I'm mostly allergic to the austere Anglican charms of choral evensong when I hear it broadcast on the wireless. But when you see this intimate performance live in one of our great cathedrals, it's a completely different experience. Walking into Lincoln cathedral out of the rain and cold yesterday, after a miserable pilgrimage up Lincoln's Steep Hill – well named, the only significant contour for miles and miles around in Lincolnshire's relentless flatness – this astonishing medieval building hosted its girls' choir singing Monday's Evensong with the Cathedral's director of music, Aric Prentice. The way the sounds of their few voices carried in Lincoln's transcendent architecture and massive acoustic was miraculous; every note shimmered with a halo of resonance.
I didn't grow up with the rituals of Anglican liturgy, so the mysteries of the responses and the rituals of when you're supposed to stand up and sit down again somewhat escaped me, but the choir's performance of a Stanford anthem and their sensitive singing of the Psalms, were minor musical miracles in the cathedral's gigantic space.
Only a handful of Lincolners were in the audience – a few of the girls' parents, mostly – but there was a moving sense of the service being part of the centuries-old musical traditions of the Cathedral. William Byrd is one of Prentice's musical ancestors – he was organist in Lincoln from 1563 to 1572; if I lived in Lincoln, or next to one of our other great cathedrals, I reckon evensong could become a regular musical ritual. It's one of the England's richest heritages – a living tradition that costs precisely nothing to experience live.
