GOLD AND BLACK

Gold Medallists

Our conservation architect, Oliver Caroe (the Surveyor of the Fabric at St Paul's Cathedral) entered us for the King of Prussia's Gold Medal, the major national award for church conservation. It was very pleasant to be shortlisted (and so one's friends saw it in the Church Times) but utterly dumbfounding to win the prize. They only gave you three tickets to the awards ceremony, so I went along with Beth Watson (from Caroes) and Lewis Proudfoot, from Cliveden Conservation, who actually did the work. The ceremony took place at St Jude's, Collingham Gardens, (behind Gloucester Road tube) which is the home of St Mellitus College, the Diocese of London's ministerial training wing, and since that building was also shortlisted for our award we were confident that we wouldn't win. That confidence was increased when we discovered that Prince Nicholas von Preussen, who was presenting the award, has a son who works with one of the contractors involved in one of the other projects. We were perfectly relaxed by the time Prince Nicholas came round to look at our display boards and asked a few, desultory, apparently uninterested questions. So we were completely unprepared when Prince Nicholas announced that the medal was being awarded to a Victorian church, which could only be us (and was).

Beth had done all the preparation for the ceremony, producing the display boards and a Power Point presentation to be shown in the event of one's winning. She did as she was told and produced a 10-slide presentation, to last 5 minutes. Then, on the day, our sheet of instructions said it was to be no longer than 2-3 minutes, and the slides would be moved on accordingly, but of course that didn't worry us as we knew we wouldn't be delivering a presentation. We did confer, though, as Beth really didn't want to do it, and so I said that, hypothetically, I would, if she would advise me of what the slides showed (as I hadn't actually seen them). So, as we walked up to receive the medal (and cheque) I was putting thoughts in order. It all went very well.

The ceremony also involved the award of the National Churches Trust President's Prize, which is for new work in a church, and that was presented by the Duke of Gloucester, so our sheet of instructions gave us etiquette for dealing with the royals. The Duke was very pleasant, but everything was so informal (and he's not the most immediately recognisable of the royal family) that none of us got our "Your royal highness" in on first meeting. As for Prince Nicholas, I huffed to my colleagues that it was all a bit rich, since his family ceased to be royal a hundred years ago, and he's not actually a prince of anywhere, and his surname is not von Preussen but Hohenzollern, so I'm not quite sure what etiquette applies beyond common politeness. It has to be said, though, that he was totally upper-class British, utterly charming, and lives in Knightsbridge.

Next year, we shall enter our new building for the President's Prize!


Men in Black

The awards ceremony was on Thursday, All Saints' Day, so the next day, All Souls', was the day of the Requiem. Our biggest event of the year is a High Mass of Requiem on All Souls' Day, celebrated with choir and full orchestra, doing a French Romantic setting. We have a nice set of black vestments for this, bought from the bequest of a deceased parishioner, who loved it, and which replaced a set that were falling apart. My friend Fr Martin Quayle usually comes to help as deacon, and Fr Frank acts as subdeacon. An old-fashioned ritual is part of the evening, as we try to use a nineteenth-century setting in an authentic way, but in a modern rite. This year we were singing the setting by Alfred Bruneau, which remained unperformed in England between its controversial premiere in 1896 and its revival at St Mary Mags in 1986. It is exceptionally loud, and jolly long. We break up the Dies Irae (in what I genuinely think is quite a creative way) to make it a bit more digestible, singing two movements during the intercessions.

There is always a lot of preparation for the Requiem, and Nicholas Kaye, who organises it, gets very tense. This year, the main anxiety was having only the temporary heating provided by our contractors, because the musicians get very grumpy about getting cold. We had also disposed of some chairs (expecting that our new chairs would have been purchased by now, which they haven't) so Nicholas had to hire in more seating than usual. A few unfinished repairs were also not aesthetically pleasing, but I did my best to see that we followed health and safety rules. With four hundred people in church one has to be reasonably careful.

I have always felt that the way most places use traditional Mass settings is silly, because you stand around in the middle of the Eucharistic Prayer while the choir sing the Sanctus and Benedictus, as a very long musical interlude (quite unlike a congregational setting, which is a snappy acclamation). In reality, the traditional way of doing it was that the celebrant continued the words of the Eucharistic Prayer while the Sanctus was being sung, as an accompaniment. In the past they weren't terribly concerned about the faithful knowing what was going on, but we provide a service sheet that explains everything and prints out the texts of what is being sung (and their translation) as well as what is being said quietly. The result of this is that we at the altar are going about the business of the Mass enveloped in this wave of sound, and you get some marvellous moments when the music reaches a climax (by pure chance) at the elevations. With Bruneau the Sanctus alone was long enough to cover the whole Eucharistic Prayer, so the Benedictus became a meditation for us (as it is meant to be). At the altar this is exhilarating, and spiritually uplifting, and often deeply moving. So at the end of the evening I was on an adrenaline high that lasted a while. It all went very well, despite my making a crass error (which fortunately had no consequences and hardly anyone noticed).