Holy Trinity Church Theale
November 2011
In Quires and places where they sing...
What an exciting time! As I write it’s nearly a week since Ann and Peter’s licensing service and I still haven’t “come down” from the wonderful experience of conducting 32 singers in Hubert Parry’s famous anthem “I Was Glad”, most famous these days for having been chosen by Kate Middleton to walk down the aisle on her way to becoming the Duchess of Cambridge in April. About half of the singers were members of our Choir; the rest were family and friends, to whom we are very grateful for lending us their wonderful voices. A lot of organisation went into providing the music for the licensing service and the following day’s special communion service, so I’d like to thank all of the Choir and particularly Fay, Frances, James, Peter and Meg for their expert and willing assistance.
Peter French deserves a special mention (again!) because he has spent a great deal of time this last month in trying to improve the performance of our sound system. This has not been performing as well as it once did, and he has spent many evenings ensuring that it was working properly for the two big services on 8th and 9th October. He is still working on it, trying to improve its quality, and we (especially those of us who wear hearing aids) are very grateful both for his time – which he gives freely and willingly even though he is a very busy man - and also for his considerable expertise.
Now for the music we have sung recently: shortly after I wrote my last article, on 11th September, we sang the traditional African American song “Go Down, Moses”, with a glorious bass solo by Lyndsay; on 24th September we returned to more familiar territory with Mozart’s “Ave Verum”. Then we focused on practising “I was glad” for the licensing service, and John Rutter’s “A Clare Benediction” which we sang for Ann and Peter at their first service. On that day we had 22 choristers (including 2 visitors from Peterlee, and 3 former Theale choristers). Our numbers are slowly growing – just one or two more in each voice part would be ideal.
Fay and I will be relinquishing our hymn-choosing roles to Ann now that the interregnum is over; we have enjoyed the challenge of trying to match the hymns to the readings and themes of the services, and hope you have been happy with our choices. We may see some changes now, as of course Ann and Peter are used to quite different hymns and will want to introduce their favourites to us. However I know Ann also wants to include our best loved hymns in her choices, so please do send her a note and tell her which ones you specially like – we may be able to introduce her to some she doesn’t know!
Meanwhile, even though we have several other major musical events to think about over the next 3 months – Harvest, All Souls, Remembrance, Advent Sunday and Gaudete for instance – we have already started preparing for Christmas, so don’t be surprised if you pass Holy Trinity Church between 7 and 8 pm on a Thursday evening and hear us
practising carols! Come in and listen, everyone is welcome. Or better still, come and join us; there are no auditions and just before Christmas is the best possible time to join a Church choir, with all the loveliest music of the year to come.
