At The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin we strive to be a part of the 1500-year history of great English catholic music. Our liturgical music consists of: traditional hymns sung by the congregation; Mass Propers chanted by the cantor; and motets (drawn from the great sacred music of the last 6 centuries) sung by the choir.

The Venerable Bede [a.d. 672-735] noted several important liturgical and musical characteristics that would remain constant in the life of Anglicanism.

The first is Benedictine Monasticism's emphasis on daily singing of the Divine Office. One of the distinctive worship forms of Anglicanism is the daily round of services called Mattins and Evensong. Both sung offices develop from the Benedictine tradition of the sevenfold Divine Office and continue the tradition in Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. From the first vernacular Book of Common Prayer in 1549 and continuing today, cathedrals and greater churches of the Anglican Patriarchy have commissioned the best composers of their eras to provide unique settings of the opening sentences, Psalms, canticles, and prayers for these services. In addition, from 1549 onwards, a rubric has remained in both the order for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer which states "here, in those places in which a quire is to sing, be the anthem." The express function of the anthem is to be purely a votive offering to God consistent with the Anglican understanding of all public worship as God-directed.

The second is the importance of plainsong. Bede narrates that Benedict Biscop [a.d. 628 – 690] brought Peter the Chanter from Rome to teach his monks how to sing their offices properly.

The third is an avoidance of revolution in politics and liturgy. Rather than radical change, slow assimilation and gradual change remain characteristic from the Synod of Whitby [a.d. 664] onwards. This suggests that continuity has priority over novelty.

Most English parish churches have had neither large organs nor professional singers. From the 1552 revision of The Book of Common Prayer onwards congregations sang metrical Psalms, canticles and hymns, first to unison melodies and soon in four-part harmony. This practice of singing metrical psalms, along with translated texts and tunes from the continent (from Luther, for example), was the chief source of what came to be one of the lasting and all-prevailing elements not only throughout Anglicanism, but of offshoot churches as well--the English hymn. Music at the parish church, at the simplest level, has been largely confined to hymn and Psalm singing and perhaps to simple Psalm-tone settings of the canticles and simple settings of parts of the eucharistic ordinary. The famed Men And Boys choirs of the English tradition has been confined to large churches, cathedrals, and university institutions.

The secular priorities of today's social scene have brought about the demise of the traditional men and boys choir in most Anglican and Anglo-Catholic churches, both in England and in the United States. Choral Mattins and Evensong have fallen into disuse, and some impatient clergy and people have often preferred shortened liturgies that rule out elaborate music. The demands of a "religious market" economy have also eroded musical competence. The fusion of music and text, which was the distinguishing quality of all Anglican choral music, is too often replaced by univalent music accompanying simplistic and childish lyrics.

At St. Mary’s we re-affirm: the rich liturgical music tradition described by The Venerable Bede; the aesthetic underpinnings of the medieval era; and the post reformation-era efforts by composers to provide sacred sung musical works which are universal rather than ephemeral in their style and composition. We acknowledge the unique appropriateness of the pipe organ as the most suitable instrument to support hymn singing. We follow in the footsteps of Merbecke and Cranmer with the use of English-language chants and hymns. We generally offer choral anthems in chapel-style (“a capella”) as opposed to the more complex preparations suitable for the great cathedrals. And, above all, we hold fast to the indestructible model of the beauty of holiness in the mainstream of western Christian music.