PAGE 38 • FESTIVE NEWS • DECEMBER 2014
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300 not out
Clare Stevens recounts the history of the world renowned Three
Choirs Music Festival which marks its 300th Anniversary
in Hereford Cathedral next year
The Three Choirs Festival celebrates its
tercentenary in Hereford next summer. We
think it’s the longest-running classical
music festival in the world. For
comparison, Leeds Musical Festival
started in 1858 but ceased to exist in 1985;
the Worcester Festival in Massachusetts,
which claims to be America’s oldest, dates
from the same year; London’s Henry
Wood Promenade Concerts began in
1895; and the likes of Salzburg,
Edinburgh and Aldeburgh were not
founded until the 20th century. The
Norfolk and Norwich Festival began in
1772, but until 1988 it only took place
every three years.
The Three Choirs Festival, however,
has been taking place every year since
1715, interrupted only by the two world
wars – which is why next year’s event will
be our 300th anniversary but only the
288th festival. The roots of the festival lie
in annual music meetings of the lay clerks’
and vicars choral – professional adults
sometimes known as ‘singing men’ who
provide the alto, tenor and bass parts - of
Hereford, Gloucester and Worcester
Cathedrals. They would get together to
sing repertoire that needed larger forces
than a single cathedral choir, or to let their
hair down a bit by singing secular music
that would be inappropriate in the
cathedral choir stalls.
Each city took it in turn to host these
music meetings, which usually happened
in September, after the harvest had been
gathered in and before the hunting season
began. Often they coincided with race
meetings, and the two activities were
jointly promoted as a means of attracting
visitors to the host city.
The growth of the music meetings
coincided with the arrival of Handel in
Britain and the popularity of his oratorios
or sacred dramas, in particular Messiah,
which was composed in 1742 and was a
firm favourite at Three Choirs Festivals
for 200 years, and Mendelssohn’s Elijah.
These large-scale works demanded a
much stronger top line than the cathedral
choristers could provide, so additional
female singers were engaged to augment
the choir – initially they had to be brought
in from the north of England, where the
tradition of amateur choral singing had
been established earlier than in the Three
Choirs counties. But in the 19th century
first Hereford and then Gloucester and
Worcester formed their own choral
societies, from whose ranks the Three
Choirs Festival Chorus could be drawn.
These days the Three Choirs Festival
lasts for a full week. The focus of each day
is the evening cathedral concert, involving
the Three Choirs Festival Chorus, an
international line-up of soloists, and the
Philharmonia orchestra, which has an ongoing residency at the festival. Services of
Choral Evensong also take place every
day and there is a rich programme of
chamber music recitals, performances by
guest choirs and orchestras, exhibitions,
walks and talks.
The music of Sir Edward Elgar and his
contemporaries is synonymous with the
Three Choirs Festival, but we are keen to
celebrate the fact that the programme has
always had an international flavour.
Works by Saint-Saëns and Sibelius were
premiered at the festival and Dvořák and
Kodály conducted performances of their
own works. Our 2015 programme will
include works by Wagner, Nielsen, and
Beethoven as well as the Verdi Requiem
and the first performance in Hereford of
the vast