This Holy Week, Rochester Cathedral have chosen to feature 'A Celebration of Women in the Bible' over the course the services throughout the week. There are a whole series of events going on, including an exhibition of the paintings, thoughts and reflections from Bishop Graham, and a Q & A about the anthems that's being hosted on Tuesday.
However, for those of you who are situated away from Rochester, I thought that I would extend this Celebration to you by making the messages and materials that I post here free for the duration of Holy Week, and posting every day with exclusive audio, sketches, insights, and thoughts about the anthems three years on from their first recording.
The process of creating this series of posts has offered a unique opportunity to review my thoughts about the anthems, and even uncover some thought processes about them that I forgot that I was having – including uncovering some very early test recordings that were made of the anthems – reminded me of the fact that they are structured so that elements may be removed from their context for easier performance and adaptability to different performance situations – an idea of a 'Pre-Anthem' and 'Anthem Proper', that enabled me to set the whole of Graham's text, whilst maintaining accommodation for musical 'access points'. A great example of this is the solo section of Lydia, that is devised to work as a standalone piece for solo voice and accompaniment. In the end, this became both an artistic foil, and a practical measure (more on that in subsequent posts!).
I look forward to sharing this all with you over the next seven days!