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Of the hundreds and hundreds of settings of the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis, one genuinely scares me. I am afraid to perform it, either as a conductor or as an organist.

And it’s not that this piece is overly technical. Indeed Herbert Howells has written more difficult settings of the Evening Canticles (the Dallas Service comes to mind).

But there is a unique difficulty in this music written for King’s College, Cambridge, in 1945. Like no other piece I can think of, the “Collegium Regale” Evening Canticles seem to demand perfection.

I recently pulled out my copy of the piece to accompany the canticles this past Sunday at Evensong. I found myself briefly second-guessing the composer at the slurring of the word “lowliness,” but quickly realized that Howells got it right (of course). It is also the first slur in the piece that somehow feels as if it was already full of them.

I can study the notes, I can sing them, I can play them, and yet, these pieces somehow remain a mystery. The kind of alchemic liquidity that Howells achieves is impressive. The culminating Gloria Patri seems to transcend time and space every time we encounter it, and blissfully, it comes up twice when these canticles are sung at Evensong.

I realize need to get over my fear which has resulted in a kind of reluctance to program these canticles. They must always remain special, but Howells has done that work for us. I relished the chance to accompany these on Sunday. They cry out to be performed, not kept under glass.

Labels: Howells, King's College (Cambridge)