It is an extraordinary effect when, after the familiar domestic procedures (switch on the power, place disc in player, press button, sit down amid cushions and papers), you enter a cavern. The place murmurs even before there is music for it to echo, but with the first sung words, “Save me, O God, for the waters are come in”, the vast hollow of the cathedral opens out within the living-room and for a moment or two we are transported. Psalm 69 itself is full of echoes (“For the zeal of thine house hath even eaten me ... Thy rebuke hath broken my heart ... and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink”). Its mind is haunted by the limitless power of the sea (“I am come into deep waters ... let not the water-flood drown me”) and the organ hints at its own infinite capacity in response. The human voices, for all the sturdiness of these strong trebles and the sonority of the men, sound as though from an isthmus of terra firma amid the unfathomable spaces of eternity. Nothing in the series so far has been more impressive than this first track of Vol. 6.
The fine effect is nevertheless achieved at a price. The tempo (if the term can be applied to chanting) is that of the slowest adagio conductor or composer ever devised. Westminster Abbey (“Psalms, Volume 1”, Virgin Classics) took 7'07'' over this psalm; the St Paul’s timing is 11'37''. Nor is this exceptional (Psalm 74, for instance, has St Paul’s at 8'00'' to the Abbey’s 5'50''). The pace increases somewhat for the confident Psalm 71, but generally if one takes the eye away from the printed text for what seems like an age, the finger is still marking the spot where they are when one returns!
It is also an occasion for battening down the hatches. The organ pedals reach out unto the uttermost parts of the room and the table-lamp shakes with the tempest of the same. The chants of these eminent men (a Master of the King’s Music, a Precentor of Eton, numerous Professors, countless Cathedral organists) repeat themselves in imperturbable, modest variance with the naked passions of the psalmist. Occasionally the choir respond, as in the enthusiastic unison of “He smote their cattle also with hailstones”, and when it comes to the turn of the first-born of Egypt, their afflictions are celebrated with the gusto of a rousing school-song.
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