I got away for a weekend singing in Llandaff Cathedral with the Erleigh Cantors: a new venue for them, though one I’d sung in a couple of times before. This time there was a very new organ – we must have been one of the first visiting choirs to sing with it – which made a nice sound though it is still short of a few stops at the moment. My only quibble about its appearance was the heavy black metal grilles on the western parts of the case – unlike the console and the pipes nearest the high altar, there is no need for a safety barrier there and they only obscure the woodwork.
Most of the music was well known to me. We had a lightish Saturday evensong: Wise’s Canticles in F and for introit Weelkes’ Alleluia – I heard a voice which I find one of the hardest pieces in the Oxford Tudor Anthem book, although the difficulty is really with the high tessiatura. The anthem was O Lord look down from heaven by Battishill; for those who know this piece, we sang ‘The yearning of thy heart’!
On Sunday morning I revisited an old Priory Voices favourite, Rheinberger’s Mass for double choir in E flat. This time it included the Kyrie, which I hadn’t sung before. The anthem was O Saviour of the world by Ouseley, which makes three composers whom I know mainly through their chants rather than their anthems. (We had a generous amount of psalmody and sang one of Battishill’s chants. If anyone has a copy of the beautiful single chant by Wise – in D minor? – I would like to have it!)
At Evensong we moved on to later music – Leighton responses as on Saturday, Hadley’s My beloved spake, Howells’ St. John’s College canticles, which I’ve only sung once before (we did the ‘alternative’ ending to the Nunc as now seems to be standard), and a new piece for me, Philip Moore’s It is a thing most wonderful, which some of us found very affecting. I look forward to singing more of his music.
