The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge

The Evensong on this week's webcast comes from early on in last term: a Festal Evensong for St Luke the Evangelist. On week day Saint's days there is sometimes a Festal Eucharist sung in Chapel and sometimes a Festal Evensong such as on this occasion. In addition to the regular parts of Evensong, these Festal services include a Marian antiphon before and after the Magnificat and an Introit. An especially popular introit or anthem for Saint's days, and a composition for which the composer is perhaps best known, is Give us the wings of faith by the English church musician, Ernest Bullock (pictured left). Bullock was Organist for long tenures at Exeter Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, also serving as Assistant Organist at St Michael's, Tenbury and at Manchester Cathedral for a short time. As well as this more Cathedral-orientated work, he was Director of the Royal College of Music 1952–1960. To touch on the the canticles for this service, a link can be found between Bullock and their composer, T.Tertius Noble. Noble was organist at York Minster until 1913 when he moved to America and established the first Choir School there, now St Thomas, Fifth Avenue. His successor at York was Edward Bairstow who had close links with his pupil, Ernest Bullock. Bairstow refused the post of Organist at Westminster Abbey, instead recommending Bullock for the job.

It goes to show how small the world of Cathedral music is...indeed more connections can be found between composers of music in this service. The Psalm chant was written by Herbert Brewer, Organist of Gloucester Cathedral 1897–1928 and therefore a predecessor of our Director of Music, Andrew Nethsingha and during his time there he gave organ lessons and mentored a young composer from the nearby, small village of Lydney, Herbert Howells. Not that Howells necessarily enjoyed his time as Brewer's pupil, but the time spent alone, improvising in the organ loft at Gloucester was supposedly a crucial creative period for developing his harmonic and compositional language; he of course went on to become probably the most influential composer of church music in the last century and even spent 5 years at St John's where he was acting Organist during WW2 – read about our previous Directors of Music.