"The Little Church Around the Corner"
One East 29th Street, New York
MUSIC NOTES:
Annual Memorial Service of
The Episcopal Actors Guild
The service of Choral Evensong is one of the great gifts of the Anglican Church to the treasury of Christian liturgy and music. The order of service is prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer (first published in 1549), and combines elements of the Roman Offices of Vespers and Compline, the formal evening and night prayers of the Church. The principal components of the service are the Evening Canticles, comprising the Magnificat (the song of Mary when she heard she was to be the mother of Christ) and the Nunc Dimittis (the song of Simeon when the child Jesus was presented in the Temple); the psalmody (all 150 psalms are sung in rotation throughout the course of a month); and a series of solemn prayers called Collects, offering the aspirations and intentions of the whole body of Christian believers in the context of the day's closing. The 1662 revision of the Book of Common Prayer established the place of the Anthem in Evensong, with its famous instruction after the Third Collect, In Quires and places where they sing, here followeth the Anthem. Evensong has brought into existence a vast repertoire of music, as composers both great and modest, from every country where the Book of Common Prayer is to be found, have turned their minds to the composition of music for the canticles, Anglican chants for the psalms, and anthems, versicles and responses, organ voluntaries and hymn arrangements, all for the enhancement of this beloved service.
Harking back to the monastic traditions from which Evensong derives, the service is primarily an act of formal worship in which the choir and the vested clergy speak on behalf of everyone assembled, and indeed of the whole Church. This is an ancient form of worship, and one which has found rather little favor in recent times, with its decided preference for direct congregational participation. Nevertheless, Choral Evensong continues virtually unchanged throughout the ages, surviving every manner of liturgical change, and reminding us of the efficacy and beauty of collective worship, which stresses the whole over the part, the community over the individual. It is also a reminder of the power of music to uplift and beautify, and to elevate the soul towards things unearthly, especially at eventide.
Harking back to the monastic traditions from which Evensong derives, the service is primarily an act of formal worship in which the choir and the vested clergy speak on behalf of everyone assembled, and indeed of the whole Church. This is an ancient form of worship, and one which has found rather little favor in recent times, with its decided preference for direct congregational participation. Nevertheless, Choral Evensong continues virtually unchanged throughout the ages, surviving every manner of liturgical change, and reminding us of the efficacy and beauty of collective worship, which stresses the whole over the part, the community over the individual. It is also a reminder of the power of music to uplift and beautify, and to elevate the soul towards things unearthly, especially at eventide.
