psmv5: Ascension day

It so happened that on Ascension Day (reference 1) - forty days after Easter Sunday - this year on Thursday, 18th May - we were visiting Buckfast Abbey (reference 2) - and we used the opportunity to hear their (sung) Conventual Mass. Perhaps the second occasion on which I have heard mass, the first being a Christmas time service at Westminster Cathedral, quite some time ago now.

It seems quite likely to me now that this mass was conducted on quite old-fashioned lines - the presence of ladies in the choir apart - compared with what one might have in suburban churches here in Surrey, but I have not gone so far as to make inquiries on that point.

Proceedings started with a tour of the gardens. Handsome gardens, only slightly infected by outdoor art, and maintained to a higher standard than we manage in most of the public parks and gardens here in Surrey. Starting with an early break under a conveniently spreading chestnut tree. Plenty of cars in the car park and some coaches in the coach park.

The araucaria noticed from time to time, for example at reference 3, was looking well. It looks to me as if the tree has gained a rosette of branches at the top and lost one from the bottom. Perhaps there is some gardeners' rule about taking out the bottom rosettes. Or perhaps they tend to fall away from natural causes, with big suburban specimens often only retaining their crowns.

There might be another gardeners' rule about pots here, with there being an outer, tasteful earthenware pot and an inner, black plastic pot, perhaps as supplied by the garden centre.

Moving on into the Abbey itself, a view of the altar, the replica of the Barbarossaleuchter (top left) and a ornamental column (middle right) which I do not remember seeing before. But I don't suppose that it is actually new, just that I haven't noticed it before.

The front of the handsomely printed order of service. We hung onto ours, although they were collecting them up at the end. Not sure why, given that there is a date on the front which would complicate re-use, even supposing the interior content did not change - which one might think it would. New year, new ideas. New choir master, new ideas.

Three or four of the officiants had elaborate robes with a lot of green and gold. One, presumably the Abbot, had a mitre and, I think, a crozier. One was in a wheel chair. An altar boy. Plenty of bells and smells. I only noticed one or two monks in monkly black, so I suppose the rest of them were officiants.

Quite a big congregation, perhaps fifty of us. I suppose a mixture of villagers, pilgrims, tourists and strays, like ourselves. Most of them took communion, prompting discussion later about the various schools of thought on the matter of how often one should partake. A hot topic, I believe, for the controversial nuns of Port-Royal-des-Champs in the sixteenth century, although this is not mentioned at reference 4. But the once famous book at reference 6 gets a whole chapter in reference 5. Very roughly contemporary with disputes about the proper places of bishops in the world and communion tables in the church leading to our own Civil War.

There was a fair bit of music, most of it sung, presumably in Latin, by the choir, roughly ten men and ten women, all adults. I say presumably because it was the sort of singing in which I do not pay all that much attention to the words, often quite hard to make out anyway.

I thought the choir was very good, often moving and all the better for the music being, in the main, fairly straightforward. Little if any of the show-off stuff they tend to use at places like Kings College Chapel, particularly on high days and holidays.

I don't suppose one of the aforementioned Surrey churches would use medieval notation for any of their music. Maybe places like All Saints of Margaret Street. While they might like to but couldn't run to it at St. Barnabas of Ranmore. Finding our various visits to these two places is left as an exercise for the diligent reader.

Quite a lot of talk of the Lord and of sin in general, but nothing of a more practical nature. Not that that would really be appropriate on the day one celebrated the arrival of the second member of the Trinity at the other place.

A service with more emphasis on ritual than on the word, which is what one would expect. With our own Anglican church struggling manfully to strike a sensible balance between the two. A balance they perhaps managed, at least some of the time, during the nineteenth century, in the days of the parsons of Barchester of Trollope's novels.

Very glad to have been.