Vivaldi’s Gloria
VOICES, STRINGS, CONTINUO (A=440)
Tutor: Ben England
Wilmslow United Reformed Church, Chapel Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 1PR
Reviewer: James Walton
No Lancashire man would leave home without an umbrella, but he might well leave it in the car after an hour’s drive south to equatorial Wilmslow, for it was most certainly not raining when we arrived. Clouds? What clouds? The sun had got his hat on, and the only thing brighter than the skies as we stepped out of the car was the glorious rhododendron in the well-kept garden of Wilmslow’s United Reformed Church. We passed the church, walked down some steps and made our way into a pristine, white-walled church-shaped hall, famous, I’m told, for its occasional potato fairs.
Committee members were ready as always to greet us, tick us in, en-sticker us with our little name tags and, of course, point out the three essentials which every North West Early Music Forum member seeks upon arrival anywhere, anywhen, anywhy: scores, brews, and the facilities. Of the brews and facilities, there is nothing to report, but the scores were orange, hard-backed and well-loved. I took one off the top of the pile: number seven! My favourite number. A good omen, I’m sure. But what was inside?
Well, at first glance, you’d have thought it was simply Vivaldi’s Gloria, that 1715-ish baroque masterpiece written for orphan girls, rediscovered in bits and bobs across Europe in the 1930s, premiered in the 1950s and sung by everyone everywhere ever since. But oh how wrong I was! For the score contained so much more, at least on that mid-Spring Saturday it did: galloping horses, story-telling moonlight, high-hats, bass-drums, tweeters, woofers, emojis, John Suchet, Mussolini, Bill Bailey, an oboe disguised as a recorder (and what a recorder!), The Simpsons (or was it Maria?) and, would you believe it, an invitation to Venice! (Who needs the water ways of Venice when you have the watery ways of the North, I hear you ask, but more on that later).
It seems to me that the final ten minutes before these workshops begin are always the same: string players faff around with open fifths, pretending to tune again, the keyboardists do their best to tape cables to the floor, a cup of tea is knocked over, Bryan sets up a tripod, altos talk about the cakes, sopranos talk about the altos, basses wake up and the tenor wanders around wondering if there will be any others of his kind to share his heavy burden.
But on this occasion, one couldn’t move for tenors: they are a rare and handsome breed, generally, but they were all over the place in Wilmslow – must be the sunshine. At 10:26, Kirsten appeared at the door with a big thumbs up. All were here and it was time to begin. Lifting a chair above her head, however, it did look as though Kirsten was about to bludgeon the tall man at the front. She thought better of it and introduced him instead: our tutor for the day, Ben England. Mr England – of Choir of the Earth and Homechoir fame – knows his stuff, and after a welcome and a warm up got us going with the triumphant first movement of the Red Priest’s most famous choral work, a work which he himself has loved since childhood, it being the first piece he sang as a treble and the first he conducted as a student. You could tell it was in his very bones. We looked at every movement throughout the day, in great but not overwhelming detail, stopping only to eat cake and laugh at jokes, and by 4 o’clock were so entranced, enlightened and entertained that nobody minded that we would only have one audience member for the informal “concert” at the end. How glad we were that twice as many people turned up! The room was truly full. What they and we enjoyed was the fruit of a day well spent under Ben’s tuition.
The good moments are too many to mention, but I’ll share a few. A select group of volunteers, including three children, sang the solo parts as a sub-chorus, and how wonderful it was to sit back and listen to them, accompanied so sympathetically by the orchestra. The father of those children (no doubt a very intelligent and good-looking man) must be very proud of them. A special treat was the recorder solo played by Grace Barton which earned a spontaneous ovation in the rehearsal – it was perfect: absolutely spot on! Another highlight was Ben’s sense of humour, his story-telling and his pedagogical prowess. He made sure we knew what we were singing and how to sing it, how to bring out the operatic touches here and the stile antico there, how to make room for the sopranos in this bit and let the altos have a little fun in that bit, how to brighten up the piano phrases with our eyes and reach the higher (or was it faster?) pitches with our eyebrows. We really did learn a lot that day.
We ate a lot too, thanks to the generosity and skill of all who baked cakes. We really did give Glory to God in the highest, and we prayed for peace on earth. Peace indeed. It was, in every way, one of the most wonderful ways to spend a Saturday in May.
And then came the rain.
Published in June 2026 Newsletter
See also Workshop report – 16 May 2026
