CE St Martin-in-the-Fields, London [L] Wed, 12th May 2021

[ardcarp]

Thanks for the info, mopsus!

[jonfan]

Keeping with the same forces, their Ascension Day broadcast on Radio 4 is worth investigating. There was a huge variety of music accompanied by organ, piano and orchestra. Very enjoyable and uplifting.

[ardcarp]

Yes, I caught this 'by accident' and wondered what all this music was doing on R4. Quickly twigged, however. As you say, jonfan, uplifting. I love orchestrated hymns!

[Keraulophone]

the Magnificat, quite lacking in its rhytmic and driving charachter: a little faster base tempo and a more staccato organ touch/singing style might have helped.

Leighton's tempo indication is Allegro molto e ritmico crotchet=168. That is a blistering speed that possibly only Trinity/Layton could maintain - even if they wanted to. In fact, last Sunday they sang the opening at around crotchet=144, though the organ began a fraction slower and caught up. St Martin's began at around crotchet=128, so yes, a slower speed but it was still ritmico, in the manner that Klemperer's Beethoven 7 (iv) is slower than most but very ritmico. It's very hard to maintain a constant tempo in this piece, and it would be unmusical to try to do so. On dynamics, the organ is marked forte at the start, but here it sounded like a flutey mezzoforte preceding the marked ff choir entry, which sounded the same volume as their next entry marked mf. Keeping strictly to a composer's written indications can be an almost impossible task, and a conductor often has to choose between which markings to prioritise; so here we heard an effective crescendo to 'magnify' in bar 6, because the opening was held at f rather than the marked ff. I'm sure Leighton would have enjoyed this performance, as I did, so many thanks.

[mopsus]

Hear! Hear! to that: it does work perfectly well liturgically and it isn't as if there aren't enough doxologies going on during evensong...but what Nunc to pair it with, Holt? There was once (late 80s, early 90s) a tremendous broadcast of it by The Exons (Tolley & Lumsden), from Tewkesbury, but that was when Radio 3 put out thoughtfully themed sequences of music and readings in their Sun evening slo, rather than the office of evensong as such.

The Holst does seem to be the standard pairing. I recall a deeply moving Armistice Day evensong broadcast from King's, around the same time as the Exon one you refer to, which had that combination.

David Bednall wrote a Nunc to go with his completion of the Magnificat, but it is on a similar scale so the two together are a demanding sing. And that is the problem with finding a pairing for the Finzi - short and the canticles will seem unbalanced, long and you are asking a lot of your choir. Stanford's Latin Magnificat in B flat creates a similar problem.

[Keraulophone]

the problem with finding a pairing for the Finzi - short and the canticles will seem unbalanced, long and you are asking a lot of your choir. Stanford's Latin Magnificat in B flat creates a similar problem.

Finzi Mag + Stanford in C Nunc arriving on 9 June, rec. 25 May.


Introit: Tavener’s Mother of God here I stand
Anthem: Elgar Give unto the Lord
...so quite a hefty sing, to which I’m very much looking forward.
.

[Wolsey]

Haven't heard the service yet, so shall listen out especially for Leighton's canticles which I love.
Talking of Finzi, it's a shame his Magnificat isn't done more often. I suppose its lacking a Gloria makes it a bit unusual for the Anglican rite.

The organ part is an arrangement of the orchestral version which was Finzi's original conception. If I remember the score from playing it decades ago, it (Finzi?) specifically says that it was *not* intended for liturgical use (even though some choirs do it as such), and at over ten minutes in duration, this is not surprising.