CE Ely Cathedral Sunday, 5th April 2015

[DracoM]

CE Ely Cathedral
Easter Festal Evensong



Order of Service:



Introit: Jesus Christ is risen (Trepte)
Responses: Leighton
Psalms 114, 118 (Garrett, South)
First Lesson: Ezekiel 37:1-4
Office Hymn: The Lamb's high banquet we await (Ad Cenam Agni)
Canticles: Murrill in E
Second Lesson: Luke 24:13-35
Anthem: Death be not proud (Francis Grier) first broadcast
Final Hymn: Jesus lives! thy terrors now (St Albinus)
Festival Te Deum (Britten)


Organ Voluntary: Résurrection (Dupré)


Assistant Organist: Edmund Aldhouse
Director of Music: Paul Trepte



Please note starting time of 3.00 p.m.

[Quilisma]

Thanks, Draco! To clarify: this service will be sung by the boys, the girls and the men all together, as is now common here for major festivals. For maximum transparency, there are currently sixteen boys including two probationers (who are not singing on Sunday), with another two joining next term to make eighteen (the maximum is twenty-two); I think we are currently also at sixteen girls (the maximum is eighteen); there are six lay clerks, who are supplemented by extras from a pool on Sundays and major occasions, and I believe there will be fourteen men in total for this broadcast. The original plan was that the canticles would be Howells St Paul's, but unfortunately this was ruled slightly too long for the broadcast. The Grier piece is likely to divide opinion: it is a starkly defiant take on the victory over death, first publicly performed here on Remembrance Sunday 2014 and also recorded back in February 2014. Note that on Saturday our boys (only) will also be prerecording the BBC Radio 4 morning service for Easter Sunday, so do listen to that too if you so wish!

[DracoM]

Murrill in E isl OK, but, crikey, to NOT permit the programming of the Howells ..................!!!!!
Surely something else could have been shortened to get the Howells to fit in? It's been on many CEs before quite comfortably? Mysterious. Britten ousting it?

[Quilisma]

Well we always seem to do a Te Deum at Evensong on Easter Day, so that is at least "authentic". The timings in broadcasts are very strict nowadays, and they reserve plenty of time for the readings and prayers and final hymn, and of course the complete organ voluntary: it would be a terrible shame to cut Edmund off in full flow, after all! The time allocated for the whole service is rather less than an hour anyway. Also, no doubt another factor disfavouring Howells St Paul's is that the boys and girls rarely get a chance to rehearse together, and the girls arrive back only the previous day (tomorrow) after a week off; SEAM will have prepared them meticulously but they won't have had a great deal of time with PT on the service music. There's always another day for Howells St Paul's: we did it one Sunday a few months ago and it was sublime. I hope they don't cut anything else on the day; the last time we were on (Wednesday 11th September 2013, when Edmund and my then bass lay clerk colleage and myself had been here only just over a week), they binned the plainsong office hymn, which is our speciality, and it was an esteemed former Ely Precentor as producer on that day, who would have known that One Does Not Simply Bin The Office Hymn! ;) Oh well, we hope you all enjoy it whatever happens...

[DracoM]

Excellent explanation and insights. My sincere thanks.

I'd guess that a goodly number of posters here and 'lurkers' would be able to identify with all that!

[bach736]

To clarify: this service will be sung ...

but where, Q? The Octagon or Choir?

[Quilisma]

It's a pleasure! The BBC van has arrived, as the boys are recording the BBC Radio 4 Sunrise Service in a few hours for broadcast at 06:35. The Vigil leading to First Eucharist (men's voices) would normally be at 05:30 with Orchestral (or anyway main) Eucharist at 10:30 and Festal Evensong at 16:00, but as the timings are different this year our Vigil is in fact this evening, starting at 20:00 and featuring the Missa Sine Nomine by Aedvardus de Ortona and a nice spiky Alleluia Psallat from the Worcester Fragments. And in the morning it's the Mozart Coronation Mass and Laudate Dominum.

Incidentally, for logistical reasons we are broadcasting from the Choir tomorrow. With both sets of choristers and a very full back row it will be rather cramped; we would normally have such things at least partly in the Octagon. Last year's Easter Festal Evensong started in the Octagon, then there was a procession to the west end, then we ended up in the Choir. It's fairly clear why we're not doing THAT this year...

[Quilisma]

Bach736, how strange, I've just answered that very question! Apparently it has to be in the Choir. What the implications will be for microphone placement and sound engineering I really don't know, but if it comes across all shrieky and bellowy on the radio then that will be why... With a top line of about thirty we won't have the option of singing down, yet in unflattering closeup this could conceivably sound quite different from how the congregation will hear it (and it's a huge building so we do find we need to project into it).

Oddly enough, I recently discovered that the same medieval choir stalls we are now using (minus the bits the refurbishers chopped off and threw away) were originally under the Octagon, in front of the two transepts, before being moved right up to the east end, and only in the nineteenth century to their current location. Until the eighteenth century there was also a big stone Romanesque pulpitum across the nave just to the west of the Octagon, and originally there was a rood screen further west than that too; the current choir screen is at the eastern end of the Octagon, so nowadays the Octagon seems like the culmination of the long nave, but originally the nave would have seemed shorter and the Octagon was the site of the Choir, the western end of a large chancel and sanctuary complex including the shrines of St Etheldreda and her relatives. We love what we are used to now, of course, and we are lucky to have so many remnants of the huge Benedictine monastic complex (and the institutional changeover between the dissolution of the Cathedral Priory in 1539 and the official refoundation by Henry VIII in 1541 seems to have been relatively seamless in terms of personnel), but I would love to have seen the place just before Bishop Thomas Goodrich got his crazed hands on it and started the campaign of smashing it all up. The Lady Chapel in particular was one of the most staggering masterpieces in the world before he ruled that everyone must get their chisels out...

[mopsus]

The Lady Chapel in particular was one of the most staggering masterpieces in the world before he ruled that everyone must get their chisels out...

Not improved either by the statue of Mary it now houses. The addition of an altar in front of it hasn't made matters better (in my opinion); it looks like an altar to Mary. (I have no theological problem in general with statues, Mary, or statues of Mary, just that one.)

Sunday evensong at Ely used to be sung under the Octagon. When I did this with visiting choirs I found it a hard place to sing, because the sound just seemed to go upwards and be swallowed. Ely's own choirs will handle this better. (Incidentally the Cathedral now does tours up the Octagon, which I recommend for those with a head for heights. Some wonderful photo opps looking down into the nave.)

[Quilisma]

Ah, the famous Charlie Dimmock statue, also known as Wild Mary... I doubt the current Dean would have countenanced such things... Yes, there are all sorts of passageways and precarious vantage-points one can get to if one knows how, including the very pinnacles of the lantern, which is like giving birth upwards! Conversely, Sunday morning Eucharists are almost always in the Nave with the choir in the movable Octagon stalls, while Sunday Evensongs tend to be in the choir except on big civic occasions; carol services are mostly in the Nave too, and processional services often involve the west end, the Octagon, the choir and the Presbytery... You're right that the Octagon has challenging acoustics: projection is certainly needed, and that's why "The Ely Sound" is definitely not the dainty mezzo-piano cooing beloved in certain other places. In the 1950s Michael Howard saw cause to import a style of production heavily influenced by Henry Washington and George Malcolm, and an element of that has stayed with us. If the dour and sturdy Norman central tower had not collapsed in 1321 Ely would have been a very different place today.

[eighthobstruction]

....goodness me....that's a very strange (to be brief) statue....

[mangerton]

(Incidentally the Cathedral now does tours up the Octagon, which I recommend for those with a head for heights. Some wonderful photo opps looking down into the nave.)

Indeed. I went to Ely in 2005 on a very hot Friday in June, and climbed up - an amazing experience. I took many pictures which I have just re-visited. Evensong was sung in the Chapter house that day, IIRC.

A bit off topic, but the Octagon featured on one of the late Fred Dibnah's programmes, and there was an interesting discussion about its construction.

[Quilisma]

Yes, I remember the Fred Dibnah programme! And yes, Friday Evensong is usually in the Lady Chapel, unless the Lady Chapel isn't available for some reason or other. Another weird thing about That Statue is that the window panel behind it has been blocked up, but only in about 2011, several years after it was installed. It looks really strange from outside. Ah well, mustn't criticise my own Cathedral, I suppose!

[Vox Humana]

Not improved either by the statue of Mary it now houses.

Ah, the famous Charlie Dimmock statue, also known as Wild Mary...

Each to their own. Apart from the fact that her arms strike me as just a bit thin in proportion to the rest of her and I think she deserved a less ugly expression, I find it really rather glorious. I'd much rather look at that than any sexless, traditional representation. I do think the wrought iron addition in front of it is a distraction though.

[Alison]

I always enjoy spotting Ely from Newmarket racecourse. A very good choice for Easter Sunday I'd say. The Holy Spirit hovers over that place!