The organist librarian

38 lengths and the last swim for a few days. Sad to see that the pool is open Good Friday and Easter Monday - the staff need a break too! Spent the day completing PRP statements and getting them signed. Staff meetings went smoothly and there was time for once for some discussion rather than just me telling everybody everything! I also had to fill in the training statistics which is never easy. I left at 5.30 and picked up the car. Thornton Heath is being dig up for gas works for 5 months so chaos reigns and it means using the Selhurst route. The service at Coulsdon went well. The choir moaned about being in the nave but it was more intimate and sensible as the congregation was sadly small. We sang Rutter Gloria, Wood Mass in the Phrygian mode, To mock your reign to Tallis tune, Psalm 116 and at the end Psalm 22 and Taize Stay with me. The altar of repose in the Lady chapel looked lovely. The hymns were "Soul of my saviour" "An upper room" "Now my tongue" t...

Thanks to Audacious Deviant for the whole picture from which a detail appeared earlier. It is by Rogier van der Weyden. I have woken up in the middle of the night again having slept a bit on the sofa when I got in last night. I was checking blogs and noted the punishing singing schedule of the choir librarian at Birmingham Oratory especially today. My own programme is bad enough but at least the singing is not so intensive. I was singing well last night in the Wood setting and the Byrd Ave verum and John and I blended well in the plainchant I think. Last night we rehearsed this hymn to Tallis's Third mode melody which Vaughan Williams used as a the basis of his Fantasia. The words are by Fred Pratt Green. We did not have time to sing this as the Byrd motet was long enough to cover the communion. To mock your reign, O dearest Lord, they made a crown of thorns; set you with taunts along that road from which no one returns. They could not know, as we do now, how glorious is that crown...