To be sung ‘like a mantra’, Ben Parry’s Lighten our Darkness is a meditation on the Third Collect for Evensong from the Book of Common Prayer. A numinous response to the timeless beauty of Thomas Cranmer’s prose, its profound effect is the result of the simplest means employed to express the theme of spiritual illumination and the splendour of light. A calmly radiant C major pervades the hypnotic outer sections, chant-like and white-note throughout. In contrast, the central episode offers warm...