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Cathedrals are more popular than ever, but how do we prevent them becoming religious theme parks during the week? Perhaps revitalising the evening liturgy might have part of the answer…
| With millions of visitors a year, a high profile in national life when disasters strike, regular appearances on television, and the responsibilities of being the mother church of the diocese, cathedrals are a highly visible part of Christian witness in England. For many people who would not otherwise notice the church very much, cathedrals appear to be the Church of England writ large. The ‘glorious liturgy’ of choral evensong offers anonymity and aestheticism to wide numbers of followers, but does it offer a window on to the activities of the church, a way in? Or is it in danger of becoming a self-selecting club for liturgical tourists? Might it be time for cathedrals to take some steps into the world of Common Worship in their evening slot as they have done on Sunday mornings? Perhaps the best of both worlds might be retained and ways might be found to prevent evensong becoming a peculiarly English piece of liturgical heritage that will atrophy over time into an indefensible side show. | |
Evensong is loved for its orderly worship and beautiful music; responses, psalms, canticles, anthem, the reading of scripture and the offering of prayer, all of which could be maintained whilst introducing some of the new texts in CW. To the un-churched visitor, a modern language evensong would still be a magical experience, with the best singing on offer in the most beautiful churches, in a service taken with dignity. It could also be an encouraging sign-post to what the church is doing in general. After all, what must such a visitor make of ‘the noise of the water pipes’, ‘smiting enemies in the hinder parts’, etc? If a foreign tourist’s only experience of the Church of England is choral evensong, it may be very pleasant but also highly puzzling, and if the visit to the cathedral feels very similar to the visit to Stonehenge, both might be associated with what we might call ‘dead culture’, in the cathedral’s case the impression may be given that this is what Christians used to do.
The danger of the ‘ghettoisation’ of evensong stems partly from its own success and also partly from the autonomy of English cathedrals, which have often seemed to exist principally for the preservation of their inherited rights (particularly involving property and money) and inherited customs (particularly liturgical and ecclesiastical independence). What allows cathedrals to react quickly and flexibly to real liturgical need at a moment of national grieving like the Soham tragedy is the very same independence which can turn inward and defensive in order to keep liturgical change out. The unregulated growth of diocesan structures within the Church of England in the nineteenth century increased the isolation of the bishop from his cathedral; the kathedra in a Church of England cathedral is normally empty and, when occupied, rarely used by the bishop to signify his gathering around himself of his familia. If the cathedral is the bishop’s church, why not return the bishop to that church, making him the dean? The bishop would be at the centre of the liturgical action of the diocese. As Heritage and Renewal rather politely put it, ten years ago, ‘as cathedrals have become more conscious, in recent times, of the need to use or develop their resources in creative responses to the general mission of the Church, they have not always - some would say, have not usually - done so in harmony with the plans of the rest of the diocese’. | |
The long term effects of evensong becoming cut off from the main liturgical life of the church, can be seen in the development of a defensive club mentality. And whilst this club delivers the very best music making of its kind in the world, membership (through the twenty-three fee-paying choir schools) is increasingly restricted to the middle classes, despite all efforts to the contrary. One vicar recently told me that the parents of a musically gifted child in her parish wouldn’t dream of putting him forward as a chorister. They were scared - first that he wouldn’t fit in at the cathedral, second, that if he did manage to fit in at the cathedral, he would no longer fit in back on the council estate where they lived, and third, the parents themselves were too scared to pick him up in their car when all the other parents seemed to have BMWs. Most pupils from the fee-paying schools go on to public schools and the cathedrals find themselves thus linked to the provision of generally first-rate Christian education, access to which is controlled largely by parental income.
Another result of the club mentality is disconnection from the mainstream modern music traditions with only a very small amount of music now being written for the church by leading composers of the day. This could be a product of secularization, or lack of commissioning vision, but it may also be that big name composers would find writing music for seventeenth century liturgy unappealing. There is no real equivalent now to that stream of composers from Ireland and Elgar to Tippett and Britten who were internationally renowned composers, but who also wrote for the Church’s liturgy. The exceptions now tend not to be Anglican: Tavener and Part (both Orthodox) and Macmillan (RC). Of the defences put up for maintaining the status quo, the most often heard is ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. But if this liturgy is being artificially preserved in the interests of middle-class music lovers and yet is not involved in the mainstream of modern musical developments, if it doesn’t appear to be even vaguely mission-shaped, and if it is capable of renewal without destruction, perhaps it needs to be broken gently to be reformed in new ways. | |
The introduction of CW material could be carried out either by having a separate track of services with newly commissioned music, say on one day a week. This CW Evensong would take advantage of all the seasonal variation now available in CW Daily Prayer. Another option would be to introduce some of the new texts into BCP evensong at various points. Any change is likely to disappoint the members of the club in the short term but perhaps give the choral tradition more chance of surviving in the longer term. Choral Evensong may otherwise go the way of Choral Matins.
| | Heritage and Renewal called cathedrals the ‘liturgical laboratories’ of the church, perhaps some experiments in the field of evening prayer might prevent them becoming liturgical museums. |
The Revd Martin Eastwood is Assistant Curate of Wymondham Abbey, Norfolk and studying for a research degree at UEA looking into the relationship between liturgy and music in English cathedrals. |
| | 'This article first appeared in the Church of England Newspaper,
4th March 2005'. | |
Reproduced with permission of the author | | | |
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UK Cathedral Music Links 2002 - 2006 |
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