A Life On-Line

On Sunday we bid farewell to Canon Vincent Berry as incumbent of St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Cadogan Street, Chelsea. At Latin Mass we sang my motet Exaudi. The motet was written in 2002 and I don't think we've done it since. It was strange to re-visit something which was no longer current in my brain; you look at things and think how they could have been done differently (I appear to have had a down on altos when writing it!).

Ursi Carmina, the new piece written for London Concord Singers 40th Anniversary is now bedding down quite well in rehearsal. The programme has been finalised and will include Harris's Faire is the Heaven, Naylor's Vox dicentes: Clama besides the 2 pieces with orchestra - Handel's Birthday Ode for Queen Anne and Mozart's Sancta Maria Mater Dei.

We are singing the Handel in a German edition and it includes a German version of the words. They are hardly a translation as Queen Anne is not mentionned at all and her name repeatedly crops up in the English text.