Polyphonic Joy

I thought Christ Church Cathedral, Pusey House and Magdalen Coll., not to mention the chapel of St Mary's Wantage, had given me a fair old training in High Anglican rite, and that those years in Hampstead had drummed the responses in pretty effectively. So I popped along to Mary Mags (Cambridge spelling, I'm afraid) in the full expectation of slotting right in. Oh no. Witness if you will the unique embarrassment that is pratting your way through a (n otherwise beautiful) mass.

To begin with, I couldn't find the hymn, owing to the multiplicity of volumes I'd been given; a short and fairly discreet hunt turned it up in none of these but in a hymnal residing in the pew. The service was now underway, but I was frantically flipping through various sections of the ringbound folder to track down the liturgy (also different from home). I had just caught up when it became clear that the entire service was sung and I didn't know the chant. By this time blushing with shame and with whole tranches of the mass passing me by, I delved back into my various tomes, but was so bent on finding something that looked like notation in the book that I couldn't follow the words and therefore had no idea what I was looking for anyway. I had by now given up my attempts to improvise the chant and was dumbly scanning page after incomprehensible page. Sensing my rising despair, a kindly parishoner intervened in a true advertisment for Christian charity. The chant turned out to be in a section of the service booklet without page numbers, cross-referenced from a separate service sheet covered in cryptic markings. This was one of three additional sheets, the remaining two of which I now regarded with fear and dread, as it was clear that at some point I was going to have to incorporate them into papier mache mountain on the pew beside me. One was just readings, and mercifully straightforward, but all was tainted by the lingering awareness that when the sermon stopped I would be at the mercy of the paper Everest again. I was also flummoxed by innovations such as which way to turn for the gospel (read from the front), or for the collects (said from the aisle), or when to stand, sit or kneel (I no longer know what on earth I am meant to be doing during the Sanctus). I felt an utter twit, especially for sitting in an empty pew so that I couldn't even follow the person next to me.

So much for a morning of soothingly familiar liturgy. But there was lots of fabby incense and friendly congregation and nice clergy who gave me a little tour through their service book. Even if they had driven me from the door with staves, it would have been more than worth going for the music: upliftingly lovely Palestrina and Lassus, and well performed. Plus, unlike almost every college chapel, the acoustic was super-clear, so you really got the transcendental effect of the counterpoint. Gorgeous. Highlight of my week. Now I just have to master the missal and I might get to listen to it properly.