John the Baptist

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 26 June 2007 22:01:09

We sang one of my favourite anthems in the morning: 'Locus Iste' (Bruckner). It is a difficult piece to sing a capella and stay in tune but, apart from one bar where the sopranos appeared to veer dangerously close to another key altogether, this was successfully achieved. The star of the show was, however, a well-wrapped up doll in a cradle, presented by the youngest children, with a label attached saying 'His name is John'.

The new Rural Dean preached at evensong. He left his cosy village church (aptly named after John the Baptist) to enter blinking into the unfamiliar territory of an (almost) full-on town church Festival Evensong. I have no idea what he made of all that singing, but he couldn't say much when the vicar was singing with us. We sang Psalm 82 and the Nunc Dimittis to Anglican Chant so the congregation could join in, but the Smith responses, the Magnificat in C (Stanford) and the anthem, 'Eternal God' (Rutter) were all choir-only. Rutter's composition was more hymn-like than most of his anthems; we sang it v.1 soprano solo, v.2 unison - soprano and alto, v.3 SATB harmony a capella and v.4 unison - all. We were complimented by an ex-chorister in the congregation for having good balance, and I don't think he meant refraining from swaying to the music..... Interestingly all the choristers who turned up for Evensong were 'young' (ie. between 10 and 55) which by today's standards for a voluntary choir is unusual. Our older members were on holiday and we had several university returners, so it was probably the youngest choir we have had for many years.
I found myself wondering, during the Rutter anthem, about the origin of the phrase 'an equal music' which appears both in this anthem and also in the title of a book by Vikram Seth.