Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 December 2007 11:37:19
We added the 'Agnus Dei' to the Mass of St. Eustachius today, which completes it for the moment until we sing the Gloria again. My favourites are the 'Kyrie' and 'Agnus Dei' full of wonderful scrunchy chords which only resolve at the last minute. During the Eucharist we took it easy by singing the Basque carol, 'Gabriel's Message' (known to choirs everywhere as 'Most highly flavoured gravy'.) The middle verse sung as a soprano solo with humming from the other parts had a certain poignancy, as if Mary really was answering the angel in song right there in the church. Such an interpretation was more noticeable with the carol being sung on its own, rather than as part of the more usual '9 lessons and carols'.
The 'Lessons and Carols' (now strangely reduced to 7 lessons) worked really well as a whole this year - we sang everything with a zing and a zip, without even the promise of a mince pie at the end. Perhaps it was because we had been so well looked-after and fed at the choir party on Friday. Despite illness in the alto and soprano lines (necessitating some last-minute solo rearrangements) we sang: Adam lay ybounden (Ord), Hail Blessed Virgin Mary (arr. Wood), Sussex Carol (arr. Willcocks), Myn Lyking (Terry), Nativity Carol (Rutter), Ding Dong (arr. Willcocks) and Silent Night (arr. Sweeney), plus the usual congregational carols. Silent Night was unmistakeably in the Sweeney style, with yet more scrunchy chords (taking a whole line to resolve in one case): I've never sung in a Barbershop Choir, but imagined myself to be in one surrounded by all that close harmony.
The organ voluntary (Variations on Adeste Fidelis - Dupre) struck me as very appropriate for the organist to play at weddings when the bride is late, sounding much more like 'Why are we waiting' than 'O come all ye faithful'.