Choral Evensong in the Octave of Witsun

Join us for a special service of Choral Evensong sung by Capella Regalis Men, Boys, and Girls Choirs who will be visiting from Nova Scotia as part of a 10-day Quebec-Ontario Tour (their first tour outside the Maritimes!). The service will feature splendid music for Pentecost with works by English composers William Harris, Herbert Howells and Thomas Tallis. Paul Halley, multi-Grammy Award-winning Canadian composer and keyboardist, will join the choirs as guest organist. All are welcome to attend this one-hour service of music and prayers.   
 
Capella Regalis Choirs sing a concert at St George's Cathedral the next day, Thursday, May 28 at 7pm. More information here. 

St George's Cathedral Choir typically sings Evensong on the first and third Wednesday of every month. Their final service of the program year was on May 20, 2026. We look forward to its return on September 16. They offer one final service on June 14 at 4pm at the Church of Saint John the Baptist in Madoc to which all are invited.

ABOUT CHORAL EVENSONG

The origins of Choral Evensong go back many centuries, and have their roots in the ancient patterns of monastic worship, which were based on the regular singing of all 150 psalms and the systematic reading of the Bible. Brief services, or offices, were said or sung throughout the day and night, in accordance with St. Paul’s instruction to ‘pray without ceasing’, so that the whole of the daily routine of monks and nuns could be sanctified and offered to God. In the aftermath of the Reformation in England, the first Book of Common Prayer (published in 1549) combined elements from a number of the monastic offices to form the dual services of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, or Evensong. Each has as its central feature the recitation or singing of the Psalms; readings from Scripture; and prayers for the Church, the world, and those in need. Both services have fixed songs or canticles associated with them, including the Magnificat (the Song of Mary from St. Luke’s Gospel) and the Nunc dimittis (the Song of Simeon from St. Luke’s Gospel) at Evensong. This format was formalized in The Book of Common Prayer 1662 and has remained largely unchanged ever since.

MUSIC NOTE: Come Down, O Love Divine – Phil Rogers (written in 2024)

Words by Bianco da Siena, b. ca. 1350, d. 1434. (Although he was born in Anciolina, in Arezzo, and died in Venice, before becoming a lay brother he worked as a wool carder in Siena.) He entered the newly-founded brotherhood of Gesuati, who were unordained men that renounced the world and lived in apostolic poverty, devoted to charitable, especially medical, work and to preaching. They had their name because of their custom of shouting “praise the name of Jesus” before and after preaching. Pope Clement IX, possibly pressured by the Jesuits, abolished the order in 1668. Bianco wrote more than 100 religious poems, which were widely popular, though not printed until 1851. This poem is “Discendi, amor santo". The translation is a cento of Bianco’ work by Richard Frederick Littledale (b. Dublin 1833, d. London 1890). He was ordained and held several curacies before retiring from parish work because of ill health. Littledale was a devoted Tractarian, but strongly opposed Anglo-Catholics becoming Roman Catholics. He spent the greater part of his life writing on ritualism and writing hymns and translating hymns from various languages. This hymn first appeared in his The People’s Hymnal (1867), but remained relatively unknown until RVW set it to Down Ampney (pronounced with only a hint of the p), named for the small Gloucestershire village in the Cotswolds where he was born in 1873. His father was the Rector of the Church of All Saints there. RVW wrote the tune for these words in 1906 for The English Hymnal.