Stories
Stories
On Tuesday 25 October 2011 fifty-six members of the Northampton Bach Choir were privileged to sing Choral Evensong in the glorious acoustics of Gloucester Cathedral. But only because the doors were shut elsewhere!
In the weeks leading up to this date the choir had been busily rehearsing ready to perform at St Paul's Cathedral in London. Shortly before the date of the service a camp was established outside the Cathedral to protest at corporate greed. Only four days before the service the Cathedral was closed due to health and safety issues relating to the camp.
The Bach Choir committee very quickly put together a strategy to find another Cathedral to host our Evensong, and with their choir on tour in South Africa, the kindliness of the people of Gloucester Cathedral was shown, offering us the chance to sing there on the same planned date. Particular thanks were offered to the Virgers and The Reverend Canon Celia Thomson for making us feel so very welcome, and to StanMan’s Delicatessen on Westgate Street, whose fabulous ‘Old Spot’ sausage sandwiches sustained a goodly number of the singers through the day!
Northampton's connections with Gloucester are very slight. The first Abbess of the first religious community on the site of the Cathedral, Kyneburgha, also founded the convent of Castor in Northamptonshire, and is buried in our Diocesan Cathedral in Peterborough. Also, a former Dean of the Cathedral, Henry Montagu Butler, was born in Gayton, a village just five miles from Northampton. However, in the memorial window to Herbert Howells, situated in the south chantry chapel, part of the score of his "Hymnus Paradisi" can be found (pictured). The Northampton Bach Choir were privileged to sing this great work in the presence of the composer in the 1974.
As part of our 2010-2011 concert programme, we decided to take the unorthodox step of postponing our usual Summer concert to September 2011, in order that we could more properly mark the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on America in 2001. This left us with a fabulous opportunity to use the usual Summer window to take our music outside Northampton. In recent years we have visited our twin towns of Poitiers and Marburg, so we began to look further afield and soon stumbled upon the Anglican Church of All Saints in Rome, with its excellent acoustic and large organ.
Despite the best efforts of the French fishermen who were blockading Calais, nearly forty members of the Northampton Bach Choir passed safely and speedily through the Channel Tunnel in April heading for Northampton’s twin town of Marburg. Arriving late in the evening, we weary travellers were greeted enthusiastically by our hosts – members of the Marburg Bach Choir and the Twinning Committee – who took us to their various homes.