1985: Prince Charles sings in Bach Choir
Daily Comfort ZoneSomething to amuse the King as he awaits prostate surgery… here’s a reminder of his participation in a Bach tercentenary performance of the B minor Mass.
Watch here.
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A huge choir; how things have changed. Nothing in the clip of the Prince singing Bach. The video is very short.
The King is can be seen singing Bach near the end of the clip, as the camera slowly pans to the right. On the word ‘Sanctus’.
His lips might have been mouthing “sanctus” but his mind was mouthing “tampon.”
“how things have changed” … back to the original
Of course today, smaller ensembles are not only a stylistic choice, it’s a budgetary necessity; in many ways we are reverting back to original sizes for the same reason original performances called for a small number of players: musicians were, and are, expensive
Hmm wonder what music goes with prostate surgery, obviously whatever the surgeons listen to while operating, most likely rock
Thank you for the chance to see my sister (next to the Duchess of Kent, who sang with the choir for decades), and my late father! One of the remarkable things about David Willcocks was that he trained the Bach Choir, which was always more than 200-strong, to sing with the precision of a chamber choir, and the results were often breathtaking.
So that’s four years before the Bach Choir flew out of LHR on 5 November 1989 to Hong Kong to perform at the same time as the then Prince and Princess of Wales went to open the the new Exhibition Centre hosting a British Trade Exhibition (Diana visited) and a British Higher Education Exhibition (Charles visited). Half the choir on my BA flight (me going to the HE Exhibition). Unfortunately, they weren’t inclined to treat us to any entertainment (unlike Rugby fans going to the Hong Kong Sevens in later years).
Wonderful that he put himself through this at all, but one wonders how many rehearsals he attended. Eyes glued to copy at ‘Sanctus’, and oh dear, that jaw!