A Daily Prayer
Creator God,
You have made us in your image to reflect your goodness.
You have called us to use our gifts to build your kingdom.
Give us wisdom and help us to use our skills to your glory
and for the building up of the people we serve.
We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,
Amen.
The Choristers Prayer
Bless, O Lord, us thy servants,
who minister in thy temple.
Grant that what we sing with our lips,
we may believe in our hearts,
and what we believe in our hearts,
we may show forth in our lives.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Prayer from the ‘Musical Collects’
God in heaven,
we praise you with hearts and hands and voices,
in the breath of song,
the plucking of strings and the blowing of brass.
As all creation worships you
in both sound and silence,
so we employ every instrument to your praise;
for you are God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
now and for ever.
Amen.
About the Chorister’s Prayer
The Chorister’s Prayer seems to have first appeared in The Choirboy’s Pocket Book, published by the School of English Church Music (the former name of the RSCM) in 1934. Despite being so well known, the prayer is not given an author in this source (some say it was the RSCM’s founder, Sir Sydney Nicholson, while others link it to Cosmo Gordon Lang, who became Archbishop of Canterbury in 1929).
The English version of this Prayer appears to be very close to the Latin in the Pontificale Romanum of 1595–96 in the form for admitting a Psalmista or Cantor:
Vide, ut, quod ore cantas, corde credas, et quod core credis,
operibus comprobes.
It may be even older (perhaps 13th or 14th century).