What is the Provost of the Cathedral Church of St Mary the Virgin listening to?
Oh, thank you for asking – it has been a while since you enquired.
- Communards – Don’t Leave Me This Way
- Zelenka – Lamentations of Jeremiah
- Scissor Sisters – I don’t feel like dancin’
- Ella Fitzgerald (with Paul Smith at the Piano) – The Intimate Ella
What I am not listening to is my mp3 player which is missing, presumed lost. I’m particularly annoyed about not being able to find it as I was wanting to record some of the choir singing the new setting that we are going to use in Lent for mp3 distribution around the congregation. The mp3 player that I had would record to mp3 and ogg very easily.
I suppose I could send the congregation something by the Scissor Sisters instead. Might make Lent more interesting.
Which reminds me, by the way, of the Freddy Mercury Ash Wednesday service that I constructed once upon a time. It was a work of genius, but won’t be repeated. Next week it is Byrd’s Four Part Mass instead.
Did you mean The Byrds for next week?Perhaps an Ash Wednesday Tribute Band.
I’m not listening (no,I know you did not ask) to Choral Evensong on Radio3 – every week since 1926, but now banished to Sundays, and replaced by a surfeit of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky. What liturgy could be really transformed with the 1812 Overture as the setting ?- we’d need a big Cathedral in the West End of Glasgow for that.
I’m relatively untroubled by Choral Evensong moving to a Sunday. It seems a more logical time for people to find it and I think that the audience will probably go up.
Ah, now you see, if you’re like me and ‘listen again’ through a computer – you can choose a time for Choral Evensong. Also, Kelvin, I did think your music choice was a little like a selection I might play if my heart was breaking (in a sort of adolescent ‘make-it-worse-by listening-to-soulful-music way). I hope your heart isn’t breaking for any reason……. And, as to Ash wednesday, I have to give my apologies – I went and agreed to do the talk for MCC on 21st February before realising what I’d done…Tubisch.
I don’t feel like dancing
When the old Joanna plays
My heart could take a chance
But my two feet can’t find a way
You’d think that I could muster up
a little soft shoe, gentle sway
But I don’t feel like dancin’
No sir, no dancin’ today.
Oh dear. It seems Vicky’s got you pegged. Do you ever dust off the old Simon & Garfunkle record? It might come in handy this week.
Please, please repeat your Freddie Mercury service and persuade Frikki to use it in years to come. You may have to partner it with the Star Trek Mass.
Meanwhile, I am looking forward to the Byrd Four Part Mass next week.
Ah. Making it worse by listening to sad music has got to be one of the best traditions of heart-brokenness – right up there with looking at old photos and reading old letters (although perhaps that custom has faded away with the decline in lettering writing – do you think folks save text messages with which to provoke future pain?). Almost as good as pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts. But not quite. Nothing beats bruise-pressing.
And mp3’s for devotions on the move, would be gratefully received!
Thank goodness a glimmer of taste has appeared in the form of Master Byrd. Or is the choice of music not up to the Provost?