Good Friday streamed services on YouTube

[sturkel]

Truro boys and men got a good workout on Good Friday, with two services streamed via their YouTube channel, the morning Good Friday Liturgy including the Sanders 'Reproaches'
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0po_...TruroCathedral)

and a choral evensong with the Lotti 'Crucifixus' as the anthem
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85Ly...TruroCathedral)

Some lovely singing in both services: interesting that the social distancing amongst the choir, whilst it must make the ensemble more difficult, makes the younger boys sing out much more, rather than being content to be passengers and leaving it to the older boys.

There's also a great Maundy Thursday Evensong from the Truro Girls & men (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ5L...TruroCathedral)

Also a fine Good Friday Liturgy from York Minster with both the Bairstow 'Lamentations' and the Sanders.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRaq...insterOfficial)

[Keraulophone]

a good workout on Good Friday

Your’e right, I’m still recovering (listening to Record Review in bed!). Thank you for your appreciative comments. We don’t usually have a nave altar, so the sound of the choir travels further into the building in this ‘distanced’ configuration than it normally does from the the choir stalls, singing across.

Please bear in mind that all the Truro live-streamed services are deleted from YT after one week.

[Andrew]

We attended the 1:30-3pm service at St. Albans Abbey yesterday. The service is available on Youtube and well worth a watch. A strange occurrence was the singing of "there is a green hill far away" by the congregation...... Clearly the Abbey had simply re-printed last year's service booklet and merely altered the date. Unfortunately the Covid restrictions hadn't fully kicked in on Good Friday last year, so the coming forward to the Cross was included in the service sheet, although the Priest informed us this would not be taking place, owing to the Coronavirus restrictions. The Priest presumably thought the congregation would remain seated while the choir sang the hymn..... we all stood up, to a man (& woman!) and sang the hymn, in spite of the vergers walking around and waving their arms, to indicate we should all remain seated!

As a direct result of this I'm expecting spike in Coronavirus deaths in the St Albans area in 3 weeks (NOT!)

[jonfan]

Your’e right, I’m still recovering (listening to Record Review in bed!). Thank you for your appreciative comments. We don’t usually have a nave altar, so the sound of the choir travels further into the building in this ‘distanced’ configuration than it normally does from the the choir stalls, singing across.

Please bear in mind that all the Truro live-streamed services are deleted from YT after one week.

Terrific music making in these services. Thank you for the termination notice Mr K!

[Bryn]

O.k., it's a bit late for GF, but:

[DracoM]

Most Easters, I put on ‘Parsifal’. Usually Solti etc, BUT this Easter, I went back to my Naxos CDs - live recording made in 1951.
The re-opening of Bayreuth after the WW2, orchestra under the very notable Knappertsbusch, stage design and director etc etc - Wieland Wagner – and, on stage London, Uhde, Modl, Windgassen etc.

As I listened, I began to wonder what on earth must be going through the minds of singers, musicians, stage staff, audience – in Bayreuth, deep in Southern Germany, a mere 6 yrs or less after WW2.

Complex histories for all, memories, mighty pictures in the mind and heart, THEN playing in an opera that starts from the DEATH of the much-loved, much-missed leader, and the bewildered Gurnemanz shell-shocked, desperate for newness, salvation, a new leader, a new life….. I mean……..and THEN at the end of Act 1, the grail ceremony, a crippled, devastated Amfortas desperate to avoid having to take up his dead father’s mission; and the Young Warrior, swan killer etc, puzzled and sent off the find and bring back……….well, what?
And THEN we see the return of The Spear in Act 3!!

In Bayreuth? In 1951? Live? Under well, well, Hans KNappertsbusch – with all the baggage that HE brought to it all, and all the Wagner family with all the debris / baggage etc THEY to brought to the house.

Blimey!

[ardcarp]

Most Easters, I put on ‘Parsifal’. Usually Solti etc, BUT this Easter, I went back to my Naxos CDs - live recording made in 1951.

Maybe ENO should have put a condensed version on BBC2 instead of Messiah.

[DracoM]

[Quilisma]

Everyone will, of course, be aware that ALL choral foundations which have been able to operate in some form or other will almost certainly have been streaming all their services and other "output" online throughout Holy Week and Easter, and indeed before. There were plenty of extra complications when it came to planning music lists and personnel for each services, because until Friday 26th March the regulations stated that "open" services were permitted but only with a maximum of three singers. Many institutions have protocols which are stringent enough for it to be feasible for them to be able to hold "open" services without arousing accusations of being gratuitously irresponsible, and in such places there was a desire to ensure that at least SOME services could be open to an in-person congregation, while others would be "closed" and accessible by live-stream only but could feature more than three singers. Then, two days before Palm Sunday, the Rule of Three was revised, after all the plans for Holy Week and Easter had been made in order to comply with it. In Ely we carried on more or less according to what we had planned, with some "open" services using just three singers and other services being accessible by live-stream only, but latterly it became possible to book a further three singers for a couple of the services for which we had planned only to have three, and a few of the "closed" services became open for in-person attendance after all. Because the choristers have not yet resumed singing together with the adults, and because of the multiple configurations of singers for different services, it was unfortunately impractical for the girls and boys respectively to be as fully involved as they usually are: the girls did Evensong on Holy Wednesday and the boys did Evensong on Holy Saturday (as well as having their postponed Christmas party!), while the Chrism Eucharist on the morning of Maundy Thursday involved three cantors, one boy, one girl and one adult (yours truly!), and the sixth-form choral scholars were involved on a couple of occasions. Although of course this year's Holy Week and Easter has been far from ideal for any of us anywhere, it has been a very intense and formative experience, and musically by no means inferior to any previous year: far from it, in fact. Singing in smaller ensemble combinations is highly beneficial for keeping one's musical skills in shape, after all. If anyone is interested, all our recent output is available here https://www.youtube.com/c/ElyCathedralCambridge for the time being (I don't quite know how long each service will remain accessible; it seems to vary quite a bit), and as I recover from the sheer exhaustion of the vocal and musical onslaught I very much look forward to binge-watching as many services as I can from lots of other places, particularly Truro and York, as mentioned (I happen to know some of the people in those places!), and also Winchester, Norwich, Guildford, Southwell, Chester, Lichfield, Wells, Exeter, Newcastle and various other places. Now remembering that it is exactly six years to the day since we in Ely did the Easter Day 2015 Festal Evensong BBC Radio 3 broadcast. That was a mammoth day if ever there was one...