CE Christ Church Cathedral Oxford 5th November, 2014

[teamsaint]

Yes indeed. This sounds a great venture. However the BBC Training Orchestra (or Academy of the BBC as it became) offered proper contracts, as I understand it, so that members were not just doing one-off concerts, but meeting and rehearsing on a daily basis just as regular orchestral players do.

There is an interesting thread to be had on this subject, I think.
Would you care to start it?

[ardcarp]

Maybe. I'll give it some thought first!

[ardcarp]

... as, for example, Exeter and its choice of a French style -

http://www.exeter.ox.ac.uk/node/178

The very French organ in Exeter College Chapel was used to great effect in Schola Cantorum of Oxford's excellent CD of Durufle's Requiem, directed by Jeremy Summerly:

http://www.schola-cantorum.net/recordings.html

[scroll down to find it]

Ironically, the organ was built by J.W. Walker!

[Keraulophone]

Did they use the 'Effets d'Orage' in the stormy bits?!

[ardcarp]

Did they use the 'Effets d'Orage' in the stormy bits?!

Sadly not......maybe a coup too far for Maurice. But they did use the tremolo at 'fac eas Domine de morte transire'.

[mopsus]

There was a craze for non-standard tunings of Oxford organs in the 1980s. The then-new main Magdalen College organ was tuned in Valotti. I went to a Schools recital (booked before it was known that it would be tuned thus) including Liszt etc., and mighty odd it sounded. IIRC New College wasn't in equal temperament either at that time.

[Vox Humana]

IIRC New College wasn't in equal temperament either at that time.

I had a little tootle on it seven years ago and was told that it was tuned to a modified Thomas Young temperament. I don't suppose Dr Edward changed it. Has/will Mr Quinney?

[DracoM]

Reminder of this archive tx: this afternoon @ 3.30

[VodkaDilc]

Most enjoyable, not just for the superb music, as expected, but also the real sense of a genuine service. Footsteps and chatter (lots of it) during the final Howells just added to it. I am guessing that, in contrast, modern-day congregations are told to be seated and silent until the broadcast ends. This sounded like a service where the BBC had been invited to attend - not a broadcast with an audience in attendance.

Wonderful clergy voices too - straight out of Trollope.

[jean]

Laudibus in Sanctis painfully slow. But lovely top notes at Alta sacri...

[Lento]

Footsteps and chatter (lots of it) during the final Howells just added to it. I am guessing that, in contrast, modern-day congregations are told to be seated and silent until the broadcast ends. This sounded like a service where the BBC had been invited to attend - not a broadcast with an audience in attendance.

You are more tolerant than I: couldn't help but wish they had told everyone to sit down and keep quiet until the voluntary was over, though I can also understand the wish to maintain normality. I wonder if Simon Preston enjoyed his organist's penchant for passing-notes in the psalms (the Oxford Cleobury brother, of course)!

[VodkaDilc]

You are more tolerant than I: couldn't help but wish they had told everyone to sit down and keep quiet until the voluntary was over, though I can also understand the wish to maintain normality. I wonder if Simon Preston enjoyed his organist's penchant for passing-notes in the psalms (the Oxford Cleobury brother, of course)!

I wonder if the exodus during the Howells was not stopped due to the 45 minute duration of Choral Evensong in those days, as someone has pointed out earlier. The 45 minute limit passed within a few bars of the piece beginning. Perhaps everyone assumed that the rest would not be broadcast, though the recording continued. They were not to know that it would be repeated decades later. (I wonder how they decide which programmes merit the 'classic' status of having a 21st century repeat?)

[Barry Rose]

You are more tolerant than I: couldn't help but wish they had told everyone to sit down and keep quiet until the voluntary was over, though I can also understand the wish to maintain normality. I wonder if Simon Preston enjoyed his organist's penchant for passing-notes in the psalms (the Oxford Cleobury brother, of course)!

I wonder if I might be permitted to set the record straight concerning the organ voluntary at the end of this Evensong ?
In those days the duration of the transmission was 45 minutes, and that period of time came to an end soon after the Howells Rhapsody had started. As is usual on these occasions, the red light was put off, to indicate to everyone present that the broadcast had finished, but in the control room, the engineers and the producer (I seem to remember it was me on this occasion) left the tape recorders running until the voluntary had finished, so that we could give one copy of the whole Service to the organists. In the Cathedral, the choir processed out and the congregation started to leave, quite oblivious to the fact that we were still recording, and there was no reason why they should have stayed to listen, though I'm sure that some did. These days, with the hour-long transmission, the clergy, choir and congregation remain in their seats until the voluntary has finished.

[VodkaDilc]

I wonder if the exodus during the Howells was not stopped due to the 45 minute duration of Choral Evensong in those days, as someone has pointed out earlier. The 45 minute limit passed within a few bars of the piece beginning. Perhaps everyone assumed that the rest would not be broadcast, though the recording continued. They were not to know that it would be repeated decades later. (I wonder how they decide which programmes merit the 'classic' status of having a 21st century repeat?)

Never before has one of my idle thoughts been confirmed by such an eminent authority. Many thanks, Dr Rose.

[ardcarp]

I enjoyed the CE very much...as an essay on changing styles as much as anything else. The 2nd lesson was a tour de force, surely, from one of the patrician clerics of yore. But even if we found some of the choral sounds (and speeds?) a little dated, SP was actually in the vanguard of getting choristers to sing with less hoot and more gusto. At around that time I actually attended a CE at Christchurch (not the broadcast) and heard them do Laudibus in Sanctis. (A singing friend of mine had just got one of the permanent lay clerk posts there.) SP conducted in a most energetic way, surplice 'wings' flapping wildly, in itself quite a departure from the undemonstrative gestures of most O&Cs. I actually felt that, from a choir point of view, that was SPs heyday...oops he's still with us so I'd better mind my Ps and Qs.

Yes those passing notes in the psalm accompaniment were most irritating...a fashion now thankfully extinct except occasionally in plainsong accomp. But the choir got stuck into the psalms pretty effectively, I thought.

Didn't the old organ sound wonderful? I always associate the opening of the Tippett Mag with a loud, rounded, high-presssue tuba stop....just not the same with a thin classical reed, be it ever so colourful.

Must stop rambling and let someone else have a go......