Music The Canterbury Festival
TN the musical life of England nothing has played a more important part than the musical festivals in the provinces. They represent the native way of music-making, beside which our London opera and symphony concerts are the borrowings from exotic cultures. The Three Choirs, Birmingham, Leeds, Norwich-one cannot name them all-haVe given us a large proportion of the best English music of the past two hundred years, and, even when there were no composers capable of turning their opportunity to account, the festivals have kept alive the great tradition of English chOral singing. From Boyce, who was one of the early conductors of the Three Choirs, down to William Walton there is hardly an English composer of note who has not written music for these festivals, and some of the most distinguished, Elgar in particular, owed everything to these meetings.
A few years ago Canterbury was added to the roll, and the
Festival there developed at once an individuality of its own consonant with the tastes and requirements of the present day. In place of the day-long " pious orgies " of Gloucester,. Worcester and Hereford, Canterbury offers a varied pro- gramme, in which there is something of every kind and not too. much of anything. Here drama, poetry and other arts are associated with music, and an hour and a half is rightly eon:
sidered to be about the extreme limit of any programme. The result is an interesting and varied week, from which one comes away refreshed, not sated. Of the individual musical events the most important is the orchestral concert given by the B.B.C. Orchestra, and the most delightful, the Serenade in the Cloisters where in the deepening twilight one may hear the lighter and more graceful kind of music which seems to be only enhanced by the rival symphonies of the birds.
There is one side of music to which the Canterbury Festival has till now made but a poor contribution. The standard of choral singing is deplorably low, compared with that at other festivals, and consequently has taken a secondary place in the programmes. Last week, however, the Kent Choir took part in the chief concert, and it is to be hoped that this is but the beginning of greater things. A good choir cannot be created all at once, and it has regret- fully to be said that, until this Festival was established, Canterbury was. a city without music. In the old days the Cathedral music was drawn mainly from the works of Bamby, Goss and Stainer. Occasionally Handel and Mozart, Wesley and Boyce appeared as composers of the anthem, and on great occasions there was Stanford in B flat. The great composers of English Church music, even Gibbons who is buried there, were almost completely neglected, and during five years' assiduous attendance in Cathedral I cannot remember to have heard anything by Purcell. It was good to see that, during last week, Farrant, Gibbons, Charles Wood and even Merbecke, the first composer of the Reformed Church, were contributing to the music of the services. More important than the details of what is being done, however, is the new spirit which has been established in Canterbury since the present Bishop of Chichester went to the Deanery. The Festival is but one symptom of that spirit. " Sleepiness " is no longer the word for this Cathedral city and its 'close. Shut doors have been thrown open and decent people are free to visit any part of the Cathedral without hindrance. The glass, which rivals that of Chartres (although alas ! it is less complete and there are some dreadful exceptions) has been restored ; Professor Tristram has been at work, revealing and copying unsuspected paintings ; and now in the Cloisters the almost invisible and crumbling coats of arms are being saved and made splendid with their proper colours.
This is not to turn the Cathedral into a museum. Rather it is to restore a living connexion with the lives of ordinary people in an institution which was in danger of becoming the preserve of a few elderly clergymen. And in this restoration all the arts can have their share. The motto of the Festival might be those words of Martin Luther, which Mendelssohn inscribed upon the title-page of his Hymn of Praise : " I would gladly see all the arts, especially Music, serving Him who has given them and made them what they are." - DYNELEY HTJSSEW
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