St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 3 Main Street, Middlebury will offer music of Bach, Stanford and Ayleward at Choral Evensong on Sunday, April 14 at 4:00 pm. Evensong is an English medieval term for the afternoon/evening prayer service known as vespers. A traditional Anglican rite, Evensong combines the monastic evening services of vespers and compline according to Sarum use. The Sarum Rite, adopted from the Roman Rite after the 1066 Norman conquest, originates from the Diocese of Salisbury. Choral Evensong is sung and beloved in Anglican cathedrals and parish churches worldwide. Singing prayers, Psalms, canticles and anthems brings unity of purpose to the prayers offered on behalf of God's creation. Much music is sung by the choir alone, with the congregation joining for two hymns. Many find that this style of service can help give a meditative gateway as the day comes to a close.

The organ prelude and postlude will be J.S. Bach's Prelude and Fugue in E-flat, BWV 552, the "bookend" movements of his great Clavier-Übung III. The anthem will be the first choral movement of Bach's Easter cantata, Christ lag in Todesbanden [Christ lay in the bonds of death], BWV 4. The Preces and Responses are being sung to a setting by Richard Ayleward (1626-1669), organist and choirmaster of Norwich Cathedral. The Evening Canticles will be the setting in C major by Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924), Anglo-Irish composer, teacher and conductor. Stanford was a professor of music at the Royal College of Music and at Cambridge University. His pupils included Gustav Holst, Herbert Howells, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

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