Service (music)
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In Anglican church music, a Service is a musical setting of certain parts of the liturgy, generally for choir with or without organ accompaniment.
The parts of the liturgy available for musical setting are:
Morning Prayer
- Venite (Psalm 95 — rarely set after the Restoration)
- Te Deum or Benedicite
- Benedictus (Luke I, 68) or Jubilate (Psalm 100)
Holy Communion
- Responses to the Commandments
- Nicene Creed
- Sanctus
- Gloria in Excelsis
(This follows the Book of Common Prayer; modern Anglican liturgy has largely reverted to the order of the Roman Catholic Mass).
Evening Prayer
- Magnificat or (rarely) Cantate Domino (Psalm 98)
- Nunc dimittis or (rarely) Deus misereatur (Psalm 67)
A "full service" includes all three of these groups; with the disappearance of daily "Matins" (choral morning prayer) from the Anglican liturgy and the reduction of the choral element in communion services composers are now more likely only to set the evening service. The Burial Service (see Requiem) is sometimes set separately.
In the Tudor and early Stuart periods, services were described as "Short", "Great" or "Verse" services. Verse services incorporated sections for solo voices; short services were simple settings for four-part choir which could be sung a capella; Great Services (of which the most famous is that by William Byrd) were long and elaborate and presumably kept for special occasions. After the Restoration this classification gradually broke down and services became known by the key in which they were written; hence the common shorthand terminology "Purcell in G minor" or "Stanford in B flat". Modern compositions are often named after the college chapel or cathedral for which they were written: examples are the Collegium Magdalenae Oxoniense of Kenneth Leighton for Magdalen College, Oxford and the Gloucester Service of Herbert Howells for Gloucester Cathedral.
