I suppose the only thing to say is that this was the choir trip of a lifetime. There are more exotic places to go and there are more prestigious places to sing (St Paul’s, Westminster, York?) but for sheer bravado, the idea that a parish choir from England could actually go and sing there for a week, Washington DC has to come close to beating them all.
The place speaks for itself—the capital city of the world’s most powerful nation. But it is also one of the world’s must-see tourist destinations; maybe not an obvious one, but thoroughly to be recommended. Its accessibility, accommodation, public transport, life-style and visual impact are superb. Washington is life-size and welcoming, neither enormous nor intimidating. It is spectacular, but it is human. If you’ve not been, then go!
It was hard work, mind you. We arrived on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday evening we were singing evensong in the nearby parish church of St Paul’s, K Street, having got there by bus (see http://www.stpauls-kst.com/). On Monday we transferred to the cathedral and sang every afternoon until Saturday when we had the day off. Then on Sunday we sang for the main morning Eucharist service and finally for evensong. Just to prove we were there, a video of the Sunday morning service can be watched on broadband at http://media.cathedral.org/11am/HE060820.wmv.
Our music was different each day, and had to be rehearsed before each service. We had the use of the resident choir’s rehearsal room in a cloister, before walking up to the stalls in the Choir to rehearse with the organ (and the tourists). We had learned the music before we went, and had inflicted it on St Mary’s congregations for some weeks beforehand. I hope they enjoyed being guinea pigs. The liturgy is virtually the same as ours, with the singular difference that they do not pray for the Queen, they pray for the State. The priest at St Paul’s K Street is English and on the Queen’s birthday this year, much to the amusement of his congregation, he had the temerity to do it properly.
So what about the rest of the time? We had the mornings free, and we “did” the museums and the memorials in central Washington mostly along the National Mall. Yes, they have a Mall too, between Capitol Hill and the Lincoln Memorial (see http://www.nps.gov/nama/). We were privileged to have an authorised tour of the White House and some of us got into (and out of) the Capitol, the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress. Our roof-garden breakfast in the Hotel Washington on Pennsylvania Avenue was something special (see http://www.hotelwashington.com).
For as much as the evenings were concerned, during our stay it was Washington’s food week, during which many of the restaurants had set meal deals, much taken-advantage-of by connoisseurs and gobblers alike.
The weather? Gosh! Now I know why Americans have ice-makers instead of fridges, air-conditioning instead of windows that open, and ear-plugs.
The cathedral is a proud Perpendicular Gothic Revival building designed by an Englishman, George Frederick Bodley. Amongst many other fine buildings he is known for his influence on the Lady Chapel of Liverpool Cathedral (while apprenticed to Gilbert Scott) and for the design of cathedrals in Tasmania and San Francisco.
The cathedral was built between 1907 and 1990 and has a satisfying uniformity of style throughout (see http://www.cathedral.org/cathedral/discover/archpage0.shtml).
One of the striking memories I have is of a guide who wished me particularly to understand that the cathedral was built by hand using craft skills rather than by machine. Perhaps I am a European after all.
It is built on Mount St Alban, the highest point in Washington DC next to a large school from which the cathedral choristers are drawn. It has an impressive collection of administration buildings and a large crypt underlying the entire building, where some of the nine chapels in the cathedral are situated and where worship commenced shortly after the foundation stone (from a field near Bethlehem) was laid by President Theodore Roosevelt and the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram. The latest addition is to be an underground car park, under construction while we were there, and which prevented us seeing the Darth Vader gargoyle from the ground.
There appeared to be no lack of resources. And perhaps that is my lasting impression.