The Choir of St John's College, Cambridge

There's a reason why Orlando Gibbons's music can be seen on music lists up and down the country - it is fantastic music. One of the leading composers of his generation at and the forefront of England's own variant on Baroque composition, he stands out for the textures he creates with his own mastery of counterpoint and gift for writing melodies. It seems suitable also for us to be singing his music since he was, himself, a Cambridge man, born in Cambridge and later a Chorister at King's College under his brother, Edward. He died suddenly at the age of 41 leaving three sons - of these, Christopher Gibbons went on to be Organist here at St John's. The Canticles in this webcast are the evening section of his Second or 'Verse' Service.

The sermon at this Evensong was given by Professor Eamon Duffy, Cambridge's Professor of the History of Christianity and Fellow at Magdalene College and took as its subject the College's Foundress, Lady Margaret Beaufort (mother of King Henry VII) by whose will, the "first and greatest of Johnians, John Fisher, founded our College; whose life is described a "baffling mixture of sweetness and violence" - a bitter juxtaposition of the sweet rose-petals of her devout Christian life with the blood-soaked fifteenth century of civil war. The service ends with a favourite hymn, Jerusalem the golden and with Kenneth Leighton's Paean. A CD of Leighton's features in our English Choral Music series on Naxos.