On Sunday, August 22, 2021, the doors of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle opened again to attendees – the first time since March 7, 2020.
For 76 weeks (almost a year and a half), the choir sang in an empty cathedral, due to COVID-19. In March 2020, churches were closed to in-person congregations; many started Zoom meetings on Sundays. The Compline choir had to exclude about a third of the singers in high-risk categories; the rest were put on rotation in services that carried on from Easter to January with just four singers plus the director (see the Seattle Times article from September 6, 2020). Masking of singers became mandatory by the end of the summer.
The hardest times came in January / Feburary 2021, when the infection rate was really high, and churches were only allowed a single vocal soloist. Compline continued to be offered by just two people – a cantor and a reader. The services were livestreamed, but not available to the public, and the KING-FM broadcast played previous recordings of Compline during this time. As members became vaccinated, those that had been excluded were allowed back into the rota, and by the end of the summer almost the whole choir was back singing to an empty cathedral, in N95 equivalent masks. To hear the whole story of how Compline carried on during the pandemic, listen to this KIRO-FM podcast.
With the Delta variant raging, strict health measures are still in place. The choir, all vaccinated, still sings in their N95s, and masks are required of the attendees. But how gratifying it was to have the people back! Many singers had a real sense of reunion after after the long absence. We had 204 attendees at the service – a wonderful way to begin. Hopefully the resurgence of Delta will not require isolation again.
To celebrate the occasion, the choir sang a wonderful anthem for double choir of the motet “Salva nos, Domine, vigilantes,” by Jacob Handl (1550-1591). The words are from the antiphon to the canticle Nunc Dimittis sung at Compline:
[Latin]
Salva nos, Domine, vigilantes: custodi nos dormientes:
ut vigilemus cum Christo et requiescamus in pace.
[English]
Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping;
that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.
To see the whole service, go to the Compline Underground post, where you can find links to the livestream archive and the podcast of the Service.