Mass from Leeds

[old barmaid]

MASS FROM LEEDS.
Did anyone else listen to the Mass broadcast yesterday from Holy Rosary, Leeds?
It was on BBC. Radio 4 at 8-10 a.m. The Mass ordinary was completely unknown to me.
The Parish primary school sang. Beautiful singing -- so it should be, given the resources
being put into Holy Rosary school by the Diocesan Music Deoartment. However, would
the average Catholic School, with its usually woeful singing at any school Mass one attends,
be able to use yesterday's excellent performance as any kind of example to emulate?
I thought the choice of Hymns was odd. Surely 'Sweet Saviour bless us ere we go '
is an evening hymn?

[dmu3tem]

I listened to the later part of the service quite by chance, so my impressions are not all that complete or precise. That being said, these are the points that sturck me:

[1] As one would expect the singing was the strongest element musically. I thought they did the Duruffle (spelling?) Ubi Caritas very nicely.

[2] It was really good to hear a determined effort being made to use instruments other than (or in addition to) the Organ. I particularly liked the performance of the Faure Pavane instead of an Organ voluntary at the end. Instruments should be used more frequently in this sort of slot, as it gives talent in this area a real chance to shine.

[3] The Sanctus setting was ambitious, especially the instrumental writing - ambition is a good thing. In church music we should not fight shy of 'pushing at musical frontiers' .That was what church musicians did in the Middle Ages; had they not done so it is difficult to see how musical composition could have developed in all its marvellous variety.

[4] Yes, there were some problems with the performance at one or two points, e.g. intonation in the string playing; but actually I would prefer to hear a 'live' performance of this sort 'warts and all' rather than listen to a 'professionally finished' rendition.

[5] In places I thought the instrumentation was really good (e.g. in 'Be Thou My Vision'); elsewhere I thought more could have been done with the available resources. That being said, they may have been limited by time and rehearsal constraints, not to mention the calibre of the players they had at their disposal. I thought it stange though that they opted for a String Quartet plus Flute combination. Getting an amateur string quartet to 'gel' is quite difficult, and often produces intonation problems. Of course in your 'normal' parish environment one has to use what players one has; and I would be delighted to have this combination at my disposal up here in Lancashire. However I find it hard to believe that a choir school cannot field more Brass or Wind players of Grade V and above. Had they opted for a more mixed combination of say Flute, Clarinet, Trumpet, Violin, Cello and Keyboard (Organ) they might have had fewer performance problems. This may sound like a more difficult combination to write for, but actually it is easier, as I know from personal experience. To pull this off though you have to switch from making transcriptions off a keyboard original to doing a recomposition i.e. break free from the tyranny of four part harmony.

[Boadicea]

I thought it was odd when they said "as the bread and wine are brought to the altar, the choir sings ‘Lord of all hopefulness’". Why only the choir? Or perhaps there wasn't a congregation?

[IncenseTom]

I enjoyed the broadcast on Sunday, although I didn't think it was quite as good as others from Leeds, which is a shame as there are so few Catholic episodes of Sunday worship.

Sorry to be off topic but as i'm in the Leeds Diocese I thought I wouldn't bother starting a new topic.

Just letting you all know that the parish where I play the organ, St. Anne's Keighley, will be featuring on Songs of Praise this week (24th June).

Sadly, the church won't be packed to the rafters of people the bbc has bused in to sing loudly, but it will form part of the interview segments of the show.
The theme is Pugin, and St. Anne's was designed by Pugin. It's a big, impresive church with lovely reredos and mosaics behind the High Altar. No-one in the choir knew of anyone from the parish who had been interviewed, so perhaps it will be an architect visiting the church.

The parish website is http://www.stanneskeighley.org.uk/

Tom

[gwyn]

It's a big, impressive church with lovely reredos and mosaics behind the High Altar.

It's reassuring to learn of churches that didn't have their beautiful sanctuaries and high altars destroyed by lunatics during the 60s and 70s. Sadly so many were irreparably damaged.

[oopsorganist]

The instrumentalists were from the College of Music in Leeds ( I thought I heard them say). I was a bit sleepy at the time. I awoke to Lord of all Hopefulness and admired the clear words when suddenly I heard, I am sure I did "...peace in our 'arts Lord" and I thought to myself that it sounded like Leeds children singing.

We should all go out to dance tunes. Yay.

[IncenseTom]

http://dioceseofleedsmusic.org.uk/news/ ... newsid=151

The organist was someone I was at University with!

[oopsorganist]

Ah, you win, Incense Tom.

I was at university with people from the "Mekons" and the "Gang of Four".

[oopsorganist]

Sweet Saviour bless us etc was written by F Faber who also wrote my favourite hymn - well it was when I was nine but that is a long time ago - Hark hark my soul. Ah brings back memories.
The Leeds broadcast receives an accolade online from a website about bones and I paraphrase - " The good thing about good liturgy is that you can hear it on the radio"
"Sweet saviour" is on the music list at the moment for Leeds as is "Lead us heavenly father lead us". Last year or so it was Immortal Invisible.

[Terry Quinn]

By coincidence these were among my most favourite hymns during school days.
'Sweet Saviour Bless us' is such a beautiful hymn and In the days of Evening Benediction it was sung regularly. I have to confess that once a year we include it in our Mass, just because "a little bit of what you fancy.....".
'Hark hark my soul' I remember that we used two tunes from the Westminster Hymnal. I loved the singing of this hymn, both tunes made it irresistable.

[Chris]

Another Catholic Sunday Worship, this time Morning Prayer from Liverpool:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnds

[Nick Baty]

Do I hear some Duffy and/or Bevenot in there?
Lovely to hear a muffled sneeze during the first psalm!

[Chris]

And some Gelineau

[Nick Baty]

Well it was all totally scrummy!