Choral Evensong

A rather special invitation today. I went to the 80th anniversary live broadcast of Choral Evensong from Westminster Abbey, and sat in the Quire, behind the choristers.

I've listened to Choral Evensong for years. Wednesdays have a regular pattern for me: recover from putting the paper together in the previous two days, leisurely lunch, listen to Choral Evensong at 4.00 pm, go to a dance class afterwards. I don't always listen with close attention - but the anthems, collects and psalms wafting through the house really lift me. And - especially this - I love the long meditative silences in a cathedral acoustic.
The programme's survival is a minor miracle. In 1970 it was almost dropped. But it was reprieved after protests from listeners, one of them the writer Marghanita Laski, a professed atheist. It flourishes now. On the BBC Radio 3 website, it is one of the programmes with most hits on the Listen Again page.

Evensong itself is an Anglican form of office, conflating the Catholic offices of Vespers and Compline. As I sat in the Abbey, I was struck by how expressive it was of the best in Anglican spirituality, but also, in a way, of the nation itself. The service is layered not only with the history of English faith, but also with centuries of a great choral tradition; today a Purcell introit, Psalm 63; Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis from Charles Villiers Stanford's Evening Service in A (I've alway loved Stanford, the love and the idealism in his writing, and thought that Dublin should claim him more proudly); and a thrilling anthem, The Twelve, by Walton with text by WH Auden. The service had many grace-notes, not least the appropriateness of including Purcell and Stanford - they are buried next to each other in the Abbey.

And I love the very word evensong. It's joyous and invites Joycean play. I thought its use might be post-Reformation, but apparently not. It's from the Old English æfensang. There is a 1486 usage from Catholic England, Let hir fast till euensong. Later Milton writes: Thee, chauntress, oft the woods among I woo, to hear thy even-song.

If Evensong is essentially Anglican, it still has echoes of pre-Reformation England. Westminster Abbey was a Benedictine Foundation until the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. When Basil Hume became Cardinal, Benedictine monks processed to the Abbey from the nearby Cathedral and sang Choral Vespers there, the first monks to do so in more than 400 years. Today there was another link with that Catholic heritage; the Master of Choristers is James O'Donnell, himself Catholic and until recently Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral.

Afterwards there was champagne in the East Cloister, with speeches from Roger Wright, R3's Controller, and Barry Rose, one of CE's longest-serving producers, who insisted that CE must never be a concert - that in its essence it must be meditative and prayerful. Then, a rousingly sung "Happy Birthday Choral Evensong", and a birthday cake baked by one of the listeners. A very English afternoon.

The broadcast from the Abbey is online at the programme's Home Page until next Wednesday.