CE Hereford Cathedral Sept 18th 2013

[DracoM]

CE Hereford Cathedral




Order of Service:



Introit: Ave maris stella (Grieg)
Responses: Sumsion
Psalms 93, 94 (Battishill; Turle)
First Lesson: 2 Kings 4:1-7
Office Hymn: Christ is our light! the bright and morning star (Godmanchester)
Canticles: Sumsion in G
Second Lesson: John 2:1-11
Anthem: Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen (Brahms)
Final Hymn: All praise to our redeeming Lord (Kingsfold)




Organ Voluntary: Allegro con fuoco from Symphony No.9 ('From the New World') (Dvorák)




Peter Dyke (Assistant Director of Music)
Geraint Bowen (Director of Music)

[Petrushka]

Organ Voluntary: Allegro con fuoco from Symphony No.9 ('From the New World') (Dvorák)

Unusual choice. Were mine the only pair of eyebrows that went up on seeing this?

[ardcarp]

Hey Petrushka; transcriptions are cool. And Hereford has a suitably 'symphonic' organ.

I guess the theme of this CE is music by mainstream composers (not Sumsion, obviously) which has been absorbed into the Anglican canon.

[Petrushka]

Hey Petrushka; transcriptions are cool. And Hereford has a suitably 'symphonic' organ.

I guess the theme of this CE is music by mainstream composers (not Sumsion, obviously) which has been absorbed into the Anglican canon.

Not greatly enthused by transcriptions myself, preferring to hear organ music on the organ and orchestras playing orchestral music but that's just my feeling. Didn't spot the likely theme so thanks for pointing it out.

[Magnificat]

Hey Petrushka; transcriptions are cool. And Hereford has a suitably 'symphonic' organ.

I guess the theme of this CE is music by mainstream composers (not Sumsion, obviously) which has been absorbed into the Anglican canon.

ardcarp,

I'll say a word for Sumsion. Cow pat or not I like Sumsion in G it has a lovely pastoral quality about it and is perfect for evensong on a balmy summer's evening or a balmy early Autumn evening ( I hope the weather improves before Wednesday! ). I see we have that lovely folk song tune Kingsfold harmonised by Vaughan Williams for the hymn. What a delightful combination.

Personally I could do without anthems in German for evensong ( including Bach) frankly. The language is just not Anglican Isn't there an English translation of this one? I like Brahms too.

VCC

[decantor]

My reaction to the published music list is different again. Hereford have proved themselves masters of the Renaissance repertoire, and yet offer only a single chant that predates 1800 - I start off disappointed. Even so, I welcome the Sumsion, as it lies in the Anglican heartland, and the opening Grieg is a good piece for its purpose. But the Brahms (even in English: "How lovely") is an abomination, too personal and earthbound, substituting sentiment for anything spiritual....... as I see it.

And yet...... I look forward to hearing the Hereford choir, no matter what they sing. A good choir has its own power to transform, just as a good organist has the power to transcribe.

[ardcarp]

VCC. I wasn't dissing Sumsion at all. I too like Sumsion in G....a worthy staple of the Anglican repertory. (There's a Sumsion in G for treble voices too.) My point was that the canticles did not fit in with (what I perceived as) the theme of the service, i.e. music by 'symphonic' composers such as Brahms, Grieg and Dvorak.

On the subject of 'foreign' words of anthems, time was (before 1960s?) when it was rarely done. I remember Lichfield having a book (rather like a hymn-book) entitled 'Words of Anthems' for the congregation so no-one could be in any doubt as to the meaning of what was being sung....and this almost entirely in English.

That Latin, German, French and other languages are now allowable is, to me, a good thing as it allows a wider repertory to be included, and heard in its original guise.

[BasilHarwood]

No anthems in German? What about other languages... Latin? Bye-bye most of the repertoire!

I think it's of upmost importance that congregations (and singers!) are aware of what they're singing! If not you might as well be singing your shopping list. Don't Christ Church Ox. have a similar book?

Looking forward to Hereford's offering.

[DracoM]

Have to say I'm with Decantor on the Brahms. IMO, it's a lusciously over-sweet almost gemutlich gobbet from a far longer work, i.e. not free-standing.
BUT
Hereford's repertoire tends to be rather broader in terms of broadcast CEs than Decantor perhaps indicates:
2007: Tallis, Stainer, Leighton
2008: Lloyd, Howells, Bairstow
2010: Hewson, Stanford, Ireland
2012: [ah, blessed memory- Ash Wednesday service!!] Allegri, Byrd, Tallis
- besides of course their appearances at the 3 Choirs, though infrequently as solo ensemble in that context.

NB: they might want to forget the recent 'Messiah'. Ahem. NOT their usual standard at all.

[ardcarp]

This was all 3 choirs wasn't it? And John Butt was conducting. Excellent playing, BTW, but maybe speeds a bit eye-watering at times. Despite advances in what cathedral/collegiate choirs are capable of, it is still quite an undertaking for a young top line to do a whole Messiah in concert...with, no doubt, a full rehearsal the same day.

[BasilHarwood]

I hear Bach B minor Mass is on the cards next year... And breathe!

[ahinton]

My reaction to the published music list is different again. Hereford have proved themselves masters of the Renaissance repertoire, and yet offer only a single chant that predates 1800 - I start off disappointed. Even so, I welcome the Sumsion, as it lies in the Anglican heartland, and the opening Grieg is a good piece for its purpose. But the Brahms (even in English: "How lovely") is an abomination, too personal and earthbound, substituting sentiment for anything spiritual....... as I see it.

And yet...... I look forward to hearing the Hereford choir, no matter what they sing. A good choir has its own power to transform, just as a good organist has the power to transcribe.

Indeed - and the standard of music making in Hereford Cathedral is now widely appreciated and has certainly risen to new levels since the inception of Geraint Bowen's directorship of music there.

The organ in Hereford Cathedral is also a magnificent example of a great English Romantic organ; if only it had full compass manuals and pedals (it has neither)!...

[Philip]

It must be just me that thinks the Brahms is wonderful then...the fugal bits towards the end being the highlight. Sentimental - arguably - but I like it. I've accompanied it twice before sung in English and think it works well - next Sunday evening I'll be accompanying to the German. It looks like the being the high point of what should be a very good offering on Wednesday.

[Vox Humana]

No, it's not just you, Philip.

In my teens I went through a violent reaction to Stainer, Gounod et al which left me with en extreme distaste for almost all pre-impressionist romantic music. It all seemed dreadfully sentimental - and I quite rightly got into trouble with more than one of my elders and betters for my blinkered attitude. The older I become the more tolerant of emotion I become, to the point where some might now consider my tastes debased. Perhaps they are; I don't care. Yesterday evening I was accompanying a soprano in, amongst other things, Ivor Novello's "I can give you the starlight". Now that's what I call sentimental. By comparison, Brahms's "Wie lieblich" simply seems full of warmth and feeling. Heart-on-sleeve stuff, to be sure, but the emotion it contains and the depth of compositional technique seem to me to add up to something a lot stronger than the word "sentiment" implies.

[DracoM]

I suppose what I tend to resist in the material discussed above is the sense that in some obscure way I am being exploited, manipulated, even coerced to experience a sort of mutual glow of satisfaction - almost a sense that the world is really lovely and OK and panglossian. The spikiness of pre- and high Renaissance for me, and then 20th century plus [Beethoven apart] is that you have to fight your way in. It just is, and does not pretend to invite empathy. It stands alone and itself, and excites interest and imaginative insight by being nothing but itself. Bit like a mountain. Maybe the fact that much of it is intended to be spiritual in an unenveloping, uninvasive, take it or leave it way?

Hearing Christ Church Cathedral Oxford singing the Eton Choirbook, or indeed hearing Hereford Cathedral singing high Renaissance material, does not pluck at heart strings so much as present ideologies that are there for evaluation and analysis, do not care if I like them or not or not, they are what they are, and shape ways one might or might not take. It is not evangelical in the widest sense. I find Stainer, Elgar, Mendelssohn, Brahms in their very different ways invasive and even blackmailing, and swirling with otiose and lengthy self-regard.

Less is more.