Service (music)

In Anglican church music , service describes the musical composition of certain parts of the liturgy , usually for choral singing with or without organ accompaniment .

The sections of the Anglican service to be set to music are:

Morning Prayer

• Venite ( Psalm 95 - rarely set to music after the English Restoration )
• Te Deum or Benedicite
• Benedictus ( Lk 1, 68) or Jubilate (Psalm 100)

Holy Communion

• Responsories to the Ten Commandments
• Creed
• Sanctus
• Gloria

(The order follows the Book of Common Prayer ; the modern Anglican liturgy is largely aligned with the Roman Catholic mass ).

Evening Prayer

• Magnificat or (rarely) Cantate Domino (Psalm 98)
• Nunc dimittis or (rarely) Deus misereatur (Psalm 67)

A full service includes all three of these prayer times. With the disappearance of daily morning services from the Anglican liturgy and the restriction of choir participation in the communion service , the composers increasingly turned to the evening service . The funeral service ( Burial Service , cf. Requiem ) has sometimes been set to music separately.

In the Tudor period and in the early 17th century, services were known as "Short", "Great" or "Verse" services . Verse Services included sections for solo voices, Short Services were simpler settings for (mostly) four-part choir that could be performed a cappella , Great Services (the most famous of which is William Byrd 's) were long and sophisticated and probably reserved for special occasions. After the restoration, these names were dropped and the services were differentiated based on the key (e.g. Henry Purcell's Service in g or similar). Modern settings are often named after the church or choir for which they were composed, e.g. B. Collegium Magdalenae Oxoniense by Kenneth Leighton for Magdalen College or the Gloucester Service by Herbert Howells for Gloucester Cathedral .