I. The roots of Evening Prayer

Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours

Organ vespers as a type of evening prayer with specific attention to music has a strong relation to a tradition of evening prayers in the worldwide Christian church.[1] To begin with, the Roman Catholic public prayer life consists of among other things the Divine Service or Mass, and the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours. The latter is the set of prayers that marks the hours of the day with psalms and prayer. Its root lies in the Jewish traditions of prayer: the Old Testament includes many examples of morning prayer and evening prayer. In the Jewish temple and synagogues, there were two or three services of prayer or sacrifice a day, and similar moments of prayer were practiced at home. The first Christians were Jew and continued a tradition of prayer. For example, they met each other in the temple at times of prayer. As Niek Schumann writes, it is difficult to reconstruct a complete image of the services of prayer by the Christians in the first centuries after Christ, but it can be stated that there were services of prayer in addition to the celebration of the Eucharist as main practice of faith.[2]

After the third and fourth century after Christ, when the Roman Catholic Church became more and more institutionalized, the times of prayer were extended to seven hours of prayer.[3] These seven hours can be related to Psalm 119:164 “Seven times a day I praise You”.[4] Benedict of Nursia, who founded twelve communities of monks and introduced the Rule of Saint Benedict, was, with others, of great importance for the structure of seven prayers in the monastic tradition. This structure was later formalized into the canonical hours: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, each at a particular time of the day. Although there were services of prayer in both cathedrals and monasteries, the Roman Catholic hours became primarily monastic, as they were difficult to realize outside the walls of monasteries.[5] The prayers consist of psalms and readings that are spoken or chanted as well as sung hymns. All 150 psalms are covered within one week according to a psalm schedule, which comes down to more or less twenty psalms a day and three psalms in one moment of prayer. The canonical hours are usually open for people from outside the monastery, but the primary objective is to continue the unremittent worship of God by monks devoting their entire life to God. The Clergy and Religious are required to pray the Office daily.

Anglican Evensong

After the English Reformation in the sixteenth century, the Anglican Church shifted the focus from monasteries to parishes as universities and cathedrals. In 1549, the first version of Archbishop Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer was published, which formulates the liturgy that is still used today in the Anglican Church. The seven prayers were reduced to the morning prayer or matins, and evening prayer or evensong. Musically, the prayers evolved from unaccompanied plainchant to accompanied singing, choir singing and organ music. Composers like William Byrd and Thomas Tallis composed choral music specifically for the evensong, and since then quite a tradition of classical choral music followed. The 500-year history of choir schools has contributed to the development and performance of a specific tradition of choral music for the evensong. It should be noted that evensong and choir schools are related to both cathedrals like Westminster Abbey and Salisbury Cathedral, as well as university colleges like St. John’s College and King’s College in Cambridge.

Because the 45-minute evensong is a combination of vespers and compline, it includes both the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, the canticles that find their place in respectively vespers and compline. The intent of Archbishop Cranmer was to attract a general public with accessible and relatively short services, rather than offering many elaborate services in Latin. Similar to the Roman Catholic canonical hours, Anglican matins and evensong offer a spoken and chanted liturgy and moments of contemplative silence, but it is the vast proportion of music in the service that distinguishes it from other church services.[6] This implies two points relevant to this research: evensong was intended to attract a general public, and music was an important means to do so. This also holds for the  typical organ vespers (the main topic in this study), as that is also a moment of prayer, silence and has an important role for music to involve the audience in the service.

Buxtehude’s Abendmusiken

Another musical practice that can be related to organ vespers is the so-called Abendmusiken in the protestant-Lutheran town Lübeck in Germany. Organist Sietze de Vries refers to this tradition of evening music as source of inspiration for his annual organ vespers in Groningen.[7] In the 1640s, composer and organist Franz Tunder started a series of freely accessible concerts in the Marienkirche in Lübeck. In this period, Lübeck was an important Hanseatic city and Tunder performed organ music to entertain the businessmen during their congregations or at the weekly opening of Lübeck’s stock exchange. When Dietrich Buxtehude succeeded Tunder in 1668, he established this series of evening concerts. In 1673, Buxtehude used the term Abendmusiken to describe the concerts, which were then held on Thursdays. In that year, the outdoor market was relocated to the town hall, nearby the Marienkirche. The concerts were sponsored by local businessmen and individual sponsors were entitled to reserved seats. The music at the Abendmusiken was varied: from secular music, to psalms and Christian hymns, and instrumental music. Buxtehude also composed cantatas or even oratorios on basis of Biblical texts. It became an innovative and prominent tradition that lasted until 1810 and attracted among others Johann Sebastian Bach to walk 400 km from Arnstadt to Lübeck.[8]

The design of and motivation for the Abendmusiken is very different from evening prayers focusing on the continuous praise of God. However, it must be noted that in Buxtehude’s era, church and secular music were not strictly separated. Besides, it is remarkable that, after a while, Buxtehude limited the concerts to five Sundays in the period of Advent. They took place between 5 and 6 pm, just after the midday services. That means that Buxtehude connected the concerts to a liturgical period. An interesting parallel with the Anglican evensong can be made, which are in nature strictly related to the liturgical time of the year. Whereas the Abendmusiken were introduced to entertain local businessmen and attract them to the church with organ and choir music, the Anglican evensong was intended to attract people with an accessible service of prayer and music. The starting point of both traditions is different, for evensong focuses on prayer and readings while Abendmusiken primarily concentrate on the music. Organ vespers as customary in the Netherlands can be situated in between. Their reference point is the liturgical time of the year with readings, hymns and music suitable to the period, but the force of attraction is organ music.

Excerpt of a typical Anglican Choral Evensong in York Minster.

Buxtehude's music inspired the instrumentalists of Ensemble Masques and singers of Vox Luminis to name a production after his Abendmusiken.