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The Rev'd Bosco Peters, a priest in the Anglican Church of New Zealand, writes the most widely-read Liturgy blog in the world. I read it regularly with edification and enjoyment, and I commend it to you.
Recently he wrote an essay “Concert or Common Prayer?” Small as I am (my "Music Box" blog entries are read by an average of eight to ten persons), I am obliged to attempt a rebuttal.
Choral Evensong (and its sister Choral Matins, rarely seen these days) lies in lineal descent from the daily morning and evening offerings established in Exodus 29:38-46 -- “And there I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory.” (v. 43). The daily sacrifices, and by extension prayer at the times of the sacrifices, carried over into the early Christian community. These sacrifices and prayers sanctified the places of worship where they were offered, and sanctified the day, making all the hours of it holy to the Lord.
As time passed, some persons received vocations from God to devote themselves more fully to prayer, first as anchorites in desert places and later more often in communities, a movement organized in the West under the Rule of St. Benedict. Chapters 8 through 20 of the Rule outline the manner in which the prayers of the Daily Office are to be conducted, with Psalmody and the reading of Scripture at their center.
In the Anglican Reformation, the seven Offices of the day became two, more plainly set forth and in English, parish clergy were directed to read them in the parish church every morning and evening, and it was expected that those from the parish who were able would join. Cathedrals and collegiate Chapels had a special obligation to maintain the Daily Office, which was already a part of their liturgical life. This process of revision is described in the Preface to the First Book of Common Prayer (1549), found in the American BCP of 1979 (hereafter “BCP”) at page 866-7.
The principal Offices had always been sung whenever possible, and it was logical that this should continue. As it happened, this was a golden age for choral music, and England was blessed with several great composers who turned their talents to the task of setting to music the new English texts. Much of their attention was devoted to music for Matins and Evensong. Polyphonic settings of the fixed prayers of the Offices appeared – one of the finest is by William Smith of Durham [Here is a rendition of the Responses], but there were others. Many polyphonic settings of the Magnificat, the Gospel Canticle for Vespers, already existed (in Latin); the composers wrote new settings for it in English, alongside the Nunc Dimittis, moved to Evensong from its former place in Compline. Here is one of my favorites from that era, from the Short Service of Gibbons.
Psalmody remained central to the Offices. Cranmer laid aside the complex arrangement of the Psalms that Benedict had established, and returned to the older and simpler Jewish devotional practice of praying the Psalter straight through in course over the space of a month. At first, they were sung to the plainsong tones. Over time, the plainsong was harmonized, and eventually developed into what we now know as Anglican Chant.
Thus it remains that “The Holy Eucharist, the principal act of Christian worship on the Lord's Day and other major Feasts, and Daily Morning and Evening Prayer, as set forth in this Book, are the regular services appointed for public worship in this Church.” (BCP p. 13, “Concerning the Service of the Church”). The choral singing of any of these services, whether Eucharist or Daily Prayer, exists in the larger context of all regular public worship in the Anglican tradition, spoken or sung, modest or elaborate.
In his essay, Fr. Peters' objections to Evensong are three: Intelligibility (“I could not pick out a single word that the choir was chanting...”), the lack of opportunity for active participation by those in the congregation, and the piety of the choristers and organists (or lack thereof). With all three of these, his points are well taken, but some response must be made.
Intelligibility. This is a challenge for choirs. We know it, and good choirs work hard at it. I recently completed a week at an RSCM Course with some of our choristers under the direction of Dr. Dale Adelmann, of St. Phillip's Cathedral in Atlanta; he in turn follows in most respects the model of his teacher, Dr. George Guest, formerly of St. John's College, Cambridge, one of the places where the tradition of Choral Evensong is strongest. It would be fair to estimate that half or more of our rehearsal time at the Course was devoted to matters of diction, all with the intent of more faithfully presenting the text intelligibly.
The Psalms present an especially great challenge: there is a lot of text, the rhythm of the text is fluid in a manner unlike the metered choral music we more often sing, and pacing of the text and the shaping of the musical line in order to emphasize one or two important syllables in each half-verse is vital. It takes rehearsal, and intense focus from all choristers, to achieve the unity in these matters that is essential in order for the congregation to have any chance to understand the text. Still, it remains difficult and requires attention from the listener as well. And if all this fails, the texts are in the Prayerbook.
Most of the sung texts at Evensong are either the fixed prayers, the Canticles, or the Psalms. In the first case, the form of prayer we sing is not exactly that in our American BCP of 1979, but is close enough so that people can get the drift of the meaning – and it is identical at every Evensong (differing only in musical setting), so regular attenders can learn the texts by heart soon enough, as are the Canticles, which exactly follow the wording in the Rite One service of Evening Prayer (BCP p. 65, 66). We purposely sing the Psalms in the modern text of the 1979 BCP, which is what is in our pews. Many places sing the older translations of Coverdale from the 1662 BCP and its predecessors, but even so, a person could follow in the 1979 BCP and have a clear idea as to what is being sung. Anthem texts ought to be printed in a service bulletin, as we do, with translations when we sing in a language other than English.
Piety. Peters notes that at a service in this tradition that he attended, only two of the adult choristers received communion. He writes: “The choir is part of the leadership of the service. Is there a critical mass of people of faith needed in a choir (in the leadership of any service) to move a service from the concert end of the spectrum to the common prayer end?”
My short answer is Yes. In the older RSCM training materials, one aphorism was this: Religion is caught, not taught. For this to happen within a choir, or for that matter a parish, there must indeed be some critical mass. It need not be large – it has never been large, never more than a remnant, at one time as few as eight persons (cf. I Peter 3:20 – Noah and the Ark).
But it is not as simple as that. Long ago, controversy arose over the issue of whether the sacraments were valid when administered by a priest who was an unbeliever or a notorious sinner. The answer discerned by the church was that the sacraments are the work of God, and depend upon him for their validity – not upon the human hands that administer them. I would submit that to some degree the same can be said about the Song, the task entrusted to choir, organists, and other musicians (e.g., guitarists, cantors, praise band singers, members of a singing congregation). The Song is the expression and prayer of Holy Mother Church, is redeemed only by the blood of Christ, and has life only through the operation of the Holy Spirit. None of us fully cooperate in this activity. But when we are weak, we are carried along by others, by the “critical mass of people of faith” mentioned by Fr. Peters, and by the grace of God – manifested in part through the Song itself:
Sometimes a light surprises
the Christian while he sings;
it is the Lord who rises
with healing in his wings:
when comforts are declining,
he grants the soul again
a season of clear shining,
to cheer it after rain.
(William Cowper)
There is, I suspect, another issue at play: many church musicians (including choristers) do not like the Episcopal Church, and our dislike is most intensely focused on the clergy. We have watched for fifty years as they have denigrated our work, disbanded choirs, silenced organists, and presented us with a parade of liturgical texts increasingly divorced from Scripture or tradition (the New Zealand Church's recent efforts in regard to the Collects of the Day, said efforts rightly opposed by Fr. Peters, are an example). They have taken away the great hymns of the church and replaced them with trite recycled pop.
From the cheery “Good morning!!!” at the beginning of the Holy Eucharist to the end, the Sunday Eucharist is (at worst) all about the clergy, or (at best) about the gathered community there present (e.g., ten minutes of hugging and chitchat at the “peace,” followed by another ten minutes of parish announcements), and not to any great degree about the Lord. It is no wonder that many choristers and organists do not take communion, or do other things that the clergy would recognize as reflective of belief.
Instead, we sing. We play the organ, we direct the choir. Or if we can do none of these things, we attend Evensong. The Music is often all we have, the one thing that keeps us in the church, hanging on by our fingernails. I could name many people who would never come near a church were it not for choral music, and especially Choral Evensong. And, I submit, our faithful adherence to our bounden duty as choristers and organists is reflective of belief (cf. St. James 2:14-26), even if (when asked) we would say that we are “here for the music – full stop.”
For it is at Evensong that some degree of piety remains in the Church. There is no scope for the clergyperson's personality to shine, there is hopefully no Sermon, there is no hugging or chitchat, and certainly no recycled pop music. Instead, there is (for the choristers) Prayer at its most intense, immersion in Psalmody, and the constant companionship of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis.
I have written mostly of those who participate as choristers in Evensong, and the spiritual benefit is for them the greatest. I have never prayed so intensely as when singing a good setting of the Preces and Responses (such as Smith, linked above); it requires all of one's spirit and mind and body (in terms of breath, posture, etc.), and absolute connection with the moment. I see this every time I teach the Smith, or Ayleward, or other good setting to the youth choir. They are drawn immediately to this music, and once they "get it," they are almost bursting with excitement at the beginning, like race horses at the starting gate: "O Lord, open thou our lips: And our mouth shall shew forth thy praise." [The Smith Preces are here, at the 4:10 mark in the YouTube clip, following a plainsong introit, and with an example of Anglican Chant psalmody following, all from the choir of Westminster Abbey]
In the “big league” choirs where Evensong is sung daily (such as Westminster Abbey), a chorister soon knows all 150 Psalms with an intimacy gained in no other way than by intense rehearsal – at St. John's, for example, Dr. Adelmann tells us that they sing the Morning Psalms for one term, and the Evening Psalms for the other term. Even in our parish, where we sing Evensong only once, the First Sunday of each month, the choristers have come to know that small selection of psalms – those appointed for the first seven evenings – extremely well. They know them well enough to have a good sense of what the entire Book of Psalms is about, why it is important to us, and how one might approach the other Psalms that we do not regularly sing. Like the Religious for whom the Offices and their Psalmody are central, this is a factor in Conversion of Life – at least for those who do not stop their ears to them.
For that is a challenge too: choristers and organists can become so angry at the church that they stop paying attention to what they are singing. That is why we begin our rehearsals with the Choristers' Prayer; we seek God's help in this matter.
Bless, O Lord, us thy servants who minister in thy temple: Grant that what we sing with our lips we may believe in our hearts, and what we believe in our hearts we may shew forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Lack of active participation:There is benefit also for those who are not choristers, and for some of the same reasons. Attending Choral Evensong is precisely akin to the experience of visiting a monastic house, and listening in for a time on the conversation of their liturgy [“and there will I meet with the children of Israel...” it is, in some manner, through these Daily Prayers that God meets with the brothers or sisters – meets with them, forms them, and makes them into what he envisions them to be] – a conversation which began long before we arrived at their gate, and will continue long after we depart. As visitors, we are not fully part of it, but we are reminded of the great calm stream of liturgy and prayer, and invited to dip our toes into it – or wade in, or immerse ourselves in it and be carried away. Unlike the Eucharist, no one is going to pressure us at Evensong to “belong” and hug everyone, or chitchat, or preach at us, or give money (especially that; we are always asking for money in the church); the stream, the river of living water, is there (cf. St. John 7:38, Revelation 22:1-3), and we can approach it as we are able.
Most of all, we are not under the pressure of saying the right words at the right time, of what often passes for “active participation.” As when visiting the monastic house, we need not understand every word at Evensong, for much of what is going on is nonverbal. We certainly need not say anything or do anything; the activity is on a different level than that. We need not participate at all, if we are not ready. But when we are, we can join our heart and mind and spirit to the Psalms of David, the Magnificat, the prayers of Holy Mother Church. We can enter through the choral Office into the courts of heaven.
---
The office of Chorister is humble in comparison with that of Deacon, or Priest, or Bishop, but it is nonetheless a Vocation, and if it is the one to which God has called us, we must fulfill it. In the RSCM office of Admission to the Choir, the new Chorister answers these questions:
Minister: N., do you wish to join the choir?
New Chorister: I do.
Minister: As a member of the choir, will you do your best to help the people worship God?
New Chorister: I will.
For many of the nine-and-ten year olds who join our choir, this will prove to be a Life Profession. Many of them will still be singing in choirs when they are grandmothers and grandfathers.
With this office of Chorister (and more so with the office of Organist or Choirmaster), there comes a responsibility to represent the Lord Jesus Christ in a special way, akin to the responsibility that one who wears the collar must bear. When we act in an impious manner during the church services, it reflects badly on our Lord, just as a priest who mumbles his way through the liturgy, preaches without preparation or study, or uses the liturgy as a platform to “prance around in his finery” (as one of our parishioners says) brings discredit to the the Church and its Lord.
We must do better, as Fr. Peters rightly suggests. All of us, clergy and musicians alike, young and old, are works in progress. We endure the “patient hammerblows of grace” (Olivier Messiaen) and the Conversion of Life that they bring, in order to fit us for our place in the kingdom: “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” (I Peter 2:5)
Fr. Peters is absolutely right that much of the problem lies in the lack of “liturgical training, study, and formation” which results in the forms of liturgy being passed on by “non-reflecting example,” and over time losing their content. It is incumbent upon choirmasters (of which I am one) to remedy this. We must ensure that our choristers understand what they are about when they sing Choral Evensong (or participate musically in the Eucharist). This can rarely happen, however, through explicit instruction. It must, after all, be primarily by example, or more precisely instruction backed by example. We must ourselves be “people of devout conduct, teaching the ways of earnestness to the Choirs committed to [our] charge” (“Declaration of Religious Principles” of the American Guild of Organists).
Opportunity arises when a young chorister raises her hand and asks what a phrase means in the Psalm that we are rehearsing, or the anthem text. Or a word, or phrase, from anywhere in the liturgy. As choirmaster, I must have created an atmosphere where choristers can inquire about such things, and then I must answer as best I can, or (better) help the group as a whole to come up with an answer. And it must be done without spending a lot of time on it – we have Work to do; we have to get the diction and pacing right for the Psalm, or get the Anthem learned. Those tasks in themselves are the more important part of formation; they require us to pay close attention to every word, every syllable of every word, and through the music devote our whole body, mind, spirit, and voice to the work at hand.
Last year, our combined choirs sang the Vaughan Williams anthem “Lord, thou hast been our refuge.” Psalm 90 is not part of our normal Evensong rotation, and this provided opportunity for us to learn the text in detail – about three months of work for our youth choir and perhaps two months for our adults – this was a stretch for us, about as great of a challenge as our all-volunteer parish choir can manage. I believe that what they carried away from the experience were these things, among others: they saw that I (and behind me Holy Mother Church) care enough about this text to spend three months working on it with them and then to sing it in church, and to do so in the finest manner possible (and in a setting composed by precisely the sort of agnostic described earlier, whose faith is most evident in his works). [Here is my essay about that day, last October]
They saw that the liturgy must include music of this sort, texts of this sort, and that such things do not happen without a lot of work – and that it is very much worth all that work. When the day arrived, they noted that Psalm 90 was appointed for the liturgy at that Eucharist, saw its relation to the liturgy as a response to the Old Testament lesson (I pointed out the nature of the connection explicitly that morning in the warmup), and they saw (not for the first time) that the choice of psalmody or anthem or hymnody is not based on personal whim or taste, whether mine or the Rector's, but on the considered and prayerful deployment of Scripture in the Lectionary, telling the Story over the course of the year – and this anthem, this day, had its place in that Story.
