CE: St Wulfram’s Church, Grantham [R] 7.ii.2024

[DracoM]

CE: St Wulfram’s Church, Grantham [R]
The Gesualdo Six

Introit: The promised light of life (Cheryl Frances-Hoad)
Responses: William Smith
Psalm 37
First Lesson: Isaiah 52 vv.13 – 53 v.6
Canticles: Second Service (Orlando Gibbons)
Second Lesson: Romans 15 vv.14-21
Anthem: When David heard (Thomas Tomkins)
Motet: O Lord support us (Henrietta Moran)
Hymn: The race that long in darkness pined (Dundee)

Voluntary: Prelude and Fugue in A major, BWV 536 (J.S. Bach)

Tim Williams (Organist)
Owain Park (Director of Music)
Recorded 23 January.

[cat]

Much as I enjoy listening to The Gesualdo Six, I feel this particular repertoire might be better-suited to a full church choir. St Wulfram’s has, according to their website, a "nationally renowned church choir" of adults, teenagers and children. A shame not hear any of them perhaps?

[DracoM]

Yes, yes. Could we be n for a 'concert' and not a service?

[DracoM]

As suspected......................
Nicely sung, but...............

[cat]

Contrary to the published description it was sung with the youth choir of the church which was a relief as I wouldn't have fancied hearing Gibbons' Second with six singers.

[DracoM]

!ndeed.

[mw963]

re the voluntary - is that the fashionable way to play Bach at the moment?

[Caussade]

re the voluntary - is that the fashionable way to play Bach at the moment?

It's one way of doing it but I don't think it represents any sort of established fashion or trend, no. Bach playing has perhaps become more flexible in general since the sewing machine renditions of a few decades back but this was maybe one of the more idiosyncratic examples of that move away from complete metrical strictness. Wolfgang Rubsam plays in a not dissimilar way, perhaps - although this is less free than his playing used to be - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrhImd3ipHc

[bach736]

Worth a listen if only for the exquisite psalmody.

[daktari]

Gibbons Canticles the high point for me. Strange rhythmic instability in the Bach voluntary, I cannot imagine intentional and I suspect a technical issue on the part of the organist. The service over-all as a Gesamtkunstwerk very tasteful and enjoyable. The repeat today (Sunday) was again incorrectly announced as containing Ramsey's How are the mighty fallen! as the anthem.

[mopsus]

Worth a listen if only for the exquisite psalmody.

The final chant was by Kerensa Briggs (the Six have previously broadcast it).

Just listened to the repeat - it would have been good not have had the final chord of the voluntary abruptly cut off. I'm sure St Wulfram's has more resonance than that.

[Vox Humana]

Strange rhythmic instability in the Bach voluntary, I cannot imagine intentional and I suspect a technical issue on the part of the organist.

It was too consistently applied to be a technical issue. I am sure it was intentional. I am afraid I didn't warm to the style.

[Keraulophone]

I listened to most of this service on Sunday afternoon stuck in a car for four hours which had succumbed to a deceptively deep puddle next to the River Bovey in deepest Dartmoor, with no phone signal, Chagford being the nearest village. Compared to the slowly rising water level and the lowering dark sky, the glorious music of Gibbons and Tomkins was a welcome distraction. It wasn’t possible to get the automatic gear box into neutral (as the engine wouldn’t turn over) so it to be pulled onto the rescue truck with the rear wheels fixed. But the wonderful septuagenarian Ray, with his thick Devonian accent and never-say-die attitude, got the car to Chagford and, picking up the rest of our party and with a change of truck and driver, thence home to Cornwall.

This was one occasion when Evensong, coming across the airwaves to me stranded alone in a flood, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, sounded particularly comforting.

[mw963]

Poor Keraulophone. "Out of the Deep" and all that. If it cheers you up we lost a car fifteen years ago to a "deceptively" deep puddle in Devon (it was dark, it turned out actually to be part of a river that had burst its banks) and it's no fun (we got wet up to our waists during the subsequent "escape"). I hope the car can be restarted (ours couldn't).

[Historian]

Glad to hear that you made it home safely: can't have been much fun. I vividly remember driving along a road on the fringes of Exmoor which suddenly turned into a stream. Nothing like your experience but still scary at the time.