Eighteenth-Century Anglican Worship: Music

Part 2: Music

Anglicanism in the 1700s had two distinct musical traditions, which, for the sake of convenience I will call “cathedral” and “parish.” In using those terms, it must be remembered that the cathedral style of worship was also maintained by other places having a choral foundation including the Chapel Royal, the Royal Peculiars of Westminster Abbey and St George’s Chapel, and certain Oxford and Cambridge colleges. Overall, this was a standardized product, unlike parish music which could vary enormously according to the resources of the local congregation. My hometown, for example, had organs by the reign of George I and paid an organist-schoolmaster to officiate at the keyboard, but nearby rural parishes ran to a fiddle, a flute, and a bassoon or serpent if they were lucky.

The cathedral tradition had developed between 1560 and 1620. It centered on a polyphonic repertoire, almost entirely in English, which had grown up in the reign of Elizabeth I, though there are a handful of pieces from the reigns of Henry VIII and Edward VI. Initially, the cathedrals had divided morning service with Mattins sung around 7 or 8 am, and then the Litany and Communion around 10 am. By the 1700s most cathedrals practiced the same accumulation of morning services as parish churches, though at least two – Winchester and Worcester – still divided the morning service in the 1740s. Musically, the services were dominated by anthems and settings of the canticles often written in the verse anthem form with soloist(s) and choir alternating. This was partly fashion and partly because of available musical resources. Most cathedrals had a handful of good singers who could act as soloists and a moderately competent chorus. Unlike today, when most churches with a choral tradition try and sing a range of music from the 16th to the 21st centuries, eighteenth-century repertoire was largely post-1660, with a bias towards recent composition. Trollope’s comment about Mr. Harding having published volumes of Purcell, Crotch, and Nares gives you an idea of the music most performed at the end of the Long Eighteenth Century, though there were lesser luminaries such as Maurice Greene, who are undeservedly half forgotten today. The Psalms were sung to Anglican chant, which had developed in the years either side of the Civil War, and the organ played a prominent part through voluntaries before and after the service, after the second lesson, and upon emergent occasions. What was entirely missing was the congregational hymn, which did not spread into Anglicanism from Dissenters until the end of the 1700s.

In a cathedral, morning service would have begun at the appointed hour, usually 10:30 am. There would have been no formal procession in most cases, the Canon, minor canons, and lay clerks would have arrived, donned their surplices, and gone into quire as they were ready. An organ voluntary would have covered this gathering, and at its end, the Canon-in-Residence would have read a sentence of Scripture, read the Exhortation, led the congregation in the General Confession, pronounced the absolution, and led the congregation in the first Lord’s Prayer. A minor canon would then have chanted “O Lord, open thou our lips” and the choral part of the service would have commenced, and have been conducted in much the same manner as today. An anthem followed the Morning Prayer part of the service, then the Litany was chanted before the Ante-Communion was commenced. Several cathedrals had one or two of the lay clerks lead the Litany, with those performing this duty at Lincoln at the beginning of the 1800s being described by Viscount Torrington as having “voices like bulls.” A voluntary would have covered the passage of three clergy to the altar. These were supposed to be vested in copes, but, except at Durham, this custom had fallen into abeyance by 1770. The only sung responses in this part of the service were those to the commandments, with the whole two-hour-plus marathon concluding with Bidding Prayer, Sermon, Prayer for the Church Militant with a closing collect and blessing.

The frequency of communion in cathedrals, thanks to their limited pool of communicants, gradually declined in this period. In the reign of Queen Anne most cathedrals celebrated communion weekly, but by 1775 monthly was the rule at more than half of England’s cathedrals. In eighteenth-century thinking, the Communion Service did not begin until after the sermon and Prayer for the Church, as the Ante-Communion was so strongly associated with Mattins. First, a voluntary was played allowing most of the congregation to depart. From the available evidence, it seems that the Communion service was likely to have been spoken throughout apart from the Gloria in Excelsis, though there are a few settings of the Preface and Sanctus from this period including one of c.1810 from York Minster which found its way into the Methodist Hymnal! The celebrant and his assistants would have adopted the “lion and unicorn” position at the Holy Table, and the elements would have been leavened bread, and undiluted wine – usually port. The number of communicants would have been small, as only those on the cathedral staff, their families and guests would have communicated there. The whole service would have concluded with the Blessing and another voluntary.

The unusual thing about Evensong in the eighteenth century, at least to our eyes, would have been the hour of the service. Instead of the modern start time in the late afternoon or early evening, 4 pm in summer, and 3 pm, or even 2:30 pm, in winter was the norm due to the need to complete the service during daylight. Evensong would have consisted of the office, and usually followed by a sermon though this was not a requirement. This service would have lasted an hour to an hour and a half, a good hour shorter than the Matins, Litany, and Communion marathon of the morning.

On weekdays, the Mattins and Evensong would be sung, though these services were usually musically unambitious. The Litany was added to Mattins on Wednesdays and Fridays, and the Ante-Communion on Holydays. Weekday services, especially Mattins, often got the fag end of the establishment’s musical resources, and the accounts of weekday worship in Viscount Torrington’s diaries suggest that Mattins on a wet Wednesday in Lent could be anything but a cultural and spiritual experience with accounts of midweek Mattins being run through by a minor canon, a couple of lay-clerks, and a handful of choristers in a perfunctory manner. The negative impact of the erosion of ecclesiastical revenues that had occurred during the inflationary period of the mid-sixteenth century compounded by the need to tread softly after the Commonwealth was not made good until the mid-1700s. This economic squeeze meant that stipends for lay-clerks and minor canons were low, and with no pensions available lay-clerks often remained in post long after their voices had failed. This meant that a cathedral was fortunate to have more than two-thirds of its nominal musical establishment available. St Paul’s, Lincoln, and at one point, York Minster had poor musical reputations due to the problems created by men remaining in post long past their “use by” dates. That said, Christchurch, Oxford, Canterbury, and a handful of others, were able to maintain good standards throughout this period mainly because of their ability to provide other employment for worn-out lay-clerks, or simply because of the size of their establishment.

Next Part: Music in the Parish Church.

[Image: Holy Communion at Durham Cathedral c.1790]