Choral Evening Prayer Wed, 10th August 2016

[jean]

The service you heard yesterday used the exact same format of Evening Prayer which the Metropolitan Cathedral use for all their weekday evening services throughout the year. Loosely based on Vespers...

It's pared down certainly, but still recognisably Vespers!

What else is there even in the text everyone knows as set by Monteverdi? Psalms (each preceded and followed by the appropriate antiphon, something I've also attempted to explain to Draco), a Magnificat (no Nunc Dimittis of course), a Marian text or two. Even the introductory O God, come to our aid/O Lord, make haste to help us is a translation of Deus in adiutorium meum intende/Domine ad adiuvandum me festina.

That's it, however elaborate the setting.

[DracoM]

<< Loosely based on Vespers, it features mostly music and little said prayer & reading.>>

I totally agree. 'Loosely' is more or less what I said. But it WASN'T Vespers in the strict sense of how the Catholic Church celebrates it under that nomenclature.
In terms of worship formats, a great deal of what we hear and attend is surely a cross-breed from many other forms of worship, Anglican or Roman Catholic. Why on earth does it matter??

And I admire the Millennium Choir - I said it contains some 'fine voices' - direct quote from my posting. I just didn't think we heard them on them on their best day.

Or are we not allowed to express reservations? It's an OPINION. This is a Forum for the exchange of OPINION.

[subcontrabass]

<< Loosely based on Vespers, it features mostly music and little said prayer & reading.>>

I totally agree. 'Loosely' is more or less what I said. But it WASN'T Vespers in the strict sense of how the Catholic Church celebrates it under that nomenclature.

It is what the Roman Catholic Church uses today.

[Monty]

<< Loosely based on Vespers, it features mostly music and little said prayer & reading.>>

I totally agree. 'Loosely' is more or less what I said. But it WASN'T Vespers in the strict sense of how the Catholic Church celebrates it under that nomenclature.
In terms of worship formats, a great deal of what we hear and attend is surely a cross-breed from many other forms of worship, Anglican or Roman Catholic. Why on earth does it matter??

And I admire the Millennium Choir - I said it contains some 'fine voices' - direct quote from my posting. I just didn't think we heard them on them on their best day.

Or are we not allowed to express reservations? It's an OPINION. This is a Forum for the exchange of OPINION.

Your 'opinion' is entirely based on your dislike of a particular liturgy which is practised every day in that cathedral. That is irrelevant in any opinion of this service. It's a bit like a Catholic coming on to these messageboards and calling a normal CE 'frankly unimpressive' simply because it's evensong. The Gorecki and Howells are very difficult sings for any choir, as they both require such huge stamina. For such a young choir to perform both of them in the same service to that standard, and to give such a particularly stunning performance of the Gorecki at the end, is, IMO, very impressive indeed.

[jean]

I totally agree. 'Loosely' is more or less what I said...

But it's wrong anyway. Please see my post above.

BUT I was a bit puzzled as to why we had the Mag from the Howells St Paul's, but not the Nunc? As I acknowledged, this was 'Choral Prayer' and thus not in any way tied to the Choral Evensong format, but the fragmenting of the St Paul's Service canticles seemed odd...

It's actually called 'Choral Evening Prayer', but let that pass.

It is in fact 'tied' to the Vespers format, which is why the Howells canticles suffered what you call 'fragmenting'.

You find this 'odd'. Do you find it equally odd when Choral Evensong takes a Latin Magnificat by such as Palestrina, and then has to scratch around for a Nunc because Palestrina did not set one to match, since he did not have the foresight to realise that the future Choral Evensong might require one of each?

.

[Vox Humana]

You are. Rose had firm views about the correct speed of Stanford in C. He was a chorister at Salisbury under Sir Walter Alcock, and remembered Alcock - a friend of Stanford's - telling him of Stanford's puzzlement that organists should think that 'minim=100' was intended rather than what he had written, ‘crotchet=100’. Any unfortunate DoM who broadcast the setting on Choral Evensong at the incorrect speed i.e. too fast, would soon be put right - in no uncertain terms - by a curt postcard from Oxford.

Thank you. I was aware of the Alcock story, which is why I suspected I might be misremembering a connection with the more general speed anecdote. The bit about the postcards was new to me though. I wish I could remember where I picked up the comment about speed v. stature. I felt sure I had read it somewhere, but I can't locate it. Perhaps it's something I was told. Either way I must have considered the source reasonably authoritative or I wouldn't have given it any credence. In any case, whether it's actually true doesn't really matter because it is perfectly valid and isn't exclusive to poor music. I have often heard great music reduced to the trivial by excessive speed.

[Don Basilio]

Purely for information here is the text of Vespers in the Roman Liturgy of the Hours

http://www.universalis.com/20160810/vespers.htm

[DracoM]

Many thx.

[Don Basilio]

On my own I used the Roman rite for Evening Prayer in preference to the Anglican Book of Common Prayer (fine for choral cathedral settings but far too many bleeding chunks of scripture for private prayer) until 2000 when the C of E introduced a new form of Evening Prayer which took account of elements that the BCP overlooked.

[DracoM]

NB: Sunday repeat is at 3 p.m.

[jonfan]

I was very moved by this service and thought the singing was full of confidence and was very dramatic where needed. The hushed still moments were beautifully controlled with excellent balance and intonation. I liked the curve of the worship with the intricate polyphony and antiphonal effects of the Byrd at the start grabbing attention, to the controlled calm of the Gorecki drifting away into silence. [The service could have stopped here without the organ voluntary - a completion achieved.] Lovely warm sound in the Brahms with great feeling in the singing and robust attack in the Howells. If the MYC this year is on the young side it didn't show, so great was the maturity of the singing. The men sounded quite full-sounding with what must be fairly newly broken voices? Thank you MYC.
Excellent engineering; the best I've heard from this cathedral with clarity and also a sense of space. The big acoustic has been a sound engineer's graveyard in the past with poor definition and the whole a murky mess. Not this time!