a radiophonic Christmas

Posted on December 26, 2003 by vhk10

Like many people, I got a digital radio for Christmas. It won’t really increase the number of classical music channels I can receive, but it will allow me to hear what there is with better quality sound anywhere in the house.

I realise how privileged television is over radio when I have to explain yet again to someone that the ‘Carols from King’s’ broadcast on TV on Christmas Eve is not the Nine Lessons and Carols service, although it may contain some of the same music. It is a recording made earlier in December; I was once invited to be in the ‘congregation’ at the recording session though I didn’t take part in the end. Sometimes the previous year’s TV recording is repeated. The presence of televison cameras and lighting equipment at the Christmas Eve Nine Lessons service would ruin the atmosphere for people in the chapel, and so it is never televised.

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9 lessons and the Pump Room

Posted on December 22, 2003 by vhk10

The Chantry Singers concert in the Pump Room happened on Saturday night. Despite fears about the ever-increasing number of Christmas concerts by other choirs (at least 3 others in the area that night), it more or less sold out. Vocally it was not too taxing as there were no notes above a G and not many of those. (It wouldn’t have been very different if I’d sung 1st soprano rather than 2nd).

My high notes got more of a workout the following night when I was singing 9 Lessons and Carols in Bathwick. This must be the first time in over ten years that I’ve done such a service. I was one of a number of extras drafted in and the choir made a strong sound, necessary because the hymns were accompanied by 8 (!) brass players. I knew all about it because I was right in front of them and in fact had to position myself very carefully, guided by the pattern of tiles on the church floor, so that one of the trumpeters could see the conductor. (I believe the BBC does positioning by painting footprints on the floor!) Our guest conductor was Anthony Crossland, formerly of Wells Cathedral. Several of the carols had a local connexion, including Clifford Harker’s arrangement of Away in a Manger, the soupiest I’ve ever encountered.

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Il Trovatore at the Hippodrome

Posted on December 19, 2003 by vhk10

I went to hear ‘Il Trovatore’ at the Bristol Hippodrome last week, done by the Welsh National Opera. WNO doesn’t have the 4 best singers in the world that this opera is said to require, but the principals were all well matched once they’d sung themselves in. When I was sold my ticket, the box office warned me that I wouldn’t have a view of the surtitles, which I felt was not necessarily a drawback, given the libretto! (My favourite surtitle moment was at a performance of Ernani I went to in Manchester once: ‘Heavens! It’s the King’. Very hard not to snigger).

I realised how much Verdi’s music redeems the plot of the opera when I heard La Juive on the radio the following night. The dénument of the two operas is very similar; someone condemns another to die, then is told just as it is too late that the other is a close relative, the information having been witheld until then in order to achieve revenge. Halévy’s libretto handles the psychological side of of this in more depth, but Verdi’s music transcends the limitations of his.

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cutting the Messiah

Posted on December 12, 2003 by vhk10

On Saturday I went to hear the Bath Choral Society perform the Messiah in Bath Abbey. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone else sing this work live before as I get to perform it myself every three years or so. This time a colleague had a ticket and couldn’t go herself.

The performance was a traditional one, with modern pitch and a large chorus; at the Hallelujah Chorus the entire audience stood up (rather than just a bold few), the choir sang from memory and the soloists joined in, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

There were also some standard cuts in parts 2 and 3. Uncut performances are commoner than they were (maybe faster speeds have something to do with this?) but I’ve done the work with a variety of omissions, the most bizarre being all but the tail end of ‘All we like sheep’. I’m always rather sorry not to have ‘Let all the angels of God worship him’, a punchy little number which is the first thing to go if anything is cut. I once sang in a performance on limited rehearsal time where the conductor had included ‘But thanks be to God’ because he liked the words. To his horror he found that practically no one knew it because it’s usually cut, and it’s not easy; it then took over a large chunk of the rehearsal time.

Meanwhile the Cathedral Chamber Choir has secured a date at Westminster Cathedral in April 2004, and I note with regret that I won’t be able to sing in the Erleigh Cantors concert in February. They are doing the Giles Swayne Magnificat which I’d certainly love to do; I’ll have to hope that it gets programmed for an evensong some time.

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Bath Abbey

Posted on December 2, 2003 by vhk10

The Rector of Bath Abbey, Simon Oberst, has just resigned with immediate effect. I can’t comment further on this but I am sorry to see him go and I hope it doesn’t take as long to find a new Rector as it did last time (the job had to be advertised twice). When he arrived a couple of years ago I hoped that he would be good for the choral life of the Abbey, as he is himself a singer of professional standard.


The Abbey maintains a couple of choirs and over the last few years the pattern of choral services has changed to accommodate them. I am still waiting for the long-promised Friday evensongs sung by the Abbey girls’ choir. However, they have at least now learnt some psalms other than no. 67, which for a long time was the only one I ever heard them sing!

Recently the mixed choir which used to sing at the Abbey evening prayer service on Sundays disbanded. Maybe it was felt that 3 choral services on a Sunday was enough, but it reduces still further the already very limited opportunities in Bath’s parish churches (of which the Abbey is the principal one). I wonder where the girls in the girls’ choir will sing the church music they’ve learnt when they grow up?

I don’t get to Sunday services at the Abbey much now, but when I can I go to Saturday Evensong with visiting choirs, which I’ve sung myself a couple of times. For an account of such a service, see this. Here I hope that I’ve caused an improvement. For a long time, the hymn ‘The day Thou gavest’ was sung at at least half of these services; I suspect that it was being routinely suggested to the choirs at the last minute by the vergers, as this happened when I was visiting the Abbey once with a choir. When I went one January hoping to sing a nice Epiphany hymn which can only be sung on a few weeks in the year and got ‘The day Thou gavest’ yet again, I emailed the Abbey pointing out how boring it was for people who attended Saturday evensongs regularly, and suggesting they might consider printing it on the service sheet rather than giving out hymnbooks! Since then it’s been given a rest.

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John Rutter

Posted on November 28, 2003 by vhk10

Chantry Singers are doing 3 pieces by John Rutter in our concert. As someone once said to me ‘We don’t have Christmas-tide any more – it’s Rutter-tide’. I’m not a huge fan (there’s only so much ‘oo’ and ‘ah’ ing accompaniment I can take), but there’s no denying he can write catchy tunes. I’ve heard a rumour that he has written jingles for BBC Radio 2 and when I first went to Japan I wondered whether he also wrote the snatches of melody which are played on bullet trains as they approach stations. There was one on the shinkansen between Sendai and Tokyo which sounded very like the introduction to the Sans Day Carol! No, it’s more likely Japanese composers who’ve been to carol concerts full of arrangements from ‘Carols for Choirs’. [2019 update: they still do this!]

Now how many people buy recordings by the Cambridge Singers thinking that the choir is something to do with Cambridge? Many of the singers have studied at Cambridge, but that’s about as far as it goes. I lived in Cambridge for six years and they never performed there; in fact I don’t know that they give concerts anywhere or do anything apart from meet in London to make recordings.

A fine cartoon in the latest Private Eye: two choirboys in the stalls, one saying to the other ‘I can’t believe it’s not Rutter…!’. I don’t expect most of the readership will get the joke though.

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things I’d like to sing (1)

Posted on November 21, 2003 by vhk10

I haven’t much time this week, so I’m posting a list of pieces of church music which I’d really like to sing and which I’ve been sending to the conductors of some of the choirs I sing in when they’ve asked for suggestions. In a couple of cases it’s out of date because I’ve performed the piece in the meantime. At some point I’ll post the wishlist of the bigger choral works I’d like to do.

a) Byrd ‘Laetentur coeli’. I sang this over twenty years ago in my first term at Oxford, and it’s forever associated with that time because I have never done it since. [I got to sing this with the Erleigh Cantors in Winchester in 2006]
b) Byrd ‘Great Service’ I can but ask …. [My chance came in October 2019.]
c) Gibbons Te Deum ‘Second Service’. Not the Te Deum from the Short Service which is Gibbons on auto-pilot. This one has verse parts.
d) Weelkes Five-part service. Which is really Weelkes’ ten-part service. I did just the Mag a year ago – I’d like to tackle the Nunc too.
e) Tomkins ‘Almighty God the fountain of all wisdom’ Some really juicy false relations here.
f) Purcell ‘O Lord God of Hosts’. Another piece I have not done since my first term at university, probably because of the eight-part verse sections.
g) Purcell ‘Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei’. My all-time favourite anthem which I have never sung. It has a (tricky) tenor and (deep) bass solo. Some stunning discords and juxtapositions of keys – it’s never been surpassed by anything similar since. [I have now sing this – in Durham Cathedral.]
I could nominate lots more Purcell but I’ll move on.
h) Haydn ‘Insanae et vanae curae’ Heard this on a broadcast the other week – a bit naff but I love it. [I’ve since sung it – in Bristol last summer]
i) Smart Evening Canticles in G. Only Chichester Cathedral choir seem to sing these, though I did sing them once in about 1987. Virtuosic and fluent 5-part counterpoint.
j) Elgar Te Deum. I think this is much better than the Vaughan Williams which you hear more often – like a bit of Gerontius that got away. But it’s expansive, i.e. long! Organists seem to like it too.
[I sang this again with the Erleigh Cantors in Salisbury in 2006.]
k) Gray ‘What are these that glow from afar?’ This is long, maybe suitable for a Saturday or Sunday evensong. Sounds fun to sing.
l) Day Evening Canticles in B flat. I’m not so smitten with these as with the other things on the list but I feel it’s a gap that I’ve never sung them!
m) Howells Evening Canticles ‘St. Paul’s’ ‘What, has Virginia never done these?’ Well, of course I have, but as it happens not since 1991 (!), and they are my favourite Howells setting, because of the sweeping vocal lines. [I have since sung these with Priory Voices in Gloucester Cathedral, and with the Erleigh Cantors in Salisbury]. For that matter, I’ve never sung Howells in B minor, though I’ve heard them often enough. [Now done]
n) Lloyd Responses (2nd set) (i.e. not the ones written for Hereford – I think this set were written for Durham). I get so envious every time I hear another choir sing these. [not any more as I’ve sung them several times since I compiled the list!]
Another gap – I’ve never sung anything by Philip Moore and I like his compositions. [Now sung a few though his canticles elude me. We do ‘It is a thing most wonderful’ quite often in church.]

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Bath’s Mozartfest

Posted on November 13, 2003 by vhk10

The Bath annual Mozartfest is in full swing and I’ve been to a couple of concerts. Last Friday I heard Barbara Bonney in the Assembly Rooms singing a Masonic cantata by Mozart, some Liszt songs (none in my repertoire), Berlioz’ Nuits d’été, and numbers from Viennese operettas. I heard her a couple of years back in a recital of Mozart and Schumann and her voice had a depth of tone now that I missed earlier. I might learn the Berlioz some time, though this performance didn’t really sell the songs to me – I think because I am used to the version with orchestra, although the piano accompaniment is the original one. The operetta was fun, though the two numbers by Léhar showed up the others, and again you lost something by not having orchestral accompaniment.

It didn’t sell out, unlike a masterclass Bonney gave last year in the same venue. I was surprised that more people wanted to hear her talk about singing than to hear her sing herself. But maybe TV cameras at the masterclass reduced the audience capacity.

Yesterday I was back at the Assembly Rooms to hear the Nash Ensemble. They played two unfamiliar works by Beethoven – a string trio from Op. 9 and the sextet Op 81b. I had never heard of this latter piece and felt that it wasn’t a great success; rather than an ensemble working together, the effect was of two horns muscling in on a string quartet who’d rather be left alone. It reminded me of the chess problems and studies which use an implausible combination of pieces you wouldn’t get in normal play. After the interval Schubert’s Octet showed how it should be done.

Some years ago I was invited to join the Bath Festival Chorus, which has given concerts at the Mozartfest and the Bath Festival. I’ve often regretted that I declined, because I’ve made several attempts to join it since and not got even as far as an audition or rehearsal, for various reasons. Either I couldn’t manage rehearsals, the choir was not taking on new members, or the Festival Chorus was not being used at the Festival in question. The last of these was what happened this time; the chorus was going to be involved in a performance of Haydn’s Creation last Sunday, which was later dropped from the programme.

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back with the Chantry Singers

Posted on November 6, 2003 by vhk10

Last night I attended my first rehearsal back with the Chantry Singers (see an account of the audition here).

I last sang with the choir in 1998 and about half of those at last night’s rehearsal remembered me from then. No one ventured to ask why I dropped out. It’s a long story, relating to the choir photo and to a concert of Bach motets which was part of a Bach weekend.

Our Christmas programme is a mixture of short pieces, but avoiding standard arrangements of familiar carols. As it happens, the most musically complex ones that we did last night are all things I’ve sung before, though some of the others aren’t.

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casing the joint at Winchester

Posted on October 27, 2003 by vhk10

On Saturday I went to Winchester (driving, as the railway service was disrupted by engineering works) to sing evensong with the Erleigh Cantors in the Cathedral. We did my favourite set of responses, the Lloyd second set. If only I could write something like that third Amen! We were also allowed to do Lloyd’s ‘final Amen’ after the blessing at the end of the service. I’ve only sung the anthem, Elgar’s ‘Give unto the Lord’ once before, with the Priory Singers at Ely last May, curiously also the only time I’ve ever previously sung the Lloyd! It’s a big sing and just running it through a couple of times took a significant chunk out of our rehearsal time. Our canticles were Wills on plainsong tones, which I think I alone of the choir had sung before, with Christ’s College, Cambridge some 15 years ago. I wish I could do them more often. The opening of the Nunc has a disconcerting resemblance to that of the first of the Seven Early Songs, which I think comes of noodling around with whole tones. We sang Dering ‘Factum est silentium’ as an introit, from the south transept.

One thing I regret, though, is the tendency of Cathedrals to patronise visiting choirs by not allowing them to do all the psalms the Cathedral choir would normally sing. I look forward to doing a decent chunk of psalmody, not the little snippets you tend to get in a parish service, and don’t like being short-changed because they assume incorrectly that I and my fellow singers can’t sing Anglican chant.

While there I gathered some information and made contacts for the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s forthcoming visit next August.

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Wimborne Minster choir

Posted on October 22, 2003 by vhk10

On Saturday I went to hear the choir of Wimborne Minster sing Evensong in Bath Abbey. I sang in Wimborne Minster myself in 2000 during the usual choir’s break after Easter. The choir had lots of boys and girls on the top line (I didn’t think there were that many boys and girls in Wimborne!). Unless the congregation at the Minster has changed in the last three years, it must also have been a novelty to perform to people under sixty, although the choir appeared to have brought quite a few such people with them. The performance (Stanford and Stainer) was good apart from some strident and nasal tone in the tenor line, very obvious to me as I was sat about halfway down the nave where it carried more strongly than some of the other singing. (This is a general problem with visiting choirs in Bath Abbey – they tend to think the building will help them more than it does and don’t project enough. At one time there was a proposal to glaze the back of the choir stalls which might have made a difference, but nothing has come of this yet). [The glazing has since been done, and has made some difference]

On Sunday I went to a rehearsal of the Erleigh Cantors, a Reading-based choir with whom I do a cathedral visit a couple of times a year. The Responses we ordered haven’t arrived in time, but I have located another set whose owner is willing to lend them. We are about to sing in Winchester Cathedral – more next week.

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CCC excursions for 2004

Posted on October 17, 2003 by vhk10

These seem to be sorting themselves out. As well as our New Year booking at Westminster Abbey and week at Winchester in the summer, we are (provisionally) going to sing a Saturday Mass at Westminster Cathedral in the spring (date tbc) and a weekend at Sheffield Cathedral at the end of October. I have had a reply from St. Mary Redcliffe but I will have to hold them off till 2005 now. Now all I have to do is book a place to stay at Winchester and I can put my feet up for a while.

Usually I receive a mailshot from the Bath Camerata in September. I haven’t done this year, so I send them a message via their website. I wouldn’t want to fall off their mailing list, as happened to me once before.

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