sinden.org/blog

I'm just going to put this out there: the Bidding Prayer in the Book of Occasional Services leaves a lot to be desired.

The one read at St. John's College, Cambridge, however, is spot on. You can listen to the service this week from the BBC.

Labels: Advent, Book of Occasional Services, prayer, St John's (Cambridge)

Howells is perhaps the quintessential Anglican Church music composer, having composed some twenty-odd settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.

Interestingly, he wrote only one set of Preces and Responses. And I've never heard them sung.

Howells Preces and Responses were written in 1967, the same year he wrote Evening Services for Winchester, Chichester and St. Augustine, Birmingham.

They are included on the evensong webcast from St. John's College, Cambridge this week.

From the St. John's Choir, Decani Bass III writes:

Although we vary the canticles and anthem every day, there are, I suppose, about 6 or 7 settings of the Preces and Responses that get used in rotation. It is therefore always pretty refreshing to sing a new setting, and I had long wanted to sing this setting by Herbert Howells. We sing so much of his music and it had always seemed an omission that we had not tackled them before. Howells integrates the cantoring with the choral parts and they seem more organic and cohesive than many of the more conventional sets.

Check it out, especially that concluding Amen.

Labels: church music, Howells, St John's (Cambridge)

If you're just joining us, we're twittering a rehearsal of St. John's College, Cambridge at Christ Church, New Haven, Connecticut. They'll be rehearsing until 6:00 p.m.

Edit: This space held the most recent tweets as we posted them. Here is the stream in its entirety:

# Settling in for the concert. The Choir of St John's, Cambridge singing at Christ Church, New Haven.
7:55 PM Mar 23rd

# Now the encore. I'll keep this one a secret from you.
6:00 PM Mar 23rd

# RVW Let All the World. Some boys sing without scores. Handel Zadok the Priest. Beautiful and bouncy.
5:55 PM Mar 23rd

# Howells Gloucester Magnificat. Bad sightlines coming into play.
5:40 PM Mar 23rd

# Amazing, orchestral Howells singing.
5:25 PM Mar 23rd

# Byrd Mass for four voices.
5:12 PM Mar 23rd

# A Humfrey Verse Anthem. Great solos.
5:07 PM Mar 23rd

# MacMillan: A New Song. Stunning.
4:55 PM Mar 23rd

# Boys warmed up in the choir room. Now back in church.
4:48 PM Mar 23rd

# The choir is here.
4:28 PM Mar 23rd

# The whole floor of Christ Church, New Haven shakes from time to time. This seems odd.
4:24 PM Mar 23rd

# Chatted briefly with Mr. Nethsingha. Bad organ sightlines. Choir yet to arrive.
4:17 PM Mar 23rd

# The organist has moved on to Howells Gloucester Service.
4:00 PM Mar 23rd

# At Christ Church, New Haven. Reeks deliciously: incense and Vierne.
3:56 PM Mar 23rd

this is just the latest tweet from twitter.com / sinden

Labels: church music, St John's (Cambridge)

Today is a travel day.

We're headed to New Haven, Connecticut to take in an afternoon rehearsal of the Choir of St. John's College, Cambridge, England. They'll also be performing a concert in New Haven at 8:00 p.m. tonight.

Join us at 4:00 p.m. for some intensive Twittering of that rehearsal. You can follow the Twitter stream here by periodically refreshing sinden.org/blog, or you can follow us at twitter / sinden.

We are excited about hearing St. John's in person because they are one of the greatest choirs in the world. But we've also been excited to follow them online this academic year. The choir's website offers new service to listen to every week. These weekly webcasts (presented in a very useful interface, by the way) are accompanied by reflections by members of the choir on the music and the experience of singing it.

The whole thing is brilliant and a model how to make the heritage of Anglican choral music freely available.

More choirs should do this.

Labels: church music, St John's (Cambridge), transportation, web

The Choir of St. John's College Cambridge is webcasting one evensong each week from their new, freestanding website. The inaugural webcast debuts today.

Their audio player makes it ridiculously easy to skip the sermon.

One can hope that King's and other English collegiate chapels are not far behind in this endeavor.

Now, a non-musical web tangent:

The arrangements of the webcast do make one wonder a little bit about the politics behind the St. John's enterprise. The choir has recently launched this new website which is separate from the college's domain. It is also a bit heavy in the self-promotion department, but that's another story.

Perhaps one of the primary reasons for the creation of this site is the choir's desire webcast evensong services. This initiative does seem to have the blessing of the college (see this press release) but I think it loses some of its prestige by not being hosted by the college.

Now, maybe there's some technical or theological reason that ac.uk addresses cannot stream audio, but I'm not privy to that kind of "Bob's your uncle" or "Heath Robinson" or whatever you want to call it.

And this separation of a music program from its umbrella institution is not an isolated incident. I run across this from time to time in parish churches and cathedrals on this side of the Atlantic. It seems to me that in the interest of the web presence of both parties this kind of separation should be discouraged and regarded as insubordination on the part of the musicians. Of course this is only valid if the umbrella institution has a responsive site and adequate technical support.

Labels: Evensong, St John's (Cambridge), web