Tag Archives: Byrd

The Evening Canticles and me

Taking part in the ‘World Cup of Evensong Canticles’ has made me think about my personal history of singing them.* I didn’t start to sing evensongs until I was about 16, and for a few years after that I only … Continue reading

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see you on the other side

Some kind of order is beginning to emerge out of the chaos. Bristol Choral Society has started having online rehearsals. Messages about ‘virtual choir pubs’ and ‘virtual pub choirs’ are dropping into my inbox, and social media is full of … Continue reading

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have I sung everything in the Oxford Book of Tudor Anthems?

I recently claimed that I had, but that claim isn’t quite true. There’s one anthem that I’ve never sung, and it’s probably the least performed in the book: Byrd’s This day Christ was born. The problem is that it really … Continue reading

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the Great Service

Long-term readers of this blog will know that Byrd’s Great Service of evening canticles has long been on my wishlist of church music that I’d never sung. In the usual way, after years of waiting, and just as I was … Continue reading

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Steal away

Not the spiritual this time, though I wish it had been. On my railway journey to sing with the Erleigh Cantors at Liverpool Cathedral, my overnight bag was stolen from the train between Bristol and Birmingham. (Memo to Cross Country … Continue reading

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an Anglo-Spanish concert in Caversham

The Erleigh Cantors’ May concert this year reunited a number of pieces from recent Cathedral visits, by English and Spanish composers. It wasn’t all familiar territory to me, however. Having missed last July’s weekend in Hereford, I hadn’t previously sung … Continue reading

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Weelkes in Winchester

It was a quick return to Winchester, this time with the Erleigh Cantors. Slightly worryingly, the place where we rehearsed in the summer was off-limits because of dodgy electrics, so we were displaced to Pilgrims’ Hall, an impressively old but … Continue reading

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avoiding the Prayer Fayre

The Cathedral Chamber Choir sang at Wells Cathedral for the weekend of Trinity Sunday. Well, sort of, as on the Sunday afternoon we made way for a ‘prayer fayre’ in the Cathedral and decamped to St Cuthbert’s Church, together with … Continue reading

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three more funerals in May

I sang at four in all this month. I have already mentioned the first – the second was that of an old friend back in Cambridge. We sang Byrd’s four-part Mass, and I heard a voice from heaven by Tomkins, … Continue reading

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what’s top of the bucket list now?

Like many singers I have a ‘bucket list’ of the works I would like to sing and have never done. For as far back as I can remember until 2008, the work at the top of it was Bach’s B … Continue reading

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