commitment to the Song

With gracious thanks to M.W., who sent me a link to the excellent site The Daily Office from the Mission of St. Clare.

The site includes links to the BBC Choral Evensong, which is of course a staple of my life, as it has been for thousands of Anglicans these eighty years and more -- the longest running weekly radio broadcast that exists.

From Wikipedia, s.v. "BBC Radio 3":

The programme has a strong following, revealed by various unpopular attempts in the past to change the broadcast arrangements. When the programme was moved from Radio 4 to Radio 3 in 1970 it became a monthly broadcast but vigorous protests resulted in a return of the weekly transmission on Wednesday afternoons.

More recently, in 2007 the live broadcast was switched to Sundays which again resulted in protests. The live transmission was returned to Wednesdays in September 2008 with a recorded repeat on Sunday afternoons. Choral Evensong forms part of Radio 3's remit on religious programming though the musical performance and repertoire holds interest for a wider audience.

The Mission St. Clare site also includes links to Thursday Evensong at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco and Compline from St. Mark's, Seattle. This morning as I have worked through my e-mail and other deskwork, I have been listening to the Grace Cathedral broadcast and their excellent choir. For this service, the Canticles were Stanford in B flat, and the Anthem was Beati quorum via, likewise by Stanford - an appropriate choice for the feast, which was Eve of St. Francis.

The Grace Cathedral choir of men and boys is one of the finest in the world; the boys are in the Cathedral School, and the ATBs are all professional singers. Their singing of the Stanford music is splendid.

But it is, in one important way, inferior to what one would have heard at this year's RSCM Course (the Beati quorum via) and last year's (Stanford in B flat - I may be wrong about the year, but I know that we sang it very recently).

We were more committed to the music.

A choir such as Grace's sings this music all the time. Especially for the professionals, it can become commonplace: another day at the Office.

For those of us who attend an RSCM Course, it is anything but commonplace. This is our only opportunity all year to sing this sort of music, and with this sort of choir and director. For me, and I know for many others of us, these services, this music, are among the most important things in our lives. And that can be heard in the results.

I wrote of this some while ago about another time and place. We are, thank the Lord, not in the situation of those German musicians in 1944. For them, it really was life and death to play the Bruckner Ninth as what can only be termed a Prayer. But at whatever level one is making Music, it has a chance to be effective only when the musicians commit themselves entirely to what they are singing or playing.

As the Berlin Philharmonic showed in that recording, it is possible for professionals to achieve this. It is harder for them than it is for amateurs, and harder for adults than it is for children.