On Monday morning we woke up early to a fresh layer of frost on the ground.  After another scrumptious English breakfast at our hotel in Cambridge, we boarded our coach at about 9 a.m. on our way to the small English town of Ely.  Some of you may know that before we embarked on our tour, we were fortunate to have Dr. Saylor, the professor of musicology at Drake, share some information with us on the places we were to visit while in England.  He had mentioned that the cathedral in Ely would be an amazing place, but nothing could have prepared me for the sheer beauty of the building.  The medieval cathedral rises above the rooftops of the houses in Ely and looks a little out of place.  

At Ely Cathedral we had an amazingly informative group tour led by a charming and witty British gentleman named Kevin.  Since the church was built over hundreds of years and suffered many traumas such as a tower collapse and defacement, it combines architectural styles.  My favorite aspects of Ely Cathedral were the beautiful stained glass windows, the ornately carved wooden quire, and especially the octagon.  The octagon tower was built after the first tower collapsed.  Like so many other features of the cathedral, the octagon shape of the tower is symbolic.  The octagon shape (or really, the number 8) was a medieval symbol for everlasting life.  We were very lucky to visit on a rare sunny day, and so the light shining through the octagon tower windows gave a stunning view. The most intense part of Ely Cathedral and indeed most of the other sites we have visited or will visit it England is the idea of their age.  It is difficult for me as an American to fathom something that was built 900 years ago, and I was fortunate in Ely to be able to see and touch that history.

After the guided tour, we had an hour to walk around the cathedral or explore the town of Ely on our own before the concert.  It is around this point that we begin to realize that we have a daunting task in front of us: we were to sing a lunchtime concert in the Lady Chapel attached to Ely Cathedral.  The chapel is large and equally as beautiful as the cathedral, with large windows and ornate stone carvings.  There is a strikingly joyful statue of the Virgin Mary at the front of the chapel that we warmly nicknamed “Touchdown Mary” because her arms are raised to the heavens in a sort of touchdown signal position.  What made this an extreme singing situation was the cold: the temperature in the chapel couldn’t have been more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  For those of you who don’t know, the Chamber Choir formal wear is not especially suited for temperatures under 70.  But despite this chilling obstacle, we put on a smashing noontime concert for about 70 people- an unusually large number for concerts in the Lady Chapel.  What kept our hearts warm during the concert was the amazing acoustic.  The last notes of songs would ring for about seven seconds in the chapel, and the ring back was absolutely ethereal.  Pieces like “O Verbum Patris” and “O Magnum Mysterium” finally came to life for me in the Lady Chapel because of this gorgeous acoustic.

After the concert we quickly grabbed our coats and headed for the warm bus, stopping on the way there by the giant heater to help regain feeling in our limbs.  We had some downtime in the afternoon before our next concert at St. John’s College back in Cambridge.  Again singing seemed like an extreme sport because we were all so exhausted from being cold and singing earlier, but we were able to muster up a collective energy that made for another wonderful concert at St. John’s.  The chapel there was quite different from Ely Cathedral because of a different but also beautiful acoustic and different architectural surroundings.  This chapel was built in the mid-1800s which makes it much younger than a lot of our other venues, but it also featured ornate decoration along with a rich history of singing.  After our evening concert, we had a much-deserved dinner together at the hotel complete with everyone’s favorite European drink: sparkling water.  While a few choir members don’t seem to mind the taste, the rest of us can’t quite figure out the appeal.  Anyway, our Monday may have been filled with extreme singing situations, but the Chamber Choir rose to the challenges and had a wonderful day singing in some of the most wonderful places in England.