On Sunday, March 4, at 5:15 P.M., there will be a special service at the Memorial Chapel. The service will take the form of an English “Evensong”  – a traditional Evening Prayer service with much choir music that is still held daily in many Anglican cathedrals and parishes throughout the world.

The Evensong service evolved as a combination of several traditional evening services from monasteries and convents, but intended as a public service. Evensong services traditionally include singing of appropriate hymns by the entire congregation, usually including one hymn pertaining to light, most often a setting of the Greek “Phos Hilaron.” 

A key ingredient of Evensong is the choir singing settings of the Evening Canticles – “Magnificat” (the Song of Mary, “My Soul Doth Magnify the Lord…”) and the “Nunc Dimittis” (Song of Simeon, “Lord, Now Lettest Thou Thy Servant Depart in Peace..”) as well as the inclusion of scriptural readings and the singing of Psalms. 

The Chapel Choir will sing Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis settings by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, one of Britain’s foremost composers and composition teachers from the turn of the 20^th Century, as well as singing a Psalm to an Anglican chant by the same composer. To encourage more participation from the congregation, another Psalm will be sung in a simplified Anglican Chant written for the occasion by John Gouwens, Organist, Choir Director, and Carillonneur of The Academies.

The officiant at the service will be Dr. David Tripp, pastor of Salem United Methodist Church in Bremen, Indiana. Members of the Chapel Choir will serve as scripture readers. The Faculty Choir of The Academies will provide the choir anthem, a setting of an ancient Jewish prayer, “Cause Us, O Lord…” and will join the Chapel Choir in singing the Magnificat. 

The organ prelude will be a piece which in its original form was an improvised voluntary for an Evensong service broadcast over BBC radio, the “Elegy,” by George T. Thalben-Ball, the much-celebrated organist and choirmaster of London’s Temple Church. Mr. Gouwens will play carillon music following the service.