Bath Abbey Chamber Choir joined forces with our opposite number at Exeter Cathedral, the St Peter’s Singers, for an evensong in Exeter.
Close-up view of woodwork from the stalls in the quire
Exeter is one of the few Cathedrals now that does the BCP psalms for the day (Christ Church Oxford is the latest one I know of to have given them up) and if you like psalmody as I do it was a real treat to sing there on the 15th evening, the longest one where you get the entirety of Psalm 78. (I think the only other time I may have sung this was years ago at St Paul’s Cathedral. We turned up on August 15th – no Marian references in that service – with Ps 78 all primed, only to be told that this was an alternate month when they sang ‘morning psalms’ at evensong! But they let us do it anyway.)
The service contained much that was new to me: a Magnificat by Soriano (a composer I hadn’t encountered before), Wood’s Latin Nunc Dimittis in B flat (which I like more than the other settings by him that I’ve done) and Verleih uns Frieden by Mendelssohn. This last bears a disconcerting resemblance to the initial hymn sung by the prophets of Baal in Elijah! The large numbers of our combined choirs allowed us to sing in 8 parts with confidence.
Impressive stitching on a Cathedral kneeler
Exeter Cathedral wasn’t quite its normal self. There was a lot of scaffolding in the quire, various bells were rung during the service which shouldn’t have been and the heating was not on.
The St Peter’s Singers have been going rather longer than us (124 years to our 4) and comparing their operation with ours has made us realise what can be done with and for a voluntary choir, and got us asking questions! Sadly I am likely to miss the return visit to Bath that is planned.