The Service of Evensong

St. Martin's Chamber Choir regularly presents the Anglican service of Evensong at area churches.  The following notes on Evensong are by Artistic Director Timothy Krueger:

The practice of singing evening prayers is as old as the church itself.  The Anglican service of Evening Prayer was the result of the joining of two of the ancient monastic offices--Vespers and Compline--into one service by Thomas Cranmer, the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury.  When the prayers are set to music and sung, either by the congregation, or on the behalf of the congregation by the choir, it is called 'Evening Song,' or 'Evensong' in Elizabethan English.  Composers from Cranmer's time to the present have given themselves to the composition of such settings, and these have been part of the church's continuous, daily offering of prayers ever since.   The settings range from the very simple, needing no choir, to the highly complex, as in those presented by St. Martin's.  The intent is in no way to replace or make superfluous the part of the congregation, but to take the very best we have of our gifts and talents, and to offer prayers and praises in as excellent a way as possible.  And, keeping in mind the great benefit of meditation and reflection to the development of our personal spirituality, it is choir's hope that the congregation will join wholeheartedly in the spirit of the service, such that our supplications and sacrifices be offered vicariously on behalf of 'all saints here present.'

Some of the choral works offered by St. Martin's at Evensong services have included settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis by Orlando Gibbons, Charles V. Stanford, and David Cutforth, God so loved the world by John Stainer, I saw a fair maiden by Peter Warlock, settings of From the rising of the sun by Frederick A.G. Ouseley and M. Susan Brown, and O Lord, the Maker by William Mundy.  The services also have included Anglican chant settings by Lawes, Tomkins and Walmisley, and settings of the Preces and Responses by Richard Ayleward and Glen McGrath.