Our first Choral Evensong of the year will be Sunday, October 12, at 5:00 p.m. We are delighted to once again offer a full season of Evensong and other choral liturgies on the second Sunday of every month.

We are privileged in this church to have a 35-year history of offering Choral Evensong, and we also look forward to maintaining the tradition of this ancient form of choral worship at St. Peter's.

The music for our first Evensong service all has a story to tell. To start with, the classical music world is enjoying a prolonged celebration of the 500th anniversary of the birth of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. We know that Palestrina was born between February 3, 1525, and February 2, 1526, so to cover our bases, we will continue to celebrate him through February of next year! The anthem at Evensong will be both parts of his beloved motet "Sicut cervus," a masterful setting of words from Psalm 42.

English composer John Blow (1649–1708) was a celebrity musician of the Restoration era before being overshadowed by Henry Purcell. The canticles at Evensong are from Blow's Short Service No. 4 in F. This setting has been in the St. Peter's choral library for many years, but it has not come off the shelf in at least a decade, and I am looking forward to this (possibly overdue) hearing of this great music.

The responses by William Smith of Durham (1603–1645) have become a regular part of our Evensong repertory, but we are going to make what I hope is a pleasing addition of a setting of the Lord's Prayer by John Sheppard (c. 1515–1558). Though composed a good bit earlier, I think this music, written for the same voices and singable in the same key, will fit well with the responses.