CE: Chapel of Merton College, Oxford 26.2.25 [L]

[mopsus]

I can tell you one thing the Merton librarian has the most covetable office I’ve ever been in . Lord knows what the Warden’s must be like.

PS apologies buried the lead .
Congrats and thanks to Reed Rubin and Nigel Hamway for sponsoring the Sinfonia - another talented casualty of the (we don’t give a stuff about the ) Arts Council.

Presumably former undergrads who get the value of the Arts ?

As a mere undergraduate I never set foot in the Librarian's office, and only went in the Warden's office once, when I was asking that he write a reference for me. I was too nervous to notice the surroundings much! But the Warden's lodgings are a rather nasty 1960s box. In my first year I lived in what had been the previous lodgings which were huge, with a large and pointless space above an enclosed stair leading from the front door into the hall. The story went that when the Warden had to move out of Fellows' Quad he demanded a building of equivalent volume to the space he was leaving and this is how it was achieved! In the 1960s the lodgings moved again to where they are now.

Reed Rubin is a former Merton undergraduate but Nigel Hamway I think isn't - and not the only major recent benefactor who didn't study at Merton. This term the College welcomed a new Chaplain (the previous one, Simon Jones, is now at Lincoln Cathedral). Only the third chaplain in over 60 years which must be a recent Oxbridge record!

As for PR, I think all Oxbridge Colleges have been forced to get better at this in recent years and Merton certainly exploited its 750th anniversary (in 2014) for all it was worth. Now I really need to catch up with that broadcast.....

[Finzi4ever]

An enjoyable service very well sung. Just a hint of strain for the singers at orchestral climaxes. Organ transcriptions of orchestral pieces usually work extremely well, saving money employing many musicians a good reason to start with. I can’t say the opposite succeeds for me, the Dyson and Bairstow sound better with organ IMHO. I enjoyed the experience and congratulations to all for the enterprise.

I'm with you on this very largely, though rapid diminuendo (say, at the end of Nimrod) can prove clunky & ineffective. Organ transcriptions can also be fiendish to register and play! The orchestral Elgar at the end was particularly lovely.