AN ANCIENT FESTIVAL

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 452, 6 September 1928, Page 10

AN ANCIENT FESTIVAL

The holding of the 208th festival of the three choirs of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford this week recalls an ancient institution in the West Country of England. The Three Choirs Festival, as it is known, has a noble tradition, and has done much to raise the standard of English music. Visitors from all parts of the world throng to the festival and the standard of the work done is particularly high. It has often been claimed that were it not for this great festival much of the work of modern English composers such as Sir Hubert Parry, Sir Edward Elgar, Mr. Gustav Holst, Dr. Vaughan Williams and many others would never have been composed; or if composed, would never have been heard. In his latest publication, “Musical Meanderings,” Mr. W. J. Turner deals with the festival in his usual entertaining style. FOUNDED IN 1715 Although the meetings of the three choirs were founded in 1715, he states that their purpose was first defined in 1724 by Dr. Bisse at Gloucester. It was he who suggested that after paying all expenses, the balance be handed over to clerical charities. In consequence, for more than two centuries, the Three Choirs Festival has been one of the chief means of raising money for the widows and orphans of the clergy of the three dioceses. “During the severely matter-of-fact eighteen century no questions were asked or even thought of; but with the dawn of idealism and the birth of Queen Victoria the atmosphere changed,” states Mr. Turner. “Large numbers of men became suddenly rich and pious. For their riches they found plenty of employment in an age of industrial expansion, but how and where could they employ their piety? Looking around for an cutlet for this damped-up religious energy, they beheld the gay and cheerful annual Three Choirs Festival being held in—of all places—the consecrated and holy edifices of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford! What were the clergy thinking of to allow such desecration. Well, the clergy were thinking of their widows and orphans. “One of these ethical Victorians, the Earl of Dudley, having become so vastly rich through the discovery of coal on his land during the industrial expansion that he could afford to indulge his religious feelings at the expense of other people’s enjoyment, tried bribery. He offered £IO,OOO to the Dean and Worcester to drop the festivals onfhe pretext that they turned the cathedral into a concert hall.

The Dean and Chapter were shaken. Such a combination of morality and money was difficult to resist. But they were mathematicians, those clergy of 1874, and while they agreed to truncate the festival of 1875 as a sop to the noble coal earl, they spent

the year in calculation. They that they would have to divide * the £IO,OOO between Hereford and Glou cester, or the Three Choirs Festival would not stop but become a Twc Choirs Festival. They knew that the

WORCESTER CATHEDRAL festival brought a lot of money into the town apart from the widows* and orphans’ profits. “They further reckoned that their own £3,000 would only be equal to a few years’ profits on the festival, and they finally concluded that Hereford and Gloucester were not sufficiently developed morally to abandon their festival for £3,000 a-piece. So y the Earl of Dudley’s offer was not accepted, and three years later the festival bloomed out again into its full glory. “This is the sole historical occasion,” states Mr. Turner, “on which the clergy beat the barons since the plundering of the monastries. rF •b «I» f-F ?;=■ rL *l* -I-

lI.M. Coldstream Guards Band, in selections from “lolanthe” and “Pirates of Penzance” (Gilbert and Sullivan) are in excellent form, and give a brilliant performance of gems from these two popular operas (C 1368).