Music
The cathedral has the traditional Anglican choir of boys and men, and more recently a girls' choir, with the only dedicated choir school in the Church in Wales, The Cathedral School, Llandaff. In addition, the parish choir sings at the weekly Parish Eucharist, and is a mixed choir of boys, girls, men and women. Women were only allowed to sing in the choir from 2005 onwards.
The organ that was installed after the wartime damage was never entirely satisfactory, even before the lightning damage. Originally it had been planned to install a new organ at that time, but the costs of about 1 million pounds were deemed to be too high in the austere climate of post-war Britain. Work on installing the new organ, by the Nicholson's of Malvern firm of organ builders, began in autumn 2008. Though not fully completed, it was brought to a playable stage by Easter 2010 and had its inaugural performance (the Gloria of Louis Vierne's Messe Solennelle) at the Easter Vigil service on 3 April 2010. The stops still lacking, due to the necessary funding not yet having been acquired, are those of the enclosed solo and some pedal stops. This is the first entirely new organ for a British cathedral since that for Coventry. A specification can be seen here.
The cathedral has a ring of twelve bells (with an additional "flat sixth", to make thirteen in total) hung for change-ringing, located in the Jasper tower. The current bells were installed in 1992, replacing a previous ring of ten.
Read more about this topic: Llandaff Cathedral
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden, that like instruments of music which obey the touch ... you would think the will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is,—the soul is [so] ... wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not ... take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet slower yet, oh faintly gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
“Woe weeps out her division when she sings.”
Droop herbs and flowers;
Fall grief in showers;
“Our beauties are not ours”:
Oh, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“I think sometimes, could I only have music on my own terms; could I live in a great city and know where I could go whenever I wished the ablution and inundation of musical waves,—that were a bath and a medicine.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)