Being ecumenical

Tuesday 17 – Thursday 19 Nov

Tuesday morning dawned gloriously, so I took advantage of the good weather to go for a walk in Christ Church Meadow, which runs south of Merton College and Christ Church (cathedral and college). It has been a very mild autumn so far, with an atypical absence of fogs and frosts (the mildness did not extend to my office, which had maintained a steady but cool 16°C until the arrival today of a new heater (hooray!)). An advantage of this time of year for sight-seeing is that autumn’s loss of leaves has made some buildings more visible.

On Wednesday evening I attended evensong at Christ Church cathedral. I even got to sing (not on my own), as there was one congregational hymn and although I didn’t know the tune the melody line was given in the hymnal and it was easy enough to sight read (apart from the distance between the musical score and the words at the bottom). Thus it is that I can now say that I have sung with the choir of Christ Church. It was, however, only the men’s voices on this occasion (basses, tenors, and counter-tenors); it must have been the choir-boys’ night off.

The choir was excellent, and there was an interesting range of styles in the pieces sung, from chant to more contemporary settings. There is, however, a formality to the evensong service that is a bit too ritualised for my tastes. It seems to distance the congregation from the contents of the service, despite the rather intimate circumstances (we were sitting alongside the choir, and there were all of 30 at most in the congregation, with at least half of them being tourists).

[For those of you with an entertainment rather than ecumenical bent, bits of the Harry Potter movies were filmed in Christ Church college. The photo above is of the grounds of Christ Church, and the avenue of trees below leads up to the visitors’ entrance of the college; the other two photos below are of the chapel at Merton College.]

And then tonight — Thursday — I sang in Oxford Town Hall and was about as ecumenical as it is possible to be in a single event. It’s National Faith Week and the Oxford Council of Faiths had organised a musical evening. My local church choir opened the evening doing “Come Come Ye Saints” (a famous Mormon hymn with history and of importance to us, but not the most exciting musically (in my humble opinion!)), followed by “Thy Will Be Done” which is a really lovely piece that also incorporates The Lord’s Prayer. We then had items from just about every faith in Oxford: an evangelical youth rock dance, a set of Muslim songs, an Indian Christian mini-play, a Hindu hymn, a Sikh martial arts routine, a Jewish choir, a quartet singing Greek and Russian Orthodox hymns, a Church of England reflection using the music of Hildegard of Bingen, two minutes of silent reflection from the Quakers and the Buddhists (which has the advantage of not requiring several weeks of rehearsals in advance 🙂 ), a couple of songs from a Baha’i, and then everybody joined in doing “Dona Nobis Pacem” at the end. And to round things out, the compere for the evening was the chair of the Oxford Pagan Circle. Yes. Really.

Now, I just have to figure out if I can fit in a pre-Christmas rendition of Messiah somewhere before I go (without having to attend heaps of rehearsals, preferably).

[The photo above is Merton College and chapel, then on the left below it’s Christ Church and Merton chapel from the meadow, and the final one is looking west along Merton St with Corpus Christi on the left and Oriel College on the right.]