Silence

...the new noise.

so important it's an element of music in the National Curriculum. Amazing when you consider that metre, rhythm, harmony, tonality and form aren't, but I digress.

Silence is great in Church because you can't annoy other people by being silent, unlike

• playing hymns people don't like, (Me playing hymns that I don't like.)
• giving unnecessary instructions, ('Please stand to great the Gospel. ' Don't we know we have to stand up then?)
• twittering about and being petty.

It has occurred to me that all the twittering and fancy stuff just acts as a total distraction and is often frankly bewildering. I haven't seen any for a while now and it's great.

At the Candelmass Mass at Blackfen at the point where the Congregation were to approach the Altar to receive candles, the MC gestured with his sleave. The big sleave. Transcends language and spoke so much more eloquently than a long wordy explanation. You can after all just watch what other people do and copy them. Works a treat for me. New to the TLM? Not sure about when to kneel etc. Sit at the back and copy the pros.

Silence; the new noise. Shhh.

Fr Ray puts it so much better on his blog.

The blogging backwater discovered

I find myself linked to three mega blogs in one day.

Dazzled by visits, but with no time to write much of consequence, I wish I had tidied up a bit, done some dusting and baked a cake for everyone.

Still, we can all bask in the wonderfullness of Saturday's Mass and hope that this is taste of things to come.

It is very touching to hear from a Cardinal that he is there to convey just what the Pope wants you to know. All the way from Rome just to tell us in person.

World Blogging exclusive

Westminster Mass packed with every sort of person, including lots of small people in buggies, (who were very quiet all things considered.)

Beautiful music sung by the Cathedral Choir including a motet by Elgar and the Byrd Ave Verum, nice to get some English music in around a Palestrina Mass setting.

An awesome occasion.

Met Fr Ray wow. Very kindly he is too as he is on his blog.

Mark of Rise and Pray with a Scottish posse.

Lots of other lovely people in the pub afterwards.

Other people will have more and photos. You know, the usual suspects.

Westminster Tomorrow

I'm going too.

Hope to meet some other bloggers.

I met some parishoners of Fr Ray about a year ago which was fun.

We shall see.

Update Mac's giving me a lift. Goodie.

A concert

I got to play at the Barbican briefly yesterday. Someone needed an extra horn, so I got to ask someone where the Artists' Entrance was for the Barbican, thus marking me out as one who had never played there before.

It was a concert of two halves, the first being an orchestra plus the choirs of various City firms. We ended with Land of Hope and Glory, which I last played as a 2nd Violin about 25 years ago (yikes!)

Anyway, we pretended the first horn was sitting in David Pyatt's chair, who is the Principal Horn of the LSO and then repaired to the Artists' Bar to discuss the relative merits of Paxman and Alexander Horns over, in my case, a can of Sprite.

Monteverdi

Have just listened to John Elliott Gardener saying that 'you Welsh' are to blame for big Handel performances to Aled Jones, who has spent an hour savouring rolling the r in MonteveRRRRdi.

MonteveRRRRdi Choir. MonteveRRRRdi Vespers of 1610 and so it went on, pretty fast as it goes.

We now move to 'Drama on 3.' Sigh.

Time for some tootling tomorrow. The handy 'wrap' makes it easier to carry than the alphorns that we saw in Lourdes and the valves add in all those pesky notes not in the harmonic series.

The alphornists were very nifty, a top C (16th harmonic) being played in one of their 'sets' at 7am one morning. Respect.

Aside from an alphorn ensemble, I also saw a Dutch group leader with a clog on a stick. All national eccentricities on display in one place. Great.