CE Durham Cathedral 25th January 2012

[DracoM]

CE Durham Cathedral

Feast of the Conversion of St Paul



Order of Service:


Introit: Happy and blest are they (Mendelssohn)
Responses: Ayleward
Office Hymn: We sing the glorious conquest (King's Lynn)
Psalm: 119: 41-64 (Turle)
First Lesson: Isaiah 56: 1-8
Canticles: The St Hild Service (Richard Lloyd)
Second Lesson: Colossians 1: 24-2: 7
Anthems: How lovely are the messengers (Mendelssohn)
See what love hath the Father (Mendelssohn)
Hymn: Disposer supreme (Old 104th)



Organ Voluntary: Allegro maestoso from Sonata in D, Opus 65 No 5 (Mendelssohn)




Francesca Massey (Sub-Organist)
James Lancelot (Master of the Choristers and Organist)

[Lizzie]

I shall be on the coach back from our new Bishop's Consecration at St Paul's so, might even get to hear this! At least iplayer has now been reinstated by Eastleigh Library so, I can LA on Sats. The time change plus lack of library opportunity has made it hard to hear many CEs....

[DracoM]

Reminder: Wed @ 3.30 p.m.

[bach736]

On the 'wireless'?

Bless!

[Anna]

On the 'wireless'?

Bless!

Managing to catch this and I thought "wireless" was rather lovely as well! Durham is probably my favourite Cathedral, I find it enhances listening to visualise the surroundings (but that's probably just me?)

[ardcarp]

Indeed a fabulous building, with an intimate feel despite its size...unlike Lincoln which can overwhelm.
Lloyd cantcles pleasant enough, though very backward-looking in style. Maybe Mendelssohn 'anthems' a strange choice?

[DracoM]

Have to say, I do so agree with ardcarp about Lloyd, and particularly about the Mendelssohn extracts from 'St Paul'.

Oratorio textures, 19th cent oratorio choral and orchestral textures at that, and Durham did not sound to have the forces to carry them off. Either it was the old thing of balance problem in a huge space, or what, but the trebles seemed fighting unavailingly to be heard, got faded every time there was a climax, and for the most part sounded to be somewhere in Jesmond, while the Precentor and readers were unsurprisingly right in my listening room, and the organ acted like a sort of aquarium in which singing swam close now and again and then swam away into the glorious spaces of Durham Cathedral.

What was sad about it was that in the responses, nice straightforward a capella Ayleward, the choir sounded ordered, had presence and sang with some confident and well-focused sound. I kept thinking if only they had had more a capella work to do.

I was very puzzled by the whole mix.

[Magnificat]

Draco

What crossed my mind was the gulf between the quality of the singing last week and the singing this week from two of our major cathedrals.

The quality of the boys will vary from year to year but I am surprised that Durham don't have better men.

VCC

[DracoM]

I am still gamely sticking to the notions that [a] choice of repertoire to best suit choir / space can have a considerable effect on what / how we hear. [b] over the radio, how the local engineers set up the mix can have a truly serious effect on how we hear it too.

I'd rather not rush to judgement until I have heard Durham etc singing the same kind of repertoire that brings out the best in them - as Tewkesbury did, maybe - or in a wholly or mostly a capella service where we might then hear the thing itself rather than ask forces of any foundation to bash through 'problems' not necessarily in their control. It would of course be excellent to hear from someone who was actually present.

[taz]

Completely agree with you Chris. James can be firm with his choir (which can put people out sometimes) he is always fair. Besides that, James has been at Durham for over 25 years, and I suggest D-D listens to the Byrd cd from a few years back. It got a great review in the Gramophone, and is a lovely record of its kind. It'll be great to hear the Durham girls next year, who are in their 3rd year (2nd of taking an even share of services) and are younger than many other female front rows, but who sound great under James' training.

To discuss the earlier comments... The BBC have a tough job in going around all the different acoustics and working out how to best record the services, and they did a great job with the spoken word, the organ, and much of the singing. However, when I listened to the playback, whenever the choir sang more loudly there was a clear drop in volumes for the back row but not always the trebles, which robbed the sound of some of its richness, particularly for the back row. I'm not sure that it did the live sound justice. I'm not saying the broadcast was flawless, and of course its a balancing act for the techies, but perhaps with a different positioning of mics the richness of sound might have been better presented.

I think it's also important to compare apples with apples - Winchester is 12 clerks and is considerably closer to London than Durham which increases their ability to recruit experienced singers. Perhaps comparing Durham to York or Winchester to Windsor is reasonable, but Durham vs Winchester isn't entirely fair. Unless of course you're talking about buildings, in which case, Durham wins hands down'. ;)

[bull-scheidt]

As someone else who was present at the broadcast, I would agree with taz that the recording did not perhaps quite do it justice, especially with regard to the sound of the back row - at several points only the sound of one side of one part came through (although often Dec and Can of different parts, bizarrely).

[decantor]

Ah. A contentious thread. I have my own angle, and I dare post only because of the contentiousness.

I have no great regard for Mendelssohn's sacred choral music, but extracts from St Paul did not seem unreasonable for this service; Richard Lloyd is not at the cutting edge of contemporary liturgical composition, but he provides good Anglican fare. Despite my personal prejudices against this music list, I enjoyed almost all of the music in this service.

And why? Because of the choir's presentation of it. The men seemed to me to be well up to the task, and the altos especially had some fine moments. But it was the trebles who were the decisive factor. They were unmistakeably boys - such playground throatiness! - yet were musical, disciplined, and utterly committed. Now, unless we expect all our cathedral choirs to sound the same, these are factors that must be taken into account. George Malcolm won plaudits with the 'controlled shouting' of his Drome choir in 1959. I heard an echo of that from Durham, as I do from Canterbury. The boys were engaged, willing. Finesse was played off against realism. Perfection is not the only game in town. I found it an interesting listen, and would happily have heard more.

Yes, the BBC engineering so often seems strange, as if they are trying to achieve with four microphones what they once achieved with ten. I'll live with that somehow so long as CE is continued.

[Triforium]

To discuss the earlier comments... The BBC have a tough job in going around all the different acoustics and working out how to best record the services, and they did a great job with the spoken word, the organ, and much of the singing. However, when I listened to the playback, whenever the choir sang more loudly there was a clear drop in volumes for the back row but not always the trebles, which robbed the sound of some of its richness, particularly for the back row. I'm not sure that it did the live sound justice. I'm not saying the broadcast was flawless, and of course its a balancing act for the techies, but perhaps with a different positioning of mics the richness of sound might have been better presented.

I've said it before - I don't understand why the BBC has not kept some sort of playbook over the years with suggested mic placement and "levels" for each place visited.

[terratogen]

Completely agree with you Chris. James can be firm with his choir (which can put people out sometimes) he is always fair. Besides that, James has been at Durham for over 25 years, and I suggest D-D listens to the Byrd cd from a few years back. It got a great review in the Gramophone, and is a lovely record of its kind. It'll be great to hear the Durham girls next year, who are in their 3rd year (2nd of taking an even share of services) and are younger than many other female front rows, but who sound great under James' training.

Agreeing with @Taz on all points here. That Byrd motets disk recorded under James Lancelot is one that I enjoy quite a lot. The choir sound warm and together in their space, and though I can't say how much of that is the space and how much is the choir, the product is, at least for me, a lovely-to-listen-to sound that does justice to all of the voice parts. Based on that—and, indeed, even based on this week's CE, imperfectly balanced though it may have been—I'd hardly pass up an opportunity to hear the choir at Durham live.

I'll also be looking forward to hearing the Durham girls. (Are they recording a CD for release next year?) I'm quite interested in the emergence of these younger girls' treble lines and, based even on the comparatively limited number of recordings available of such groups, often wonder why preference seems to be with the 12-18 year-old lines rather than the 8-14 year-olds. Still waiting to hear the full-blown 'playground throatiness' that @decantor mentions with regard to some boys' lines, but I trust that some director or another will seek and coax it out!

Anyway. Well done to Durham. It's a shame that the general praise pales in comparison to the (well-deserved) gushing over Winchester only last week, but I'm just glad to be able to bring CE into my house when I'm not in a position to hear it in person.

[DracoM]

I suppose quot homines tot sententiae springs to mind. Having LA'd the broadcast, I still find myself unable to endorse the pretty well universal praise in the last few postings. What seems to be agreed by all is the significant gap between what we heard on air and what must have been heard on site.