The Queens’ chapel is tall and narrow. From where I sit during rehearsals I can barely make out “SANCTUS SANCTUS SANCTUS DOMINUS DEUS SABAOTH” stencilled below the vaulted ceiling. A green carpet leads between wooden choir seats to a green altar; in front of us are embroidered kneeling-pillows (green), ancient copies of the Book of Common Prayer with Latin dedications from alumni hand-pencilled into their front leaves, detritus from the inside of the chapel choir’s pockets and a green-and-white scarf abandoned by some congregant early in the term.
Rehearsals themselves are much as I remember from my four-month run as a vocalist in high school: brief calisthenics, embarassing exercises (scales on “Popocatepetl, copper-plated kettle”; “I know a man with a ping pong ball” to the tune of William Tell) and then the music. MagSoc’s usual fare seems to be the standard big-chorus repertory of masses and intermittent Messiahs; this term we are performing a somewhat more obscure setting of the Requiem by Saint-Saëns, to be incongruously preceded in concert by his Carnival des Animaux.
Our conductor is a Queens’ student, a manic chemist with a lovely counter-tenor and a musical director’s fondness for exaggerated displays of emotion. My fellow choristers are, in about equal proportion, musical incompetents like myself, singers in serious choruses here for extra practice, and more mature members of the university who have outgrown other groups. Like many choirs without the luxury of choosing their own membership, the Chorus of the St. Margaret Soceity of Queens’ College is rather heavy on basses and altos. Attendance wobbles throughout the term and quality varies non-monotonically.
I’ve befriended a small group of other graduate students in the choir. At break (bland biscuits and the intolerably sweet beverage the British refer to as “squash”) we make template small talk about weather, thesis progress, the dearth of tenors, college food. After five minutes our leader or or one of his harried-looking accompanists summons us back to the chapel. Last week we resumed with the sixth movement: “Sanctus–sanctus–sanctus….”