Choral Evensong Marks 100 Years on BBC Radio

Choral evensong has been broadcast on BBC radio for 100 years, making it the corporation's longest-running outside broadcast — a weekly fixture that still reaches hundreds of thousands of listeners on Radio 3.

The first transmission aired on 7 October 1926, live from Westminster Abbey, when the BBC was still in its infancy. A century on, the service continues weekly from cathedrals, churches, chapels and abbeys across the country.

Writing in the Guardian, MP and former chorister Jonathan Davies marks the centenary with a defence of what he calls a "vibrant, thriving art form" — and a call to protect it.

Why does evensong matter?

Davies frames the sound of a choir singing evensong as part of the fabric of British life. He places it alongside a short list of sounds that, in his words, "seem to belong to Britain":

• The peal of church bells
• The brass band on a village green
• The roar of a football crowd
• A cathedral choir at the end of the day

For Davies, evensong is more than a broadcast artefact. He describes it as a "beautiful and empowering collective experience", arguing that the tradition deserves both praise and active protection as it enters its second century on air.

What does the centenary actually celebrate?

The milestone is a broadcasting fact as much as a musical one. When the BBC transmitted the Westminster Abbey service on 7 October 1926, the corporation had existed for only a few years. That a live religious outside broadcast from a single venue has survived every subsequent change in radio schedules, technology and listening habits is the substance of the anniversary.

Today the programme rotates around the country's religious buildings rather than remaining anchored to one choir. Each week, Radio 3 carries a live service from a different cathedral, church, chapel or abbey — a format that has kept the broadcast tied to local choral traditions while giving it national reach.

What is at stake going forward?

Davies's argument is explicitly protective. The centenary, in his view, should not be read as a memorial but as evidence of a living practice: an art form he judges vibrant and thriving, sustained by working choirs and the institutions that train them.

His intervention carries weight as a political one as well as a personal one. A serving MP and former chorister calling for the tradition to be safeguarded turns the anniversary into a prompt for decisions about funding, church music education and the future of the choirs whose voices have filled the airwaves since 1926.