The Three Choirs Festival is a music festival, held each August alternately at the cathedrals of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester in England and originally featuring their three choirs,
which remain central to the week-long programme. The large-scale choral repertoire is now performed by the Festival Chorus but
the festival also features other major ensembles and international soloists. The 2007 festival took
place in Gloucester from 4-12 August.
The festival is closely identified with the musical careers of British composers Edward
Elgar, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Elgar's Enigma
Variations, which swept him to fame in 1899, and the oratorio The Dream of Gerontius, written for the Birmingham Triennial Music Festival of 1900, were both
performed in 2007, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth. The 2007 festival also featured Benjamin Britten's War Requiem and Mahler's Eighth Symphony: two large-scale choral works dating from near the end of the lives of
these two composers. The organists of the three cathedrals (who act as artistic director and festival conductor when it is their
cathedral's turn to host the festival) are Geraint Bowen (Hereford),
Andrew Nethsingha (Gloucester) and Adrian Lucas (Worcester). In September 2007,
Andrew Nethsingha moved to St John's
College, Cambridge as director of music, and will be succeeded at Gloucester in January 2008 by Adrian Partington. The
2008 festival will take place in Worcester from 2 - 9 August.
History
The festival, originally over two days in September, is probably one of the oldest in Europe. Publicity for it in
1719, addressed "Members of the yearly Musical Assembly in these parts". Its music obviously tended
towards the ecclesiastical. In early gatherings, Purcell's setting of the Te Deum
and Jubilate was a regular part of the repertoire until 1784, and Handel dominated 18th
century programmes with oratorios such as Alexander's Feast,
Samson, Judas
Maccabaeus and Messiah. Haydn's The
Creation was heard first in the festival of 1800. From 1840, Mendelssohn's Elijah was performed every year until 1930.
The 19th century saw the introduction of Rossini, Mozart and Beethoven and the festival's fortunes were enhanced by the arrival of the railways. However, these
also brought crowds, a phenomenon not always pleasing to the church authorities although full seats uplifted the finances. In the
1870s, the festival was reduced to the three cathedral choirs, ending for a while the era of the visiting celebrity singer as a
faction in the church sought to stress the "appropriate" nature of activities allowed in cathedrals. However the civil
authorities took issue with the ecclesiastical and the festival revived. Interestingly, works by J.S. Bach were not heard until the 1870s, soon to be followed by
"local" composer Elgar, who began to be featured around the turn of the century and whose works dominated the festival for much
of the 20th century as it shifted emphasis toward British musicians. Parry's compositions were also performed regularly. His De Profundis was one of the earliest works
to be commissioned especially for the festival and performed in 1891.
Delius in 1901 is another composer who introduced or conducted new works, with his
Dance Rhapsody No. 1. Another was Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose
Tallis Fantasia was premiered there in 1910, followed by Fantasia on Christmas Carols in 1912, after which he
co-featured with Elgar as a central prop to the musical repertoire. Other names include Holst, Arthur Sullivan, Herbert
Howells, Gerald Finzi, Walton,
Bliss and Britten and recently, Lennox Berkeley, John McCabe, William Mathias, Paul Patterson and James MacMillan.
External links
See also
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