The Festival Chorus had fewer concerts than in 2016, but took park this morning event on the Thursday, a collaboration with folk ensembles Broomdasher and Coracle. Like Sancta Civitas, this was a hangover of Vaughan Williams-related programming that had been held over from the anniversary year in 2022.
This renamed brew appeared again for the 2023 Festival.
We started by singing some anthems (O How Amiable and Valiant-for-Truth) and folk-song arrangements (Gloucestershire Wassail and Just as the Tide was Flowing) by Vaughan Williams. I now had the pleasure of being conducted in person by Samuel Hudson – previously I’d been in the strange situation of having sung for him without having met him.
Then we learnt more about RVW’s work collecting folk songs, heard an improvisation on some of the melodies, and then three of the tunes which found their way into the English Hymnal, with some of the secular verses to which they were previously sung. The texts demonstrated folk’s direct engagement with some of the darkest aspects of life and I probably won’t be able to sing the corresponding hymns now without being reminded of this. One tune – ‘Danby’ – was known only to me among those in the Festival Chorus; I had sung the hymn to which it is set once before, and only once, as a teenager when I first started in church music, and its intriguing melody with a flattened seventh in the first line had stayed with me ever since.
Afterwards I repaired to the Festival Bar for a half of ‘Partington’s Potion’ and later on attended a gathering of work colleagues at the Bristol Brewhouse (their 10th anniversary as it happened)