CE Manchester Cathedral on Easter Sunday April 4th 2021[L] @ 3 p.m.

[DracoM]

CE Manchester Cathedral on Easter Sunday


Order of Service:


Introit: Messiah (Then shall be brought to pass – O death, where is thy sting? – But thanks be to God) (Handel)
Responses: Smith
Psalms 113, 114, 118 vv.1-2, 19-29 (Battishill, Marshall, Stewart, Ashfield)
First Lesson: Ezekiel 37 vv.1-14
Canticles: Stanford in C
Second Lesson: Luke 24 vv.13-35
Anthem: Messiah (Worthy is the Lamb – Amen) (Handel)
Hymn: Christ the Lord is risen again! (Würtemburg)

Voluntary: Praeludium in C, BuxWV137 (Buxtehude)

Geoffrey Woollatt (Sub-Organist)
Christopher Stokes (Organist & Master of the Choristers)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tw5n

[subcontrabass]

Presumably sung by the Voluntary Choir (who normally sing Evensong on Sundays)? All other sung services there for Holy Week and Easter seem to use only the Lay Clerks.

[ardcarp]

Here's their music list. It doesn't say which choir.

https://www.manchestercathedral.org/site/assets/files/11262/sunday_4_april_2021.pdf

Yet another cathedral using Facebook.

[mopsus]

When I lived in the Diocese in the mid-1990s, the Voluntary choir was men and boys (around this time the Cathedral Choir admitted girls to the treble line alongside boys). But around the turn of the millennium finding boys got just too difficult and it has sopranos on the top line. I think it may be the only Church of England Cathedral where the main Sunday evensong isn't sung by the Cathedral Choir?

[ardcarp]

Is there any connection with Chethams, for instance supplying choristers?

[mopsus]

Yes, certainly the Cathedral choristers used to be Chethams pupils. When the voluntary choir had boys on the top line, they were drawn from other schools, local and further afield.

[ardcarp]

Off topic, but a long time ago Westminster Abbey (of all places) used to have a 'Special Choir' with boy trebles (and ATB not the lay vicars) to fill in during holiday periods. I think it stopped about the time Simon Preston took over the reins.

[DracoM]

CE Manchester Cath: energy, fresh, committed young voices on top line, AND in the Handel, no mighty Wash of SOUND' eg from 'amateur choral socs', but the individual lines sung with responsibility, careful interaction, and projection.

Many thx.

[Magister Chori]

CE Manchester Cath: energy, fresh, committed young voices on top line, AND in the Handel, no mighty Wash of SOUND' eg from 'amateur choral socs', but the individual lines sung with responsibility, careful interaction, and projection.

Many thx.

Agreed (very good top line indeed), but that anthem was unbearably slow... and the phrasing in the closing voluntary not well articulated, too.

[Barry Rose]

Agreed (very good top line indeed), but that anthem was unbearably slow... and the phrasing in the closing voluntary not well articulated, too.

One of my rare posts. Sorry to disagree, but no - it wasn't unbearably slow. These days we are too used to Messiah at breakneck speed, but today's performance had dignity, clarity and musical poise, even if if the organ was pushed much too far into the background.

[ardcarp]

Good to hear someone who worries about the breakneck speeds employed by some Baroque bands. It's as if the directors of period instrument ensembles (their players now being so fleet of foot with their gut strings and minimal keywork) push everything to the limit just because they can. In my most recent participation in a St John Passion (with a top-rate ensemble) the final Ruht Wohl...which IMO is meant to be a sort of lullably...was more like a Viennese Waltz on steroids.

I find the Netherlands Bach Society tends to choose sensible speeds for everything they do, meaning that phrasing and ensemble are above all, musical.

[organista]

One of my rare posts. Sorry to disagree, but no - it wasn't unbearably slow. These days we are too used to Messiah at breakneck speed, but today's performance had dignity, clarity and musical poise, even if if the organ was pushed much too far into the background.

I couldn’t agree more. And also the comments from Ardcarp about Ruht wohl, which is surely, as he says, an affectionate lullaby not a canter to the finish.

It’s as if many performers these days have no understanding (and by implication, that Bach had no idea) what the text is about. Another irritation for me is when the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba is played so fast that it gives the impression that the Queen must have run to meet Solomon like a over excited little girl, not the arrival of the caravan of a great and elegant Queen and her exotic entourage. At the other extreme are those (old school) sopranos who sing I know that my redeemer liveth like a dirge, each phrase being wrung out as it it were their dying breath.

As each generation of early musicians comes to the fore it feels that they have to ‘go one better’ than previous generations in order to make a mark. Maybe sometimes it works but just as often it doesn’t. The current trend gives the impression that elegance is no longer an acceptable concept in music.

[Vox Humana]

I absolutely agree with the prevailing view here. Most modern performances of Baroque music are so intolerable that I have learnt to avoid them. Everyone seems obsessed with virtuosity, rhythm, excitement and dance (an over-cooked concept if ever there was one) at the expense of the actual musical content. Do these performers really think that Bach lavished such care and subtlety on his harmony only for it to be thrown away perfunctorily before the listener has time to savour it? A couple of years ago I happened to catch a Radio 3 concert of chamber music by Bach performed by some eastern European ensemble. They quite literally played everything as fast as they possibly could - so fast, in fact, that it was sometimes beyond the technique of some of the performers. I have rarely heard anything so embarrassingly scrappy from supposed professionals. It's not just Baroque music, either. Mozart often comes in for similar treatment. I am so glad that I managed to record on my TV's hard disc Sky Arts' broadcasts of Mozart's piano concertos played by Barenboim. You can always trust a real musician.

[Magister Chori]

One of my rare posts. Sorry to disagree, but no - it wasn't unbearably slow. These days we are too used to Messiah at breakneck speed, but today's performance had dignity, clarity and musical poise, even if if the organ was pushed much too far into the background.

Glad to have raised some different opinions after my previous post, and especially from such an experienced musician like Barry Rose which I truly admire more than any other choral conductor.

For clarity's sake: as a musician myself, I am really not into the so called "historically informed performance" and the subsequent hysteria which seems to distinguish the tempi of most Baroque ensembles.

But music it's not based just on tastes and opinions, but also on some facts. And it's a fact that, in Haendel's own holograph manuscript, "Blessing and honour" is a Larghetto, while the subsequent Amen (whose slowness I was particularly complaining) is marked "Allegro moderato". It's also a fact that in yesterday's performance the Amen was taken slower than the previous movement, a choice of which I do not understand the rationale.

[Ein Heldenleben]

A very interesting debate . As a massive generalisation I find much HIPP Baroque too fast and much late classical / early romantic playing (esp Beethoven Piano Sonatas) too slow. I am not asking for Klempereresque tempi ( even though weirdly I like his utterly “inauthentic” Messiah) but tempi which respect the words and the underlying harmonic pulse ...