It’s quite impersonal, and not particularly sincere. Actually, given the time lag, it’s the sort of letter that would be better not sent at all!

If the author is reading this, and if in the future you wish to convey sincere thanks to a group of musicians for giving of their time and talents, may I — in the politest of terms — suggest:

• attempt to write a little sooner after the event, say within the week — or at most fortnight — but not eight weeks later.
• comment on something that made an impression, stood out etc (dramatic psalms singing, repertoire choices, versatility) so they aren’t left thinking they sounded like any other forgettable visiting choir
• if you’re going to write it from a template at least try and disguise it (”thank you for singing the services on the above dates”).

And if you have indeed read this, I shall expect not to be booked to sing at Wells in the near future!

So now we have proof of how good it sounded!

Whilst we’re here, if you never saw the St David’s montage, created by the inimitable Sarah Topp, you can’t fail to find its mock-seriousness a hoot.

I had a ball from start to finish - albeit a ball that required copious amounts of Grecian 2000. If you’re interested in my inner monologue on the week you can find it on this site, together with photos, videos and mp3s.

• Blog posts: Edgar Day (Mon), Purcell Day (Tue), Fiddle Day (Weds), Day off Day (Thurs), Acapella Day (Fri), Party Day (Friday), Hangover Day (Sun)
• Recordings - anthems from Tuesday and the weekend (except Tallis, sob) now available!
• Photos: Chris Gray’s | Sue’s (not public) | Claire’s (not public - login to facebook)
• Video: available soon
• Twitter tweets: www.twitter.com/canlit

Thanks again all. Bring out the chutney!

Tim

The Gray and the Harris are all in double choir, as are bits of the Shephard responses, the Gray unknown by all but one singer, and a very small group with which to pull it off (20 originally, reducing to 16 with sickness).

Not much rehearsal time either; the only slots to get learning Sunday’s 3-service music list were Friday morning and Saturday morning, so we just had 2-5 to prepare for today’s evensong.

The exciting thing about Friday was the arrival of the weekenders: Eric, Ben and Laura, Ben Brown, Richard, Nigel, Sarah T, Jo, Malky, Snapesy and probably others I’m forgetting (sorry!).

Thankfully Richard was around in the morning to accompany Sunday’s music (Cummings was playing for the actual services but only arriving on Saturday night) - notably the Walton Jubliate and VW Te Deum would be very difficult for me to rehearse from the piano (glossing over the fact I can hardly play them in first place).

I’m not sure how sold people were on the Gray in F minor, but for me it remains a firm favourite with one of the most exciting Glorias in the repertoire.

The Harris, much more familiar went really well, and in the rehearsal at least held its tuning:

I really enjoy watching this bit of footage; I don’t normally get to see it from the outside but it looks like we’re working hard but having a chuckle between ‘takes’, which is good.

Disappointingly, in performance, we lost some pitch in the Harris — not that the bottom C didn’t trouble our Can Basses!

This was also the joint-best, and certainly most plaintive, psalm singing of the week (Wednesday was excellent but we don’t have the recording, grr; Sunday evensong, Murril chant, was also very tight) 142 to the Howells chant (click to listen).

Afterwards, we went to the Swan bar, where my folks were staying (where they were stashing the booze for tomorrow evening’s party and also presented me with my other birthday present - tickets to the First Night of the Proms), where we had a few rounds in the sunshine before gravitating towards the City Arms (five nights in and we’ve restarted the cycle!) for food and more beer.

Unfortunately, Vicars Close’s resident drunk materialised back at #14 after pub closing — which sent nearly everyone to bed! Olly, just arrived after deadline week, and he stayed up a little longer debating the ins and outs of the BBC Music Magazine CD reviews process…

This being the half-way point, we said goodbye to a lot of people yesterday and were due to receive the weekenders tonight and tomorrow.

So in the meantime, what to do? Well, I imagine Trojan will have gone for his daily run, though I can’t actually remember (what was I doing?!).

With just me, Sue, Emily, Richard Ian and Claire left, we decided to head over to Cheddar for the afternoon.

I was absolutely committed to picking up some cider for Jo’s Nick, ahead of Saturday’s party, and further committed to getting it from Roger’s infamous cider farm in Mudgley. However, I left the navigation to Emily and consequently we found ourselves in Cheddar having totally bypassed the cider farm! So we resigned ourselves to getting some ‘ordinary’ cider and rejoined the others.

It was a fairly uneventful afternoon, it has to be said! But I did pick up cider for the party and then went to collect ’star tenor’, the inestimable Mr Milne, from Bristol Airport. Whilst back in Bristol, I went to pick up a dongle that might help Ian repaire his mp3 player (which is recording all our services).

We all arrived back and began preparing for the fajitas and poker  evening. The fajitas were fabulous (how we fit anything in after the gargantuan fish and chips at lunchtime, I don’t know). Unfortunately, around the time we were due to start poker I suddenly went into admin mode and realised I had about twenty phone calls to make.

Happily, Chris Reed and Angharad arrived this evening so I got to enjoy some time with them before the onslaught of the weekend.

After 2-3 hours, Angharad was the victor in the poker. Yours truly went out within 20 minutes.

Tomorrow is the day I’m most nervous about. We’ve got 8-part music for evensong, and a modest choir of about 16 voices plus we’ve got to make a decent start on Sunday’s 3-service marathon (with a third of the choir missing) so I really need to get focussed and get to sleep.

Night…

Monteverdi’s 9-minute, 7-part Beatus Vir, complete with organ and strings. Grandiose enough for a Wednesday night? I think so!

Ever since I met Rich, and later Martha, both colleagues at Futurelab and accomplished violinists, I’d been dying to take part in some musical performance with them. This seemed the perfect, if ostentatious, opportunity. I was thrilled that they were up for it, and between us we put in considerable preparation for the day.

The choir too; we’d looked at it bit by bit since the start of the week and, together with many people knowing it already (many more than I expected; I thought it moderately obscure) we were fully prepared for performance by the time Rich, Martha and Kit P-W (organ) arrived.

Kit, one should note, was not long since a father - 9 days to be precise - and probably hadn’t had anything resembling a good night’s sleep for a week. And still played like a total ninja.

The choir was the same as yesterday but with the loss of Andrew and the addition of Emma, Andy with_the_hair Davidson, and Ben Brown.

In rehearsing the Monteverdi so thoroughly I possibly neglected the Gibbons (Second Service) which, for the second time of conducting, I find makes greater demands of the singers than it appears on the page, especially the soprano duettists.

Today’s were the best psalms so far, and will be hard to top. I really love the Ware chant I found for the first psalm (142) and the Garrett one (more commonly used for 142) for 143 is a classic.

The Monteverdi was an absolute scream. It’s a silly little piece anyway so I wanted people to have fun, dance it up and smile at all the silly jokes (’fra-a-a-a-me it!’) and Latin innuendos (stuff about rectums) — generally have a good time.

Which they did. I think Rich and Martha were very nervous but it didn’t show in the music; they played consummately.

We processed out to Kit’s Bach voluntary - coincidentally the first opportunity he had to lay a finger on the main organ (what a show off) - and after the closing prayers, the Canon remarked, “What an extraordinary anthem!” — and walked off! So we have no idea whether it was meant favourably or not, and indeed whether the remark was deliberately ambiguous. You could indeed accuse him of tergiversation… Like the time the Dean at Bristol remarked after Friday evensong — “it’s going to be a memorable weekend!”. Classic.

Back to Wednesday in Wells then. I was flattered that we had five supporters from the ‘Lab at evensong — Payton, Kieron, Cassie, Lyndsay and Emma — and it was great that they could join us at the pub (tonight the Crown!) to raise a glass to the triumphant performance. And I was true to my word, that if Payton text me to say five or more Labbers would be in the congregation, I’d wear my leaving gift under my cassock.

The only shame about tonight, particularly given the quality of the playing and singing was that the recording failed: mp3 player too full and wasn’t able to save the recording (which only ran for the first 30 mins anwyay) properly. I have a plan to reunite today’s performers at a later date and have another go at recording it for posterity.

Pub was followed by curry and that was followed by sleep. Here’s hoping tomorrow’s day off will afford me a full night’s sleep, and not another 5am anxiety-induced wake-up call!

So, 10 voices, an even split of 4-2-2-2 and a lovely blend. Sops were Sue, Claire, Eve and Liz; altos Jo and Emily; tenors Ian and Andrew Kirk; basses Chris Gray and Trojan.

We were also honoured by the effortless accompaniment of David Bednall - former Assistant Organist of the cathedral and all-round good egg.

Highlights today were the psalm singing - a step in the direction of what I’m after (drama and ensemble); trios, a particular treat to hear Emily on the two extended verse sections of the Magnificat; and the Hear My Prayer. Although they found it laborious at the time, I think the singers appreciated the sing-through of every single voice part in rehearsal - discovering the points of interest in each line, thus making ‘vertical’ sense of the music as well as the horizontal line. I thought the recording reflects the effort put in. And I remain a fan of the forte finish ;-)

In the evening we went to the Fountain (in a bid to try a different pub each night) pre-barbecue, kindly co-ordinated by Liz. This was yummy.

We had a fair bit to drink - culminating in a blurry but vintage game of 21 (’bring out the chutney!’) - though our inebrity was exceeded by a certain house caller at about 23:30. A visitor whose uncouth behavious quickly soon hurried most of the Number 14 residents to bed. Twat!

Number 14 is absolutely twatting massive! 8 beds and enough floor space to host the rest of the choir (willingness to rough it on air mattresses permitting).

If there’s one emotion/state matching the excitement it’s stress. Today and the last few days have seen qute a few last minute changes to people’s circumstances meaning we’ve massively over-catered for (expensive) B&B accommodation. Fortunately the Swam were amenable to changing one of our bookings so that makes it a bit easier.

So Monday the choir line-up was: (sop) Claire, Liz, Eve, Sue, Caren, (alto) Emily, Sue P, Wardle, Ellie, (tenor) Ian, Olly, (bass) Richard C and Ben Reid. And Duncan Courts ably assisting on organ.

It was a good group but not the right numbers for the music I had chosen - Edgar Day in Bb and Finzi God is Gone Up. We had a number of teething problems today - arrival, self-locking song schools, adjusting to a new ensemble and so on - and for many reasons the music never quite settled. I think my polite but uncharacteristically cautious assessment via Twitter probably reflects how I felt about our first service.

However, we had a wonderfully sociable day including a lovely lunch courtesy of Chef West and then a cracking post-evensong knees-up in the pub afterwards (City Arms - the old gaol) and I made the most of seeing the likes of Wardle, Ellie, Duncan and Sue P who were only there for that one day. Oh, also Andy (with_the_hair) Davidson came to evensong and we managed to press gang him into singing on Wednesday.

I also had the opportunity of regaling the troops with my New Year 08 hire-car story which never fails to have tears streaming down faces.

The other comedy of the day was Olly who, having done an excellent job of the canting throughout Evensong, was taken a bit by surprise with the cue for the final responses (so was I to be fair) and consequently fumbled around for his tuning fork, struck it on the wrong end resulting in no note, finally began it but ended the first one on the wrong note, fixing it at the last second with a graceful jazz slide up a tone. Nice one Ol - heroic recovery and a classic choir-week anecdote to kick us off!

Looking forward to the next two days with some music possibly better suited to the forces.

Here’s what I can give you:

• Monday - Wednesday psalms
• Fri-Sun: Psalms, Hymns, Sunday Introit
• If Ye Love Me - Carpenter (in the pack above)
• Hear my Prayer - Purcell (CPDL)
• Rheinberger Mass in Eb (CPDL)

More of our music may be on the CPDL - feel free to have a look and let me know if so.