Music for a while
Above, last week's music list ...
Above, the music list for a while before. 1902, in fact, before the Cathedral was fully opened, and when services were being sung in the Lady Chapel. The Master of Music then was the redoubtable Sir Richard Terry, whose work in rediscovering the treasury of sixteenth and seventeenth century polyphonic music made this repertoire available to the Church. Below, Sir Richard rehearses the Cathedral choristers.
The current Master of Music, Martin Baker (below), notes how the two music lists really differ very little in the sorts of things being sung, and in the commitment to a fully daily choral celebration of the Divine Office and the Mass. Long may it continue!
3 comments:
How charming to see the choristers clustered around the piano... but I guess it's just a pose, and not how they usually rehearsed?
As to the present choir: their latest CD with the Palestrina Lamentations is just utterly beautiful. Please convey my congratulations to the Master of Music.
Whatever the challenges with regard to recruitment, Westminster Cathedral Choir remains in a class of their own.
I am curious to read the 1902 list, but the picture is so small I can hardly make out the words. Would it be possible to post a larger size?
That picture of Sir Richard is priceless. I'm sure nothing escaped his notice. The expression on his face says it all. I can only imagine "the look" he could give a member of the choir if something was not to his satisfaction.
I hope I did not drool when I looked over the music lists. Oh, to hear a mass setting like that EVERY day! What a treasure.
1902...that would have been four years before Vaughan Williams published his English Hymnal.
What year was the first Westminster Hymnal published?
A google search gives 1911 as the date of the first Westminster Hymnal. One site says Terry worked with David Lloyd George on a later hymnal and used to breakfast at 10 Downing Street!
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