"Evensong on the Eve of War" at St Paul's, Wightman Road, 20 July

With one of my several church hats on, I've spent quite a lot of time at the London Metropolitan Archives in the last few months, taking a look at the vast collection of materials deposited there by vicars of St. Paul's, Harringay in years gone by.  I've learned a huge amount about the life of the church and the parish during the First World War, and this will form the basis of a number of events that we will be holding at the church in the coming months as part of our contribution to the centenary commemoration of the start of the war.

While I was going through the materials, I discovered that in each monthly parish magazine there was a list of the services for the next month including, for matins and evensong, a list of the music that would be sung.  This got me thinking, and I had the idea to hold a choral evensong service that would include the same music that was used at evensong in the weeks leading up to the outbreak of war - the music that the congregation would have heard just before the young men went away to fight (or, in some cases, to object to the fighting) and the community learned to live without their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers.

We've had to do quite a lot of research to actually find the music in some cases - we gave up on a few potential pieces because they seem to have fallen so far out of favour that not even specialist libraries have the scores any more, and yet others because (although they were apparently popular at the time) they aren't particularly musically appealing!  In the end, we've hit upon a selection of music that we think will provide an evocative experience for the modern congregation:

Introit: Woodward - The Radiant Morn
Canticles: Ebdon in C
Responses: Tallis
Anthem: Stainer - I am Alpha

All of these were sung at evensong at (the old) St Paul's, Harringay in May, June and/or July 1914.

The choir will comprise singers from a number of local churches and the service will be on Sunday, 20 July at 6 p.m.

Everyone is welcome, and we hope to see you there.