Dr. Stanley Vann

I heard today that Stanley Vann died on 27th March. He had recently celebrated his 100th birthday. Details of his life and music can be found on the website which is maintained by his son. He was Master of the Music at Peterborough Cathedral from 1953 to 1977.

I put together a number of memories of Stanley and sent it to Martyn just before his 100th. It was good to look back at my days as a chorister and find that I do have a lot of memories; it was an invaluable experience which can never be repeated. Yes, there are, and have been, other cathedral choirs and other Masters of the Music but only the lucky few got to be choristers under Stanley.

I was in the cathedral choir from 1967 to 1971 (i.e. aged 8 to 13) although my association with the cathedral continued until I left school in 1977 and beyond, when I was briefly ‘assistant organist’ (for 2 weeks) in 1980. I celebrated my 40th birthday by conducting Evensong sung by a choir of family and friends on 7th November 1998.

I vividly remember this occasion:

In 1980 when I passed my FRCO, I was proud that Stanley was in the audience at the presentation ceremony at the Royal College of Organists; when my name was called out he enthusiastically urged me to get to my feet to go and collect the certificate.

Ah yes, gone but not forgotten.

R.I.P.

398

The first day of my holiday. This is what I have done.

• Took the car to be serviced. Well I actually booked it in for the brakes to be done (which was advised at the MOT) and said 'if you've got the wheels off you may as well do a service rather than pay you to take the wheels off again'. In fact they told me when they looked at the new pads they could see the original set were not all that worn so they didn't change the brake pads. They could have and charged me more too.
• Balanced my accounts (I do still have some money)
• Sent an email to the ABRSM
• Gave a singing lesson
• Tidied the office (a little)
• Wrote a letter of apology to relative
• Decided that I cannot tell a certain person I like that I like them a lot.

397

Post 400 is approaching. At the moment I just do not know what 398, 399 or 400 will be about.

Time has been short recently and I have been busy, oh so busy. I will probably shut down this as it has served its purpose; only a few people know about it and I don't have time to add to it. I am not ashamed I am on Fluoxetine and have found that a few of my friends are too.

I have only done a few of the things listed here, although the school concert was a great success; even I thought so, so it must have been good.

I'm doing a lot of reading at the moment which I may write about later.

Daughter #1 is home from Cambridge and I hope to spend some time with her.

Recently I have moved from Adobe pdf reader to Foxit which has some good features. I've also started using Open Office on my laptop although some Excel spreadsheets don't do what they should in OpenOffice.org Calc. Can anybody help?

Well that's all for now - I must go to bed and get some rest. It's nice to see people visiting and get comments. Don't be shy; I don't bite.

Worship

Before I get onto my topic I must comment on a comment I had to this post, today by Robert.

This blog began [in August 2007, I can't believe it!] as a way of expressing myself concerning things which irritate me, although I have not always posted about those things. Looking back at some old posts I can see that I was - to an extent - a different person when I started the blog. I used the term 'musical morons' simply because that is how I felt at the time; 'musical sheep' may have been a better description. I accept that not everyone is blessed with the musical gifts that God has given me (that sounds pretentious) but, as I recall, I had rehearsed one of the hymns at school and requested the pupils not to put in a passing note. They continued to do so.

In the case of "O Come, all ye faithful", it is so often heard on the radio in December sung incorrectly that it really grates, and congregations get it 'wrong' (I'd like to see a version which includes the passing note in a genuine hymn book) because they copy what they hear and cannot break a habit. That, I suppose, is all I meant. I fully accept that there are many congregation members who - if corrected directly - would be only too pleased to sing it my way. I further accept that people do try their best and at least they are singing! I won't change the post but I can see how if might offend some people. Friends who know me personally will take the comment in the spirit in which it was made (a bit of hyperbole) though I am grateful to Robert for reminding me that this blog can, potentially, be read by anyone on the planet.

It is interesting that Robert's comment came today. This weekend is a Leave Out so I have a Sunday off school church. For reasons I will not go into here, I accepted an invitation to go to a more informal church. I was told a bit about it before I went. The service (which they called a 'meeting') ended with two full-submersion adult baptisms.

The first 25 minutes involved us all standing and singing 2 worship songs with the words projected on a screen; it is actually quite liberating to have nothing to hold although it does mean one has to think what to do with ones hands. I have not reached the point where I can comfortably hold them aloft!

Now I didn't know these 2 songs at all. Luckily they were quite predictable and repetitive with only a narrow range of notes; they were also sing several times. As one who has a music degree and was once extremely good at aural dictation I am always ashamed how long it takes me to pick up a tune without the 'dots'; no doubt Julie (if she reads this) will be shocked to find that out.

Thus Robert's comment made me realise that, today, I was the musical moron because I made plenty of mistakes. However, it didn't matter, at least I was trying and many people were not even singing. Also, in context, it was the sentiment of the words and not the musical accuracy which mattered. We were lucky to have a very competent 18 year old keyboard player whose sense of pulse was rock steady. As there was not organ or choir I was not tempted to work out the registration or find fault with the choir's interpretation.

I was somewhat aghast when we were asked to sing (over a repeated chord pattern) anything we liked to whatever words we liked. I was also not used to the constant chatter from the congregation throughout the meeting; by 'chatter' I mean "Praise the Lord", "Amen" and "Yes!" (in agreement with what had just been said) but actually hardly any "Hallelujahs". I did wonder if some people were just putting it on a bit as the 'thing to do'. What a cynic I am!

I have to say I will go again. I was warmly welcomed by several people, none of whom tried to smother me. I'm sure I can adjust to the different music. The sermon was not tedious though much longer than what I am used to, at 25 minutes. The testimony from one of the adult Baptism candidates was moving and I learnt things over 40 years of church going has not taught me.

Watch this space.

Chrome

I am using Chrome at the moment. Goodness me it's fast.

I visited my own website with Firefox yesterday and the banner had gone. I cleared out the cache and tried to reload but to no avail. It was there in Internet Explorer. I decided to install Chrome to see if a new browser (and cache) would show up the banner; it did. Of course I knew it was there as I uploaded it myself.

There is no menu bar in Chrome (you use the 2 buttons on the top right). Most of the screen is given over to the web page which is actually an improvement; on my homepage you can see the whole navigation page at once.

Chrome also plays music files well. If Quicktime launches I don't get that loud bang when it starts playing.

I may well be hooked.

One warning for the security minded. Most browsers offer to import bookmarks; that's fine. I have stored a few (only a few) log in details in Firefox. Chrome imported them too WITHOUT ASKING (as far as I recall). I was quite surprised.

My desk

Over at Almost American I found this post which motivated me (goodness knows why, I have enough to do) to take the snap above. My desk is often a mess. I made it myself from my previous home made desk and the old computer desk I used to use; this was when I redecorated my room (when the study WAS tidy).

On my desk I find:
Books
Software
Printer/scanner
hole punch
stapler
camera (well not while I was taking the photo)
Money pot (a jam pot my sister bought me)
An identity hider (which I recommend)
post it note dispenser
coaster
Mint imperials
glasses case
Fluoxetine (hence this)
..and all the rest you can see.

I don't do much writing at my desk - I mostly use the computer.

Well, must get on.

Hair

It was a nice lunch at school today. Pork and red pepper casserole with mashed potatoes and cabbage. Pudding was apricot and mincemeat crumble, although we were perturbed to find one of the cook's hairs in the crumble; it was about 5 inches long.

I placed it in a bowl and returned it to her after the meal. There was not even a sorry!