Easter from King's.

[MickyD]

Don't forget this broadcast today:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rrgg2

[mercia]

will be watching, but is it actually a repeat from a previous year ? my online TV guide has 2011 against it

[Nick Armstrong]

will be watching, but is it actually a repeat from a previous year ? my online TV guide has 2011 against it

That would appear to be an error in your EPG. (I'll fetch a nurse! )
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rrgg2

[Curalach]

I'm going there tomorrow for the Easter morning service for the first time in my life.

[BBMmk2]

Watching now. Why they had to put on the Mozart Ave Verum and not Brd's?

[Nick Armstrong]

Watching now. Why they had to put on the Mozart Ave Verum and not Brd's?

Postcard please to:

S Cleobury Esq
King's College
Cambridge CB2 1ST

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm going there tomorrow for the Easter morning service for the first time in my life.

Good for you, Curalach - hope it's a wonderful occasion.

[Anna]

We've all watched. and enjoyed Kings I think. But, how many treat it as just a performance, a concert, and how many treat it as a religious experience, a church service which they are unable to attend? (the same applies to CE - the performance or the content?)
Serious question, not inviting any Anti-Christian stuff, just genuinely interested, as in, if you could go to church and hear this - would you?

[Mary Chambers]

I realise it isn't supposed to be a concert, but I think I treat it mainly as a performance. I listen to how they do it, and criticise and admire as appropriate. I'm aware of the spiritual dimension, but it isn't the main thing to me. The singing is.

[DracoM]

Well, if you are hankering after something BBC/King's don't do any longer, then try to listen via their website to St Thomas Fifth Avenue NYC and you will hear proper, full services and amazing singing from one of the, if not the best men and boys choirs singing anywhere these days - sound only, but they webcast every single service in their week, no editing, no packaging, no plugging into what the BBC think of as the standard religious spectacular of any season, namely King's at Christmas, Easter, or whenever, with that formulaic visual packaging that IME is both tiring and predictable and detracts from the music and the work of the choir.

For example, go the St T website now and listen to their Holy Week services, particularly Maundy Thursday. Slow, quiet, less is more.

http://www.saintthomaschurch.org/music/services

[EdgeleyRob]

We've all watched. and enjoyed Kings I think. But, how many treat it as just a performance, a concert, and how many treat it as a religious experience, a church service which they are unable to attend? (the same applies to CE - the performance or the content?)
Serious question, not inviting any Anti-Christian stuff, just genuinely interested, as in, if you could go to church and hear this - would you?

I don't believe in God ,I treat it purely as a performance of some wonderful and beautiful music
I would go to a church (and have done so )to listen religious or church music just as I would go to a concert hall.
There is music that makes me question my non belief (Mozart's Great C Minor Mass for example springs immediately to mind).

[Hautboiste]

No I wouldn't. The majority of the readers didn't convince me - they just, as my Aged Father told me NOT to do when I was 8 and practising to read from the pulpit for the first time, said the words.
The singing was all right but I've never been impressed with Stephen Cleobury's leadership of the choir. There was very little feeling in the singing - they just sang the words. I didn't get the Easter feeling at all.

[Nick Armstrong]

I'm going there tomorrow for the Easter morning service for the first time in my life.

Do you mean that you are going to King's Chapel for the first time - or on Easter morning for the first time?

Either way, I hope it is a great experience... but if the former, when you enter, don't let yourself be hurried... just raise your eyes to the ceiling and absorb the astonishing marvel that is that roof...

... that branching roof
Self-poised, and scooped into ten thousand cells
Where light and shade repose, where music dwells

Lingering - and wandering on as loath to die;
Like thoughts whose very sweetness yieldeth proof
That they were born for immortality

as Wordsworth said.*

I was there on Monday evening, and spent a lot of the time gazing upwards. (I must have listened to music in there 100 times).




*http://www.bartleby.com/106/279.html

[chitreb]

Re the spirituality bit, I agree with some of the sentiments above but I did find the John Updike reading unexpected and quite challenging. The somewhat limited congregation made it feel more like a performance to camera than a service of devotion.

Re the music, it was all "performed" to the usual standard (perhaps a little heavy in the Weelkes?).

BUT - why oh why is it Easter from Kings? I can sort of understand that Carols from Kings is a National Institution now but why Kings again at Easter? There are dozens of Cathedrals and Collegiates that could do the job. Come on BBC - once a year is enough, even from the almighty Kings.

[BBMmk2]

I always go for the religous aspect of these events. I su8ppose it's my Catholic upbringing that has influenced my opinion here.