Herefordshire, according to the side of a punnet of raspberries in the fridge. I’ve returned from a weekend of services at Hereford Cathedral with Priory Voices.<\/p>\n
On a visit some years ago, I was collared as I emerged from the Mappa Mundi exhibition by someone from the Hereford and Worcester tourist board armed with a clipboard. They asked me various questions about my visit and then invited me to rate the tourist attraction I was currently visiting out of 10 compared with other similar attractions. I thought hard, and gave Hereford Cathedral 7 out of 10. But what can they do about it? It can hardly be replaced by the cathedral and setting of Durham or Salisbury. I might have rated it a little higher if I’d been able to see the beautiful chapter house, but I was a couple of hundred years too late for that.<\/p>\n
The music for this trip was all known to me and a mixture of some Priory Voices favourites (Kelly’s Jamaican Canticles, Mozart’s ‘Sparrow’ Mass, Alessandro Scarlatti’s beautiful Iste Confessor<\/i><\/a>) with more some familiar numbers such as Howells’ Gloucester canticles and Wash me throughly<\/i>. The Kelly was the trickiest piece, not so much because of syncopated rhythms as because of the irregular bar lengths in places combined with the need for fast articulation; it’s certainly harder than Kelly in C.<\/p>\n We were well looked after and given sherry after the Sunday morning services. It’s been a long time since I’ve sung at Hereford, and I hope it won’t be so long before I return there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Herefordshire, according to the side of a punnet of raspberries in the fridge. I’ve returned from a weekend of services at Hereford Cathedral with Priory Voices. On a visit some years ago, I was collared as I emerged from the … Continue reading