Friday music spot: the Bach Magnificat

The Bach Magnificat is a rather longer music spot than I would usually post, but I felt like putting something substantial down to relax after a very long day (see forthcoming lockdown diary entry.)

This reminds me of a story from my Royal School of Church Music days.

One person who I knew through the RSCM many years ago towards the end of my time at school or early in my time as an undergraduate, described to me how he had been running a choir of young adults - if memory servces they might well have been students at UEA, the University where I myself did my postgrad MA a few years later.

It had been arranged that this choir would sing evensong at a parish church in Norfolk, but the vicar was being a bit stuffy about how much music they could actually sing.

For the full works a choral evensong on the English church music tradition should have an anthem or a hymn as an introit to start off with, and a setting of the sung preces and responses (if you have ever listened to Choral Evensong on BBC Radio 3 or attended such a service, that's the bit which starts when a soloist called the cantor, often but not always a member of the clergy, sings "O Lord Open thou our lips" and the choir responds "And our mouth shall show forth thy praise!")

There would also be a psalm, usually the one set for that day of the month, two canticles - for evensong the canticles are the "Magnificat" and the "Nunc Dimittis" - plus an anthem and at least one hymn.

However, the vicar at this church didn't want anything fancy - the choir could sing some simple hymns, simple responses, no anthem, and only one scored piece in harmony, which could either be the Magnificat or the Nunc Dimittis.

So they put down "Bach in F" as the setting of the Magnificat, and sang this ...


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