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anefWe went to a concert on Friday night, in the chapel of St John's College. It was the Sixteen making their annual Choral Pilgrimage (sacred music sung in churches, chapels and cathedrals).
I had booked late so we didn't have seats in the chapel itself, but behind it in the antechapel. As advertised, we could see very little of the singers, and what we could see was far away, but it didn't matter. In a way, it was almost better not to be able to see, you had to focus on the music. There were no instruments and no amplification. As designed, the sound was picked up and resonated through the cavernous, stone-bound nave. Here, have a picture https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/chapel-choir. ; Mildly embarrassed to note that the chapel is Gothic revival, by George Gilbert Scott, rather than original 16th Century, but it fits in so well with the older College buildings that it didn't occur to me to think about it.
Anyway, the concert was wonderful. The programme was designed around the music of William Byrd, on the 400th anniversary of his death. He was a Catholic in Queen Elizabeth I's court, composing in the tradition of Renaissance polyphony, and the programme included music by his contemporaries and two modern pieces by Dobrinka Tabakova commissioned for the choir. I bought the CD, which is all the songs in the same order, and am listening to it now.
Edited to add: Sorry, the link doesn't work and I can't fix it, but if you try to use it it will take you to an error message on the college website, and then go to ABOUT, and scroll down to "Chapel and Choirs" it will take you there.
I had booked late so we didn't have seats in the chapel itself, but behind it in the antechapel. As advertised, we could see very little of the singers, and what we could see was far away, but it didn't matter. In a way, it was almost better not to be able to see, you had to focus on the music. There were no instruments and no amplification. As designed, the sound was picked up and resonated through the cavernous, stone-bound nave. Here, have a picture https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/chapel-choir. ; Mildly embarrassed to note that the chapel is Gothic revival, by George Gilbert Scott, rather than original 16th Century, but it fits in so well with the older College buildings that it didn't occur to me to think about it.
Anyway, the concert was wonderful. The programme was designed around the music of William Byrd, on the 400th anniversary of his death. He was a Catholic in Queen Elizabeth I's court, composing in the tradition of Renaissance polyphony, and the programme included music by his contemporaries and two modern pieces by Dobrinka Tabakova commissioned for the choir. I bought the CD, which is all the songs in the same order, and am listening to it now.
Edited to add: Sorry, the link doesn't work and I can't fix it, but if you try to use it it will take you to an error message on the college website, and then go to ABOUT, and scroll down to "Chapel and Choirs" it will take you there.
no subject
Date: 2023-03-26 11:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-26 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-03-26 03:01 pm (UTC)(You seem to have a full stop and a spacew trapped between the link itself and the quotation mark which follows - this may be why it isn't working.)