Join us for Choral Evensong for All Saints, Nov. 3 at 5 p.m.
The sung service of evening prayer offers an opportunity for reflection and contemplation as we remember those who have gone before us.
Join the choir of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church for a service of Choral Evensong for All Saints at 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 3. The sung service of evening prayer offers an opportunity for reflection and contemplation as we remember those who have gone before us.
Evensong goes back nearly five hundred years, with its earliest expression found during the time of the Protestant Reformation. Choral Evensong adds the glorious element of having the choir offer composed settings of various elements of the service, including sung responses, collects, and anthems. Evensong is the perfect opportunity to invite friends to come and experience our rich Anglican choral heritage.
Worship in the beauty of solemn holiness as the choir sings the "Preces and Responses" of William Smith and Herbert Sumsion's “Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in A."
The choir will also sing a relatively new anthem by American composer Elaine Hagenberg. She writes, “O Love” was inspired by the words of Scottish minister, George Matheson in 1882. Blinded at the age of nineteen, his fiancé called off their engagement and years later, as he remembered his heartache and loss, he penned the words...
O Love that will not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thy ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.
O Joy that seeks me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.
- George Matheson
The choir will be joined by Thomas Schroeder, principal cellist from The Symphony of Southeast Texas, accompanying "O Love" and "Requiem" of Eliza Gilkyson. Come for the music. Stay for the fellowship! A festive reception will follow.