Sunday, 9th April, 2023

Today, we celebrated Easter by attending a Choral Eucharist at Truro Cathedral. So many other people had decided to do the same thing that the cathedral was almost full! There were 43 members of the choir, including, boys, girls and men. The Service was recorded and can be found on YouTube. The music included "This joyful Eastertide" arranged by Wood,  "Coronation Mass" by Mozart and "Blessed be the God and Father" by SS Wesley. The hymns were "Jesus Christ is Risen Today", "Alleluia, Alleluia! Hearts to Heaven and Voices Raise" and "Thine Be the Glory". For me the highlights of the video are the wonderful unison singing by the men in the Agnus Day (starts at 1:17:50, "Blessed be the God and Father" (starts at 1:19:20) and Satoshi and I receiving Communion (starts at 1:28:40). The acoustics of the cathedral are superb, the standard of the music was excellent and the whole service was a wonderful celebration of Easter. We couldn't stay for all of the organ voluntary ("Variations on an Easter Theme" by John Rutter) because we had to leave in order to get to St Michael's Mount on time (we had booked for 1:00pm and the service didn't end until well past 11:30am!)




Satoshi and I receiving communion during the Service. This is a screenshot from the video mentioned above. Who can say why the camermn decided to zoom in on us just then?


St Michael's Mount is an island which is accessible via a granite causeway when the tide is out, otherwise access is only via boat. Fortunately, we were able to cross via the causeway. It's quite a rough surface and then, as you can see in the photos, there is a lot of "up" involved to get to the castle itself. In the end, I was surprised that I managed the climb as well as I did.






The views from the castle back to the town of Marazion were amazing!



The Castle has some gardens but we didn't have time to visit them properly. A quick look over the castle battlements had to suffice.






This is the causeway that we had to walk over to get to the Castle.



The tide was so far out that these boats became stranded.



The font in the chapel.



Some of the stained glass in the chapel was wonderful.



St George and the Dragon



I thought the way the toes of Jesus were depicted here was really quite funny!



St Michael defeating Lucifer (Revelation 12:7-10)




The doorway to the Chapel



The Blue Drawing Room




The Great Hall









This case contains the mummified remains of an Egyptian cat.
I had wanted to get back to Truro in time for Evensing at 4:00pm but on seeing the number of people at St Michael's Mount and the line waiting to get in, I had thought that we hadn't much hope of achieving this. To my delight, after we left the Castle, I realised that we might be able to manage it. Accordingly, we hot-footed our way back down the causeway, across the sand and back to the car. Despite a wrong turn, we managed to arrive at the Cathedral just as the bells stopped and we entered at 3:57pm. Again the cathedral was full but we managed to find a spot. The music included the Preces and Responses by Bernard Rose, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis from "The St Paul’s Service" by Herbert Howells, Stanford's setting of Psalm 150, and the anthem "Lo, the full, final sacrifice" by Gerald Finzi. The choir was even larger than this morning because many former choristers had come to sing for the last service with the current Director of Music, Christopher Gray, before he moves to St John's College in Cambridge. The Organ Voluntary was  "Fête" by Langlais. Once again, the service was recorded and, for the time being at least, can be found here. (We have been advised that both recordings mentioned on this page will only be on Youtube for about a week so don't miss out!!)Following the Service, I managed to get some photos of the cathedral but it was getting dark. As we are visiting it again tomorrow morning (for a "proper" look around), I will provide photos in tomorrow's journal entry. C:\Users\ELLYSH~1\AppData\Local\Temp\mso334A.tmp



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