Glorious Hay Madrigals

 What a wonderful concert yesterday afternoon!

(and this time I very decadently got myself a glass of red wine before the performance began!)

Before the music began, Michael Eccles said a few words about the Citizens' Assembly he's organising in the New Year.  As recently as the 1960s, Hay was more or less self sufficient in food, and he thinks we can be again.  So there will be a meeting at the Swan on 27th January from 2pm, to discuss local self-sufficiency.  I'll mention it again nearer the time.  The event is free but ticketed, because the space is limited, and tickets are available from bit.ly/HayFoodAssembly

Lucy, one of the founder members of the Hay Madrigals group, announced that this concert was dedicated to the memory of Michael, another founder member, who died two weeks ago.

And the opening organ music by Father Richard was the Shepherd's Farewell by Berlioz.

Then it was straight into some glorious seventeenth and eighteenth century music, much of it in German or Latin (or both) for voices, violins, cello - and there was a keyboard and spinet, and a flute player who sat very quietly until it was his turn to play, when there was a scramble to find him a light to see his score by - it was a candle lit concert, so the performers were using those little clip on lights to see by.  The cello player turned out to be my neighbour - I knew he was musical, but I hadn't known he played the cello!

Buxtehude was, apparently, much admired by Bach.  Perti wrote a rather beautiful setting of the Magnificat.  There was a version of O Dulci Jubilo, and I knew all the medieval carols they sang - Lully, Lully, and Veni, Veni, Emmanuel.  They finished with a piece that had a lot of Alleluias at the end.