Holy Week Evensong at Christ Church, Pensacola

My favorite service of all, Evensong. Everything is just moving along, peacefully, penitentially, as we enter Holy Week, when all of a sudden, the choir is singing Gounod, the Jerusalem anthem from Gallia. Oh, WOW! Gounod makes me grin, and he moves me. Gounod . . . Gounod ROCKS!

And here you can here the anthem:

I was introduced to Gounod in Doha. Our priest, Ian Young, led a group called the Doha Singers, and he chose challenging music. We learned Gounod’s Mass for St. Cecelia, and the music is the kind that gets into your blood. I couldn’t get enough of it. I never get sick of it. Gounod is music with a sense of drama and a sense of humor about itself. I think it is his sense of timing, how you hold a note just a little longer than you would expect, and then rollick on to the next. I had never heard this piece before, but Gounod is so individual, so unique – it had to be Gounod.

It was a perfect evening, a lovely service, and the sun shone in through the cross as it set:

At the end, we sang one of my very favorite hymns, The Day Thou Gavest Lord, is Ended:

I admit it, I am pretty tough, but these words make me weak and weepy:

The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended,
The darkness falls at Thy behest;
To Thee our morning hymns ascended,
Thy praise shall sanctify our rest.

All in all, a lovely day. Our son joined us for the first episode of The Game of Thrones on HBO. He’s read all the books, I am on book 2, and AdventureMan is reading the first book, the one on which this series is based. Great way to begin our week. 🙂