I mean… who won the war? ;-)
I rarely think that European music works well in choral evensong and this week’s broadcast from Eton College Chapel is a case in point.
But if choirs are wont to make a ‘theme’ of this (Introit: Reger; Canticles: Praetorius and Schutz; Anthem: Brahms) — I wonder why not commit fully and do German responses (in German?!) and German chants too (instead of a jarring Sumsion, Walmisley and Edwards selection)?
Well… I don’t know, but I imagine very few sets of German responses and chants exist. Why? Well, again I’m guessing (and please disabuse me if you know otherwise), but European cathedrals don’t really ‘do’ Anglican choral evensong, leaving little or no demand for their composition. This in turn backs up my feeling that German choral music and choral evensong go together about as well as Jonathan Ross’s radio show and Saturday morning rumpy pumpy.
It just doesn’t work!
Now then. I’m a huge fan of most European choral music — Rachmaninov, Mozart and Poulenc are amongst my top five composers — but can we use European music sparingly in Radio 3 choral evensong and save it for settings that it really suits?
Categories: Music
Comments
Chris says: There was some BBC4 programme on recently about sacred choral music, and from what little I saw it seemed to imply that quite a lot of things like chants and settings were kept alive only in French cathedrals (like Notre Dame), without which it would never have made it here.
He was in some library looking at – and trying not to dribble on – an original bound copy of a chant book, decreeing it to be the ‘original ancestor’ of our splendid choral tradition, or somesuch.
Probably not much help, but I’m fairly sure that there must be a more complex historical basis to the Anglican service – it can’t have come from nowhere… But hey, I know even less than what you do, so why ask me, eh?
Judith says: You’re not gonna like the Millennium Youth Choir’s broadcast of Choral Evensong in August… David’s been painstakingly researching Dutch choral music, but in their defence, the broadcast is from Bergen op Zoom in Holland…! No responses as it’s Common Worship, so that gets around that problem.
Timbo says: Hmm… Dutch music? I will listen with interest :-)
Any Obrecht?
Judith says: Sweelinck, mostly
Leonora says: So would you also argue that a Latin mass should not be sung at a service where everything else is in English?!
Timbo says: Um… No.
God, I sound like a Daily Mail reader