Remembrance Evensong

This year we are holding a special orchestral Remembrance Evensong to complement our morning Remembrance Sunday Service on this special day of national reflection and commemoration when we remember those who have fallen in war.

St Bride’s Choir and Orchestra will be performing Finzi’s Requiem da Camera as the anthem in our service of Choral Evensong.

All are welcome to attend this service which lasts approximately 1 hour.

Music

Finzi was profoundly affected by the deaths of his father, all three of his brothers, and that of his close friend and mentor Ernest Farrar, who was killed in action in 1918.

His requiem is a deeply personal act of remembrance which he dedicated to Farrar; however, it is also a requiem for other artists such as composer George Butterworth who also died during the First World War.

Gerald Finiz (left); Ernest Farrar (right)

The work for baritone, mixed choir and small orchestra, opens with an elegiac orchestral prelude and then sets verses from poetry written during the war by John Masefield (August, 2014) and Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (Lament) and also Thomas Hardy’s In Time of ‘The Breaking of Nations’, creating a sequence that moves between grief, pastoral reflection, and quiet thanksgiving.

Its structure and themes provide a reflective arc that makes it especially fitting for Remembrance Sunday, bringing together sorrow for lives lost and a tender hopefulness for peace.

Additional Information

All are welcome to attend this service. Directions to St Bride’s Church and information about accessibility are available on our Visit Us page. Attendees are free to come and go quietly as they wish.

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Top image: Embroidery panel commemorating the centenary of the First World War by Rosemary Meara, wife of the former Rector, The Revd Canon David Meara