Day 7 - John

Slops

This morning the choir was set its most important deadline: we had to arrive at the Holy Trinity Church in Princeton by 9:30 so as not to be late for our four-hour free morning in Princeton.  It is with great pride that I can say that every single boy in the choir met this deadline; however, I cannot say the same for some of the staff.  David Goode was mortified after turning up a few minutes late, and Ralph Allwood did not even deign to grace us with his presence.

The choir set out in small groups to explore Princeton.  John Templeton once said that "the best thing about Princeton is that there are no distractions". This certainly made a change from the sights of Chicago. Andrew Maynard certainly took that at its face value, choosing to spend the morning relaxing with a cheap thriller in the grounds of the famous university.  The attractions of the town were different for others.  I for one was rather taken aback to notice that Timothy Khoury was sporting a tiger's tail when he returned for the practice at 1:30 - my surprise was mostly due to the his skill in keeping it hidden from us for so long.  A number of members of our party, including David Goode found solace in Princeton's coffee shops, and some were delighted to discover the Princeton record exchange: Adam Berman left with no fewer than six CDs.  John and Richard Gowers spent the morning down Memory Lane, visiting the apartment building where they had lived for two years, and receiving a particularly warm welcome at their old Elementary School.  Max James and others visited Princeton's delightful art museum.  Several boys enjoyed buying clothes and books in Princeton: One senior member of the choir bought a delightful bound collection of short love stories, and I am sure that they gave him much pleasure.

The boys' plans for the afternoon were, sadly, dashed: Andrew Maynard and the rest of the staff decided that the hour's free time we were promised in the afternoon would have caused problems, so Ralph Allwood deliberately dragged our rehearsal on and on until it was time to be picked up by our host families: I for one have never spent so long on futile discussion about how best to organize the choir so we could find our places in the balcony before the concert began.  After the rehearsal, we headed back for supper, and then met in the crypt to get changed and get ready for our evensong.  Ralph Allwood had told us a few days previously that anyone turning up to a performance without their concert dress or music would not be allowed to sing: today was the first day in which this rule almost came into effect.  Henry Stacey had left his black shoes and smart shirt with his home-stay, but several members of the the choir, under Ralph's direction, were able to provide him with spares, enabling him to sing.  


Ralph told us that we were performing an evensong rather than a concert in order to cut costs: I like to think that this is partly because it costs $2000 dollars to put on a concert in the Princeton University Chapel (as opposed to nothing for a church service) and partly because Ralph didn't have to hire his speech-writer to think up fresh introductions for all the pieces of music.  The concert went well, in spite of a few senior boys who seemed particularly keen to keep their cassocks closed.  We must congratulate Thomas Norrington on remembering which bird is mentioned in Gerald Finzi's Lo, the Full Final Sacrifice in time for the concert: we had 'parakeet' and 'cockatoo' in practices.

O soft self-wounding pelican

After the concert evensong, the choir was looking forward to the ice cream very kindly provided by Samuel Jordan's family.  However, we were slightly taken aback to learn that there was a catch: we had to sing Henry Ley's A Prayer of King Henry VI before we could get our hands on it.  I for one noticed a peculiar yearning quality in the choir's tone as they sang, which I thought was rather effective.  We then helped ourselves to bowls of chopped banana with ice cream and chocolate sauce before launching into a performance of Under the Sea, for which the audience was treated to College Chapel Choir's unique sense of rhythm.  Our slightly depleted group of Incognitos gave us lovely performances of That Lonesome Road and Superman: it was so nice to hear them sing something different for a change.

It has been lovely filling you all with slops tonight; don't forget to keep checking the blog for more posts.

- John Gowers