From the ambitious Mass in E-flat, op. 5 (1890) through Pax nobiscum (1944), choral music played an ongoing role in Amy Beach’s creative life. The works are stylistically varied, ranging from typical Victorian harmonies and textures in the early works, through sacred anthems and services inspired by Anglican choral traditions during her middle period, and finally to spare, harmonically experimental late works. Her most important secular choral works were written during the years of her marriage, when she was also composing her major instrumental works. After the death of her husband in 1910, she turned increasingly to religion for solace and inspiration, finding a spiritual home in the Episcopal Church. Her association with St. Bartholomew’s Church in New York and its music director, David McKay Williams, proved crucial in shaping the music of her later years. The Canticle of the Sun, op. 123 (1924) was exemplary of the sacred choral works that were her most performed compositions in later years.

Chapter 5 examines Herbert’s attendance at the public choral liturgies of the church. Herbert was associated throughout his life with religious institutions that supported choral foundations: Westminster Abbey, Trinity College, Cambridge, Lincoln Cathedral, and, most famously, Salisbury Cathedral. Herbert’s practical interest in making music is well known; yet he was never a member of these choirs, and the music performed during public worship at these foundations is a repertoire that he would have experienced passively and aurally. This chapter reads Herbert’s poetic alongside contemporary developments in the composition and aesthetics of seventeenth-century liturgical choral music. In revealing striking analogues between Herbert’s verse and contemporary polyphonic church music, this chapter considers Herbert and his work in more receptive, attentive terms, affording significant new perspectives on the nature of devotional attention and early modern debates about the ‘beauty of holiness’ and the aesthetics of worship.