Sunday, June 04, 2006 AD
Ave, Choral Evensong!
I've added another link to the "Daily Prayer" section, to the BBC's Choral Evensong page. This includes each week's Evensong broadcast, and details of the schedule for future broadcasts.
As I type this, I'm listening to last week's broadcast, from St David's Cathedral. Some very nice chanting in the psalms, but what makes it a "must listen" is that they're doing the Rose responses, probably my favourite setting, with the possible exception of the Smith responses.
(For those unfamiliar with the service of evening prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, the responses come at two points: the "Preces" at the start of the service, beginning "O Lord, open thou our lips", and the "Responses" after the Creed, beginning "The Lord be with you". Rose's setting of the Lord's Prayer in the "second half" is especially gorgeous.)
31st May (the date of the broadcast) was the Feast of the Visitation of the BVM, so there's a decidedly Marian air to the service. It appears the Anglican practice is that it's OK to sing to the BVM as long as you do it in Latin (so we have a setting of the Ave Maria, and one of Salve Regina), but if you're singing in a tongue that is "understanded of the people" then you can only sing about her ("Now in Holy Celebration Sing We of that Mother Blest").
Mind you, it's not as Marian as the service I attended that evening at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, near where we were staying on holiday that night. OK, technically the Shrine is Anglican, but they don't let that stop them. The service of evening prayer was taken from the Roman Catholic Divine Office, which doesn't feel the need to drop into Latin when addressing the Virgin. (Personally, I could cope with the odd bit of "Hail Mary"-ing in a quoting-scripture, literary-apostrophe sense during the office hymn and the antiphons, but I drew the line at asking her to pray for me later in the service.)
As I type this, I'm listening to last week's broadcast, from St David's Cathedral. Some very nice chanting in the psalms, but what makes it a "must listen" is that they're doing the Rose responses, probably my favourite setting, with the possible exception of the Smith responses.
(For those unfamiliar with the service of evening prayer from the Book of Common Prayer, the responses come at two points: the "Preces" at the start of the service, beginning "O Lord, open thou our lips", and the "Responses" after the Creed, beginning "The Lord be with you". Rose's setting of the Lord's Prayer in the "second half" is especially gorgeous.)
31st May (the date of the broadcast) was the Feast of the Visitation of the BVM, so there's a decidedly Marian air to the service. It appears the Anglican practice is that it's OK to sing to the BVM as long as you do it in Latin (so we have a setting of the Ave Maria, and one of Salve Regina), but if you're singing in a tongue that is "understanded of the people" then you can only sing about her ("Now in Holy Celebration Sing We of that Mother Blest").
Mind you, it's not as Marian as the service I attended that evening at the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, near where we were staying on holiday that night. OK, technically the Shrine is Anglican, but they don't let that stop them. The service of evening prayer was taken from the Roman Catholic Divine Office, which doesn't feel the need to drop into Latin when addressing the Virgin. (Personally, I could cope with the odd bit of "Hail Mary"-ing in a quoting-scripture, literary-apostrophe sense during the office hymn and the antiphons, but I drew the line at asking her to pray for me later in the service.)
