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.
Shortly after arriving back from Gloucester, the Choir received an e-mail from John Smedley, who had been in the congregation, and wrote the following:
I would be grateful if you would let the choir know how grateful we were for their inspirational music today. I was most taken by their singing of the "war horse" that is Smart in B flat. My grandfather studied the organ with Henry Smart, and I am sure that Smart would have approved of the great power that the choir unleashed on the Magnificat, and the sensitivity of their singing in the quieter sections, especially the beginning of the Nunc dimittis.
I have heard Battishill's 'O Lord, look down from heaven' before, many years ago, I think, and it is a glorious thing! Again, very sensitive singing, with a great range of dynamics and real sympathy with the music. And to crown it all, Bach's wondrous G major Prelude and Fugue, played with real panache by your accompanist.
The choir also gave the first performance of a new version of the Responses by the Organist of Cartmel Priory, Adrian Self, and the Psalm was sung to chants by E. C. Bairstow and E. J. Hopkins. Thanks go to our Musical Director, Lee Dunleavy, for taking us "into his world" for the day, to Stephen Meakins for accompanying us with such verve, and to Felicity Orme who had the nerve-wracking job of turning Stephen's pages! St Paul’s have very kindly offered to re-schedule our Evensong there; watch this space for the new date!