Chapel of King's College, Cambridge [L] R4 3 p.m. 24.xii.2018

[Alison]

Rejoice! We are blessed with cathedral, school and collegiate choirs that have never been better as witnessed weekly on these boards. Standards are rising all the time with dedicated DOMs who are skilful in getting the best from their choirs.
Chris Evans said “As Sir Terry said before me, there’s never a right time to leave something you love but there might be a wrong time if you hang on too long." Hard one for Stephen Cleobury perhaps? Willcocks, Ledger and Rattle all got it right.

Totally agree.

[Quilisma]

Has someone actually said that?!

Suffice to say, I've known some pretty tactless people over the years...

[Quilisma]

Something rather similar applies here in Bath with regard to Wells Cathedral and Bath Abbey (unless the Tallis Scholars or the Sixteen are performing in Wells and not in Bath on the same tour). Admittedly, Wells is awkward to get to from Bath too, despite its nearness. Bathonians who go to choral performances often have one choir they support; it's very hard to persuade them to go and hear another, and almost impossible to get them to go to a concert in, say, Bristol. In that kind of scenario a choir's reputation relative to others will rely largely on word of mouth, because not that many people will be able to make a direct comparison!

Cambridge is in addition very isolated in its immediate area - you have to go a long way to find anywhere as large and the areas north and east at least are thinly populated. The University also dominates more than in Oxford. Ely used to be tiny in comparison and while it has expanded a lot since the 1980s, Cambridge people still, as you say, find it easy to overlook.

An interesting and enlightening parallel! You're right, though: by population, Cambridge is currently about six times the size of Ely. However, both are far bigger and busier places than they used to be, and I'm not sure I'd concur that either place is anywhere near as isolated and "cut off" as you suggest here. For a start, Ely is only sixteen miles from Cambridge, and despite the cliché that Ely is an unbelievably cold place (and that in the Cathedral it is always freezing) the weather in Cambridge is almost identical. The idea that we are remote and backward doesn't bear scrutiny. Public transport links in Ely are in fact arguably better than they are in Cambridge, as you can get direct trains to Cambridge, Stansted Airport, London, King's Lynn, Norwich, Ipswich, Peterborough, Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester, and all sorts of other places all over the country with just one change. The cost of living here is also very slightly less outrageously high than it is in Cambridge or London, so it's no surprise that these days a lot of people who work in Cambridge or London live in Ely (or Littleport, or Downham Market). It's actually a very attractive option, especially as Cambridge itself can be rather frenetic and neurotic, particularly in the height of tourist season.

Why, then, is there this sense that Cambridge is isolated from and within its immediate area? Actually I think this might derive from a certain insecurity among some Cantabrigians. Oxbridge rivalry is pretty infantile, but while Cantabrigians have, to the best of my knowledge, never come up with a stock standard negative cliché about Oxonians (after all, we generally respect, admire and like them as people), I understand that the traditional age-old cliché among certain Oxonians about Cantabrigians is that we are all just "Filthy Stinking Tabs" who inhabit some ghastly primitive bleak godforsaken ugly wasteland in the middle of the Fens (which is actually factually incorrect), well beyond the reach of civilisation, among "subnormal" "inbred" people, and that we are all boring philistines, "clever but wilfully ignorant", and, with our predilection for sceptical reanalysis and critical rationalism, represent a dangerous subversive threat to tradition and to the intelligent cultural order... One particular Oxonian, who was in authority over me at the time, once told me, with a straight face, that we Cantabrigians are "enemies of beauty and civilisation". Charming! I daresay some Cantabrigians sometimes counteract this cliché by differentiating themselves from, and being unnecessarily rude about, their own geographical environs and neighbours, and particularly from the Fens.

[Quilisma]

In fact, this completely unfounded but deep-seated stigma of the Fens goes back centuries, perhaps propagated by the Normans when the Isle of Ely was the last part of England to resist the conquest under Hereward the Wake (although he wasn't from here). The Fens are even now sometimes stereotyped as a completely different world from the rest of England, somehow untouched by civilisation and full of wild and dangerous people who look peculiar and have a tiny gene pool. It is now, of course, an extremely productive agricultural region, but before the Fens were drained (which many of the locals also resisted) this was a vast expanse of marshes and bogs and lakes and rivers, where wildfowling and fishing and hunting were the way of life, dotted by islands of firm land (some of them quite large, like the Isle of Ely), which were like the mainland but somehow apart because of being rather difficult to access. So I'd suggest that the stigma of Ely itself (which is completely misplaced and rather ridiculous) is historically largely a Cambridge phenomenon, largely because, as I mentioned, Cambridge has in turn sometimes been lampooned as being a ghastly uncivilised ugly hovel of a place "in the middle of the accursed Fens" (even though Cambridge is actually beyond the edge of the Fens... but what are factual details anyway?!?). So Cambridge people have sometimes tended to "defend" themselves by looking down on their Fenland neighbours and distancing themselves from us.

But there's a twist! Ely is indeed only sixteen miles from Cambridge, and is nothing at all like the false stereotype, and in fact until the Dissolution of the Monasteries Ely Cathedral was in fact the third biggest and most powerful foundation in the country, fully integrated into the international (European!) cultural and scholarly network (yes, being in a water world is helpful for maintaining links overseas!), and also a genuine hyper-radical innovator in architectural engineering, decades before ideas first tried here became used on a much bigger scale in in the Italian Renaissance. Also, although the University was in Cambridge rather than up here in Ely (there's more space there and it was already a busy riverport city) it largely owes its existence to Ely Cathedral and its international influence and largesse as a benefactor and instigator. But of course Cambridge ended up becoming the internationally renowned place of learning and output and power and influence whereas Ely retreated into the shadows. Then the Reformation happened, and our massive monastery was shut down, and it became typical to think of it all as a emblematic of the bad old superstitious ignorant corrupt decadent days of the old order, now swept away never to return. (Cambridge, as one of the driving forces of English Protestantism at that time, would have been keen to paint Ely as a place whose days were over.) But of course the Cathedral survived and redefined itself, although some people still saw it a symbol of the bad old days and had little time for it, especially when the area became a stronghold of militant Puritanism in the seventeenth century (although there was quite a complex game of self-preservation playing out in that respect, so it's not that simple)...

In the musical sphere, over the past century, at least, Cambridge has gradually become more and more famous for having more and more excellent college choirs, a fair few of which have been world-famous for several decades. Cambridge has good reason to consider itself one of the world's great centres of excellence in choral music, and it does. But underlyingly there is a bit of resentment in some circles that Cambridge doesn't have its own Cathedral but that Ely is still the Cathedral for Cambridge. Cambridge does fully embrace Ely Cathedral as a "venue", of course: several of the college choirs regularly come to Ely Cathedral to make CD recordings, and each year there is at least one Cambridge Summer Music Festival concert held in Ely Cathedral, and the Cambridge University Festival Chorus (multiple combined college choirs) and CUMS concerts have very often been held here, but to the best of my knowledge the Cathedral Choir itself has never been invited to be involved in any way... The flipside of there being so many phenomenally good college choirs in Cambridge can sometimes be an assumption amongst some that music-making, and indeed other aspects of culture and intelligent discourse, beyond Cambridge in "the provinces" must by definition be massively inferior, backward, conservative, unadventurous, dull, uninteresting and the opposite of "cutting edge". It follows that, with so much to choose from in their own neighbourhood, many Cambridge people have little inkling that there might in fact be good things going on up in Ely, let alone be inclined to test it out. So while some places have a reputation based upon assumption which flatters them, we arguably have a reputation based upon assumption which does not do us justice. Despite that, artistically and musically we have actually been one of the more ambitious, radical and adventurous cathedrals over the past several decades, and standards have typically been a great deal better than some people assume. And in fact there has been choral music of some sort going on in Ely Cathedral since before any of the Cambridge colleges even existed...

But anyway, I digress!

[jonfan]

Well said Q, a passionate reply. We visit Ely every year staying at the Lamb and think Cambridge a backwater. Many of their choirs can't manage a decent a cappella CD without using Ely's Lady Chapel. The new Christmas CD from the girls and men of Ely is my top buy this Christmas after strong recommendation from Record Review. Nothing routine about performance or programme.

[ardcarp]

If you live in the West Country [I interject somewhat irrelevantly!] it's a nightmare travelling to Cambridge or Ely...and that applies to most East-West journeys in the UK. About 20 years ago when we made the journey frequently from Devon to Cambridge, we found the best way was to get up at 2am...or not go to bed at all....and thus arrive at the M25 before it became gridlocked. Then take M11 and arrive in Cambridge for breakfast. Next day felt a bit like jet-lag.

Yes, I know there are trains, but the Waterloo line was/is pathetic...and if you're a family with luggage it's expensive/impossible.

I'm informed that it's now quicker (although much longer) to drive almost to Birmingham and take some motorway or other that goes off in a SSE direction. Never tried it.

[Vox Humana]

I'm informed that it's now quicker (although much longer) to drive almost to Birmingham and take some motorway or other that goes off in a SSE direction. Never tried it.

I was rather surprised to learn recently that, in theory, it takes only about eight minutes longer to get from Nottingham to Bristol as it takes to get from Exeter to Land's End.

[Petrushka]

I was rather surprised to learn recently that, in theory, it takes only about eight minutes longer to get from Nottingham to Bristol as it takes to get from Exeter to Land's End.

I was told this when I worked in Bristol many years ago and I too was surprised!

[ardcarp]

...maybe because we in the Southwest think of Nottingham as being 'oop north' whereas it's only in the Midlands! Granted it's motorway for most of the route, but OMG if you time it badly (e.g. rush hour on the M42) I'd rather be mixing it with the ponies on Bodmin Moor. I wish our road system approached that of France. Two weekends ago I had to drive from Cherbourg to Le Mans. Whoosh. Fast, uncluttered dual carriageway all the way...and only the last bit was peage. 200 miles in two-and-a-half hours.

[Sir Velo]

I was rather surprised to learn recently that, in theory, it takes only about eight minutes longer to get from Nottingham to Bristol as it takes to get from Exeter to Land's End.

Given that Bristol to Nottingham is 140 miles and Exeter to Land's End is 120 miles, it doesn't seem that surprising to me!

[Vox Humana]

Given that Bristol to Nottingham is 140 miles and Exeter to Land's End is 120 miles, it doesn't seem that surprising to me!

I'm impressed you just knew that.

[ardcarp]

Mrs A wanted to watch the TV version of Kings carols, which we did last night. Then this morning on R3, Howells' Here is the Little Door popped up out of nowhere, sung by NCO/Higginbottom. Now that's what I call musical, and the most moving thing I've heard this Christmastide.

[jonfan]

Mrs A wanted to watch the TV version of Kings carols, which we did last night. Then this morning on R3, Howells' Here is the Little Door popped up out of nowhere, sung by NCO/Higginbottom. Now that's what I call musical, and the most moving thing I've heard this Christmastide.

Sung again this afternoon in the archive CE from Trinity.

[Nick Armstrong]

Howells' Here is the Little Door

One of my very favourite seasonal pieces - thanks for the last two posts, will look out for those performances.

I listen to it regularly on this excellent recording - always gets a few outings in December (it has one of my other favourites, the first of the RVW 'Winter Folksongs'... not to mention the gorgeous 'title track' with Roderick Williams

[Petrushka]

I've just taken delivery of the new CD/SACD issue of this, The Centenary Service, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Festival-Ni...3593070&sr=8-1 and while I've not played any of it yet I must register a sense of disappointment.

According to the booklet: 'When playing the disc in a standard CD player, two tracks are omitted because of technical limitations. They are available for free download from www.kingsrecordings.com using the voucher code 9LC'.

The standard CD lasts 76'44'' while the SACD, which includes the two omitted tracks, lasts 81'55''. Now, the 'technical limitations' are not specified but I think that many of us have CDs lasting longer than 82 minutes and this really is no excuse.

The booklet and documentation with the disc are absolutely outstanding, making it a genuine collector's item, but why let the whole enterprise down like this? It seems very silly.

Fortunately, I have the entire Service on my hard drive taken from R3 last Christmas Day.