Step into a Cambridge college chapel at the end of an afternoon in term, and you may find candles already lit, a handful of visitors in the back pews and a choir taking its place in the stalls. Then the first note rises into the stone, and the city outside seems to disappear.
Music has been part of Cambridge life for centuries. When King Henry VI founded King’s College in 1441, he provided for a choir to sing daily in his chapel, and that is still its main task today. Across the city, the choirs of St John’s, Trinity and many other colleges keep the same rhythm through the year: services, rehearsals and, above all, Choral Evensong.
Evensong, open to everyone
Evensong is the sung evening service of the Church of England, a mix of psalms, canticles, prayers and an anthem, and in Cambridge it is sung most days during term. It is free, and anyone is welcome, whatever their beliefs. Many people come simply to sit for forty minutes, listen to some of the finest choral singing in the world and watch the light fade in the windows.
Forty minutes of candlelight and voices, and the city goes quiet.
A single voice on Christmas Eve
The most famous Cambridge choral tradition began in 1918, just weeks after the end of the First World War. King’s new Dean, Eric Milner-White, a former army chaplain, introduced a Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols on Christmas Eve, adapting a service first created in Truro. The following year he added the opening that has become so familiar: a single treble singing the first verse of “Once in Royal David’s City” alone.
The BBC first broadcast the service in 1928, and it has gone out almost every year since. Today millions of people around the world listen live. The soloist is chosen only moments before the service begins, so every chorister has to be ready, and somewhere, in a quiet house on Christmas Eve, someone always holds their breath for that first note.
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