o’clock on Sunday mornings was significantly different from anything previously experienced in Britain and closer in pattern to that of the earliest Christian communities of the Mediterranean world.
Meanwhile steps had been taken to ensure that there could be no repeat of the 1927/28 debacle. In 1970 Parliament accepted a Worship and Doctrine Measure which allowed the Church of England to make its own decisions in these areas without political approval. A change of outlook in liturgical studies also led to the abandonment of uniformity as an ideal and to the acceptance of a considerable degree of variety. Thus, in the sensitive area of eucharistic doctrine and its expression, both Evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics were offered liturgies they could use. They were themselves also more open to change than ever before.
The long period of experiment ended in 2000 with the publication and authorization of Common Worship, which included eight different eucharistic rites. This was followed by several more volumes which covered the remainder of the services – all attractively printed and costing in total about £75. The Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London complained that a wheelbarrow was needed to carry them all to church. The policy enunciated in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, ‘And whereas heretofore there hath been great diversity in saying and singing in Churches within this Realm … now from henceforth all the whole Realm shall have but one use’, had been turned on its head.
The revival of Evangelicalism, particularly in its charismatic form, had by this time, moreover, raised new and difficult issues. A Pentecostal movement, sweeping like fire through many parts of Latin America and Africa, eventually reached Britain, and immigrants from the Caribbean and Africa added their own spontaneous forms of worship – all far removed from the traditions of the long-established churches. Their style was not dissimilar to that of the nineteenth-century revivalist movements, with a strong emphasis on worship – hymns, songs and choruses – as a tool of evangelism and the saving of souls.
The number of Anglican churches embracing the charismatic tradition in its fullness was, and remains, relatively small. But elements of it exist in a large number of fairly typical Evangelical congregations and the effect on their worship has often been sharply divisive. The introduction of songs and choruses of an exuberant sort, accompanied by guitars and percussion instruments, represents a radical change, both of form and underlying spirituality, for traditional churchgoers. Those attending only at the great festivals have often been surprised, and sometimes distressed, to find the much-loved Christmas hymns and carols replaced by unknown revivalist hymns and choruses. The end of the century therefore found the Church of England with the widest possible variety of forms of worship and, although the virtues of diversity, rather than those of uniformity, were now extolled, serious issues relating to underlying unity remained unresolved.
2. The Victorian Musical Inheritance
Very little is known about music in England prior to the eleventh century, though there is some evidence from the late seventh century that boys, some as young as seven, were recruited to monastic communities to assist in the chanting of the services and to prepare for the day when they would themselves take religious vows. Gregorian chant, once thought to have been imported from Rome by St Augustine and his fellow missionaries, is now believed to be a fusion of Roman and Northern European chants which took place in the late eighth or early ninth century. The Viking invasions of these centuries put paid to the monasteries, but the mission of the church in Saxon England continued in some places from minster churches. There communities of clergy, sometimes led by a bishop, sang Mass, Mattins and Vespers daily and some of their number undertook missionary and pastoral work in the district, often over a fairly wide area.
During the tenth century monasticism was reintroduced from the continent and once more boys were admitted as singers and oblates. But two centuries later this practice ceased, as it came to be regarded as undesirable that they should be drawn into the religious life so early. The collegiate cathedrals, differentiated from those served by religious (mainly Benedictine) communities, recruited boys to share in their worship and made alternative arrangements for their education in what became the first choir schools. The education provided was, however, often poor and sometimes virtually non-existent.
By this time significant developments were taking place in the composition of music. The earliest surviving evidence of this is to be found in the Winchester Troper, dating from 1050, in which the single lines of plainsong, using only about half a dozen notes and about the same number of rhythmic patterns, were augmented by the additional notes to create a richer texture and to provide the basis for harmonious polyphony.
Once this breakthrough, pioneered at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, had been achieved its method spread quickly and led during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to a marvellously rich output of polyphonic settings of the Mass and the divine offices. The Lady Chapels of the major monasteries were opened for public worship – consisting of the offering of a choral ‘Lady Mass’ – and large numbers of laypeople often assembled in naves when choirs sang an evening hymn before a statue of the Virgin.
In the rest of the church, the minster-church pattern of organization did not survive the Norman Conquest, except at the collegiate cathedrals and some collegiate churches. The development of the parochial system, which became and remains a distinctive feature of the Church of England’s life, led to the building of churches, served by one priest, for clearly defined geographical areas. Services – Mass, Mattins and Vespers – were conducted in Latin by the parish priest, assisted by a layman known as the parish clerk. They were mainly spoken but sometimes chanted. The laity, if present, had no vocal part in the worship.
Between 1450 and 1550, however, the larger parish churches incorporated one or more chantry chapels, endowed by wealthy laymen to ensure that Masses for the repose of their souls would be frequently offered. A priest was provided with a small stipend in return for this duty, and in order to augment their stipends some of the musically competent clergy travelled to the best-endowed churches to join the local clergy in the formation of a choir. This enabled some at least of the parish churches to share in the development of polyphonic music in worship, by the recruiting of boys for Lady Chapel choirs and the installation of choir stalls in their chancels. During this relatively brief period there was in fact more music in English parish churches than there would be again until the mid-nineteenth century, though in many village churches there was little or no music and even where volunteer choirs were formed the Latin services permitted no vocal congregational participation.
The sixteenth-century Reformation did not, initially, change this situation fundamentally. King Henry VIII confiscated most of the considerable wealth of the cathedrals but left them with sufficient funds to maintain their regular round of worship and to embark on a new programme of education. Lay clerks and choristers were included in the reformed capitular bodies, and grammar schools took care of the boys’ education. For a time the worship continued to be offered in Latin, but in 1544 Archbishop Thomas Cranmer produced a version of the Litany in English, intended to be sung in procession by trained musicians, without congregational involvement. Five years later came the first Book of Common Prayer which was intended for congregational use, and the English of which did not fit the existing plainchant and polyphony.
John Merbecke, who was both a theologian and a musician, filled the gap with an adaptation of plainsong to the new liturgy (further adaptation was needed for the 1662 Prayer Book), which proved easy for congregations to learn, became popular and continued widely in use until the liturgical reforms of the late twentieth century. Where the Nicene Creed is still sung it remains serviceable. Other composers, principally Thomas Tallis and his pupil William Byrd, also responded to the challenge with settings for Mattins and Evensong of the highest quality which are now regarded as classics of sixteenth-century music. All demanded professional skill but the versicles and responses from one of Tallis’s services went into common use following the nineteenth-century revival of church music and remain his best-known work.
What had become a glorious era of
