Music to the Church’s ears

QUESTION Has there been a full musical setting of the Christian Litany or any other parts of the Book Of Common Prayer?

When the Book Of Common Prayer was published in 1549, it was set to music.

Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer engaged John Merbecke to provide a collection of service music similar to that used in Latin rites ‘containing so much of the Order of Common Prayer as is to be sung in churches’. The Book Of Common Prayer noted (i.e. ‘with musical notes’ and not ‘ annotated’) was published in 1550.

It was a simple musical setting of the prayer book, based on traditional plainsong melodies, but adapted to the vernacular.

Merbecke, thought to be from Beverley, east Yorkshire, was a boy chorister at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and was employed as an organist there from 1541.

In the early 19th century, the Oxford Movement (founded to reinstate Christian traditions) inspired renewed interest in liturgical music. The Rev John Jebb rediscovered Merbecke’s settings in 1841.

By the 1850s, they were being sung in St Margaret’s Chapel, London. The settings of the communion service have been sung congregationally since.

John Vine, Worcester.

QUESTION Why can’t birds hear my cat-scarers?

FURTheR to the earlier answer, they will also get rid of children, whose hearing can be highly sensitive.

Playing tennis with his father in their cul-de-sac, my grandson complained of a strange sound hurting his ears. It turned out to be a cat- scarer in the neighbour’s front garden. We adults couldn’t hear anything.

Alan Sharpe, Melton Mowbray, Leics.