Mawby première

Colin Mawby, former Master of Music and now a prolific composer, has written a setting of Ave Maria which we will sing for the first time on Saturday morning, 26 November, at the 10.30 Mass. Colin will be there to hear it, and the Mass is, appropriately, a votive Mass of Our Lady.

He wrote it after a chance comment from one of our new priests, Fr Paulo. When he was recently introduced to Colin Mawby the conversation turned to Fr Paulo's ordination. Fr Paulo mentioned that when choosing music they had listened to settings of Ave verum by Mozart and Mawby, and although they liked the Mozart, the Mawby was the hands down winner. Touched by this, Colin immediately wrote an Ave Maria, dedicating it Fr Paulo, and sent it to me. I was struck by its quality and asked Colin if he'd orchestrate it so that it could be sung at the Christmas Celebrations on 20 and 21 December, which he did. But as Colin can't be there for either Celebration, I found a date when he could be here - this Saturday - which will be therefore its first performance. Here's the opening of the version for choir and organ.



Today's service went very well, including the Ron Corp commission, as did MacMillan's Te Deum last Sunday. With the Mawby on Saturday, therefore, we will have premiered three new works in the space of a week.

MacMillan première

We're learning lots of new music at the moment. The USA concert programmes, good as they were and beneficial as it was to sing the same repertoire over an extended period, have left me (if not all of us) hungry for something new. The reset button has been pressed and each rehearsal is devoted first to some familiar repertoire for the day's service, and then to lots of new stuff; the looming proximity of Christmas and all that entails means it's a good time to start feeding in the new music before things get too frantic.

One thread we are working on at the moment is a recording for next calendar year. The exact repertoire is yet to be finalized but it will be lots of, or entirely, James MacMillan. I've been in contact with his publishers for a few months over this and they've been sending lots of ideas through. One of them immediately caught my attention: a choir and organ setting of the Te Deum, in Latin, simply called 'Edinburgh Te Deum.' It begins with a catchy rhythmic ostinato on the organ over which comes a jagged treble melody. It's generally more angular, tonally and melodically, than the style we're familiar with. I've put it down for Vespers this Sunday. Although the Te Deum is not a vespers text, it is an apt choice for the feast of Christ the King (containing as it does the words "Tu Rex gloriae Christe") and our Vespers motet slot is the free-est of any during a normal week; we are less constrained in choice of text than at mass and the music can also be more extended without interrupting the flow of the liturgy.

I contacted MacMillan and it turns out that this will be the world première performance! He wrote it in 1980 when a student in Edinburgh, forgot about it, and is only just publishing it. This explains the difference in style.

Sunday Vespers is, therefore, quite an event for us. Do try and come along and hear the first performance of a work by one of the greatest living composers at 3.30pm this Sunday, 20 November.

St Cecilia

Each year, on the Wednesday closest to 22nd November (her feast-day) a service in honour of St Cecilia is held, rotating between our own Cathedral, St Paul's Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. The home choir fields a full team and is supplemented by half of each of the other choirs. This year it's our turn to host the service, which takes place on Wednesday next week (23 November) at 11am.

Why do we do this? The service is organized by the Musicians' Benevolent Fund and was originally held annually in the church of St Sepulchre's Holborn. The tradition began in 1946, though not with WC Choir. I don't know the exact date but I think we became involved in the late 1970s during Stephen Cleobury's time as Master of Music. St Sepulchre's is a small church with a mediocre organ and poor facilities, so when, in 1990, there was a problem with its roof and the church became unusable, James O'Donnell (then Master of Music at WC) invited the MBF to hold the service here, and thus began the tradition of rotating between the three churches.

It's one of three or four annual opportunities we get to sing with the other choirs, and the only one with all three; other events being the joint services with the Abbey Choir in October and May, and the exchange of Vespers/Evensong with St Paul's in January. (The choir tour to the USA prevented the Abbey service from taking place this last October.)

Each year, there is a new anthem (motet) commissioned which receives its first performance at the service. In 2011 we are singing the premiere of a setting of Psalm 150, Laudate Dominum, by Ron Corp, an Anglican priest and the musical director of the New London Children's Choir. He also sits on the committee which organises the service each year. Three years ago the commission was by Tarik O'Regan, six years ago by Peter Maxwell-Davies. In 1995, when the service was held at St Paul's Cathedral, the commission was James MacMillan's Christus vincit, which has since become a firm fixture in our repertoire, and was performed in every concert in the USA. Any commission is a risk, and the danger with the St Cecilia commissions is that the composer writes with the massed forces in mind and produces something which isn't suitable for one choir on its own, thus pieces can have a short shelf-life. I'm pleased that the ones I've mentioned above have all had several outings since their premiere, and I hope the same will happen with Ron Corp's piece.

On Friday this week the choristers from St Paul's and the Abbey will come to us for an advance rehearsal - an opportunity to spend some time together learning notes and ironing out any differences in style - and will stay for lunch, turning it into a pleasant social occasion too.

On Wednesday 23rd we start early, beginning at 8.45 with the boys and 9am with the full choir, giving us time to prepare four pieces: the commission, Victoria's 8-part Ave Maria, In spiritu humilitatis by Croce, and Elgar's Great is the Lord. We need to be out of the way by 10.15 in order for the doors to open. In fact it's one of the few, possibly the only, occasion in the year when we actually get to rehearse with the full choir in the Cathedral; normally this isn't possible due to the timings of the other services. If all goes to plan then we shall be singing from the Sanctuary, standing in front of the high altar; as the service is mostly musical it makes sense to have the musicians in view. Archbishop Nichols will be the preacher.

All Choristers (but not Probationers) will be singing. Tickets (free) are required for admission, but I gather they've all gone now. If you have any questions please contact Aoife Daly on 020 7798 9057 or aoifedaly@rcdow.org.uk. If you attend, I hope you enjoy the musical feast, and that you find the new piece interesting and effective. Do you think it's the sort of piece that will receive many performances?

Victoria Requiem

I have had many gushing comments about last Wednesday's R3 broadcast of the Victoria Requiem Mass. Having had only a few days to recover from the USA tour, to come back and sing the Sunday services as well as solemn masses on Monday and Tuesday for All Saints, then sing so brilliantly on the live broadcast was a real feat. Congratulations to all the choristers involved and particularly the second trebles who, on the day, found themselves suddenly having to hold their part without anyone from the top year.

If you didn't get a chance to hear the broadcast, it's available on iPlayer for another couple of days here.

You can also hear the choir sing some of the movements at Mass next Sunday morning, 13 November; we always sing a Requiem Mass on Remembrance Sunday and with this year being the 400th anniversary of his death, the obvious choice was to sing the Victoria again.

Born in Avila in 1548, Victoria was a choirboy in the cathedral there before moving to Rome, where, as a singer and organist he would have met Palestrina. It was during his time in Rome that most of his music was composed and published. He was ordained priest in 1575 and eventually returned to Madrid in 1587 where he was chaplain and choirmaster to the Dowager Empress Maria. It was for her state funeral in 1603 that he wrote the 6-part Requiem, published two years later. Victoria himself died in 1611 and the Requiem was the last work he composed.

At Mass on Sunday, during the offertory motet Versa set in luctum, listen especially to the way Victoria sets the words "nihil enim sunt dies mei." (For my days are as nothing.) Or you can hear the Cathedral Choir singing it here under David Hill in the 1980s - a stunning recording.

Welcome

A number of parents have asked if I'd continue writing a blog now that the USA tour is over. Obviously there's not going to be so much news on a daily basis and there's no natural structure for posting, as there was on a tour. But I do think it's a good idea to look occasionally into various aspects of what we do and try to make the music programme, both in the Cathedral and at the School, more accessible to parents, and indeed the staff.

Music at the Cathedral has a high profile, but to those of you close to it, it may seem rather obscure; we rehearse in private and perform almost out of sight - there are few occasions when you get to see close-up what goes on or are given insights into the music we sing or why we sing it.

This blog will look - on an occasional basis - at things which may be of interest to you. It may also be a way of communicating some factual data about schedules and forthcoming events, though we will continue to feed those into the Headmaster's weekly newsletter - please keep using the newsletter as your primary source of information.

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