VI Chapel and Choir

Sacristan: Z Lloyd. Wardens: B Price, W Reis, A Lord, F Riche, D Dold, A Sturkgh, K Macfarlane, M Nussbaumer, D Evans, R Philips, R Blyth, D Matthews, R Downie, A Bickersteth, A Hibbert, S Ponte, and K Phillips. At the end of his first year as Chaplain, Nick Widdows recalls his first visit to the Chapel: ‘I walked through the gloomy area that passes for an ante-chapel and entered the main body where I was immediately struck by the simplicity, almost austerity of the building. Yet even more so by the quietly impressive beauty. Vivid windows framed in plain white walls; elegant lines of candle-punctuated, polished wood; a towering organ, overshadowing the pews like a guardian angel. This, I thought, is how a chapel is meant to be. Small and simple enough to feel intimate, homely even, maintaining a sense of the collegiate, yet managing also to retain the sense that here is a place to approach one who is transcendent and holy. This also felt like (and I subsequently learned, is) a place which carries the history of the College within its walls. This is part of Magdalene’s ancient heart, one that continues to resource new generations of students and scholars. For Members of Magdalene, even if they don’t believe every word they hear in a service, this is their Chapel and their Choir, an opportunity to feel part of the rich traditions of this place and to experience a beautiful and historic part of College life, a space to contemplate for a moment the idea of something much bigger than themselves and to find food for the soul. It has been a privilege to become part of this community, and therefore a particular delight to be able in June to baptize in Chapel my son Kit’.

The Master preached at the first and last Sunday Evensongs of the academical year; Professor Duffy on All Saints’, Professor Boyle on Remembrance Sunday, and Dr Atkins on Trinity Sunday. The visiting preachers included the Archdeacon of Cambridge and the Revd Helen Orr (1990, daughter of Bishop Simon) from St Andrew’s Chesterton; her sermon included a sung quotation. There were two preachers from the Divinity Faculty, Professor Janet Soskice and Dr Katherine Dell. From further afield, we welcomed the Bishops of Lincoln, Blackburn, Chichester, and St Germans; the Dean of Truro Cathedral, the Archdeacon of Leicester, the Pastor of Woodstock Baptist Church, Oxford; together with Professor J G McConville of the University of Gloucestershire.

Among the memorable occasions this year were the annual Service of Remembrance, at which for the first time the names of all the College’s 194 war dead were listed in the Order of Service, with individual memorialisation focused on Leonard Stern (1913), the Jewish Londoner who was killed in Flanders two years after graduating. Evensong before the Pepys Dinner was attended by HRH Sultan Dr Nazrin Shah, the Ruler of Perak, Malaysia, and his guests, after his admission in Chapel as an Honorary Fellow; the Master sang with the Choir on this occasion

for a spirited rendering of Purcell’s great anthem ‘Jehovah quam multi sunt hostes’. The annual Commemoration of Benefactors attracted almost fifty from among the Fellowship and saw the sum of £248 collected for the College student hardship Fund. Each term ended with something special: the Advent Carol Service in December 2015 (which squeezed 150 people into the Chapel), Bach’s Cantata Ich elender Mensch (with instrumental accompaniment and conducted by Polina Sosnina), in March; and a ‘farewell’ Sunday Evensong for Mr Hellyer Jones, with the Choir augmented by former members to sing Dyson in D and Handel’s Hallelujah chorus and attended by over 100 people in June. On the final Sunday morning of term a Sung Eucharist held in the Master’s garden attracted almost 50 students. The weekly collections have been for Christian Aid (and its Refugee Crisis Appeal), Open Schools Worldwide, the Campaign for Female Education and Lynn’s House, Cambridge.

CHOIR REPORT. Organ Scholars: P Sosnina, W Bosworth. This was Mr Hellyer Jones’s last year as Director of College Music, retiring after 14 years as Organist and Precentor; we owe a tremendous amount to him, not least for putting the Choir library of music on a much firmer foundation, wonderfully expanding the repertoire, and for raising the musical reputation of the College. On St Mary Magdalene Day an anthem dedicated to him and the Choir by Jonathan Bielby (acting Organist and Precentor 2014) was performed at Evensong, ‘Jesu, you heal our wounds’, (for St Mary Magdalene). Former members of the Choir greeted him at Evensong and a Reunion Dinner in November.

The annual Christmas Concert in London was held in All Hallows by the Tower and was well attended. The Choir also sang services in Wymondham Abbey, Norwich Cathedral and Waltham Abbey and had an Epiphany residency in Canterbury Cathedral at the beginning of the year. Malta was the destination for the Choir Tour, facilitated by Dr Stoddart; it included concerts in St John’s Cathedral in Valetta and in the magnificent Temples of Hagar Qim on Malta and Ggantija on Gozo. A concert was also given as part of the Victoria International Arts Festival on Gozo, in the Basilica of St George.

During the year two pieces composed by Peter Relph, who is a bass in the Choir, were performed; the first was ‘Tenebrae lumini’; the second was a setting of C S Lewis’s only hymn, ‘Lords coeval with creation’, written in 1958 at the suggestion of Francis Turner (1920, Fellow and President). Professor Cooper thought it might be set to music, so Relph’s response to the commission was to dedicate it to her. An Easter hymn, it celebrates the bursting into ‘rich rejuvenation’ of everything from ‘Bear, behemoth, bustard, camel, /Warthog, wombat, kangaroo’ to insects and lichen. The congregation at the Choir-leavers service enjoyed helping to give the work its first performance. It joins those other splendid ‘Magdalene hymns’: ‘O worship the king’ (words by Robert Grant, 1795, Fellow), and ‘How shall I sing that majesty’ (music by Ken Naylor, 1950, organ scholar).