06 October 2020 Evensong

This webcast is the first service of the 2020/21 academic year, and the first Choral Evensong to be sung since 13th March. It therefore marks the end of an extraordinary period of silence in the Chapel's history, and the start of a very exciting, if challenging, new term.

The canticles are by Herbert Murrill, who had a varied career as a Professor of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, Head of Music at the BBC, and Intelligence Officer. It was while in the latter role, working at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, that Murrill wrote his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in E.

The anthem, O Taste and See, is a short motet written by Vaughan Williams for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. One of the composer's last sacred works, its intimate, reflective character with clear influence from the English folk tradition could not be more at odds with the bombast and grandeur of the royal occasion that originally surrounded it.