As a resident of Bath I ‘hosted’ the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s weekend at Bath Abbey and this entailed letting people into rehearsal venues and generally shepherding them around.<\/p>\n
A weekend at Bath Abbey is unusual because it includes Matins and not Communion. Our setting was my favourite Te Deum, Elgar’s. This is relatively early Elgar, Gerontius<\/em>-period, rather than contemporary with his later large-scale anthems which I don’t get on with nearly so well. We paired it with his Benedictus<\/em> (a first for me) which uses a lot of the same music; not strictly the right time of year for this canticle, but we had a reading about John the Baptist so it was appropriate after all! (And a more erudite sermon than I’ve heard in quite a while – I can’t remember when I last heard someone quoting Philo from the pulpit, or a sentence of the New Testament in the original Greek.)<\/p>\n On Saturday we had to wait for a wedding to clear the Abbey before we could use it, and then sang Wise in F (in an unfamiliar edition to keep me on my toes) and In Pace<\/em> by Sheppard, which I don’t think I’ve sung before. It was a lovely relaxing piece and a real discovery for me.<\/p>\n Sunday evensong was more standard fare: Smith responses, Howells Coll. Reg<\/em> and Fauré’s Cantique de Jean Racine<\/em>. One quirk of the weekend was that we sang the same hymn at all three services; this was partly my fault, because I chose it for Saturday’s evensong before I’d seen the hymn list for Sunday, but it got accidentally substituted for the correct hymn at Sunday evensong too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As a resident of Bath I ‘hosted’ the Cathedral Chamber Choir’s weekend at Bath Abbey and this entailed letting people into rehearsal venues and generally shepherding them around. A weekend at Bath Abbey is unusual because it includes Matins and … Continue reading