CE Westminster Abbey [L] Wed, 26th May 2021

[cat]

Live from Westminster Abbey.

Introit: O hearken thou (Roxanna Panufnik)
Responses: Rose
Psalm 69 (Battishill, Goss)
First Lesson: Genesis 15 vv.1-21
Canticles: Walmisley in D minor
Second Lesson: Romans 4 vv.1-8
Anthem: For lo, I raise up (Stanford)

Voluntary: Rhapsody No 3 in C sharp minor (Howells)

James O’Donnell (Organist and Master of the Choristers)
Peter Holder (Sub-Organist)

(I hope DracoM, who it seems usually starts these threads, is ok)

[cat]

Emergency hymn!

[jonfan]

Emergency hymn!

Choir sounding on great form.
Always risky broadcasting from far flung places like Westminster Abbey; should be more secure next week from a central location like St Davids.

[ardcarp]

I only heard it from the anthem onwards in the car. A lot of 32' bass almost blowing my car speakers! It sounded pretty impressive, so look forward to hearing the whole thing (maybe with the announced glitch ironed out?).

[DracoM]

Some fine singing - and great to have boys on top line in cracking form - anthem particularly ear- grabbing...........erm...micing of solo was............erm........??
MIGHTY organ vol too! Wow!

[ardcarp]

Yes, an excellent CE. I felt the organ was a bit OTT at times. One is spoiled for choice on that instrument, and I remember attending a CE there in the past (those horrid chairs East of the choir) and hardly being able to hear the singing. Not so today, because the engineers managed it well. I was especially impressed by Walmisley in D minor, even if we did miss a chunk of the Mag. (It wasn't re-instated on 'Sounds' when I heard it.) I have a story about that. My old friend, the late Arthur Hutchings, was attending an evensong I was doing. As the choir was attempting a difficult anthem (Tippett's Plebs Angelica) we had decided on 'stock' Canticles, and so I apologised to Arthur for just doing Walmisley. Never short of words, Arthur upbraided me for 'belittling' them. His point was that at a time when Anglican church music was on the whole pretty dire, Walmisley had produced a well-constructed and original piece of music. I can't remember when they were last on CE, so it was good to hear them done so well today.

[cat]

An excellent service, I did like the pace of the anthem, it's a piece that really doesn't benefit from being taken sedately imo.

They often pick canticles where the composer has a connection to the abbey. I don't know why Walmisley wasn't a chorister at the abbey like his father and uncles, but apparently he spent much of his childhood loitering in the organ loft there.

Yesterday they recorded another service for broadcast in July, for the quatercentenary of the death of Edmund Hooper, former organist. Perhaps it will feature his Great Service, which is nowadays heard at the abbey far more than anywhere else.

[Magister Chori]

Not the most confident treble solo, but - apart from this - first class music excellently sung and imaginatively played.

Also having had an unprogrammed 'office hymn' instead of the first lesson wasn't so bad...

[Keraulophone]

first class music excellently sung

Former Wabbey organist Simon Preston used to cite Walmisley in D minor as a good example of first class music of the second rank, and I can see what he meant. Be that as it may, it’s a rare treat to hear it sung by a first-rate choir because many cathedral DoMs usually prefer to broadcast more demanding music of the first rank, something like Howells’s Gloucester Service, for instance.

Dr Walmisley had, at the age of 19, been appointed jointly organist of Trinity College and St John’s College, Cambridge, though after 23 years “of four o’clock dinners in Hall ... long symposiums in the Combination Room, ...the excellent port of the College cellars [being] more his master than his servant” (Stanford), he died aged 41. It may be that the early onset of a form of Porterhouse Blue led him to seek the assistance of a mysterious ‘Dumont’ in both Glorias of these D minor Canticles, quoting pedal lines acknowledged from an Angus Dei and an Amen ‘from Dumont’. Simultaneously a Trinity and a St John’s academic, he was bound to quote the source of his inspiration.

[DracoM]

On re-listening, really enjoyed that anthem - sung with almost theatrical relish!!

[Vox Humana]

Score of the Panufnik introit (good piece):

https://issuu.com/editionpetersperusal/docs/ep72771