To be honest...

I'm rather glad that term has started, and the choir is back rehearsing. We even did an evensong again on Tuesday - Hunt in D. Hunt in D, I say! Wonderful stuff. Absolutely wonderful. And coming up later on this term we have Arnold in A, Cooke in G, Jackson - that's William, by the way (1730-1803) organist and Master of the Choristers at Exeter - in F, and Walmisley in - no, not D minor - Walmisley in B flat. I can, of course, claim some of the credit for such luminaries of the English church tradition elbowing aside the likes of Howells and Stanford, having stood the young boy recently appointed as assistant organist a half of mild the night before he set about compiling this terms music list. I might also, inadvertently, have instilled a sense of urgency in getting the thing out before the Precentor - along with the rest of the Chapter - returned from their retreat. The organist, of course, was furious. But then, he's on sabbatical and telephones can always be put down. So we've a month and more of singing delightful - English - settings of the canticles. And anthems, too. Goss - The Wilderness (not that we would baulk at Wesley's wonderful sub-oratorio setting) and God is a Spirit, from the Woman of Samaria by dear, dear Sir Arthur 'Gilbert and' Sullivan. It promises to be quite a term.

Oh, alright then...

Further to my last post it appears not only that there are unfeasible numbers of people with little to do each day but spend inordinate amounts of time posting bloggings to the world wide cyber-net, but also that those who don't seem to spend an equivalent number of hours asking those of us who do questions. Thankfully, I activated the 'send an e-mail before a comment is published' button recently, so the questions about my current marital status and availability for rather dubious concerts and recordings have been spared my growing readership. But so many of you out there seem to want to try and guess my real identity that I feel duty bound to respond, politely, to at least some of your more pertinent questions. Besides, it's (still) half-term and there is precious little else for me to do. So, there now follows a selected list of questions accompanied by the most appropriate answer.
1. Where do you sing?
Well, no marks for subtlety there. And why, anyway, do you wish to know, whoever you are? I will answer only by saying that I sing at a rather small foundation with a megalomaniac organist and an unmusical precentor. Apparently that rules out hardly any of this country's great cathedrals and thus is not at all helpful to my interlocutor. Good.
2. What colour cassock do you wear?
What colour cassock do you wear? What colour cassock do you wear! I ask you.
3. Have you got a girls choir?
No.
4. Why not?
Because, my dear (on the assumption that 'pinklady' is a female, rather than a countertenor) only the boys voice is truly representative of the long tradition of all-male Anglican singing, a tradition we, here, in this choir, struggle manfully to uphold in the face of untold difficulties.
5. What sort of difficulties?
Put bluntly, the Organista et Magista Choristarum and Precentor.
Enough, I think, for now.

Who'd have thought it?

Who would have thought there were so many people in the world wasting their time as the most advanced product of evolution by writing stuff like this on the net? I know, I know – I’m one of them. But. But. Just look at some of the things I've found so far this week while inadvertently hitting buttons linked to different things on my computer. For instance, there’s a chap in the United States (where else) who lists his interests as 'The Lord, Holiness, forgiveness, and rock-climbing...' Another fellow I seem linked to by virtue of our mutual admiration for the works of Thomas Tallis claims his interests include '...Backpacking, and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and Their Strategic and Tactical Uses in a Post-Coldwar Geopolitical Climate'. I ask you? What manner of person is one rubbing electronic shoulders with? Would you, for instance, choose to be associated with the man from Colorado who describes himself as a devotee of 'Aquinas, Roman Catholic Natural Law Theology and early Church History'? The worst thing about it is that I can see little alternative, short of reducing the list of my favourite composers to those likely to be known only to a bass lay-vicar at an unfashionable Anglican cathedral. On the other hand this blogging mularky seems to do wonders for one’s longevity. Did you know that there is a 271 year-old Australian gentleman by the name of Pete posting regularly on his blog ‘I’ll Drink to That?’ And a 342-year-old lady from the States who seems to attribute her great age to a succession of younger husbands? In fact blogging even seems to promise proof against the grim reaper if the site of Cardinal Wolsey is anything to go by, although you'd think by now that he'd have better things to do than 'Pleasing the King and Outwitting France.' On the other hand, there are clearly some of us in blogging-land of taste, culture and discernment. What a pity the Most Honourable Irving Reginald Eustace Talbot Mountbatten, who lists his interests as ‘Gentleman’s Advice’ and ‘Governing Natives’ seems not to have posted since 2006 (although as his age is given as 105 there is probably an innocent explanation). And there seems to a rather sweet 26 year old Gemini from California called Kate who lists among her favourite music Osbert Parsley. I think I might send her a message.

Now what?

Half-term, a long lie-in, the Sunday papers (well Sunday paper - I could only afford to buy one so I went for the biggest, heaviest of the lot only to find it stuffed full of fashion tips and gardening advice. Given that I live in a basement flat without so much as a yard to house my dustbin the latter sections were completely useless; the fashion sections weren't much better either, although I managed to find a small piece on the latest trend in cottas). The trouble is, once you've done all that, you're stuck. There are no lessons on a Sunday and I've given myself the week off anyway, largely because none of my dwindling list of pupils is around for the next seven days. In fact, nobody's around. The choral scholars have retreated to their mothers for the week complete with bin-bags filled with dirty washing; my fellow choral vicars are mostly spending time with their respective families; the informator choristorum has just started his sabbatical (thank God) and the Chapter to a man is on retreat with the exception of the elderly sub-Dean who is literally left minding the shop whilst a succession of dismal visiting choirs attempts, unsuccessfully, to live up to our great building's acoustic. What does one do in such a situation? Watch the telly, I suppose. Except, of course, there's nothing whatsoever on. Listen to the wireless? The third programme, perhaps? Maybe for a while until the tone is lowered at six-thirty by that obsequious snivelling adenoidal Welshman Alan Jones. Dear Lord above, it's desperate, and it's only Sunday. It's enough to make one wish the choir were singing. Almost.

Responses, anyone?

So far this tiresome blogging thing has yielded a grand total of one invitation to sing the Nelson Mass and a solitary, tone-deaf singing pupil. Time to take matters in my own hands, so-to-speak. Either that or else be sucking up to Anthony eternally to stand me for a half of mild and buying up the out-of-date stuff in the local supermarket. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. And so the other day I thought I'd try my new responses on the DoM.
'Had a chance to look at them?' I asked, as casually as I could manage and without a trace of any of my usual hostility towards the over-talented imposter. And, blow me if the blighter didn't say that as a matter of fact he had! Having girded myself to fight the good fight on behalf of my compositional inspirations, I was somewhat nonplussed by his response to my responses. 'Yes' he went on. 'And the Precentor thinks they could be very useful.' Well, I thought - at last some recognition of my talent. 'He thinks they'd be extremely good as sight-singing exercises for our choral scholar applicants, although I had to tell him that - as completely unsingable nonsense - forcing them on anyone of talent would be rather unfair. We don't want to frighten off the youngsters, do we? The Precentor is completely unmusical, you know. Knows nothing at all about these things.'
I resisted the temptation to add that he was not the only one in the cathedral suffering from such epistemological deficiency and snatched back the autograph copy of my masterpiece. So if anyone out there is looking for a set of new and challenging responses - only slightly torn - please let me know. Far from being 'unsingable' they represent to my mind a genuis of musical synthesis, drawing inspiration from the great mediaeval plainsong tradition, the flowering of early polyphony, and the choral works of Giles Swayne. As such, it must surely be unique among the canon of Anglican church Preces and Responses. Imagine the opening of Swayne's Magnificat, combined with the Kyrie from Missa Papae Marcelli and - quite frankly - you're still nowhere near the mark. Hmm - on second thoughts, perhaps the pompous ass of a Precentor has a point. Sight-reading stinkers, anyone?

I See...

Or rather, I don't but he did. Who? Isaiah of course, in the year that King Uzziah died. Being Trinity Sunday yesterday, we had the big guns out so to speak - Sir John Stainer and his magnificent musical rendition of the day's Old Testament Lesson. 'I Saw the Lord' pom - pom -pom 'sitting up-on a throne' pom - pom - pom. Ah, they don't write them like that anymore! What a masterpiece of genius, second in importance only to the great man's beloved Crucifixion. And, of course, the piece ends with the plaintive hymn 'O Trinity, O unity'. For once, the combined efforts of Precentor and the Organista Magistratum succeeded in providing a most worthy and appropriate musical offering as part of the service. And what an offering! Nobody - especially that Austrian automaton Mozart - could have done it better. It was just a pity that the rest of the music at evensong was so unworthy by comparison. Watson in E, I ask you. Well I did, actually. I asked, nay, I demanded that the DoM explain. He waved me away with some drivel about the choir needing to conserve their energies for the anthem, but I caught sight of the oleaginous Precentor looking rather shifty at the pertinence of my enquiry. And we all know that the real reason was to make sure that the clergy were home in front of their tellys in time for Alan Ditchmarsh's programme from the Chelsea Bloody Flower Show. Couldn't do without their Sunday sermons though, could we? Couldn't spare us twenty-minutes incoherent quasi-academic ramblings? Oh no. No. If only we'd done something long, like the Howell's Westminster Service, and maybe sung an introit too. We might have limited the sub-Dean to about five minutes.

Oh God...

'Since it is so good a thing, I wish all men would learn to sing.'
So said William Byrd. But being a Gentleman of the Chapel Royal and living in the sixteenth century he clearly hadn’t had the dubious pleasure of trying to instruct Kayleigh. For those of you new to this blog, allow me to explain. Kayleigh is so far the only person to present herself as a result of this shameless self-publicity for singing lessons. And I rather wish she hadn't.
'Just sing the note that I play on the piano, Kayleigh' I began by asking, adding that it might help if she removed her chewing gum as well. I played her middle 'c', then we tried 'g' and 'a' and then went down the octave - nothing, not a sound, which you'll understand was not a very promising beginning. 'I can’t sing those notes you’re playing' Kayleigh muttered, sullenly. 'They're just, like, not the notes I sing?'
'So what notes do you sing then, Kayleigh?' I asked.
'Ones like this' she told me, demonstrating what might pass to somebody completely tone-deaf as a reasonable approximation of a person actively engaged in the noble art of singing – someone, that is, in extremis due to acute asphyxiation and a lifetime's smoking.
'Kayleigh - are you sure you want to come to me for singing lessons?' I demanded.
'Oh yeah' she replied, 'cos I’m, like, gonna be a singer.'
Dear Lord Above - the creature wants to be a singer! My repeated 'why-oh-whys' had been intended for the ears of the Almighty, but they seem inadvertently to have been made audible to Kayleigh.
'Cos you're cheap' she told me as a bubble of gum popped in my face. Cheap! Cheap, I ask you! I immediately informed her that my fees were set in strict accordance with the current I.S.M recommendations, but she seemed to think that I was talking about driving lessons.
‘Not BSM young lady – ISM – the Incorporated Society of Musicians. My, er – my union, I suppose.'
'Oh, cool' she said. 'So you’re, like, in a union.'
'No, I'm not - 'like' - in a union, I am in a union.'
'But aren't you - sort of – self-employed?' she asked. 'So what d’you do, like – have negotiations with yourself?'
'Aha. Very funny. Well, you see now Kylie – '
'Kayleigh.'
'Kayleigh. Sorry. Well you see now Kayleigh, really – in a way – it is my pupils who are my employers. If I agree to take you on, then for half an hour each week you will be my pay-master.'
'Cool' she said.
'Quite so, and now I’m afraid my other pay masters will be getting rather annoyed if I keep them waiting any longer.'
'You got other pupils then?'
'No – I mean yes, of course I have. But not right now, no. Now I’m singing evensong.'
'Eh?'
'Evensong – you know - one of the great offices of the Church of England, sung daily in the Cathedrals up and down the country.' But the creature clearly hadn't the first idea what I was talking about. I did think of suggesting she attend the service with me, but good sense prevailed. Dear God, can you imagine what the Precentor might have made of her?