CE Salisbury Cathedral Wed, 6th Feb 2013

[DracoM]

CE Salisbury Cathedral



Order of Service:



Introit: Behold, O God, our defender (Howells)
Responses: Reading
Psalm 122 (Charles Musgrove)
First Lesson: Isaiah 52:13 – 53: 6
Office Hymn: All people that on earth do dwell (Old Hundredth arr Vaughan Williams)
Canticles: Blair in B minor
Second Lesson: Romans 15: 14-21
Anthem: O clap your hands (Gibbons)
Final Hymn: National Anthem
Coronation Te Deum (Walton)



Organ Voluntary: Coronation March 'Orb and Sceptre' (Walton arr McKie)




John Challenger (Assistant Director of Music)
David Halls (Director of Music)

[ardcarp]

Final Hymn: National Anthem

Are we going to get all the verses...unexpurgated?

[teamsaint]

Are we going to get all the verses...unexpurgated?

I sincerely hope so !
I would expect nothing less from Salisbury .(especially with a royal visit fresh in the memory, and a shiny new plaque to prove it !)

[bach736]

Are we going to get all the verses...unexpurgated?

Well, if you include the four Hickson verses and the 1919 official peace version, we could be into extra time!

[Miles Coverdale]

Why all this music from the coronation, I wonder. Salisbury's web site is advertising Clucas responses. Perhaps they'll do that verse in the National Anthem about Marshall Wade, just to annoy our brethren north of the border.

[MrGongGong]

I sincerely hope so !

I think Alex Salmond has slipped them one of these



to try and make sure they do

[Roger Judd]

Feb 6th is the day King George VI died and The Queen acceded to the throne in 1952. So June 2nd 2013 is the 60th anniversary of the Coronation. A broadcast on Accession Day seems like as good a day (other than June 2nd itself) as any to celebrate this landmark.
RJ

[DracoM]

Reminder: today @ 3.30 p.m.

[DracoM]

Big, bright, confident sound matching a big, bright bouncy order of service. Can't remember Salisbury ever sounding quite like that. Both boys and girls singing together is what it sounded like, hence big sound?

Just a teeny tad strident here and there, maybe, but great expressive joy in the business of communicating. Particularly liked the Gibbons.

John Challenger had quite an outing too - many thanks.

And I bet the engineers had a busy time too - just now and again the choir sort of disappeared, but balance between full-on organ plus big choir into various smaller ensembles that the Walton Te Deum especially calls for etc were pretty well handled.

Hats off, all.

[Op. XXXIX]

Hats off, all.

Agreed!

Just finished listening. (I can never catch it at the regularly scheduled time.) A good knock-out Blair in B minor is always a pleasure.

[DracoM]

So did NO-ONE else hear this CE?

[chitreb]

I was wondering that too. Perhaps everyone had their say before it was broadcast...

I did listen and thoroughly enjoyed the broadcast. As you say, the occasional slightly strident tone but even for a nitpicker like me there was very little that wasn't top notch. Well done Salisbury.

[Roger Judd]

Indeed - it was a splendid broadcast, well worthy of the occasion, with choir and organist on top form. I only had a very minor niggle, and that was with the Gibbons anthem which seemed a little relentless for my taste. The Walton was terrific, both the Te Deum and the March, and it was good to hear the Howells introit. As for Hugh Blair - well, it never fails. Bravo!
RJ

[terratogen]

I've been listening to this service in small pieces since Wednesday and enjoying it all the way. Having never been a chorister and having not sung in a choir since school, I tend to feel very ill-qualified to comment constructively on the work being done in choral foundations, but recognising so much of the music is a comfort and a nice place to start, and I’ve been looking forward to this service since seeing the music list.

People have commented on the top-heaviness and the ‘strident’ tone of the top line. There's something about the sound of the Salisbury trebles that strikes my ear as slightly peculiar. The vowel pronunciations, particularly amongst the girls, seem to me—please excuse a layman—wider than they are tall, more shallow than deep, lending the choristers’ tone a colour that I’ve grown used to hearing from Salisbury but not really from elsewhere. Could that be it? Perhaps it’s just stuck in my ear, a ‘received’ idea of what Salisbury’s choristers sound like. That said, this sound did seem to become less apparent as this service progressed, and I remember being surprised not really to hear it in the excellent documentary shown last Easter.

Anyway. The choir particularly shone in the new-to-me Blair canticles, I thought, which balanced very nicely the otherwise wonderfully effervescent Evensong. The Gibbons anthem, too, was joyfully sung and so in the spirit of the service, and the tremendous, full-voiced Walton Te Deum seemed the perfect way to end things.

Thanks, all at Salisbury, for such a joyous, celebratory service. Well done.

[ardcarp]

Sorry, Draco, I only got round to listening late last night. It was quite a big sing wasn't it? Enjoyable repertoire, but all a bit high octane, maybe. Terratogen; I don't think you need to voice any reservations about posting your opinions! That's what The Forum is for. Whilst I join with others in congratulating Salisbury on their broadcast, I agree that the sound of the top line can be a little hard and unrelieved. At one or two gentler moments in the psalmody there was a welcome softening. That bright, hard sound was first heard, I think, at the girls' first broadcast which I remember well, and remember being surprised...and delighted.