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.
\nThe 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!<\/p>\n
\nRecently 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<\/a> (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?<\/p>\n \nI 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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 … Continue reading