August 2011 issue of the parish magazine, Your Berkhamsted

Parish pagesSt Peter’s Church Choir tour to ViennaRobin McMorran reports on the choir’s recent tourShoppingfor purplethread isn’tnormallytop of mylist whilstpreparingfor a trip,but one ofthe hazardsof going ontour with achurchchoir isthat a button will almost certainly fall offyour cassock just before you pack it. I wasgetting ready to go on the 2011 tour ofVienna with the Choir of St Peter’s, GreatBerkhamsted; a purple button had fallenoff my purple cassock, and matchingpurple thread was nowhere to be found! Ahasty visit to Shepherd’s Bush Marketeventually solved that particular problem;ecclesiastical vestments repaired, I set offto join the choir in Austria.After months of planning and rehearsal, StPeter’s Choir, led by our illustriousKapellmeister Adrian Davis, was lined upto perform a selection of English andEuropean choral music in some of themost prestigious venues in Europe.Privileged as we were, we were alsoexporting one of Britain’s greatest culturalassets: the rich tradition of Anglicanchoral music. The Austrians’ selfsatisfactionfor having given the worldMozart and Schubert may be justified, butwe took a certain sense of pride inbringing to them the music of Tallis, Byrdand Howells,composersprobablyrelativelyunknown inCentralEurope. In thespirit of thebest culturalexchanges,were going toshow them athing or two.There is astory that the Austrian composer AntonBrückner went to view the body ofBeethoven prior to its re-burial in 1868;Brückner later realised one of hisspectacle lenses had fallen out, and wasoverjoyed because it had probablydropped into Beethoven’s coffin to beburied forever with the great composer.Brückner was revelling in glory byassociation, as if the greatness ofBeethoven would somehow rub off ontohim. An English parish church choirsinging in Viennese churches today enjoysa similar sense of glory by association; theAustrian capital is steeped in history,every building and street boasting analmost nonchalant association with A-listers such as Johann Strauss, GustavKlimt or a dynasty of Holy RomanEmperors. So when our first gig was in thetowering gothic splendour of theStephansdom (the cathedral of Vienna) wewere all too aware that this was the churchwhere Mozart’s funeral was held. In thedistinguished company of umpteen deadHapsburg Emperors, we filled the gothic16