Resumption of sung services in cathedrals

[Lizzie]

Can I just say how much I appreciate the livestreaming of services. I have been watching services weekly from Canterbury, Winchester and Ely whereas normally I might attend these place only once or twice a year. Also from Chichester to where I've never been (but will now make a point of doing so when things return to normal).

There is no substitute for being there in person, but as someone in my household is shielding and I'm also being very careful on my own account, I don't currently feel comfortable making non-essential visits. The livestreams are therefore a great comfort.

So pleased that the livestreams are helping you. If you can, please do watch this mornings Law Sunday Mattins from Winchester. The address was very moving, and had me laughing and crying in equal measures. Our Girls sang beautifully too. This afternoon, our Layclerks will be singing Evensong at 1530. Stay safe in your shielding and health issues. When things are better, please come and see us in bodily form too. All best wishes.

[Lizzie]

Spot on there.

[cat]

So pleased that the livestreams are helping you. If you can, please do watch this mornings Law Sunday Mattins from Winchester. The address was very moving, and had me laughing and crying in equal measures. Our Girls sang beautifully too. This afternoon, our Layclerks will be singing Evensong at 1530. Stay safe in your shielding and health issues. When things are better, please come and see us in bodily form too. All best wishes.

Thank you, I will check it out. I am certainly looking forward to doing more visiting-in-person in the future than I have done in the past!

[Lizzie]

Thank you, I will check it out. I am certainly looking forward to doing more visiting-in-person in the future than I have done in the past!

We'd love to see you. With the livestreams, I 'go to church' nearly every day now!

[Quilisma]

This article by the fantastic Dr Charlie Bell (eminent medical research scientist and policy advisor, former Chichester Cathedral chorister and Queens' College Cambridge choral scholar, and Church of England ordinand) could be of interest. https://anglicanism.org/risk-and-pro...response-right

[ardcarp]

I've only just returned to The Forum after a long break, and I haven't read all the above posts. But I'd just like to add my pleasure and gratitude that live CEs have returned....three out of the last four. If anyone is in the mood for picking flies, I'd just add that the choristers concerned (first boys' one this week) and lay-clerks are probably spread around at two or three metre intervals and ensemble must be difficult. I'm personally amazed at how well they did...and all brought solace during an enforced Autumn lay-up!

Canterbury has always been a very difficult place for the organist to feel any contact with the choir.....see my post under The Organ.

[Quilisma]

Apologies if this is a bit off-topic, but it relates to some of the things I was saying in my posts earlier in this thread, and it might potentially be of interest. I don't usually bother with podcasts, and it is only thanks to this being shared by the Ely Cathedral Facebook page that I discovered it. I don't know who the Australian presenter is, but for anybody interested in our Cathedral, who we are and what we do, with particular reference to the current situation, this is an interesting discussion. It also happens to contain some samples of the current incarnation of "the Ely Sound", all recorded live at Evensong this Tuesday: I should know, I was there (in chaperoning mode), but I had no idea it was being captured for posterity. Well worth a listen! https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts...l--Cvq_L3oG2z/

[DracoM]

Is there any accessible / reliable list of those cathedrals in UK or Europe which hold SUNG services led by a resident group of any kind AND are still taking place?

[ardcarp]

I think the answer is 'No' ! All establishments want to keep the options open according to the ever-changing situation. I know The Temple was back in operation last week, but now?

[Miles Coverdale]

Is there any accessible / reliable list of those cathedrals in UK or Europe which hold SUNG services led by a resident group of any kind AND are still taking place?

I don't know about a list, but Hereford are still singing on weekdays, and today's Evensong is on their webcast page.

[Quilisma]

I suspect not, largely because the situation is so fluid and uncertain. For example, on the evening on which the second lockdown was announced (Saturday 31st October), it initially appeared that there would be no possibility for any of us to continue, because one source in the Government seemed to have indicated that any broadcast/streamed liturgies must involve no more than one "leader". Shortly afterwards, however, the Culture Secretary asserted that people who work in the performing arts would indeed be permitted to work, in their places of work if necessary, but that any performances they give must not be open to the public to attend in person but must be recorded, broadcasted or streamed. There was a lot of very urgent discussion and negotiation behind the scenes. As the week progressed, the direction of movement was towards not making professional liturgical musicians an exception to the right of professional performing artists to work, and for a slightly more permissive attitude towards professional liturgical music in circumstances where rigorous anti-COVID-19 measures are in place and meticulously observed and where continuing the Opus Dei is being done with an eye to being open to all those who are unable to attend services in person. We are allowed to sing on condition that (a) this is our job of work, (b) this is what we would have been doing under normal circumstances, and (c) every service in which we are involved behind closed doors during this lockdown is broadcast/streamed or recorded. At the end of last week it also emerged that choristers would indeed be allowed to participate in sung services after all so long as they are all locked down together in the same residential bubble within the same school, which unfortunately means that under the current circumstances those choirs whose choristers all attend a particular choir school as boarders are able to satisfy this requirement whereas other equivalent choirs aren't. I am painfully aware of just how fortunate we are here at the moment and how unfair this might seem to many others: I believe there are fewer than ten English cathedral choirs currently able to continue with a relatively complete schedule. So we have gone from being almost certain that there would be no more choral liturgies after All Souls' Day until December to discovering that we are in fact permitted to continue (in a strictly compliant way, behind closed doors and with everything broadcast/streamed) and that this week's two BBC broadcasts can indeed go ahead as planned. Each institution will have approached the uncertainty in its own way; we are extremely lucky that our administration hung on to the possibility, even when very slim, that there might be a way to continue and to avoid standing people down for a second time. In any sense, we all need to stick together, and we stand in solidarity with all those who are not currently able to sing.

[cat]

Is there any accessible / reliable list of those cathedrals in UK or Europe which hold SUNG services led by a resident group of any kind AND are still taking place?

Can we make our own? Feel free to add:

Chester
Chichester
Winchester

[oddoneout]

I suspect not, largely because the situation is so fluid and uncertain. For example, on the evening on which the second lockdown was announced (Saturday 31st October), it initially appeared that there would be no possibility for any of us to continue, because one source in the Government seemed to have indicated that any broadcast/streamed liturgies must involve no more than one "leader". Shortly afterwards, however, the Culture Secretary asserted that people who work in the performing arts would indeed be permitted to work, in their places of work if necessary, but that any performances they give must not be open to the public to attend in person but must be recorded, broadcasted or streamed. There was a lot of very urgent discussion and negotiation behind the scenes. As the week progressed, the direction of movement was towards not making professional liturgical musicians an exception to the right of professional performing artists to work, and for a slightly more permissive attitude towards professional liturgical music in circumstances where rigorous anti-COVID-19 measures are in place and meticulously observed and where continuing the Opus Dei is being done with an eye to being open to all those who are unable to attend services in person. We are allowed to sing on condition that (a) this is our job of work, (b) this is what we would have been doing under normal circumstances, and (c) every service in which we are involved behind closed doors during this lockdown is broadcast/streamed or recorded. At the end of last week it also emerged that choristers would indeed be allowed to participate in sung services after all so long as they are all locked down together in the same residential bubble within the same school, which unfortunately means that under the current circumstances those choirs whose choristers all attend a particular choir school as boarders are able to satisfy this requirement whereas other equivalent choirs aren't. I am painfully aware of just how fortunate we are here at the moment and how unfair this might seem to many others: I believe there are fewer than ten English cathedral choirs currently able to continue with a relatively complete schedule. So we have gone from being almost certain that there would be no more choral liturgies after All Souls' Day until December to discovering that we are in fact permitted to continue (in a strictly compliant way, behind closed doors and with everything broadcast/streamed) and that this week's two BBC broadcasts can indeed go ahead as planned. Each institution will have approached the uncertainty in its own way; we are extremely lucky that our administration hung on to the possibility, even when very slim, that there might be a way to continue and to avoid standing people down for a second time. In any sense, we all need to stick together, and we stand in solidarity with all those who are not currently able to sing.

Do the boarders have to stay on site - no visits home - in order to meet the criteria?

[DracoM]

Yes, indeed, + Hereford - well, sort of. Have just had an email from there alerting to their schedule.

St Thomas, Fifth Ave NYC in and out - very odd situation. Men only, BUT one boy treble bussed in for specific solo then bussed out!
Boys for that choir now resident OUTSIDE NYC entirely.

..............which admirably and tragically points up the boarders / non-boarders conundrum in UK as well.

PS delighted ardcarp is back on board.

PPS: Ahem...........Cardinal Vincent N - are you listening?

[Simon Biazeck]

I suspect not, largely because the situation is so fluid and uncertain. For example, on the evening on which the second lockdown was announced (Saturday 31st October), it initially appeared that there would be no possibility for any of us to continue because one source in the Government seemed to have indicated that any broadcast/streamed liturgies must involve no more than one "leader". Shortly afterwards, however, the Culture Secretary asserted that people who work in the performing arts would indeed be permitted to work, in their places of work if necessary, but that any performances they give must not be open to the public to attend in person but must be recorded, broadcasted or streamed. There was a lot of very urgent discussion and negotiation behind the scenes. As the week progressed, the direction of movement was towards not making professional liturgical musicians an exception to the right of professional performing artists to work, and for a slightly more permissive attitude towards professional liturgical music in circumstances where rigorous anti-COVID-19 measures are in place and meticulously observed and where continuing the Opus Dei is being done with an eye to being open to all those who are unable to attend services in person. We are allowed to sing on condition that (a) this is our job of work, (b) this is what we would have been doing under normal circumstances, and (c) every service in which we are involved behind closed doors during this lockdown is broadcast/streamed or recorded. At the end of last week, it also emerged that choristers would indeed be allowed to participate in sung services after all so long as they are all locked down together in the same residential bubble within the same school, which unfortunately means that under the current circumstances those choirs whose choristers all attend a particular choir school as boarders are able to satisfy this requirement whereas other equivalent choirs aren't. I am painfully aware of just how fortunate we are here at the moment and how unfair this might seem to many others: I believe there are fewer than ten English cathedral choirs currently able to continue with a relatively complete schedule. So we have gone from being almost certain that there would be no more choral liturgies after All Souls' Day until December to discovering that we are in fact permitted to continue (in a strictly compliant way, behind closed doors and with everything broadcast/streamed) and that this week's two BBC broadcasts can indeed go ahead as planned. Each institution will have approached the uncertainty in its own way; we are extremely lucky that our administration hung on to the possibility, even when very slim, that there might be a way to continue and to avoid standing people down for a second time. In any sense, we all need to stick together, and we stand in solidarity with all those who are not currently able to sing.

Really?! If you are not live-streaming or broadcasting it is not allowed? Please, can you direct me to the government regulations on this? I would appreciate it.