{"id":976,"date":"2012-10-11T13:20:45","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T13:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/cantusfirmus\/?p=976"},"modified":"2012-10-11T17:04:41","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T17:04:41","slug":"a-ceremony-of-cecilians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/cantusfirmus\/2012\/10\/11\/a-ceremony-of-cecilians\/","title":{"rendered":"A Ceremony of Cecilians"},"content":{"rendered":"

The newly-formed University Cecilian Choir met for the first time earlier today, and discovered plenty of opportunity for confusion during the warm-up – we discovered we have two Sophies, two Hannahs, and one Montana. You can see how this year is going to shape up…<\/p>\n

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Nearly all the Cecilian Choir!<\/p><\/div>\n

This year, we’re working on developing Britten’s evergreen A Ceremony of Carols<\/em>, for a performance next term, which falls during the centenary celebrations of Britten’s birth. Having a harpist Scholar (Emma) at the University, it seemed churlish not to do the Britten, really…<\/p>\n

Rehearsing started with a look at ‘There is no rose,’ which builds from relatively simple triads in F major to a spectacular burst of A major at ‘Gloria in excelsis Deo,’ at which point the newly-formed Choir really let rip and sounded like they’d been together for six months already. A good sign! And with approximately another third of the Choir coming next week as well, the sound could be enormous…<\/p>\n

In contrast, ‘This little Babe’ is a fiercely intense charge through E minor with plenty of opportunities to fall foul of some linguistic trickery – at one point, the altos ended up singing about ‘haystacks’ rather than ‘haystalks’ and the sopranos singing enthusiastically about ‘shepherd’s pie,’ which isn’t quite what the imagery entails…<\/p>\n