Categories: uncategorized
Date: 25 February 2008 11:01:20
Nobody could accuse our church of not being up-to-date when the opening hymn (Guide me, O thou Great Redeemer) so clearly celebrated Wales' outstanding Rugby victory. The Welsh organist got rather carried away, with a rather strange arrangement on the last verse, and another Welsh parishioner was asked to read the New Testament lesson. I'm sure his accent was much stronger than usual. I'm also not sure what the visiting Youth Leader made of all that Welsh fervour appearing in a rural Devon backwater. I expect he began to think he'd made a wrong turn off the Motorway.
As a total contrast, our anthem, 'Ave Verum Corpus' (Byrd) - sung on this occasion by a quartet - was almost as old as the stones surrounding us. We were told afterwards that we sounded 'positively Mediaeval' - I'm not sure whether that was a compliment or not.....
Evensong was made rather interesting by a number of minor mistakes, both spoken and sung (each member of the choir and clergy appeared to be trying to outdo each other - what is the closest mistake you can make to a major mistake, whilst still keeping it as a minor mistake?). In the midst of all this near-madness and mayhem, our anthem 'Cantate Domino' (Giuseppe Pitoni) shone out joyfully, even if the name does make it sound like a brand of pizza.