I joined the choir of St. Peter’s Caversham to sing an evensong at Bristol Cathedral. Most of the music was familiar (Clucas responses, with his rather less familiar Lord’s Prayer, Bainton, Bairstow), but the canticles were new to me: Bob Chilcott’s Downing Service. The existence of this service illustrates the greater attention paid recently to choral music in Colleges which previously had not gone in for it very much. Downing would never have commissioned a canticle setting from a major composer in the 1980’s, for example. I’d guess Chilcott’s service was linked to the major rebuild of the Chapel organ a few years ago. It is harmonically very simple but rhythmically complex with frequent changes of time signature.
We were made welcome by Bristol and given tea in the Chapter House (with flapjacks!) before the service.