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Being in 2020

Dear Reader

Firstly I need to apologise for the delay in posting here. We have been quite busy.



So up front, here is the musical report from Canterbury thus far.

Our first service of the five Evensong we sing here was on Monday. There has been a small change in that we will be singing the same Responses each day (except the Lay Clerk day) at the request of the Cathedral. So Hunt it is. And very appropriately so. On Monday we sang the Matthias Jesus College Service canticles, which were well received. The Trebles sang the JV Peters Away in a Manger again from memory.



The New Year’s Eve service had Stanford in G canticles, with Luca and Jules doing the honours in the solos. They filled the huge Cathedral with their sound and received praise from our tour party and from other members of the congregation. The anthem was Quem vidistis pastores dicite by Poulenc. It is a beautiful but challenging piece, but I think we are now getting the hang of it.




New Year’s Day had Brewer in D canticles, and the anthem was My Musick Shine by Wilberforce. This too is a challenging anthem but we are getting better at it each day.



Tonight is a Lay Clerk service - this means we will be doing different responses, the Rose. The canticles will be the Ives Magdalen Service and the anthem will be the Byrd Surge illuminare, Jerusalem. 

You may notice a few repeats starting to happen. This is fine with us, and especially with me, as every piece of music we bring adds around 500g to our luggage.

Now for some fun facts

  • Andrew Scott from Harrison and Harrison came to visit our wonderful David Heah and stayed for the service. He was very positive about our singing and David’s playing. We will see him again when he comes to Adelaide to give our organ a check up. 
  • Harrison and Harrison are currently voicing the south triforium organ at Canterbury. They have had to wrangle each piece of the organ by hand. 
  • Wrangling trebles can be like wrangling kittens, but they are doing well and in fact thriving. They particularly enjoyed the Ghost Tour. This is them on an earlier tour of Canterbury. It was rather chilly. 


  • New Year’s Eve dinner together was great, and the venue was beautiful
  • Archbishop Justin Welby is apparently in residence this week, but we have not seen him (yet) 
  • His predecessor, Archbishop Thomas Becket, was murdered in the Cathedral by having the top of his head cut off. One of the guides we met yesterday told us they scooped out his brains. I hope you are not reading this over dinner. You can see the sword through his head in this picture. The candle in the following one marks the spot where he was murdered. 


  • Michael G’s family are arriving from Sri Lanka when we get to London. I have an interesting story to tell you about him soon. 
  • There is a ducking seat by the river where punishment could be meted out for such crimes as nagging.


More later

Cxx




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