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And Our Mouths Shall Shew Forth Thy Praise: Evensong With a Men and Boys Choir
| Article
# : |
18659 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1991 |
3,421 Words |
| Author
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Christi Ann Merrill
Christi Ann Merrill is a free-lance writer and teacher
residing in New York City. |
In the chill of a winter afternoon, the sun sets behind St. Thomas Church in New York City. The fading daylight shines weakly through the stained glass windows to cast stripes of deep reds, blues, and greens on the otherwise solemn congregation. Hundreds of people wait patiently in their pews. By entering the hushed and darkening church, the worshipers have left the frantic concerns and anxious pace of mundane life behind and come to concentrate instead on thanking and praising God. A few kneel in prayer; others sit in contemplation; some muffle coughs and sneezes. Then a single male voice breaks the silence by intoning an ancient invitatory: "Oh Lord, open thou our lips."
The boys of the a cappella choir respond in a pure, clear soprano chorus: "And our mouths shall shew forth thy praise." Their trained voices rise from the shadows of the church and echo in the carved vaulting of the nave high above their heads. Then, as the echoes begin to fade, a subway's rumblings serve as a reminder of the incongruities in holding such an ancient service in the twentieth century.
Once a monastic rite, the evensong service celebrated at St. Thomas follows the Anglican form first approved by Henry VIII during the English Reformation in the sixteenth century. The English reformers combined the evening and late-night daily hours of the Roman rite, vespers, and compline, to create a single service that matched the medieval one in beauty and eloquence. Traditionally, the service corresponds with the natural waning of the day, a time that can be as gloomy as it is peaceful. This was the time when lamps were lit and people drew closer before ending the day's activities. Today the service continues to be quiet, contemplative, and intimate.
The Episcopal Church in the United States, like the Church of England from which it is descended, includes both evensong and evening prayer in its official liturgy. If an evening service is offered at all, most Episcopal churches celebrate a much less elaborate evening prayer where little or no music is sung. At evening prayer, the emphasis is placed on the literal meaning of the lessons read and the prayers recited.
At evensong, the liturgy is set to music so as to heighten and interpret the prayers and lessons. Today in the United States few churches are able to present evensong in its full grandeur--with a professional men and boys choir singing the canticles, anthems, vesicles, and responses.
Evensong is
...
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