Day 14: Windsor Castle and Royal Holloway College

25 January 2018

Our day begin with a trip to Windsor Castle! This is one of the official residences of the British monarch and it has many features, including the state apartments, Mary’s Dolls House, and St. George’s Chapel. While I could not take any pictures inside these attractions, I can say that it is hard to come up with words to describe the fancy living in the state apartments and the amount of gold that was everywhere. While the Dolls House was a little more underwhelming considering I just witnessed the most amount of fanciness in one building ever, it was still cool to see a monarch’s doll collection and to know her husband’s dedication to building the giant house for her dolls. Lastly, St. George’s Chapel was like most of the other chapels I had visited, but it was cool to know that many kings and queens were buried in this building along with Henry VIII, a king that has been a prominent figure in the religious studies portion of our course. 








After some lunch and some free time, we took a short ride to Royal Holloway College, where we received a tour and got to sing with their choir in our last Evensong service of the trip. Before the tour, we heard a presentation from our last group. Austin, Callie, and BJ talked about the organs that we saw at Salisbury Cathedral, Greyfriar’s Kirk, and Selwyn College. They talked about the features of each one and compared and contrasted each one. We also learned a little bit about how an organ works and how to play one. Our challenge was originally going to be that we had to talk to a Selwyn College organ scholar, but due to the fact that the presentation got delayed until after the Selwyn visit, we were just supposed to take a picture of the organ at Royal Holloway and possibly talk to their organ scholar if we had the chance (I did not get the chance to do this, sadly). 





The tour was nice, but the more important part was the rehearsal and the Evensong service. It was more of the same. Prayers and psalms are read and sung and the choir joined in with the chapel choir to sing “Magnificat”, “Nunc Dimittis”, and “Bethlehem Down.” The audience members were a few college students, the few R-MC students that were not part of the choir, and a few older men and women. The choir wore their usual black and white robes. 

The only part of the service that was different to me was the fact that I had forgotten my music on the bus and I had to read off of Atticus’s iPad. Due to my seating arrangement, I had to switch to tenor for “Bethlehem Down.” This meant that I had to sight-read the tenor part on the fly, which actually was not hard at all. While I usually sing the alto part on that piece, I thought I did really well singing a different part on such short notice. 

I feel that this was our best performance, which is to be expected now that this was our fourth and final Evensong service. Now that our singing is all wrapped up for our trip, I can reflect on my favorite choral parts. My favorite place to sing overall was the Ely Cathedral due to the acoustics and our great repertoire. My favorite Evensong service was definitely the first one at Salisbury because the choir was amazing and the experience was unlike any other.  

Our final full day is tomorrow! 

- Jacob Stech 

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