Sunday Scorecard

On Friday, I wrote of my hopes for this day:

So what about that descant [Hymn 518, “Westminster Abbey”]? I view it as a possible breakthrough moment for our choir. We have sung descants, but they have not been strong enough to carry over the full congregation and organ. This Sunday, if they do it as they are capable of doing, that may change. I think they can pull it off. And if not this time, maybe the next.

I had not figured on several of our strongest singers being absent. All told, we were short by seven choristers, giving us a choir of fifteen instead of twenty-two. Of the senior girls whom I described as essential to “That Sound,” only Elise and Alice were present. It was not as strong as I had hoped it would be, but it was audible. Here is the sound clip, with the descant on stanza four. One of the descanting voices that you will hear was the Celebrant, Rev'd Raisin. She loves this hymn, and I hope it was meaningful for her to sing it alongside the choristers. You will hear the young people as well.


What about the Liturgy, Rite One with Penitential Order? At the beginning, there was much scrambling about in the BCP for the Decalogue – by congregation as well as choir – but by the seventh or eighth Commandment, they had the page open and said the responses. As I wrote the other day, there is never enough time. I would have liked to have gone over the Decalogue with them and gotten them thoroughly familiar with it and its place in this liturgy. We touched on it at the rehearsal a couple of weeks ago – the one where we had an ice storm and only a handful of them could make it to choir. It needed more teaching, but I was pleased with them for their effort in this, and especially the way that they helped each other. As the service progressed, they did fairly well with the other responses, especially “The Lord be with you/And with thy spirit.” They sat quietly through the sermon, they said the Creed, they participated. There were plenty of rough edges, but I was pleased with their progress. And at the end, they all said the Post-Communion Prayer, just as we had rehearsed.

The Psalm went better than I had expected. It was far from professional, but they got through it. Our primary emphasis had been listening to one another. We did much rehearsing without a conductor to encourage this, repeating verses until they were singing at the same speed – this took many tries, a half-dozen or more at times. In the event, the pacing was good and the words were clear. “This is like talking on a pitch,” one chorister observed at the end of this morning's warmup. It is, indeed.

The Anthem was not so good. It was here that we chiefly missed those senior girls; without them, several of the entrances were shaky. Still, we got through it, and they had the experience of singing it well in several of the rehearsals.

During the Sermon and Prayers, I sat with the treble boys. Looking down the row at the five of them, I thought about what a fine group they are, and how good it is be making music and liturgy with them. At two different times in my past, I have directed boy choirs; I never had a group of trebles as good as these young men. And the girls of this choir are just as good. I want them all, boys and girls alike, to be good singers, but much more, I want them to be good Christians, witnesses of the Resurrection in a dark world. I hope that this day was a small step in that direction.

It was a Good Day.


Here is my improvisation for the contemporary service, in a somewhat different style than what I more often do; it is based on the spiritual “Let us break bread together,” and is essentially (once it gets going, which takes a while) just a single leisurely play-through of the song, repeating the second half of it, with lots of ornamentation around the tune in homage to the way that some of the great old singers of these songs would do.