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W elcome to the new-look St Albans Area Newsletter. You may be surprised at the amount of work that goes on behind

the scenes planning events and looking after the interests of our many affiliates, so it seems timely to reintroduce the members of the Area committee and let you know their particular responsibilities.

� Christopher Muhley Area Chair

� Derek Cann Secretary—chief contact with affiliates

� Andy Benoy Publicity, e-mail, Newsletter and Web Site

� Stuart Brant Bishop’s and Dean’s Awards Scheme

� Roger Carter Child Protection Officer

� Peter Hatswell Treasurer

� Kevin Goss Clergy representative

� Grayson Jones Training

� Alan Richardson Communications

Andrew Lucas is currently the Vice Chair, and Artistic Director of the biannual Diocesan Choirs Festival. If you want to get in touch over any issue, there are a number of ways to proceed. The most efficient is to use e-mail, and a message sent to office@rscm-stalbans.org.uk usually results in a reply within 24 hours. Derek Cann can also be contacted by telephone on 01462 437718, and will always pass on a message as appropriate. There is also the Area Website, with links to the officers among other features, and this can be found at www.rscm-stalbans.org.uk. �

~ S T A L B A N S , H E R T F O R D A N D B E D F O R D A R E A ~

Newsletter

November 2006

§§§§ And a And a And a And a New Look…New Look…New Look…New Look…

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§§§§ Area AwardsArea AwardsArea AwardsArea Awards Many congratulations to the following candidates who have recently passed

the Dean’s or Bishop’s Award:

Bishop’s Award Successes

Eleanor Hart Pass Hemel Hempstead St Mary

Lydia Hart Merit Hemel Hempstead St Mary

Louis Gaudencio Pass Hertford All Saints

Mark Gilby Pass Hertford All Saints

Mark Dean Distinction Hertford All Saints

Christine Russell Merit Hitchin St Faith

Christopher Hills Pass Hitchin St Mary

Ed Kisby Distinction Hitchin St Mary

Rebecca Ellis Merit St Albans St Peter

Stella Brooks Distinction St Andrew Ampthill

Jonathan Smith Distinction Ware St Mary

Dean’s Award Successes

Stella Brooks Distinction St Andrew Ampthill

Henrietta Johnston Pass Braughing St Mary the Virgin

Amy Carter Merit Braughing St Mary the Virgin

Harriet Butler Merit Braughing St Mary the Virgin

Christopher Limbert Merit Great Berkhamsted St Peter

Peter Woodin Merit Hitchin St Mary

Connor Richardson Merit Hitchin St Mary

Katie Nicholls Merit St Albans St Peter

Emma Hartley Merit Ware St Mary

Miriam Franklin Merit Ware St Mary

Catherine Smith Distinction Ware St Mary

Rebecca Peters Distinction Ware St Mary

Examinations are held on the second Saturday in March, May, September and November. Dates for 2007 are March 10th, May 12th, September 8th and No-vember 10th. The usual venue is St Mi-chael and All Angels Church, Watford.

Fees for 2007 are Dean’s Award £25 and Bishop’s Award £30.00.

Further details can be obtained from the Awards Administrator:

Stuart Brant, 35 Raglan Gardens, Oxhey Hall, Watford, Herts. WD19 4LJ.

Tel: 01923 330999 (home) 01923 845071 (work) E-mail : stuart.brant@ntlworld.com

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T his is just by way of advance notification to whet your appetite! There will be another Area Con-vention—probably towards

the end of September or beginning of October in 2007—and again make use of the marvellous facilities af-forded by Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’ School (have to be careful with those apostrophes!) in Elstree, Boreham-wood. Watch this space for further details.

“The ideal training experience for trebles leading up to their Bronze, Silver and Gold award.”

Are there any boys in your choir who would relish singing in Cathedrals around the south of England on oc-casional Saturdays? John Wardle, who directs the Southern Cathedral Singers, is looking for new recruits with good chorister experience. For further details, and an application form, contact Andy Benoy at andy.benoy@waitrose.com.

F ollowing on from the huge amount of interest shown in plainchant at the Area Convention held last year, there will be another chance to hone these skills this coming January, when we visit the All Saints Pastoral Centre, near London Colney, for a service of Compline by candlelight. This is a magnificent setting, built in Gothic style, and boasts a wonderfully atmospheric chapel.

No experience is necessary, as all the music will be taught beforehand, with a break for tea. Compline is a beautiful, if underused service these

days, and this is an ideal opportunity to experience its beauty in a truly atmospheric setting with wonderful acoustic.

The Pastoral Centre boasts an impressive Website, which is worth a look. You will find it at www.allstspc.org.uk.

The cost will be £4.00 per person, and further details can be obtained from Derek Cann. �

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§§§§ ComplineComplineComplineCompline

§§§§ Area ConventionArea ConventionArea ConventionArea Convention §§§§ Cathedral SingersCathedral SingersCathedral SingersCathedral Singers

Saturday 27 January 2007, 15:00 to 18:00

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Christopher Muhley writes:

O ne of the joys of being Chair-man of the RSCM for our area is the opportunity to get ‘out and about’ on the patch and meet the people who week-by-week make mu-sic with ‘Spirit and Understanding’. The rehearsals preparing for our bi-annual Diocesan Choirs Festival in St Albans Abbey are one of the high-lights of my travels. For on those three evenings we all come together with a certain anxiety about what is ahead. Some choirs will have been able to look at the music prior to that rehearsal; others will be singing it for the first time. For choirs with limited resources it may be the first time they have heard the tenor lead at the top the ninth page, but the common pur-pose of working hard towards our big event has us all singing from the same hymn sheet, if you excuse the expression. Music has a wonderful ability to transcend differences and pull us all together.

Thanks must go to the choir directors who, both before and after those re-gional rehearsals, did so much work to get pitch and rhythm correct, as well as all the others symbols that needed observing, in order for the music to be lifted off the printed page in performance.

And, in that Abbey, what a perform-

ance – I think that the music needed peeling off the rafters on a few occa-sions in Haydn’s Insane et Vanae Curae!

The Abbey began to buzz from 2 p.m. as choirs arrived from around the Diocese. Cassocks of various shades glowed in the summer sun-shine as choristers assembled in the Cathedral nave. Basses in the north aisle sang to the tenors in the south, with Sopranos, Trebles and Altos in the centre facing the altar. The Abbey Girls’ Choir with Cathedral Lay-Clerks sang from their chevron choir stalls facing west and prior to the service the Abbey Girls’ Choir gave an impressive recital of music for up-per voices accompanied at the organ by James Davy the Cathedral’s Organ Scholar.

In the absence of Andrew Lucas, Ca-thedral Master of Music who was enjoying a sabbatical in the summer term, our conductor was Simon Johnson, his Assistant. Standing in the movable pulpit he led us all through an invigorating and well-paced rehearsal; enthusing us with a little ‘action song’ if we looked and sounded a bit weary and gently, but skilfully, taking all the musical and human resources and welding them into a performance which was sung with Spirit and Understanding. An-drew Parnell’s Father, hear the prayer we offer, was an effective introit, leading into Martin Neary’s Re-sponses and Noel Rawsthorne’s

§ Review of the 2006 § Review of the 2006 § Review of the 2006 § Review of the 2006 Diocesan Choirs FestivalDiocesan Choirs FestivalDiocesan Choirs FestivalDiocesan Choirs Festival

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Psalm 150. Bairstow’s splendid set-ting of the canticles took quite a bit of rehearsal time, and perhaps ini-tially choirs had not warmed to it, regarding it as a challenge to under-stand fully its harmonic language and overall construction. But with the Abbey Choir giving a strong lead and some specific attention to detail from Simon, this setting proved to take off with an enormous sense of drive and purpose. I mentioned the music of Insane reverberating in the rafters earlier; the second anthem was Charles Wood’s Expectans expecatvi – a great gem which deserves to be in the repertoire of all four-part choirs. In total, this was an uplifting celebra-tory service; a service which praised God with merry noise and tuneful accord. Oh! and in addition, a four-part fugue in the Nunc Dimittis Glo-ria!

But having retrieved the semi-quavers of the Haydn from the rafters there was still much to celebrate. The Dean of St Albans and the Bishop of Bed-ford presented Bronze and Silver Awards and, along with some Gold Award presentations, we applauded the dedication and commitment of those who had passed these examina-tions.

The Diocesan Choirs Festival is a wonderful occasion where choirs of all abilities are encouraged to join together in collective song. The at-tendance this year was slightly lower than in some previous years and that

may have been partly due to the slightly later timing, with weddings already booked, with GCSE and A level exams being endured or with a general feeling of weekends being over-crowded. However, I would like to think that for the Festival in 2008 this trend might be reversed. The DCF can offer a hugely powerful re-charge of the batteries, not just through the group music-making, but from friendships formed amongst singers from different churches and a sense that we were all working to-wards a common goal – Praising God through the beauty of music. Much very positive feedback has been re-ceived from those attending, which is always good to hear.

So if you enjoyed this year’s Festival come to the next one. And if you’ve haven’t been for a number of years, come and participate in the 2008 Festival.

BUT you don’t need to wait that long. Join in our forthcoming events and particularly our Second Annual Convention to be held in the autumn of 2007 – you will be assured of a warm welcome. I hope that at this Second Convention you will be in-spired to work with other church musicians in recognising that music-making in our churches is precious and valuable, and that all of us as members of the RSCM, have much to offer in promoting God’s work by its vibrant and vital execution.

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T he latest edition of The Network, sent out along with Church Music Quarterly, contains details of our next Area event—the Regional Evensong to coincide with The Feast

of Christ the King—which will be held at St. John’s church, Boxmoor. You will find a ‘flyer’ for this event in this mailing, so please don’t delay in getting in your replies.

James Davy sitting

nonchalantly at the console

Newsletter compiled by

§ Pictures from the 2006 Diocesan Choirs Festival § Pictures from the 2006 Diocesan Choirs Festival § Pictures from the 2006 Diocesan Choirs Festival § Pictures from the 2006 Diocesan Choirs Festival

Sunday 27 November 2006, 14:00 to 19:45

H ere are some photographic memories from this year’s Diocesan Choirs Festival to complement Christopher Muhley’s very thorough write-up.

�

Simon Johnson getting the best out of

choristers in his inimitable style

Choristers raising

the rafters

§§§§ Festal EvensongFestal EvensongFestal EvensongFestal Evensong