I know a church organist who started out Swedenborgian (we had two aboard Ship at one point), then became Methodist because she liked the hymns then Anglican because she liked the liturgy.
She 'reconstructed' an 18th century service once as she has a PhD in English church music of that period.
I'm not sure how historically accurate it was.
I also attended a 1662 Book of Common Prayer service in a sadly redundant church building which purported to be conducted as it would have been at that time.
I didn't notice any discernible difference from other 1662 services I've attended. There were some metrical psalms if I remember rightly.
I'm not as old as @Enoch - sorry old Enoch - but I am old enough to remember when CofE (or CinW) services were more of a muchness, irrespective of churchmanship, than they are now, at least in times of the script as it were.
By the way, what is known about the history of the use of the Latin BCP in collegiate settings?
The diary of Lewis Caroll records that College Morning Prayer at Christ Church, Oxford, was read in English instead of Latin for the first time on January 27th 1862. There was, as I undertand it, a distinction there between College and Cathedral services.
Does Rev Dodgson say why the use had been changed?
No. I have always assumed that all the colleges at Oxford changed from Latin to English at around the same time. The day was a Monday, and would be at (or near) the start of a university term.
Chetham's Book of psalmody was...the first to include chants, for the Te deum, Benedicite ad Nunc dimmittis (1718); in the third edition (1724) was added a single chant for the Venite, with the comment 'This, or any other tune of this kind, may suit the whole book of Psalms, commonly called the reading Psalms.' Clearly, this was an invitation to parish choirs to get into the business of chanting. Nor was it in vain. Already in 1724 Chetham could report that in 'several churches they now' chant the canticles.
Missed the edit window. Temperley goes on to write (p. 168) that the chanting in the eighteenth century was not done as now:
When there are many syllables to be recited, they are not, as in modern chanting, sung in natural rhythm to a note of indefinite length; they are provided with shorter notes, so that the total time taken up is the same in each verse - precisely seven bars. As we shall see, there is a good deal of evidence that this was the way chanting was done, not only in parish churches but in cathedrals, in the eighteenth century. The rhythmic vitality and bounce is utterly different from the studied fluidity of present-day Anglican chanting.
Massey Shepherd wrote a little book back in the 1950s called At All Time and In All Places that had vignettes of imagined Eucharistic celebrations throughout history. You can find it on The Internet Archive. Chapter 4 and 5 depict pre-Oxford Movement Anglican liturgies.
Missed the edit window. Temperley goes on to write (p. 168) that the chanting in the eighteenth century was not done as now:
When there are many syllables to be recited, they are not, as in modern chanting, sung in natural rhythm to a note of indefinite length; they are provided with shorter notes, so that the total time taken up is the same in each verse - precisely seven bars. As we shall see, there is a good deal of evidence that this was the way chanting was done, not only in parish churches but in cathedrals, in the eighteenth century. The rhythmic vitality and bounce is utterly different from the studied fluidity of present-day Anglican chanting.
This musically illiterate Shipmate is interested how that would sound.
I know the 8-bar and 12-bar blues but I don't read music so am not sure what shorter notes within a 7-bar framework would sound like.
I like modern Anglican chant but have no idea of the mechanics of it.
Was there a distinction between the worship at Cathedrals/College Chapels and ordinary parishes? I was told somewhere that Cathedrals and college chapels were high church, and regular parishes were low church.
@Anglican Brat That is what I heard also (whence my question about how services differed in cathedrals, in market towns and in villages). I have faint memories of 19th-century Anglo-Catholics using cathedral services to support their claims that certain vestments and practices were legal.
(... Faint memories from reading stuff on the internet, I mean. I'm not actually 150 years old.)
@Anglican Brat That is what I heard also (whence my question about how services differed in cathedrals, in market towns and in villages). I have faint memories of 19th-century Anglo-Catholics using cathedral services to support their claims that certain vestments and practices were legal.
(... Faint memories from reading stuff on the internet, I mean. I'm not actually 150 years old.)
My recollection is that their arguments rested not on the then-current practices but on the "ornaments rubric" that stated that things should be left as they were in the second year of Edward VI's reign i.e. mostly in the general vicinity of the Sarum use.
My recollection is that their arguments rested not on the then-current practices but on the "ornaments rubric" that stated that things should be left as they were in the second year of Edward VI's reign i.e. mostly in the general vicinity of the Sarum use.
I think the argument was additional to that one, and specifically pointed to the preservation of certain vestments (eg, the cope), ceremonies and liturgical furniture in the cathedrals. I could be wrong, though; this is only a vague memory and I may be thinking of arguments made at the time of the Caroline Divines, perhaps by Laud or one of his associates.
I've heard that Elizabeth I retained a degree of ceremonial in cathedrals because she 'liked cathedral worship' - a term that sounded rather anachronistic when it was related to me.
I'd be interested to hear whether this was the case. I've always thought that Elizabethan Anglicanism was fairly 'dry' and low on ceremonial and that it was only in the late 1620s and the 1630s that the Laudian emphasis on vestments, gestures and ceremonial began to take hold, with subsequent Puritan reaction.
I've often wondered how elaborate the Laudian arrangements were. I get the impression most of the controversy centred on the use and positioning of altars rather than plain tables for communion and the introduction of communion rails. I've always thought that the iconoclasm of the Civil War and Commonwealth period was primarily directed at older, medieval imagery and artefacts that had survived the reign of Edward VI rather than contemporary ones, although there may have been newer artworks too of course.
Prior to Laud and to the more ritualistic phase of the Oxford Movement most High Church Anglicans were 'High and Dry' and not given to ceremonial. James VI of Scotland, 1st of England, was essentially a High Church Calvinist.
High Church people had a 'high' view of the authority of the Church, invested in its bishops. It didn't necessarily mean they went in for bells and smells and ceremony.
... I've downloaded Jebb's Three Lectures on the Cathedral Service of the Church of England (Leeds, 1841) which that page also links to and am looking forward to reading it.
I managed to read that over the Christmas period but since then have been away. As historical evidence of the cathedral tradition as it was before the Oxford Movement had really got going, Keble's Assize Sermon was 1833, it was fascinating.
One has to try to do a certain amount of reading between the lines. Jebb, like everyone else in this field, then and now, shows that he's an authentic Christian by demonstrating the maxim I've already cited ''they will know you are Christians by your disapproval of each other'. But, as ever, what he disapproves of most vociferously is evidence that it was quite widespread. I was gratified a few years ago to come across a clergyman fulminating as far back as the mid-eighteenth century about those sloppy and lazy good-for-nothings who batched the verses of the Benedicite into threes with only one 'praise him and magnify him forever' ever third verse.
Also, as ever, one has to remember that there are no sound recordings from the 1840s and that people don't mention what everybody knows, experiences and takes for granted. About 15 years ago I was at the house of some friends where another friend of theirs who played the organ and led a choir in an RC church was playing carols and hymns on their keyboard. Coming from a different tradition, he wasn't aware that in the CofE, Methodists etc, you don't play the music exactly as it is written in the book. For a start, it's taken for granted that the first note of everything is held slightly long as a gathering note before everyone launches into the words.
From Jebb, I reckon it's fairly clear that there was a complete distinction between the way services were done in cathedrals and those collegiate churches that had choir schools, even if fairly small, and what happened in a parish church. Cathedrals chanted responses etc, and normally at least sang the prose versions of the Canticles either as chants or as settings. It sounds as though at that date relatively few parish churches even attempted to do that. Most cathedrals, and possibly all, chanted the Apostle's Creed. They might have been less likely to have done so with the Nicene Creed (see p29). Although that came before the break point in the Communion Service, one of the things he deplores is choirs not singing the Communion Service at all.
Most sang the prose versions of the psalms, but he reckoned it was better to say them than to sing them badly. Both Canticles and psalms were usually said or sung antiphonally by verse - as is usually to this day when the psalms are said. In parish churches, said alternately seems to have been more or less universal. In most cathedrals, the presiding minister took the ordinary prayers etc as a chant - less practical I suspect in a parish church for those where the congregation were expected to join in.
It rather sounds as though how everything was done, including how the chanting was done, was passed on by tradition rather than from any musical texts.
Anthems etc were widespread, and others could be added into the slots between the services, or before or after the Litany though he doesn't agree with the way some people put them in what he regards as the wrong places.
He pays a lot of attention to the cathedral way of doing the Litany which is hardly ever done these days, and then on pp16 ff there is some particularly fascinating material on chanting psalms. It is sad that without the benefit of sound recordings, one cannot be entirely sure which particular abuses he is execrating. The presence of what looks like pointing in his examples and what he describes does, though, give the impression that it is the 1841 ancestor of what the normal way of singing prose psalms and canticles sixty years ago. I still think that for congregational use, metrical versions are a better bet, but if one must sing English prose, that tradition is a thousand times better than any of the other methods that seem to have been tried.
It does look, though, as if that way of singing was not a creation of the late nineteenth century so much as clergy persuading parish churches to adopt what had until then been only the cathedral way of doing things. I think that confirms that though the one may leach into the other, the formal, civic/cathedral, decent and good order tradition and Anglo-Catholicism are not the same thing by any means.
I'd better stop there. This post is getting a bit long.
Ah - I must admit I hadn't noticed that. The person who uploaded it onto YouTube made this interesting comment about the date(s):
The date of the recording is correct as stated. However, when King Edward VII died in 1910, this set of recordings (the pride of the Gramophone Company) suddenly had a glaring error.. praying for the incorrect King. So on 6th March 1911 the entire service was re-recorded with the exactly same music, but this time updated to the current monarch. However, the recording was not good and all the test pressings were destroyed, expect for the one record of the prayers, which replaced the old record in all sets sold from that date.
I've heard that Elizabeth I retained a degree of ceremonial in cathedrals because she 'liked cathedral worship' - a term that sounded rather anachronistic when it was related to me.
I'd be interested to hear whether this was the case. I've always thought that Elizabethan Anglicanism was fairly 'dry' and low on ceremonial and that it was only in the late 1620s and the 1630s that the Laudian emphasis on vestments, gestures and ceremonial began to take hold, with subsequent Puritan reaction.
I've often wondered how elaborate the Laudian arrangements were. I get the impression most of the controversy centred on the use and positioning of altars rather than plain tables for communion and the introduction of communion rails. I've always thought that the iconoclasm of the Civil War and Commonwealth period was primarily directed at older, medieval imagery and artefacts that had survived the reign of Edward VI rather than contemporary ones, although there may have been newer artworks too of course.
Prior to Laud and to the more ritualistic phase of the Oxford Movement most High Church Anglicans were 'High and Dry' and not given to ceremonial. James VI of Scotland, 1st of England, was essentially a High Church Calvinist.
High Church people had a 'high' view of the authority of the Church, invested in its bishops. It didn't necessarily mean they went in for bells and smells and ceremony.
My old history master, long, long ago when I was at school, was a clergyman, and I think knew quite a lot about this. I can remember him saying that although she was definitely and unequivocally Protestant, Elizabeth liked musical services, a certain amount of dignity and didn't much care for too much of the joyless austerity some of her more Puritan supporters felt she ought to be imposing on everyone.
Laud in the 1630s tried to shift things 'up the candle' in modern terms, though not all that far. Altars were altars and not tables, were to be against the east wall, fenced off inside communion rails and with two candles, one at each end. By late C19, early C20 Anglo-Catholic standards, he was quite low.
He was also, by all reports, rather a fussy, pernickety little man, bossy, very full of his own authority and insistent on getting his own way. That certainly contributed to his eventually getting executed.
Many Puritans, though, were equally obsessed with minutiae, as some are to this day. One that strikes us as odd, is that they didn't approve of wedding rings or the blessing of them in the marriage service - no, I've no idea why, either.
'High and dry' in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was much more about episcopal authority, doing everything very much by the book, and an assumption that the Church of England as by law established, its bishops and its Book of Common Prayer was the best of all possible worlds, a mark of God's gift and special favour, and that anyone, whether Papist, Dissenter, Methodist, Enthusiast, Unitarian, Socinian or whatever, was demonstrating their profound inner blindness in not being able to see that. I don't think they were much interested in vestments or church furnishings provided the incumbent was properly clad in a cassock, a clean white surplice, a black scarf, wore the correct academic hood to which they were entitled and that the altar had a clean white cloth upon it.
I don't think they were much interested in vestments or church furnishings provided the incumbent was properly clad in a cassock, a clean white surplice, a black scarf, wore the correct academic hood to which they were entitled and that the altar had a clean white cloth upon it.
Even that basic minimum is not now found in some C of E churches.
I think that the puritan unease around wedding rings was connected to the lack of scriptural reference to them and wanting to look as unsacramental as possible
Hmm. Imagine having to sit through Mattins, Litany, and Ante-Communion every Sunday, though - for even longer if there were to be a full Communion...
That was my thought after our (USA Episcopal) parish in Michigan did a Sunday service in that format from the 1789 USA BCP in 1989. The basic results were a hoarse rector and a tired congregation most of whom found it interesting but looked forward to a regular service the following Sunday. The many metrical psalms we sang at the appropriate times didn't kick off a continuing interest in doing them, either.
At least you Orthodoxen can wander about, light candles, venerate icons, or go outside for a smoke - the poor peasants in the C of E of old had to sit tight for the whole marathon drone-fest, for fear of the Squire (if he were still awake) noticing that someone was missing, and turfing them out of job and home...
I think I could just about put up with a full BCP morning service if it were enlivened by a band and some metrical psalms, hymns and/or anthems...
It must've been quite fun in the musicians' loft along with all those Thomas Hardy types. Before the new parson came with all his fancy Oxford ways and persuaded Miss Priscilla Primrose, the new school-teacher, to play that new-fangled organ of his. (And if you're thinking what I'm thinking, shame on youse all).
References to the Orthodox going off for a smoke during the services is not an exaggeration. I myself have taken a break for a coffee on occasion, as noted in my review of Saint Spyridon's in Sydney.
When my former parish of Saint Vartan's was at the beginning of its civil war, I often wondered if I would be frowned upon if I left for a breather as the sermon hit 30 minutes (the one on sodomy-- he was against it-- took 45).
When I was still attending services at Our Place, but usually sitting at the Table of Greeting (in a wheelchair), I used to quietly wheel myself into the calm of the Church Porch whilst FatherInCharge was waffling preaching...
If I'd still been a smoker (I gave up in 2006), I'd have lit up...as it was, the fresh air coming in through the open door was sufficient as a restorative...
When I was still attending services at Our Place, but usually sitting at the Table of Greeting (in a wheelchair), I used to quietly wheel myself into the calm of the Church Porch whilst FatherInCharge was waffling preaching...
If I'd still been a smoker (I gave up in 2006), I'd have lit up...as it was, the fresh air coming in through the open door was sufficient as a restorative...
There is a certain church I am aware of (in your diocese I believe BF) where there was once an ancient thurifer who used to slip out during the sermon for a quick half in the nearby pub, still clad in lacy cotta. Maybe an urban myth but I would like to believe it is true.
The conferring of minor orders when I was at the seminary used to take over two hours. Members of the altar party used to avail themselves of a side door near them to nip out for a crafty ciggie. Those of us in the main body of the chapel were trapped!
There is a certain church I am aware of (in your diocese I believe BF) where there was once an ancient thurifer who used to slip out during the sermon for a quick half in the nearby pub, still clad in lacy cotta. Maybe an urban myth but I would like to believe it is true.
Reminds me of a story of a young thurifer in Texas who couldn't stand the summer heat in the church and ducked out but didn't come back in to prepare for the offertory. Whereupon the celebrant (was it the bishop?), all other things being ready, chanted with proper descending pitch on the last note:
"Where, O where is the incense pot?"
and the reply from just outside the nearby open exit door came through, also well pitched:
There is a certain church I am aware of (in your diocese I believe BF) where there was once an ancient thurifer who used to slip out during the sermon for a quick half in the nearby pub, still clad in lacy cotta. Maybe an urban myth but I would like to believe it is true.
Reminds me of a story of a young thurifer in Texas who couldn't stand the summer heat in the church and ducked out but didn't come back in to prepare for the offertory. Whereupon the celebrant (was it the bishop?), all other things being ready, chanted with proper descending pitch on the last note:
"Where, O where is the incense pot?"
and the reply from just outside the nearby open exit door came through, also well pitched:
"It's out here 'cuz it's too damned hot."
Ha! I always heard it as
“What did you do with the incense pot?”
“Threw it out the window, it was too damned hot!”
And I heard it about an Episcopal church in eastern North Carolina. I imagine it’s been told about many a church.
I'm not sure I recognise the church in this diocese which @angloid referred to above - Our Place's late churchwarden/head server/thurifer would have been even more incandescent than the charcoal at such Disrespect had been shown to The Holy Worship Of God if he'd known about it...
I think I've only heard one Orthodox sermon that's lasted more than the time it'd take to light and inhale a first drag let alone smoke an entire cigarette.
I think I've only heard one Orthodox sermon that's lasted more than the time it'd take to light and inhale a first drag let alone smoke an entire cigarette.
Not that I smoke, of course ...
We went to an orthodox wedding in Liverpool years ago.
I swear the only men in the church were the groom (a really dodgy geezer,) the officiating bishop and me. The others were outside smoking like chimneys.
I'm not sure I recognise the church in this diocese which @angloid referred to above - Our Place's late churchwarden/head server/thurifer would have been even more incandescent than the charcoal at such Disrespect had been shown to The Holy Worship Of God if he'd known about it...
I think I've only heard one Orthodox sermon that's lasted more than the time it'd take to light and inhale a first drag let alone smoke an entire cigarette.
Not that I smoke, of course ...
We went to an orthodox wedding in Liverpool years ago.
I swear the only men in the church were the groom (a really dodgy geezer,) the officiating bishop and me. The others were outside smoking like chimneys.
With a visiting bishop where was the local Priest? Who was singing? There should have been at least one man at the cantor's desk.
I knew a church where it wasn’t unknown for the vicar to nip out for a cigarette and a swig from his hip flask during the sermon if he wasn’t preaching.
I think I've only heard one Orthodox sermon that's lasted more than the time it'd take to light and inhale a first drag let alone smoke an entire cigarette.
Not that I smoke, of course ...
We went to an orthodox wedding in Liverpool years ago.
I swear the only men in the church were the groom (a really dodgy geezer,) the officiating bishop and me. The others were outside smoking like chimneys.
With a visiting bishop where was the local Priest? Who was singing? There should have been at least one man at the cantor's desk.
No idea where the priest was. Cant remember if there was any singing at all.
In the past when it was not uncommon for wedding liturgies to be celebrated in church in France it was not at all unusual to see men standing outside the church smoking rather than actually going in to the church.
I think I've only heard one Orthodox sermon that's lasted more than the time it'd take to light and inhale a first drag let alone smoke an entire cigarette.
Not that I smoke, of course ...
We went to an orthodox wedding in Liverpool years ago.
I swear the only men in the church were the groom (a really dodgy geezer,) the officiating bishop and me. The others were outside smoking like chimneys.
With a visiting bishop where was the local Priest? Who was singing? There should have been at least one man at the cantor's desk.
No idea where the priest was. Cant remember if there was any singing at all.
There'd have been a bloke intoning at the least, unless the bishop took the whole service himself with the priest indisposed and nobody else taking part. I'm not up on the rubrics but that sounds unlikely.
The smoking doesn't although it's not something I've seen. I've led a sheltered life. I've seen plenty of people hanging around outside checking their mobile phones and clearing off after the lighting of the candles at the Easter Vigil though.
Comments
http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Latin1662/BCP_Latin1662.htm
She 'reconstructed' an 18th century service once as she has a PhD in English church music of that period.
I'm not sure how historically accurate it was.
I also attended a 1662 Book of Common Prayer service in a sadly redundant church building which purported to be conducted as it would have been at that time.
I didn't notice any discernible difference from other 1662 services I've attended. There were some metrical psalms if I remember rightly.
I'm not as old as @Enoch - sorry old Enoch - but I am old enough to remember when CofE (or CinW) services were more of a muchness, irrespective of churchmanship, than they are now, at least in times of the script as it were.
The diary of Lewis Caroll records that College Morning Prayer at Christ Church, Oxford, was read in English instead of Latin for the first time on January 27th 1862. There was, as I undertand it, a distinction there between College and Cathedral services.
No. I have always assumed that all the colleges at Oxford changed from Latin to English at around the same time. The day was a Monday, and would be at (or near) the start of a university term.
This musically illiterate Shipmate is interested how that would sound.
I know the 8-bar and 12-bar blues but I don't read music so am not sure what shorter notes within a 7-bar framework would sound like.
I like modern Anglican chant but have no idea of the mechanics of it.
@Anglican Brat That is what I heard also (whence my question about how services differed in cathedrals, in market towns and in villages). I have faint memories of 19th-century Anglo-Catholics using cathedral services to support their claims that certain vestments and practices were legal.
(... Faint memories from reading stuff on the internet, I mean. I'm not actually 150 years old.)
My recollection is that their arguments rested not on the then-current practices but on the "ornaments rubric" that stated that things should be left as they were in the second year of Edward VI's reign i.e. mostly in the general vicinity of the Sarum use.
I think the argument was additional to that one, and specifically pointed to the preservation of certain vestments (eg, the cope), ceremonies and liturgical furniture in the cathedrals. I could be wrong, though; this is only a vague memory and I may be thinking of arguments made at the time of the Caroline Divines, perhaps by Laud or one of his associates.
I'd be interested to hear whether this was the case. I've always thought that Elizabethan Anglicanism was fairly 'dry' and low on ceremonial and that it was only in the late 1620s and the 1630s that the Laudian emphasis on vestments, gestures and ceremonial began to take hold, with subsequent Puritan reaction.
I've often wondered how elaborate the Laudian arrangements were. I get the impression most of the controversy centred on the use and positioning of altars rather than plain tables for communion and the introduction of communion rails. I've always thought that the iconoclasm of the Civil War and Commonwealth period was primarily directed at older, medieval imagery and artefacts that had survived the reign of Edward VI rather than contemporary ones, although there may have been newer artworks too of course.
Prior to Laud and to the more ritualistic phase of the Oxford Movement most High Church Anglicans were 'High and Dry' and not given to ceremonial. James VI of Scotland, 1st of England, was essentially a High Church Calvinist.
High Church people had a 'high' view of the authority of the Church, invested in its bishops. It didn't necessarily mean they went in for bells and smells and ceremony.
One has to try to do a certain amount of reading between the lines. Jebb, like everyone else in this field, then and now, shows that he's an authentic Christian by demonstrating the maxim I've already cited ''they will know you are Christians by your disapproval of each other'. But, as ever, what he disapproves of most vociferously is evidence that it was quite widespread. I was gratified a few years ago to come across a clergyman fulminating as far back as the mid-eighteenth century about those sloppy and lazy good-for-nothings who batched the verses of the Benedicite into threes with only one 'praise him and magnify him forever' ever third verse.
Also, as ever, one has to remember that there are no sound recordings from the 1840s and that people don't mention what everybody knows, experiences and takes for granted. About 15 years ago I was at the house of some friends where another friend of theirs who played the organ and led a choir in an RC church was playing carols and hymns on their keyboard. Coming from a different tradition, he wasn't aware that in the CofE, Methodists etc, you don't play the music exactly as it is written in the book. For a start, it's taken for granted that the first note of everything is held slightly long as a gathering note before everyone launches into the words.
From Jebb, I reckon it's fairly clear that there was a complete distinction between the way services were done in cathedrals and those collegiate churches that had choir schools, even if fairly small, and what happened in a parish church. Cathedrals chanted responses etc, and normally at least sang the prose versions of the Canticles either as chants or as settings. It sounds as though at that date relatively few parish churches even attempted to do that. Most cathedrals, and possibly all, chanted the Apostle's Creed. They might have been less likely to have done so with the Nicene Creed (see p29). Although that came before the break point in the Communion Service, one of the things he deplores is choirs not singing the Communion Service at all.
Most sang the prose versions of the psalms, but he reckoned it was better to say them than to sing them badly. Both Canticles and psalms were usually said or sung antiphonally by verse - as is usually to this day when the psalms are said. In parish churches, said alternately seems to have been more or less universal. In most cathedrals, the presiding minister took the ordinary prayers etc as a chant - less practical I suspect in a parish church for those where the congregation were expected to join in.
It rather sounds as though how everything was done, including how the chanting was done, was passed on by tradition rather than from any musical texts.
Anthems etc were widespread, and others could be added into the slots between the services, or before or after the Litany though he doesn't agree with the way some people put them in what he regards as the wrong places.
He pays a lot of attention to the cathedral way of doing the Litany which is hardly ever done these days, and then on pp16 ff there is some particularly fascinating material on chanting psalms. It is sad that without the benefit of sound recordings, one cannot be entirely sure which particular abuses he is execrating. The presence of what looks like pointing in his examples and what he describes does, though, give the impression that it is the 1841 ancestor of what the normal way of singing prose psalms and canticles sixty years ago. I still think that for congregational use, metrical versions are a better bet, but if one must sing English prose, that tradition is a thousand times better than any of the other methods that seem to have been tried.
It does look, though, as if that way of singing was not a creation of the late nineteenth century so much as clergy persuading parish churches to adopt what had until then been only the cathedral way of doing things. I think that confirms that though the one may leach into the other, the formal, civic/cathedral, decent and good order tradition and Anglo-Catholicism are not the same thing by any means.
I'd better stop there. This post is getting a bit long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZlHC1oJ9TU&t=101s
Recorded in 1908...
The date of the recording is correct as stated. However, when King Edward VII died in 1910, this set of recordings (the pride of the Gramophone Company) suddenly had a glaring error.. praying for the incorrect King. So on 6th March 1911 the entire service was re-recorded with the exactly same music, but this time updated to the current monarch. However, the recording was not good and all the test pressings were destroyed, expect for the one record of the prayers, which replaced the old record in all sets sold from that date.
I loved that recording.
Hmm. Imagine having to sit through Mattins, Litany, and Ante-Communion every Sunday, though - for even longer if there were to be a full Communion...
IIRC, Percy Dearmer was very much against this sort of monotoning, preferring the said parts of the service(s) to be spoken in the natural voice.
Laud in the 1630s tried to shift things 'up the candle' in modern terms, though not all that far. Altars were altars and not tables, were to be against the east wall, fenced off inside communion rails and with two candles, one at each end. By late C19, early C20 Anglo-Catholic standards, he was quite low.
He was also, by all reports, rather a fussy, pernickety little man, bossy, very full of his own authority and insistent on getting his own way. That certainly contributed to his eventually getting executed.
Many Puritans, though, were equally obsessed with minutiae, as some are to this day. One that strikes us as odd, is that they didn't approve of wedding rings or the blessing of them in the marriage service - no, I've no idea why, either.
'High and dry' in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century was much more about episcopal authority, doing everything very much by the book, and an assumption that the Church of England as by law established, its bishops and its Book of Common Prayer was the best of all possible worlds, a mark of God's gift and special favour, and that anyone, whether Papist, Dissenter, Methodist, Enthusiast, Unitarian, Socinian or whatever, was demonstrating their profound inner blindness in not being able to see that. I don't think they were much interested in vestments or church furnishings provided the incumbent was properly clad in a cassock, a clean white surplice, a black scarf, wore the correct academic hood to which they were entitled and that the altar had a clean white cloth upon it.
Even that basic minimum is not now found in some C of E churches.
Bear in mind, I am Orthodox...
But yes, I find it hard to stand through some of our services.
When the priest says, 'Let us complete our prayers to the Lord,' you know there's another half hour or so to go.
No doubt much like the "and finally" of many a preacher!
That was my thought after our (USA Episcopal) parish in Michigan did a Sunday service in that format from the 1789 USA BCP in 1989. The basic results were a hoarse rector and a tired congregation most of whom found it interesting but looked forward to a regular service the following Sunday. The many metrical psalms we sang at the appropriate times didn't kick off a continuing interest in doing them, either.
😉
I think I could just about put up with a full BCP morning service if it were enlivened by a band and some metrical psalms, hymns and/or anthems...
That is, of course (as enny fule kno) basically the plot of Under The Greenwood Tree...
When my former parish of Saint Vartan's was at the beginning of its civil war, I often wondered if I would be frowned upon if I left for a breather as the sermon hit 30 minutes (the one on sodomy-- he was against it-- took 45).
If I'd still been a smoker (I gave up in 2006), I'd have lit up...as it was, the fresh air coming in through the open door was sufficient as a restorative...
There is a certain church I am aware of (in your diocese I believe BF) where there was once an ancient thurifer who used to slip out during the sermon for a quick half in the nearby pub, still clad in lacy cotta. Maybe an urban myth but I would like to believe it is true.
Reminds me of a story of a young thurifer in Texas who couldn't stand the summer heat in the church and ducked out but didn't come back in to prepare for the offertory. Whereupon the celebrant (was it the bishop?), all other things being ready, chanted with proper descending pitch on the last note:
"Where, O where is the incense pot?"
and the reply from just outside the nearby open exit door came through, also well pitched:
"It's out here 'cuz it's too damned hot."
“What did you do with the incense pot?”
“Threw it out the window, it was too damned hot!”
And I heard it about an Episcopal church in eastern North Carolina. I imagine it’s been told about many a church.
I'm not sure I recognise the church in this diocese which @angloid referred to above - Our Place's late churchwarden/head server/thurifer would have been even more incandescent than the charcoal at such Disrespect had been shown to The Holy Worship Of God if he'd known about it...
Not that I smoke, of course ...
We went to an orthodox wedding in Liverpool years ago.
I swear the only men in the church were the groom (a really dodgy geezer,) the officiating bishop and me. The others were outside smoking like chimneys.
Odd as it may sound, most of the exposure I've had to Orthodoxy comes in the 'convert' context rather than unadulterated 'ethnic' ones.
I don't doubt your account though, from what I've heard.
PM me if you want to know!
With a visiting bishop where was the local Priest? Who was singing? There should have been at least one man at the cantor's desk.
No idea where the priest was. Cant remember if there was any singing at all.
There'd have been a bloke intoning at the least, unless the bishop took the whole service himself with the priest indisposed and nobody else taking part. I'm not up on the rubrics but that sounds unlikely.
The smoking doesn't although it's not something I've seen. I've led a sheltered life. I've seen plenty of people hanging around outside checking their mobile phones and clearing off after the lighting of the candles at the Easter Vigil though.