Bath Abbey Chamber Choir made the second of its Cathedral visits, a rather shorter distance to Bristol Cathedral, where the quire is full of scaffolding and the organ has been dismantled, so we were in temporary stalls in front, and accompanied by a rather faint digital organ.<\/p>\n
Our repertoire included two pieces I had, rather surprisingly, not performed in a very long time. I have not sung Ireland’s evening canticles in F in the lifetime of this blog and have done both his Communion in C and (surprisingly) his morning canticles in C many more times. It’s not clear to me why they aren’t done more often. <\/p>\n
The anthem was Purcell’s O God, Thou art my God<\/i>, which I have done just once before, a month before getting married. (Fortuitously, I’d already chosen Purcell’s harmonisation of the final Alleluias for our opening hymn.) Purcell’s verse anthems seem to be very out of favour at present, which may account for the long gap. There are a whole string of them I’d love to do, including Rejoice in the Lord alway<\/i>, the ‘Bell Anthem’ (another wedding piece). For completeness’ sake, our Responses were Reading.<\/p>\n
Back at the ranch (I mean at Bath Abbey) we sang both morning and evening services a week later. Highlights included Darke’s Communion in E, Elgar’s O salutaris Hostia<\/i> (he set this text several times and I’m not sure which of them I’ve done before though this one seemed familiar), Weelkes’ First Service and another wedding piece, a reprise of Walton’s Set me as a seal<\/i>, where I did the brief solo this time round.<\/p>\n
We were back in August, filling in a gap in the schedule to sing movements from Palestrina’s Missa Brevis<\/i>, Tallis O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit<\/i> and Mozart’s Ave Verum<\/i>. And that really was it for my singing in August this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bath Abbey Chamber Choir made the second of its Cathedral visits, a rather shorter distance to Bristol Cathedral, where the quire is full of scaffolding and the organ has been dismantled, so we were in temporary stalls in front, and … Continue reading