Service, MUSICAL.

Service, MUSICAL. The musical arrangements of a full cathedral service in the Church of England are usually as follows: The introductory prayers of morning and evening service, up to the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer, are sung in monotone. The versicles and responses before the Psalms, after the Creed and Lord's Prayer, and the Litany are sung to the plain-song adapted to them by Marbeck from the equivalents in the Catholic Directory, with some traditional variations; the responses are, however, usually sung in harmony, either in the festal form by Tallis, with the plain-song mostly in the tenor, or in the everyday or ferial form, in simpler harmony. The remaining prayers are sung in monotone, with plain-song inflections and endings. The Venite (Psalm xcv.) and Psalms of the day are sung antiphonally to appropriate chants, of which many different collections are in use. Various collections of anthems are also found in different churches. The Canticles (Te Deum, &c.) are sung sometimes to chants, but usually to special settings by the various English writers from Tallis downwards; the term 'service' is used as denoting a complete set of music for these parts of the ritual, and is distinguished by the composer's name and the key. An ordinary Morning Service consists of settings of the Te Deum and Jubilate, or its alternative the Benedictus. The Benedicite is seldom sung. An Evening Service contains settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, or more rarely of their alternatives the Cantate Domino and Deus Misereatur. A Communion Service includes choral settings of the Kyrie Eleison (the response after each of the Ten Commandments), the Nicene Creed, the Sanctus and the Gloria in Excelsis, and recent composers add the Doxologies before and after the Gospel, the Sursum Corda, the Agnus Dei, and the Benedictus. The style of music of a service (in the latter restricted meaning) varies very considerably with the different periods to which the composers belong. Among the most eminent of these are Thomas Tallis (c. 1515-85), Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625), John Blow (1648-1708), Henry Purcell (1658-95), William Croft (1677-1727), William Boyce (1710-79), Thomas Attwood (1765-1838), and Samuel Wesley (1766-1837). The style of the last has been largely followed by the innumerable modern writers, many of high excellence. See the collections of Boyce, Arnold, Rimbault, and Ouseley, containing also biographical notices. There are also what are known as Chant Services, the music of which is a free form of chant, of which the well-known 'Jackson in F' is a hackneyed example. See also Stainer's Cathedral Prayer-book (Novello).