25 SEPTEMBER 1993, Page 45

Mu sic

Spirit of England

Robin Holloway

With rare delight I proffer a first-time report upon a corner of English cultural life that seems hardly to have changed since around 1910. The Three Choirs Festi- val, one of our most venerable, exudes a sense of spacious shires and happy heart- land. It shifts annually between Worcester, Gloucester and Hereford, drawing upon the cathedral choirs of each provincial cap- ital and many other local choristers, under the overall direction of the host cathedral's organist.

Players come mainly from the big cities (this year the BBC Philharmonic from Manchester and the Royal Liverpool Phil), as do soloists. But the tone is intensely local, patriotic both to the particular coun- ty and town and more still to its focal point, the cathedral. This August's festival was at Worcester. A rarely heard work by the town's most famous son, Elgar's Spirit of England, summed up in a. phrase what his familiar Introduction and allegro, opening the concert, had encapsulated in music.

One drastic thing has hit Worcester since 1910 — a classic cop-out to the car, which, running right across the city, lays the centre waste and throws up a trail of mediocrity culminating in the large shopping, hotel and parking 'complex' that confronts the cathedral head-on. A wretched statue of Elgar stands between the two worlds; a nearby plaque records the peace-time destruction of his father's music shop where he passed his boyhood, located once in the little streets whose charm can be guessed from unspoilt pockets elsewhere.

Plenty of good buildings, and some whole stretches, survive, but the loss of good, consistent texture is painful. Witness the Countess of Huntingdon Hall, whose charming interior preserves a demure, dis- senting piety beautifully suited to chamber music and songs, but whose outside, lapped on one side by a ring road and on the other by a further, brand-new shopping mall, confronts an abandoned church tower and a brutalist poly in noisy Nowheresville. Once within the close, then the cathedral itself, these outrages are distanced. One is enveloped in gregarious bustle — the spirit of the C of E, all hassocks, flower arrange- ments, gift shops. Barbara Pym and Joyce Grenfell live on, and on a clear day one can catch the intonations of Barchester. These hardy-perennial activities are supplement- ed at festival time by a massive temporary apparatus — meals in the school hall, drinks in the marquee, an army of stewards and organisers, Portaloos and a bishop's palace for the convenience of the numer- ous artists. The efficiency and good humour of it all was infectious. Everybody appeared to be loving every minute. Not knowing Edinburgh, I can compare it only to the Proms, country-version, scaled down and within-the-family; a big agricultural show in these western shires would surely feel much the same.

With this sociability the kind of music that figures most frequently is in happy accord, warm-hearted and stirring, to nour- ish both a healthy appetite and the unspo- ken ideals, maybe also the secret melancholies, that lie within. Thus the genius of Elgar comes into its own, as nowhere else, in his native place.

It's the cathedral's acoustic that makes the magic. Everything sounds good in it. And everything sounds! In my own pre- mière, a serenade for strings whose very key is a tribute to the Master, a soft pas- sage for two muted violas and a single dou- ble bass pizzicato was completely distinct, while the climaxes soared with a mixture of richness and clarity that moved me as though I'd not written it myself. Later the

same day came a Handel oratorio done in the modern manner with reduced forces, which also filled the space without effort.

But this acoustic comes into its greatest advantage with the large chorus and sym- phony orchestra for which Elgar wrote, and it is this area of the repertoire that gives the festival its raison d'être. It had opened with Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, the one work whose permanent perch advances the date beyond c. 1910; it ended with Verdi's Requiem. The two other pillars were Brit- ten's War Requiem and Elgar's directly con- temporary response to the same cataclysm, the aforementioned Spirit of England.

I was able to attend only this last. No masterpiece, it remains flawless in tech- nique whatever the pudding of patriotic uplift and dirge. But 'the noise it makes' is marvellous even when the music is not so special. From softest hush to full-throated roar, the cathedral takes it equally well and gives it back, seeming indeed to resonate in sympathy, clothing the sonority in a rich glow that only becomes mushy when the composer has mushed it up anyway. Elgar knows this sound as a great singer knows her voice. When inspiration strikes, as in the trilogy's final section, 'For the Fallen', he is ready, and so is the building.

'There's a touch of fall in the air. I think you'd better wear your down jacket with the removable down-filled hood, Velcro closures, down-filled snap collar, concealed zipper, snap pockets, elastic waists and cuffs and rugged, outdoor look.'