King’s College Choir’s latest album: A Year at King’s
The venerable Choir of King’s College, Cambridge, has recently put out a new album of a capella works that give a tour through the liturgical year that is the life blood of the King’s College Chapel. They may be known internationally for their tours and dozens of recordings, but week in and week out in the chapel they sing evensong most days of the school term, as well as services on Sunday mornings. The amount of repertoire that they cover in a year is phenomenal. (Think of it: choral responses, a sung Psalm, a choral setting of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, and an anthem for each evensong service.)
Stephen Cleobury, the college’s director of music since the early 1980s, has put together an interesting program of old and new: two of Arvo Pärt’s “Magnificat” antiphons; a new setting of the familiar Christmas Carol “Away In A Manger
The sound of the choir is not as perfect in blend as I have heard them in the past; however, this album in enjoyable and it is a nice souvenir of the music that one would hear in the mighty gothic chapel in Cambridge.
In memoriam Peter Avery, OBE
I’m passing along a link to an obituary in the Times of London for Peter Avery, OBE, who was one of George and my acquaintances in Cambridge at King’s College. He was a very noted scholar on Iranian/Persian literature and culture. He was a cantankerous and a larger-than-life character, and you can get a sense of it from his obit. But he was also inspiring to generations of students. One of my lasting life memories was of a very hot summer evening in 2003 in his rooms in the Gibb Building at King’s College, Cambridge, right next door to the entrance to the King’s College Chapel. Peter chain-smoked through the evening (thank God the window was open!), and George and I and our friend Dan Gross had been instructed to meet him at an appointed hour and to take several bottles of wine with us. Over the course of the next 4 hours Peter Avery regaled us with stories, quizzed us on our knowledge of many topics from ancient mythology to current events, showed us the video of his investiture when he received the OBE from QE II. It was one of the most intimidating and intellectually stimulating evenings I have ever spent–all the while drinking our way through the 3 bottles we had brought, plus two more that he already had on hand. (All this on no dinner.) We were his pupils for the evening, and it is easy to see how he became a mentor for his many students and Iranian visitors. His rooms were the stereotype of the English academic, with bookcases full of Arabic and Persian books from floor to ceiling. At several points in the evening he would say to one or another of us, “Get that book down from the shelf over there” and he would read something to us.
I cannot say in any way that I knew him well, but sometimes people make an indelible impression, and Peter Avery was one of those.
Heres the link:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article4950966.ece
Lifting a glass to the memory of Peter Avery…
Christmas Eve at King's College – Miracles do happen…
The alarm went off at 7:15 AM so that we could make preparations to get into the queue at King’s College for the Festival of Lessons and Carols. Enrobed in our silk long underwear, corduroy trousers and heavy sweaters, scarves, coats and hats, we were in line by 9:00 AM. The King’s web site informed us that those in line before 10:30 were likely to get in. They start letting people in at 1:30 PM for a 3:00 PM service. The crowd was jovial. We had people from Somerset in front of us and a couple from Ottawa behind us, who just came in from London for the day to attend the service. The porters at King’s kept “scrunching” the line to get more people into the courtyard. Our friend Tessa Gardner came along to say hello to us while she was out on her errands.
About 11:00 Jim Trevithick came along, shopping bags in hand, and found us in the queue. While out on his marketing errands he ran into Martin Rees (that is, Lord Rees, the Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge) who told Jim that he and his wife were not using their reserved tickets for the carol service. Jim told us that he was going to go find the King’s Chapel Administrator and see if he could arrange things for us to use the vacant seats. “Don’t get too excited,” he said, “because I don’t know if I will succeed.” And off he went.
About twenty minutes later he came back with a white card bearing the King’s College letterhead, with a handwritten note from the Chapel Administrator, “Please admit two guests of Jim Trevithick to the choir stalls.” WOW! A miracle! It could not have been a better outcome–not only would we be in the chapel for the service, but right up with the action.
At that point, there was no reason to stand in line anymore, so we went to Jim’s rooms for coffee. He then had to start cooking the food for his Christmas lunch, so we went shopping. Back to the flat briefly, then at 2:30 met Jim and we were escorted into the chapel, into the choir stalls (past the hundreds of people who had waited outside all day). We were seated on the Decani side of the choir, in the row behind the basses and altos. I had a perfect view of Stephen Cleobury, the Director of Music, as he conducted the choir. (Very interesting to watch: minimal gestures, and unlike many choral conductors, he never “mouths” the words.) In point of fact–and not in any way to seem ungrateful for such an extraordinary opportunity–where we were sitting was not absolutely the best place to hear the blend of the choir. But who cares, here was little Tim Robson from Scranton, Iowa, in the famous King’s College, Cambridge, Chapel for the even more famous Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. How could I be indifferent? It was truly an amazing experience.
After the service, I realized that a gentleman who had been wheeled in in a wheelchair shortly before the service was Stephen Hawking, the great physicist and cosmologist. The commissioned new Carol for the service (a setting of “Away in a Manger”) was by Sir John Tavener. (Not one of his greatest efforts, in my opinion.) He was seated on the other side of the choir. Sir David Willcocks was seated in the upper level on the other side next to Jim Trevithick. As we were filing out after the closing organ voluntary, a gentleman let us go before him. George and I were walking away, and then I realized that the man was Francis Pott, the composer of the commissioned closing organ voluntary, an “Improvisation on ‘Adeste fideles’”. So I turned around and said, “Excuse me, are you Mr. Pott?” He said, “Yes, I am, do I look particularly guilty this afternoon?” We had a brief chat, in which I said how much I admire his music, but how hard it is to come by in the U.S. and that it is not performed as much as it should be. The new organ word is brilliant, very difficult, but made a strong impression.
We were invited back to Jim’s rooms for champagne, joined by Jim’s guest, a lovely gentleman named Peter. We were later joined by the King’s chaplain, Richard Lloyd-Morgan. About 7:15 they all went to dinner in the King’s dining hall, and George and I came home, happy with our great good fortune of the day. I fixed Indian dal soup for Christmas Eve supper along with some excellent venison sausages from Waller’s.
The rest of the evening was spent quietly at home.
A grand shopping day in Cambridge
Friday, December 23, 2005 — Cambridge. The day was spent doing the various shopping tasks before everything closes down for Christmas: a trip to the farmers market for veg, then to Marks & Spencer for the Christmas pudding (and underwear and socks, on sale). In the afternoon there was a trip to Waller’s Master Butcher shop to pick up the pheasant for Christmas dinner, plus pork pies and some paté.
Later we went for drinks at the Gibbs Building in King’s College with Derek’s friend Jim Trevithick, a fellow in Economics at King’s. Very pleasant and entertaining. He had other plans, so he let us go about 5:00. Another quick stop at Sainsbury’s before we came home for the evening. Preparation for dinner of pork pies, mash, green beans.
New Carols from King's College
I’m somewhat hard-pressed to think of another choir with as many recordings or as wide repertoire–especially in these hard times for the classical recording industry–as the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge. The choir continues its tradition of being among the most-recorded choirs in the world with their latest recording on EMI, On Christmas Day, a compilation of Christmas “carols” (most of us would think of the vast majority of these pieces as “anthems”, because they are largely extended choral works, as opposed to the generally strophic and simple “carols”) commissioned by King’s Choir’s director Stephen Cleobury since he arrived at the Cambridge in 1982. The King’s Choir is noted for their annual “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols” broadcast on BBC and worldwide–NPR in the U.S. Each year Mr. Cleobury commissions a new carol from a prominent composer. The composers represented on this two-disc set are the cream of the crop of contemporary music: Peter Maxwell Davies, James MacMillan, Lennox Berkeley, Harrison Birtwistle, Arvo Pärt, Thomsas Adès, Stephen Paulus, Robin Holloway, John Rutter, Jonathan Dove, etc. I am especially fond of Bob Chilcott’s “Shepherd’s Carol” and Stephen Paulus’s “Pilgrim Jesus,” but almost all of the carols can be recommended. The overriding feature of the works on these discs is the incredible virtuosity of the King’s College Choir–their sense of pitch, rhythm and style are unsurpassed. Several of the carols are published (Chilcott and Pärt among them) and are not out of the question for moderately skilled U.S. church choirs. If you want a disc of Christmas music that is out of the ordinary, this is the one I’m recommending for this year.
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