Choral Evensong with orchestra – celebrating Stanford

As part of our Inspire! Sunday celebrations, St Brides Choir will be joined by the St Bride’s Orchestra for a festal Evensong to mark the centenary of the death Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. All are welcome to attend this free event. Refreshments served after the service.

Responses: John Sanders
Psalm: 150
Canticles: Evening Service in A – Charles Villiers Stanford
Sermon in Music: i) Te Deum in B flat – Charles Villiers Stanford; ii) For lo, I raise up – Charles Villiers Stanford
Organ Voluntary: Allegro maestoso (St Patrick’s Breastplate) from Sonata Celtica – Charles Villiers Stanford

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852- 1924) was one of the leading musicians of his generation and had a profound effect on the development and history of English music as a performer, conductor, composer, teacher and writer. His music is a mainstay of our sacred repertoire here at St Bride’s, particularly his settings of the Evening Canticles.

His Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in A were among a number of orchestral settings commissioned by John Stainer, then organist at St Paul’s Cathedral. Stanford had recently returned from Germany where he was exposed to the new musical language of Brahms and Wagner.

Stanford relished Stainer’s challenge of composing liturgical music with orchestra and the setting in A, premiered in 1880, echoes the musical experiences he had in Germany, particularly of the music of Brahms whose Requiem Mass he had also conducted in Cambridge.

The anthem For lo, I raise up was written more than 30 years later and the world was a very different place. War had broken out and Stanford was horrified by its brutality and Germany’s seeming abandonment of its artistic integrity. The anthem is his most dramatic and sets the prophet Habakkuk’s vision of peace for a war-torn world.