Coll. Mag.

[Finzi4ever]

Last week, after an academic meeting in the college, I managed to get to the second half of a Tudor evensong in Magdalen and though only in the narthex, the singing was superb with real ping and edge in the trebles and rich, balanced sonoriies throughout. All under the control of acting IC, the redoubtable Simon Lawford, while DH is on leave. SL had been organ scholar there back in his first Oxford incarnation and as elsewhere recently (like Chichester) he has stepped into the breach and is doing wonderfully.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

fascinating if a tad esoteric F4E ... DH?

[Finzi4ever]

Daniel Hyde , the current, excellent Informator Choristarum.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

thanks and narthex? as in this?

if so i was there only last term listening to two undergraduates playing Janacek and Beethoven ... but with no nominal intimations as to the location ...

[Finzi4ever]

ante-chapel

[Keraulophone]

the redoubtable Simon Lawford, while DH is on leave. SL had been organ scholar there back in his first Oxford incarnation and as elsewhere recently (like Chichester) he has stepped into the breach and is doing wonderfully.

I knew him slightly in the late '70s as I was living the other side of Longwall St, so could watch the Mag deer through the bathroom's misted window. Our paths crossed years later at the St Endellion Summer Festival, when he was guest Chorus Master. He publicly rebuked an elderly lady (who seemed somewhat affronted at this) for arriving fifteen minutes late to that morning's rehearsal. That was the last StESF he was invited to, as the even more redoutable lady in question was, unbeknown to him, Richard Hickox's mother!

[muticus]

Hum, one hates to cast nasturtiums but, Calum dear, how do you get to be a 'host' without knowing what a narthex is?
Shocking........perhaps you should have been one of that now redundant species a 'head chorister' - but I stir too much. ;-)

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

well muticus perhaps being rather bad at latin, and of a secular persuasion, and not the sort to bother with church architecture etc ... and having gone to a Wilson era university in Acton [an old cinema and huts as it happens, now all concrete and glass]... seem to qualify one for knowing a bit about jass the devil's music and finding one's way around Soho rather than the High .... what tickled me was finding out that the reference was to somewhere i had actually been ... and listened to music that was poorly served by the acoustic .. high ceiling all that stonework ... chamber music needs good timber eh ....

and tomorrow night i shall be in the University Church listening to OUWO, who were very successful in the National Wind Ensemble Festival Finals recently ... if you are in Oxford you should hear them, for they are truly excellent!

[muticus]

To have done so would have been a pleasure - sadly I am out in the fens - much nearer to 'the other place' :-(