Our Programming

All our concerts are unique sequences of words and sung music. Below are described the programmes which are being performed during 2009 -10, followed by a historical list of sequences over the last 20 years.

JOYFUL RETURN - songs of winter & summer, exile & return.

The exuberant Helston Hal an Tow, Maytime madrigals and Warlock’s 'My own country' together with traditional stories represent the theme of joyful return. It follows preliminary music of exile and absence: the plaintive traditional ‘Winter Song’, Palestrina’s Lamentations, Byrd’s Constant Penelope, with the narrative of the escape, exile, and return of Charles 2nd. The 17th century ‘When the King comes home in Peace again’, introduces the masque-like ‘Spring Awakening’ of Gordon Crosse telling the story of Bottom from 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'.

LOVE SONGS Falling in Love, Courting, Marriage, False and Farsical lovers, Partings
The Lark in the Clear Air, The Turtle Dove, My Love is like a Red Red Rose; with Music Hall, Tudor Court Song, Folk Song, Madrigals, and works by Vaughan Williams, Holst, Skempton, and Tavener. A narration from Shakespeare, Laurie Lee, Marie de France, Ann Bradstreet, Ted Hughes. An entertainmet of tunes, romance, tears, and laughter.

SIR GAWAIN & THE GREEN KNIGHT Mediaeval Carols and a story for Midwinter
An ancient Celtic tale of the supernatural, a midwinter beheading match, is retold in this epic 14th century English poem, a story of seduction and courage in a courtly setting, narrated here in a lively modern version. At Camelot the lords and ladies of the round table are celebrating Christmas and the New Year. Mediaeval carols and music by Dufay, Dunstable and Machault along with the earliest surviving music to English words set the scene and complement the dramatic story.

THE SEEDS OF LOVE Vaughan Williams and the Golden Age of English Folk Music Collectors
Folk-song arrangements by Vaughan Williams, and by Butterworth, Sharp, and Grainger, together with diaries, letters, and writings, evoke the wonder and excitement of these early twentieth-century collectors. This was an influential moment in English music. The story depicts their search of the countryside for singers of ‘genuine’ folk-song, with amusing and moving anecdotes of countrymen and women, of bicycles, notebooks, and phonographs. This most popular programme commences at the formation of the English Folk-Song Society in 1898 and ends with the death of Cecil Sharp in 1924.

FIGGY PUDDING - with Carols and Songs to drive the cold winter away
Our celebrated Christmas Concert of traditional carols, songs, French Baroque Noels, music hall, and stories. A rich variety of both unusual and well-known music together with poems and narratives from Hardy, Dickens, Herrick and Kipling make up a splendid Christmas entertainment, which concludes with a set of haunting arrangements of folk carols by Vaughan Williams.

SINGING THE HOURS - A Feast of Gregorian Chant
Opus Anglicanum stages dramatic and meditative sung services from the earliest era of England’s great Abbeys, Cathedrals, and Priories. As performed for Salisbury Cathedral's St Edmund of Abingdon celebrations; Wells Cathedral recreation of Nocturns for the Epiphany; Worcester Three Choirs Festival Vespers for St Wulstan.

HISTORICAL LIST OF PROGRAMMES

2010

JOYFUL RETURN

2009
LOVESONG
2008
SEA MUSIC
2007
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
2004
THE ISLAND
BATTLES & BORDERS
2003
THE JOURNEY
FISHERMAN PETER (St Peter in Chains)
2002
GREEN AND PLEASANT LAND
2001
THE SONG OF SONGS A reading (version 2)
FIGGY PUDDING
2000
ANGELS & ARCHANGELS
BEDE
1999
MOTHER OF LIFE, a meditation
GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT Mediaeval midwinter
1998
THREE MEDITATIONS OF MOTHER JULIAN OF NORWICH
THE PILGRIMS WAY The voyage of the soul
THE PSALMS, Chant, Byrd, Lassus, Tallis
THREE MEN IN A BOAT, Jerome K Jerome’s narrative
1996
REQUIEM FOR ST EDMUND OF ABINGDON The life
1995
PORTRAIT OF A MEDIAEVAL CATHEDRAL
THE GARDEN: An anthology
OUR WASSAIL BOWL, A Christmas Party
1994
THE SONG OF SONGS, (version 1) Palestrina, Hidegard of Bingen
OFFICIUM PEREGRINORUM, liturgical drama the Pilgrims
1993
THE CANTERBURY PILGRIMS, Chaucer’s Prologue
1992
VISITATIO SEPULCHRI, Liturgical drama
THE SEEDS OF LOVE Collecting English Folksong
OFFICIUM PASTORUM, Liturgical drama for Christmas
1991
CLAD ALL IN GLADNESS
1990
AN ENGLISH MANOR HOUSE
1989
THE TREE: A meditation in words and music
THE MERRIE TALES OF SKELTON: Tudor Laureate
ALL CREATION REJOICING:
MEDIAEVAL CAROLS (revised annually)