Bath Abbey Chamber Choir began the year with the fixed point in our annual schedule: the Epiphany Carol service, with two pieces I hadn’t done before.<\/p>\n
Byrd’s 5-part setting of Reges Tharsis<\/i> appears to be an early work, using the style of a previous generation, and has a certain amount of clunkiness, such as its abrupt ending, presumably resulting from inexperience. <\/p>\n
Jonathan Dove’s The three kings<\/i> is familiar to me from 9 Lessons and Carols broadcasts and proved to be tricky, with its changes of speed and key. I’d missed some rehearsal on it in December so I had catching up to do.<\/p>\n
We reprised Marenzio’s Tribus miraculis<\/i> from a couple of years ago, and also included the well-known The Crown of Roses<\/i> by Tchaikovsky and the Coventry Carol<\/i>. In the latter case we left in the dissonance recorded in the transcription which was fortunately made before the original manuscript was lost to a fire. Almost certainly this is a scribal error, but it seems right to my 21st-century ears, even if it’s wrong.<\/p>\n
The other piece was another Nine Lessons favourite, Pearsall’s In dulci jubilo<\/i>, which I hadn’t sung for a decade or so (it seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years, at least at King’s).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bath Abbey Chamber Choir began the year with the fixed point in our annual schedule: the Epiphany Carol service, with two pieces I hadn’t done before. Byrd’s 5-part setting of Reges Tharsis appears to be an early work, using the … Continue reading