CHIRRUP - June 2025
SUMMER 2025
Goodness, there is so much to be chirruping about this nesting time. York Minster, twitter, twitter,
Fotheringhay – steady on blackbirds, form an orderly queue, yes, I know there are strawberries, don’t
push. Gracious, how unruly.
Where was I? Oh yes, St. Stephen’s in London. Pigeons! Parakeets!
Pelicans! A stuffed Dodo. Wait. I’m getting in a flap. I need to perch on a branch and compose myself.
There, that’s better.
By Gill Guest - June 2025
York Minster - March
I’ll start at the beginning, a triple whammy start to the singing season − a single weekend with three happenings. One, trilling all the services in York Minster − a big enough thing in itself. Complicated by two, the clocks going forward, and three, for added emotional spice, Mother’s Day. WHAT a weekend.
As cathedrals go, York is magnificent. The seat of the Archbishop of York, who is second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Minster is the world’s largest Gothic Cathedral. And one of the most beautiful. A vaulting space of pale magnesian limestone, in shades of white to almost primrose yellow, the stone makes even the grumpiest gargoyle look cheerful. The Minster always feels as if the sunniest spring day has somehow been trapped inside. It’s light, bright and a medieval masterpiece of craftsmanship. Enough to stir anyone into song. Which is a good job, since our mission, which we had chosen to accept, was to stand in for the Minster choir boys and girls for a whole weekend during their holiday.
Choir in The Quire
Our first service was Saturday Evensong. It was an intimate affair held in the ‘Quire’. The area behind the screen, where the choir stalls are. It’s a symphony of intricate carving, like something with a lot of fiddly quavers reimagined in wood. We sang Hylton Stewart in C, our late friend Charles Paterson’s Responses, and Rheinberger’s lovely ‘Abendlied’ as the Anthem – the words go ‘Bide with us, for evening shadows darken’. Nice. Plus some psalms and a hymn, of course. All good. We enjoyed it and felt we’d made a great start. To celebrate, we skittered off to the only Tior city centre restaurant that could accommodate all 62 of us, for a mass choir, family, and friends dinner. The following morning, Sunday, we wished we hadn’t. The clocks had gone forward, urgh, so we had to get up early, AND we had a ton of singing to do. Groggily, we made our way to the choir school and got stuck in. Bairstow and Jackson, both of whom had been organists at York and whose compositions we were now giving the ‘morning after the night before’ rehearsal treatment, scowled down at us from their pictures on the walls. It’s a wonder they didn’t cover their ears. Under their stern gaze, we pulled ourselves together in double quick time.
Today, it being Sunday, we weren’t singing in the in the cosy Quire, but in the cavernous and overwhelming nave. Matins, the first service, was to be followed almost seamlessly by the Sung Eucharist − which would not only be live streamed on the Minster’s YouTube channel, but would stay available, for the world to see, for the next few weeks. Lots of pressure then. I was in such a state I inadvertently ‘went on’ in my trainers. Fortunately, they were black, just not regulation ‘shiny’. I jammed them under my choir desk, hoped no-one would notice and concentrated on the music. Matins had all my favourites. Francis Jackson’s fabulous and tricky Benedicite, composed in 1949 and full of thunder and lightning, and two cracking pieces from the sixteenth century − Orlando Gibbons ‘Benedictus’, where the choir sing ‘Cantoris and Decani’. We sing, physically split across the nave in two matching choirs, answering each other. Cantoris is usually on the north side where the Cantor or Precentor sit, where Decani will be opposite on the south, where the Dean sits. This is called antiphonal singing - a challenging format for any choir but completely normal for a Cathedral sung Service.
Then Palestrina’s ‘Sicut Cervus’ where we sing intricate, weaving, independent vocal lines. The sound echoed down the enormous nave, licked round the pillars and shimmered up in the clerestory. My spine felt like all the Minster spiders were lining up and doing something from Riverdance on it. Could we really be making THAT SOUND? It didn’t seem credible. I was still trying to get my head round it as we processed off, me taking short strides to make sure my trousers concealed my shoes and Andrew finished with a wonderful full organ voluntary that made full use of the great York Minster organ. In the south aisle, now hidden from the congregation, we lined up in front of the 32-foot pipes and basked in the full blast of their magnificence and Andrew’s musical artistry.
Afterwards, it being Mother’s Day there were flowers for mothers, and tea and simnel cake for all, followed by FREE TIME, which the choir evidently misheard as PLAY TIME (see above). But in no time at all we were back in the Quire for evensong. Sumsion in G, another whizz through the Paterson Responses, an alto treat in the form of Gjeilo’s haunting Ubi Caritas and we were done. Finished. Glowing. Exhausted. We wondered how the Cathedral choir keep up the unremitting pace, week in week out and felt pleased and massively privileged to be able to give them a well-earned holiday.
Not that we got much of a holiday ourselves, as we went straight into rehearsals for ‘Midsummer in Song’. An early evening concert on Midsummer day, 21st June, with strawberries, and summer fizz at Fotheringhay Church. A similar event here went brilliantly last year, with a sunny summer afternoon and a sell out audience so we’re hoping for a repeat of both. This year, since it’s actually Midsummer day, we’re doing a programme of music for midsummer, themed around sonnets and verse. Shakespeare’s words from A Midsummer Night’s Dream will feature in several settings, including Sarah Quartel’s beautiful ‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows’, and Paterson’s magical ‘Lullaby to Titania’. Biblical settings will include Dove’s ‘Seek him that maketh the Seven Stars’, Howell’s ‘Like as the Hart’ and Bairstow’s ‘I sat down’, with words from the Song of Soloman. The event starts at 6pm and tickets − £16, to include strawberries and fizz − are available from our website or by phoning Adele on 07581 341957.
We’ll perform some of this music again a few weeks later, on 12th July at St Stephen’s Church on Gloucester Road in Kensington. We don’t often get the chance to perform in London, or as part of the renowned 2025 Brandenburg Festival, so it will be exciting. Plus, it’s just round the corner from the Natural History Museum so we can all pay a visit to the famous Dodo. His song was ‘doo doo’, hence dodo. I reckon he was an alto. We do … do… that a lot. Tickets available from the Brandenberg Festival, via our website - or just click the image above.
To finish, some exciting news to twitter about. Former choir member Julie Desbrulais has been awarded an MBE in the King’s Birthday Honours list, for her services to music as a cellist with the London Mozart Players. Well played, Julia!