0:00 Magnificat
2:42 Nunc dimittis

One of the treasured traditions of the Anglican church is the service of Choral Evensong, which hasn't happened in most places for quite a while. The service can also be spoken -- in which case it is called Evening Prayer -- and consists of prayers and responses from the choir or congregation, lessons from the Bible (which like Sunday readings change according to the season) including a Psalm, which is chanted in a choral service, and two evening canticles which are the Magnificat (Song of Mary) and Nunc dimittis (Song of Simeon), or in musicians' circles "Mag and Nunc" for short. This is one of the simplest settings in texture, from a larger work of Thomas Tallis’ called the Dorian Service (Dorian is one of the ancient church modes and includes the notes from D to D if you play a scale on the piano using only the white keys). Tallis sets each word once with very little rhythmic variation between the parts; consequently the entire setting of the canticles takes under four-and-a-half minutes, which is very short compared to some of the Romantic era settings which can take three times as long. Though probably intended to be sung unaccompanied, I have added a consort of recorders to the voices, doubling them at the octave, which hopefully comes across more like playing it on the organ with two stops rather than as a separate entity.

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