Six Cambridge composers were commissioned to write new Psalm settings for this concert. The problem with writing for an English church choir is that such a task requires real skill and imagination not to lapse into either staid hymnody or grave cerebrality. For the most part, these settings fell into the latter, dryly and uningratiatingly chromatic, lacking colour or contrast, and in the end sounding curiously old fashioned and inhibited.

None of these settings were particularly religious in tone and there was a general pall of unease and joylessness to the new works. The whole dreary affair could be seen as a reflection of the malaise felt by the composers in being cast as ‘British Choral Composers’. As the Anglican church arguably becomes less relevant to British society, the efforts of the composers to recapture any sense of ecclesiastical usefulness or even just genuine religious sentiment were synthetic and stilted. The fact that most of these composers are atheists and agnostics is not necessarily an issue. Howells, Finzi, Vaughan Williams and Britten, for instance, all produced magnificent ecclesiastical works. Cambridge Psalm’s indifference to the message of the Scriptures was the problem, the touchstone of the word setting here. Sensitivity to the text was largely absent, in both detail and overall mood.

The notable exception was Cheryl Frances-Hoad’s eclectic and beautiful setting of Psalm 1, imaginatively written in its disavowal of any one particular harmonic scheme, its use of light and shade and extraordinary final organ chord glissandoed into the heights and depths of the instrument’s range, as if the entire building was exhaling a final breath. Perhaps it was.