For her final service at church, our priest in charge requested a setting of the Benedictus (meaning the morning canticle ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel’, not the movement from the Mass). This is my favourite canticle, but unless you happen to catch a Mattins service in Advent you don’t normally get to sing it. I’ve done two settings before: one by Healey Willan and the lovely one by Elgar. This time though we did a setting by Stanford (part of his service in C), ticking the anniversary-composer box. Looking at my spreadsheet of pieces I’ve sung, I see this is the 6000th item on it.
The previous weekend I sang an Evensong in Bath Abbey, with the Reading responses (these used for geographical reasons to be the Erleigh Cantors’ calling card, but I hadn’t sung them for some time), Sumsion in A and Light of the World by Elgar. This last was a first performance for me, though I have heard it on broadcasts many times.