On Saturday I went to hear the Bath Choral Society perform the Messiah in Bath Abbey. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone else sing this work live before as I get to perform it myself every three years or so. This time a colleague had a ticket and couldn’t go herself.
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\nThe performance was a traditional one, with modern pitch and a large chorus; at the Hallelujah Chorus the entire audience stood up (rather than just a bold few), the choir sang from memory and the soloists joined in, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
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\nThere were also some standard cuts in parts 2 and 3. Uncut performances are commoner than they were (maybe faster speeds have something to do with this?) but I’ve done the work with a variety of omissions, the most bizarre being all but the tail end of ‘All we like sheep’. I’m always rather sorry not to have ‘Let all the angels of God worship him’, a punchy little number which is the first thing to go if anything is cut. I once sang in a performance on limited rehearsal time where the conductor had included ‘But thanks be to God’ because he liked the words. To his horror he found that practically no one knew it because it’s usually cut, and it’s not easy; it then took over a large chunk of the rehearsal time.<\/p>\n
\nMeanwhile the Cathedral Chamber Choir has secured a date at Westminster Cathedral in April 2004, and I note with regret that I won’t be able to sing in the Erleigh Cantors concert in February. They are doing the Giles Swayne Magnificat which I’d certainly love to do; I’ll have to hope that it gets programmed for an evensong some time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Saturday I went to hear the Bath Choral Society perform the Messiah in Bath Abbey. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard anyone else sing this work live before as I get to perform it myself every three years or … Continue reading