Orlando Gibbons' music for the Anglican Church has been among the most popular of all time. Several of his anthems had printed editions added to manuscript copies very shortly after his lifetime and have probably been in constant use since the 1660s. His Service music, as well, has occupied a treasured place in English choral repertories. Some 30 copies of his First Service (the "short" service) survive from his time alone, placing Gibbons' simple homophonic setting of the Anglican canticles and prayers second perhaps only to the services of Thomas Tallis in contemporary esteem. Only slightly less-beloved, Gibbons' Second Service, the so-called "Verse Service," shows the composer in a completely different aesthetic light. In this presumably later composition, Gibbons lovingly adapts the musical principles of the new century—the consort song and verse anthem—to the more mundane daily worship needs of the previous. The result is an excellent pivot chord between the more expansive yet conservative music of William Byrd, and the Anglican church music of the future.

In many ways, Gibbons' Second Service acknowledges its debt to the Second Service of William Byrd (he may even have quoted Byrd's Nunc dimittis in this piece), yet surpasses it. Of the various canticles possible contained in an Anglican church service, Byrd set only those for Evensong; Gibbons sets the Evensong Canticles (Magnificat and Nunc dimittis) as well as those for the Matins liturgy (Te Deum and Jubilate). Byrd sought to unify his setting by use of a strong head-motive; Gibbons chose something like a tail-motive, ending three of the four movements with similar florid and melismatic Amens, and bringing all movements to close by means of the same cadence. More typical of the seventeenth century, Gibbons chose to alternate passages for five-voiced choral forces (with organ) and so-called "verse" sections for solo voices and organ; sometimes he linked the contrasted passages by similar melodic writing, though with delightfully changed harmonies. Just as fifteenth century musicians adapted principles from the motet to larger compositions of the Catholic Mass, so did Gibbons adapt the techniques of the verse anthem (a genre he also helped craft) to a lengthier, complete set of worship music.

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