CE Chapel of Royal Holloway, University of London [R] 30.iii.22

[DracoM]

CE Chapel of Royal Holloway, University of London [R]
Recorded 25 January 2022


Order of Service:


Introit: Turn unto the Lord (Tomkins)
Responses: Byrd
Psalm 119: 35-56 (Lawes, Tomkins, Luther)
First Lesson: Jeremiah 18: 13-23
Canticles: The Second Service (Gibbons)
Second Lesson: John 10: 11-21
Anthem: When David heard (Weelkes)

Voluntary: Passacaglia in D minor (Buxtehude)

George Nicholls (Senior Organ Scholar)
Rupert Gough (Director of Music)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015m5h

[DracoM]

Reminder: today @ 4 p.m.

[jonfan]

Light, airy singing as befits this glorious Tudor programme. I particularly enjoyed the intimacy of the Canticles with lovely ensemble work from the soloists. The Weelkes anthem crowned a very moving service. Surely the composer can be forgiven the act of urinating on the Dean of Chichester by the penning of this masterpiece!

[ardcarp]

Bach was surely influenced by this Buxtehude Passacaglia? His own C minor Passacaglia, although vastly more extensive and masterly, is one of those works I always think of as Buxtehude-influenced. It was worth that long walk!

Details of Royal Holloway organ here: http://www.for3.org/forums/showthrea...Royal-Holloway

[Vox Humana]

The Weelkes anthem crowned a very moving service. Surely the composer can be forgiven the act of urinating on the Dean of Chichester...

Especially as there is no evidence he ever did it. I think you'll find it's just puerile wishful thinking dreamt up by some smutty-minded twentieth-century organist. Not that he didn't have his problems though.

[cat]

John Shepherd addressed the evidence for Weelkes' supposed degeneracy in this paper published in 1980, which he summarises thus:

"It can therefore be demonstrated that the documentary evidence hitherto employed to catalogue Weelkes's trail of disorder and disgrace is capable of other interpretations [which] fall well within the bounds of historical possibility and therefore serve to bewilder current assumptions with reasonable doubt. It becomes abundantly clear that it is not possible to bundle Weelkes up into the watertight category of a progressively declining wastrel and drunkard. Hitherto, such a simplistic biographical interpretation has generally prevailed, and it is perhaps now time for a more cautious approach."

Alas it seems his advice wasn't followed, as the apocryphal tales are repeated as fact in contemporary popular publications.

[ardcarp]

the apocryphal tales are repeated as fact in contemporary popular publications

Tit Bits folded in 1984. The Sun is still going though.

[DracoM]

Tut tut!!

[Vox Humana]

Drunkenness was quite a common problem in those days, I think - which isn't that surprising when children were brought up on ale (or at least small beer) because water wasn't safe to drink. There's a particularly sad tale here on page 36: https://www.stgeorges-windsor.org/wp...20Vol%2013.pdf

[ardcarp]

Drunkenness was quite a common problem in those days, I think - which isn't that surprising when children were brought up on ale (or at least small beer) because water wasn't safe to drink. There's a particularly sad tale here on page 36: https://www.stgeorges-windsor.org/wp...20Vol%2013.pdf

Thanks for that Vox...but Oh Dear, I'm so 'into it', I'm going to have to read the whole of the Chapter Acts of the Dean and Canons of Windsor!

[Vox Humana]

Thanks for that Vox...but Oh Dear, I'm so 'into it', I'm going to have to read the whole of the Chapter Acts of the Dean and Canons of Windsor!

You'll find that Langford has some prior history!