Three Choirs Festival

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Three Choirs Festival is a British music festival, held each August alternately at the cathedrals of Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester 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 2006 festival takes place in Hereford from 4-11 August.

The festival is closely identified with the musical careers of British composers Edward Elgar and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Elgar's oratorio, The Kingdom, was written at the composer's home in Hereford in 1906 and is being performed in 2006. Works by Mozart, Schumann, Shostakovich, Gerald Finzi and Walton, along with the premiere of Sun-Dogs, written and conducted by James MacMillan, also feature in 2006, when the Philharmonia Orchestra, displaced from London's Royal Festival Hall during reconstruction, is in residence at Hereford. The National Youth Orchestra of Wales also plays Gustav Mahler's Fifth Symphony and other ensembles include the Brodsky Quartet and the Corelli Orchestra. 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).

[edit] History

The festival, originally over 2 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 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, Howells, Finzi, Walton, Bliss and Britten and recently, Lennox Berkeley, McCabe, William Mathias and Paul Patterson.