Evensong

 Evensong is surely the quintessential Anglican, and therefore the quintessential English, church service. Taking place in the softening twilight at day's end, it perfectly embodies the Church of England's preference for blurred dogmatic outlines, with the weight of meaning borne by beautiful words (at least in more traditional liturgical practice) and beautiful music, rather than by anything too stark and prescriptive (though there is no escaping the Apostles' Creed). Evensong, you might say, is a rite of 'ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds': Wallace Stevens certainly wasn't thinking of the Church of England when he wrote his twilit poem The Idea of Order at Key West, but the closing lines could almost be applied... 'Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.' It is surely significant, too, that the archetypally English poem, Gray's Elegy, is a long meditation at twilight in an English churchyard – an evensong poem, if ever there was one. 
All of which is by way of saying that the Evensong I attended last night in the cathedral – a Solemn Choral Evensong for Candlemas – was one of the most perfectly beautiful services I have ever experienced, a simple, intimate, quietly perfect mix of words and music with never a false note, sustaining a calm, unforced exaltation. The music was Orlando Gibbons's Short Service, and there was one anthem, 'When to the Temple Mary Came' by Johannes Eccard. The choir, of course, were excellent.
Here is the Eccard anthem, sung by the choir of my old college...