CE Liverpool Cathedral Wed, 8th June 2016

[jean]

A discreet alto part is more likely!

[charles t]

I hope that none will resent my trespassing into this topic. It does qualify as 'Religious' in the absence of such a forum herein.

The reason for my intrusion ... is ... on a recent trans-Atlantic cruise, somewhere off the coast of Spain, in the ship's library I found a donated copy of a novel - The Sentimentalists - by an early 20th-century Brit novelist, to wit:

Robert Hugh Benson (18 November 1871 – 19 October 1914) was an English Anglican priest who in 1903 was received into the Roman Catholic Church in which he was ordained priest in 1904...Benson was the youngest son of Edward White Benson (Archbishop of Canterbury) and his wife, Mary. (wiki)

The irony of finding the freebie on the ship is that another Benson freebie - The Dawn Of All - courtesy of a Forgotten Books printing, came into my hands at last year's L.A. Times Book Fest but had fallen, unremembered, into my book-limbo shelf.

Hopefully, there are fellow admirers of this Christian novelist lurking here...

[Pulcinella]

I hope that you enjoy attending the service, jean.
Looks like a busy week at the cathedral, with a service for Carla Lane tomorrow, an ordination service on Saturday, and a service for HM's 90th involving the Philharmonic Choir as well as their own forces on Sunday.

I got this message from an old school friend, a former chorister there, when I sent him a link to this thread:

I will be listening later. I don't recollect a congregation when I was involved and they broadcast from the Lady Chapel to get a good sound quality.

I suspect the equipment has developed over the past >50 years.

[jean]

I hope that you enjoy attending the service, jean.

I'm sure I shall!

I hope that none will resent my trespassing into this topic. It does qualify as 'Religious' in the absence of such a forum herein...

You're right, there isn't really a place on the forum for this sort of thing.

It's a bit misleading too to call R H Benson Christian - he was part of the furious religious polemicism of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century when Catholicism, and its Jesuit manifestation in particular, was seen by many as nothing less than the Antichrist of the book of Revelation and perhaps even worse, un-English - see the novels of Joseph Hocking.

This was what Benson was responding to, which is probably why The Sentimentalists portrays its Catholics as perfect upper-class English gentlemen.

(He was the brother of E F Benson, who wrote the Mapp and Lucia books.)

[ardcarp]

I hope that none will resent my trespassing into this topic. It does qualify as 'Religious' in the absence of such a forum herein.

Trespassers will be....welcome! No-one stays on-topic here anyway. Was this Benson any relation to A.C. Benson?

[jean]

Was this Benson any relation to A.C. Benson?

Another brother. They're all here.

[Keraulophone]

...not forgetting their remarkable mother Mary Benson, neé Sidgwick, the 'cleverest woman in Europe' (Gladstone).

After her husband's death in 1896 Mary set up household with Lucy Tait, daughter of the previous archbishop of Canterbury. None of her six children married. [Wiki]

[DracoM]

Not that you need one, but a reminder of today's CE @ 3.30 p.m.

[Pulcinella]

Why, why, oh why did La Derham feel obliged to pounce in and tell us what the closing voluntary was before the echo had died away, especially as we had loads of time to spare?

[AuntyKezia]

Why, why, oh why did La Derham feel obliged to pounce in and tell us what the closing voluntary was before the echo had died away, especially as we had loads of time to spare?

It often feels as if she thinks it her duty, as continuity announcer, to bring us all down to earth with a bump after Choral Evensong.

[jean]

Those of you who heard it at home may well have had a more satisfying experience than we did in the cathedral, because they didn't let us into the choir and even from just the other side of the nave altar, the dreaded acoustic begins to muddy things.

I'm looking forward to listening again on iPlayer.

I did my best with the hymn, but I have no idea if there were any mikes directed at my efforts.

[ardcarp]

It came over well on the radio. The acoustic (dread or otherwise) is quite a gift for treble voices which soar very effectively (and did!) and the engineers got a pretty good balance IMO. I can only imagine what a mush it must have been in the nave. Did the organ predominate? I need to LA because my 'listening hour' was sadly interrupted. Good to hear the VW Te Deum in G...even if we didn't get all of it! Glad the organist didn't stick to the letter of Herbert Murrill's arrangement of Crown Imperial. Many touches were more faithful to the orchestral score.

[chitreb]

Why, why, oh why did La Derham feel obliged to pounce in and tell us what the closing voluntary was before the echo had died away, especially as we had loads of time to spare?

Me too. I nearly threw something at the radio.

I did struggle a bit with the balance - the sound came across to me as rather muddy. I thought it might be my DAB radio/hifi combination but I tried my older FM hifi and it sounded the same.

Re Jean's comment, I tried very hard but I'm afraid congregational singing was not terribly obvious.

I look forward to Jean's 'compare and contrast' re the iPlayer version and being at the service.

[Philip]

Must have been thrilling hearing the Walton live, sounded like Dan Bishop managed to use about every trumpet and tuba going!

[ardcarp]

the sound came across to me as rather muddy.

But much clearer than in days of yore (Woan/Tracey?) when there was a blaze of organ and a distant hoot from the choir.

I enjoyed this CE, and the trebles are to be congratulated (a) for doing some double choir stuff and (b) for really having a go at the high notes.

http://www.liverpoolcathedral.org.uk/home/cathedral-music/our-choir.aspx

...oh, and good to have a picture of the Gilbert Scott cathedral on BBC web page and not the default pic.