CE London Festival of Contemporary Church Music Wed, 11th May 2016

[DracoM]

CE London Festival of Contemporary Church Music
St Pancras Church


Order of Service:

Introit: Vox nostra (Francis Grier 2015 Festival commission)
Responses: Sebastian Forbes 2016 Festival commission
Psalms 59, 60, 61 (Christopher Batchelor)
First Lesson:1 Kings 19: 1-18
Office Hymn: Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire (Veni Creator)
Canticles: St Albans Service (Cecilia McDowall)
Second Lesson: Matthew 3: 13-17
Anthem: Ignis Amoris (Peter Foggitt 2016 Festival commission)
Final Hymn: Creator Spirit, by whose aid (Tavistock Square)


Organ Voluntary: Even so, Amen! (Daniel Knaggs)


Organist: Peter Foggitt
Director of Music Christopher Batchelor

[DracoM]

Reminder: today @ 3.30 p.m


AND ahead of schedule, route over Dunmail Raise on A591 is re-opened after Storm Desmond's devastation.!!!!!

[jean]

And on the eve of the feast of St Pancras, too!

[decantor]

For those interested in such things, Peter Foggitt has kindly included on his website the full score of his anthem Ignis amoris, commissioned for today's CE broadcast. The link is http://media.wix.com/ugd/bbfa52_3ba1...93f2a7fccb.pdf

[ardcarp]

Thanks! It will be fun to watch and listen.

[DracoM]

Liked the Knaggs voluntary.

[Gabriel Jackson]

Liked the Knaggs voluntary.

Interesting...

Very fine piece by Cecilia McDowall, the best thing in the service, at which I was present

[decantor]

Very fine piece by Cecilia McDowall, the best thing in the service, at which I was present

I agree entirely, Gabriel, that Cecilia McD's canticles were musically mighty fine. What I can't get my head around is that her setting of the Magnificat was appropriate for the text. I'd be the first to argue that it is music's role to give us as many fresh interpretations of a text as possible, but - in my ignorance, maybe - I still see a mismatch. I just wish that I could have heard her piece without knowing the words, thus removing the tension.

More generally, I enjoyed all today's music (apart from the leaden-footed Responses), and reckoned the choir did a good job in bringing them to life.

[chitreb]

Plenty here to challenge the listener (and no doubt the choir and organist) but only the McDowall was enjoyable/inspiring for me. The voluntary did just about win me over by the end.

[Alain Maréchal]

Please forgive my ignorance, but from which of the two St Pancras churches in London is this service broadcast?

[jean]

The other one is always called St Pancras Old Church, isn't it?

[Alain Maréchal]

Thank you Jean, but I understood the one on the Euston Road (is that the one with outsize Caryatids or is my memory again at fault?) was called St P New Church, thus my confusion. I've never been inside either.

[jean]

Yes, that's the one - but it's only sometimes called New, while the old one is always Old.

(I only know about it because I once sang in a concert there. It's too small and out-of the-way for such a festival as this. There's a St Pancras in Liverpool too, but he has to share the dedication with St Agnes.)

I enjoyed the canticle settings too, but I have spent too much time singing early music to worry much about whether the music is appropriate to the text.

[Alain Maréchal]

Thank you Jean. I have heard this annual service for many years and always assumed it was the church seen from the railway (not knowing until recently that the other church was also St. P). I travelled on that line frequently 40 years ago, and one fact that stuck in my subconscious was that when the railway was being built one of the engineers was Thomas Hardy, who had the task of digging up the churchyard.* There is a ruined St. P. in Canterbury (part of St Augustine's Abbey).

* I'm not at all certain about my past tenses in that sentence.

[Gabriel Jackson]

I enjoyed the canticle settings too, but I have spent too much time singing early music to worry much about whether the music is appropriate to the text.

I didn't really understand the point about appropriateness. To my ears, the lack of aggression and the quietly ecstatic quality of the Magnificat were very well-conceived.