Reading FC’s visit to Carlisle United in 2024 was the first one for over 40 years. My return to Carlisle, with the Reading-based Erleigh Cantors, wasn’t after quite such a long interval but it wasn’t within the lifetime of this blog. (Continuing the sporting theme, one thing that happened during my previous visit was Sri Lanka’s setting of a new record for the highest ever score in an innings. I still recall a choir member rushing into breakfast – we were all staying at a nearby school – clutching a newspaper with a report of the the match ‘Just look at this!’)
Practice your psalm chants in a couple of non-standard languages
A choir member had moved to Cumbria some years ago (without leaving the choir) so a trip to their home Cathedral was always on the cards with some planning. (But you mark my words, it will be Kirkwall next!) Because of the investment in travel, we sang on three days rather than the usual two, with straightforward repertoire for the first service soon after our arrival.
This first service included the ?pseudo-Fayrfax canticles, paired with a piece new to me, Sweelinck’s Laudate Dominum. I hadn’t realised that Sweelinck didn’t actually compose very many Latin motets.
Saturday brought a piece that I’ve somehow missed altogether, to the extent that I’d never even heard of its composer: Malcolm Boyle’s Thou, O God, art praised in Zion, one of those retro pieces in the Parry mode, but written some time later and unpublished for many years so only select foundations sang it. It has a long passage for unison sopranos/trebles in the middle, so special concentration needed. This service was a big sing, as we also sang Wood in D and Walton’s Set me as a seal.
On Sunday morning we performed a fairly recent Missa Brevis by John Rutter, which as usual seemed straightforward but had some twists to watch out for, and Leighton’s Drop, drop slow tears. Carlisle were generous about introits, so in the afternoon we were able to do My beloved spake by Hadley, together with Francis Jackson’s Canticles in G and Stanford’s setting of Psalm 23.
At the instigation of another choir member I got a stamp for a Pilgrim Passport. I didn’t actually get a Pilgrim Passport itself, as the shop was out of stock, but I collected the stamp on a piece of paper to attach to the Passport later. The Passport was one of the more successful and enduring aspects of the Church of England’s ill-fated ‘Year of Cathedrals’ (ill-fated because the year chosen was 2020). The stamp showed what (in the absence of a nave) is the symbol of the Cathedral: the starred ceiling of the quire, a Victorian embellishment which hasn’t dated and of which they are rightly proud.
