A NEW collection of music for evensong for treble voices, Open Thou Our Lips (RSCM, £13.50 (CT Bookshop £12.15); 978-0-85402-199-4) marks the 350th anniversary of the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

Evensong is much loved, and for many churches and cathedrals is a mainstay of their choral activity. David Halls has selected the music and edited the volume. As Director of Music at Salisbury Cathedral, he makes the point that the introduction of the first girls' choir there in 1991 led to a growing demand for evensong music for upper voices from churches and cathedrals with upper-voice choirs. This volume will be welcomed by them.

There are six settings of the Preces and Responses, and 15 setting of the canticles (Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis). Composers cover a wide range of styles and standards, and the volume includes works by Donald Hunt, Peter Aston, Richard Shephard, and Malcolm Archer, as well as works by relative youngsters such as Thomas Hewitt Jones and Jeremy Woodside, with pieces by Halls himself.

Some of the settings have been composed specially for this volume, and are published here for the first time, while others are part of the general repertory.

The music is predominantly in unison, although Hunt's Canticles, based on American folk-tunes, go into three parts in unaccompanied sections that are rather haunting. Halls's The First Service, Hewitt Jones's The Berkeley Service, and Quinney's The Short Service venture into two parts sporadically.

Peter Nardone's Preces and Responses are written for unaccompanied two-part choir in a stark but effective musical idiom, while all the other settings of these texts are accompanied by the organ.

Of the canticles, I particularly warmed to Timothy Noon's for the boys of St Davids, and preferred the abrasive harmonic language of Robert Quinney's setting (written for Westminster Abbey) to the more anodyne Durham Service by Christopher Totney. A treble-voice version of the fauxbourdon Tallis Canticles arranged by Sarah MacDonald has been included, together with her unaccompanied Fauxbourdons Service based on the psalm-tone Tonus Peregrinus.

I notice that some composers still retain two syllables for "praised" in the Preces and two syllables for "rejoiced" and "filled" in the Magnificat, which seems a touch archaic. Halls has included alternative words in the Lord's Prayer, however, where "which" might be "who" and "them" might be "those".

This is a smart and well-produced volume, and a great source of upper-voice music for evensong.