A Prayer for Choristers

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.

Musical setting

John Harper has composed a setting of this prayer for the 80th anniversary of the RSCM, which can be bought from the online shop.

This setting of the Choristers' Prayer was sung at St Paul's Cathedral, London on Easter Monday, to mark the beginning of the RSCM's 80th anniversary celebrations – together with a hymn (Aetholwold) by Sydney Nicholson and psalm chant by Gerald Knight; the anthem was the first performance of John Harper's Eastertide anthem Regina Caeli.

Provenance

The Choristers' Prayer seem to have appeared in the first edition of the Choristers’ 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 1595-6 in the form for admitting a Psalmista or Cantor:
Vide, ut, quod ore cantas, corde credas, et quod core credis, operibus comprobes.
(Thanks to Canon Robin Ward for this information.)

It may be even older (perhaps 13th or 14th century).