Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London Wed, Jan 8th 2020 [L]

[DracoM]

Chapel Royal of St Peter ad Vincula, Tower of London


Order of Service:


Prelude: Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (Scheidt)
Introit: Omnes da Saba venient (Handl)
Responses: Morley
Office hymn: Bethlehem of noblest cities (Stuttgart)
Psalms 41, 42, 43 (Stainer, Wesley, Anon from Wesley)
First Lesson: Joel 2 vv.28-32
Canticles: Second Service (Gibbons)
Second Lesson: Ephesians 1 vv.7-14
Anthem: The Three Kings (Jonathan Dove)
Hymn: From the eastern mountains (Evelyns)

Voluntary: Épiphanie (Litaise)

Christian Wilson (Assistant Master of Music)
Colm Carey (Master of Music)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d04b

[DracoM]

Reminder: today @ 3.30 p.m.

[ardcarp]

https://www.thechapelsroyalhmtoweroflondon.org.uk/music-at-the-chapels-royal/a-note-on-the-organ/

Full-bodied singing today. Very tidily directed and accompanied. Morley the madrigalist made a brief appearance in the Nunc at 'To be a light'. Speed a bit overdone, perhaps? This setting of the canticles is one of my favourites, and I was glad to hear it as it doesn't seem to appear so often on music lists these days.

I think M.Litaize spelled his name with a 'z' and not an 's' as on the Beeb's website. I was lucky enough to meet Gaston as a student, and to act as his guide and stop-puller during one tour of the UK. It was truly amazing how he could acquaint himself with a large instrument very quickly. (For those who don't know he was one of the many blind children who benefited from a musical education at l'Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris.)

[Pulcinella]

https://www.thechapelsroyalhmtowerof...-on-the-organ/

Full-bodied singing today. Very tidily directed and accompanied. Morley the madrigalist made a brief appearance in the Nunc at 'To be a light'. Speed a bit overdone, perhaps? This setting of the canticles is one of my favourites, and I was glad to hear it as it doesn't seem to appear so often on music lists these days.

I think M.Litaize spelled his name with a 'z' and not an 's' as on the Beeb's website. I was lucky enough to meet Gaston as a student, and to act as his guide and stop-puller during one tour of the UK. It was truly amazing how he could acquaint himself with a large instrument very quickly. (For those who don't know he was one of the many blind children who benefited from a musical education at l'Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris.)

Indeed, and he's the soloist in the highly respected Barenboim Saint-Saëns S3:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7931295--saint-saens-symphony-no-3

[DracoM]

Rpt this pm.

[mopsus]

https://www.thechapelsroyalhmtowerof...-on-the-organ/
This setting of the canticles is one of my favourites, and I was glad to hear it as it doesn't seem to appear so often on music lists these days.

It's a favourite of mine too - perhaps even the favourite of all. I couldn't quote you chapter and verse, but I think that at least on R3 broadcasts it still comes round about once a year. The edition used in this broadcast had some variants on what I am familiar with.

[Miles Coverdale]

The edition used in this broadcast had some variants on what I am familiar with.

I assume that you're referring to the old Fellowes edition, which does have a few mistakes in it.

[CallMePaul]

Many of us will also have heard the live R4 broadcast of a service from the same chapel last Sunday, which I for one enjoyed as much as the evensong. It focussed on the life of St Peter as told in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles.

[mopsus]

I assume that you're referring to the old Fellowes edition, which does have a few mistakes in it.

Yes, Fellowes is what I have sung from, and what I'm used to hearing. I am always amused by the footnote by a false relation in the Gloria of the Magnificat, saying that one of the notes is to 'be sung very lightly'. An earlier edition edited out the discord altogether.

There's a more recent edition in the OUP English Church Music: Canticles and Responses volume. I can't recall what differences it had from Fellowes, except that it had a 2/2 time signature. The one time I sang the canticles from this edition I felt that beating in 2 was a mistake, though possibly the conductor was at fault rather than the edition.

[Wolsey]

There's a more recent edition in the OUP English Church Music: Canticles and Responses volume.

In addition to Robert King's edition in this anthology, there's also one by David Skinner, published by Fretwork Editions. Winchester Cathedral's Hyperion recording, released in 2000, uses yet another edition. It is hard to justify the use of E H Fellowes' 1936 edition today.

[ardcarp]

It is hard to justify the use of E H Fellowes' 1936 edition today.

...yes, but nevertheless one should not forget what a pioneer he was.

[Miles Coverdale]

Yes, Fellowes is what I have sung from, and what I'm used to hearing. I am always amused by the footnote by a false relation in the Gloria of the Magnificat, saying that one of the notes is to 'be sung very lightly'. An earlier edition edited out the discord altogether.

There's a more recent edition in the OUP English Church Music: Canticles and Responses volume. I can't recall what differences it had from Fellowes, except that it had a 2/2 time signature. The one time I sang the canticles from this edition I felt that beating in 2 was a mistake, though possibly the conductor was at fault rather than the edition.

One of the most obvious is the last note of the word ‘rejoiceth’ in the solo alto part, which Fellowes prints as E flat, but should be G, so that the last interval is a descending minor third (cf the tenor part).

[DracoM]

But....but.....I do get it, but Fellowes editions made more widely available all manner of early music and certainly introduced me to so much.

[Roger Judd]

Well said, ardcarp. When I worked at St Michael's Tenbury, where Fellowes had been librarian, there was a shelf - it must have been at least 10 feet long - on which sat all the printed volumes of Tudor / Elizabethan secular and sacred music that he had edited. A phenomenal output of work bearing in mind that it was all transcribed by hand; he was reading off separate part books using 'old' clefs; no-one had done it before on such a scale. The modern 'smart set' may look down their clever noses at the few infelicities he committed, but no-one comes close to him for the scale and scope of work he did. He wasn't made a Companion of Honour for nothing, and I shall defend him to the death!
RJ

[Vox Humana]

I don't believe I have ever met or heard of a scholar who has disparaged Fellowes's work. No one working in the field can be unappreciative of the scale of his achievement and how instrumental he was in making so much of this corpus available. His editions were (mostly) excellent for their time. The problem is rather that, during the many decades since he died, knowledge has advanced and this, together with some new sources unknown to Fellowes have rendered his editions obsolete, much as the Neue Bach-Ausgabe has superseded the old Bach Gesellschaft in reliability. Fellowes isn't alone. Plenty of editions by more recent editors have also been superseded. This is the inevitable fate of any edition because it is in the nature of scholarship that knowledge moves on. The problem for choir directors is knowing which old editions are still serviceable and which aren't. I'm amazed that, getting on for a century (!) after Fellowes flagged up the problem, there are still cathedral DoMs who continue to attribute the 16th-century setting of Rejoice in the Lord alway to Redford. You really would think that they, at least, would know better by now.