Beverley Minster must be one of the best-kept secrets on the cathedral\/greater churches visiting choir circuit. Apart from the summer holidays the only weekends available are those after Christmas and Easter. No wonder few of us in the Cathedral Chamber Choir had sung there and there was a lot of interest in going.<\/p>\n
We sang a full evensong on the Saturday. The Minster uses a congregational eucharist setting so our efforts on the Sunday morning were concentrated on two Byrd motets I hadn’t sung before: Terra Tremuit<\/i> and Pascha Nostrum<\/i>. We found out a few weeks beforehand that the Sunday evening service on the Sunday after Easter isn’t evensong but a service for relatives of those whose funerals have been taken by Minster clergy recently. (Visiting choirs ought to be aware of this as it may influence whether choir members who have been bereaved themselves want to take part.) There were four choir items in this service, as we sang Rutter’s The Lord bless you and keep you<\/i> after the blessing and used Faur\u00e9’s In Paradisum<\/i> as a closing voluntary. Our anthem was Faire is the Heaven<\/i> which is a great favourite of many but not an especial one of mine; I always end up wondering why Spenser couldn’t write about ordinary human beings!<\/p>\n
Our organists confirmed that the building has a good instrument and it is certainly a pleasant one to sing in, from any of the three locations we used (the ‘real’ choir stalls on the Saturday, the north transept for both motets on the Sunday morning, the nave choir stalls on the Sunday).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Beverley Minster must be one of the best-kept secrets on the cathedral\/greater churches visiting choir circuit. Apart from the summer holidays the only weekends available are those after Christmas and Easter. No wonder few of us in the Cathedral Chamber … Continue reading