An annual event, of six to eight days’ duration, substantially but not exclusively choral in character, based in turn in the cathedrals of Gloucester, Worcester and Hereford. Its precise origins are not documented. However, the Worcester Postman of 10 July 1713 records a special service at which was performed ‘Mr. Purcell’s great Te Deum, with the Symphonies and instrumental parts, on Violins and Hautboys’. Six years later, in August 1719, the same journal published a notice calling on ‘Members of the yearly Musical Assembly of these Parts … by their Subscription in September last at Gloucester … to meet at Worcester on Monday … in order to publick Performance, on the Tuesday and Wednesday following’. In 1920 official recognition was given to the year 1715 as that of the first ‘festival’, thus making the festival of 1977 the 250th festival in an annual series broken only by two world wars.
The earliest events consisted of Morning Prayer in the cathedral with Te Deum and Jubilate in orchestral settings and extended anthems on two successive days, and secular concerts in the town in the evenings. In 1724 at Gloucester the practice was initiated of taking up a collection for the widows and orphans of the cathedral choir members and diocesan clergy. Soon this was limited to dependents of clergy for whose special needs and those of their families the charity continues to the present day.
At first only liturgical music and anthems were admitted to the cathedrals. Purcell’s Te Deum and Jubilate in D was staple fare, with the occasional use of Croft’s setting in the same key. Later Handel’s ‘Utrecht’ and ‘Dettingen’ settings took turns with Purcell’s. After 1727 one or more of Handel’s coronation anthems was in regular use during the rest of the 18th century, frequently supplemented by anthems of Boyce or, less frequently, some other English composer of the period. In the early years oratorios were given at the evening secular concerts, but in 1759 at Hereford a third morning was introduced in the cathedral and devoted to Messiah. This was the first stage in a prolonged process of extending the number of cathedral performances and eliminating Morning Prayer. With unimportant exceptions the 18th-century programmes, both in and outside the cathedrals, were dominated by Handel.
The organization rested on an annually chosen ‘steward’ (from 1755 two stewards, one clerical, the other lay); the stewards, who each bore the inevitable deficit, were increased to six from 1798. The event itself was known as the ‘Gloucester [Worcester, Hereford] Music Meeting’, the expression ‘festival’ in the modern sense being unknown, while the term ‘Three Choirs’ only came into use (and then informally) from about the mid-19th century. The choral body was originally the combined cathedral choirs supplemented by a few local amateurs. By the early 19th century, if not earlier, male singers from choirs in Oxford, London and elsewhere were also used, and beginning in 1772 (following the practice of the Ancient Concerts in London) ‘female chorus singers from the North of England’ were engaged. Nothing is known of the earliest conductors. In 1737 and 1755 (both years at Worcester), possibly also in other years, William Boyce conducted, and William Hayes conducted at Gloucester in 1757, 1760 and 1763. The earliest organist of one of the three cathedrals to be recorded as conductor is Richard Clack of Hereford, who first conducted there in 1759. Elias Isaac, organist of Worcester, not only conducted there from 1761 to 1791 but at Gloucester also from 1769 to 1787 and at Hereford in 1777. The practice of having the organist of the ‘home’ cathedral conduct the festival was established after 1790; from 1934 the other two organists have shared in the conducting, and in more recent times eminent conductors have been engaged for specific concerts.
From the 1830s the music meetings changed considerably in character. In 1834 and 1835 Hereford and Gloucester transferred the cathedral performances from the choir to the nave, and Worcester followed in 1845. There was a consequent enlargement of orchestra, chorus and audience. Beginning in 1840 the number of stewards was progressively increased, leading to the present usage whereby the holders of subscription tickets are termed stewards.
From 1853 the combined cathedral choirs sang Matins daily: at modern festivals the combined choirs sing Evensong. By 1860 liturgical services with orchestra had been reduced to one, and this was relegated to an early hour on the first morning in order to accommodate an additional oratorio. Later it was replaced by the service with chorus and orchestra which has since opened the festival on the Sunday afternoon. However, from 1984 Worcester festivals have commenced with a service of dedication immediately preceding the opening concert on the first Saturday.
By the mid-19th century the prestige of older music meetings had declined in favour of the newly established festivals at Norwich, Birmingham and elsewhere, the term ‘Worcester [Gloucester, Hereford] Musical Festival’ coming into common use. Moreover, being held in cathedrals, they were increasingly criticized by those who felt that they offended against religious use. This feeling reached a climax in 1875 with the refusal of the dean and chapter of Worcester to allow their church to be used for a festival of the usual kind; and a series of church services without soloists and orchestra was held, derisively called the ‘Mock Festival’. Local feeling was strong enough to ensure the resumption of the festivals on their former lines, but a much greater sense of decorum was established.
Along with other festivals the ‘Three Choirs’ began from the 1860s to encourage choral music by English composers. But, as elsewhere, the list of 19th-century works, composed in a derivative if not moribund idiom, now makes depressing reading. Nevertheless the performance of this body of now forgotten pieces by minor worthies – Cusins, Barnby, Armes, Garrett, Stainer and the like – forms a recognizable facet of festival history.
Among the 19th-century cathedral organists who served as festival conductors only S.S. Wesley (organist of Hereford Cathedral, 1832–5, and of Gloucester Cathedral, 1865–76) was of real distinction, but he was a poor conductor. C.H. Lloyd, who was organist of Gloucester Cathedral from 1876 to 1882, was a cultivated musician if not a good conductor. But little could be done to improve standards of performance so long as the festival chorus, in addition to the cathedral choirs and bodies of local singers, included contingents from places as far afield as Bradford, Leeds and Huddersfield with only one combined rehearsal. The first festival since the early 18th century to rely entirely on a chorus drawn from the counties of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester was at Gloucester in 1892 under C. Lee Williams.
In 1871 Wesley introduced Bach’s St Matthew Passion and in 1893 Hugh Blair (then acting organist at Worcester) conducted the first Three Choirs performance of the Mass in B minor. Whilst Messiah held its annual place, Mendelssohn’s Elijah was performed every year from 1847 to 1930 with but two exceptions. However, Lloyd introduced Brahms (A German Requiem) at the Gloucester festival of 1877, and Blair (now cathedral organist) Verdi’s Requiem to the Worcester audience of 1896. At this same festival the first performance was given of The Light of Life, an oratorio by Elgar who from 1878 had been a member of the festival orchestra. In 1884 he played under the baton of Dvořák, who had been invited to Worcester to conduct his Stabat mater and Sixth Symphony. Six years later, in 1890, Elgar himself was to conduct his overture Froissart, a festival commission.
The modern history of the festival began in the 1890s following the appointment of three organist-conductors who carried it into the 20th century: G.R. Sinclair (organist of Hereford Cathedral, 1889–1917), Herbert Brewer (Gloucester Cathedral, 1897–1928) and Ivor Atkins (Worcester Cathedral, 1897–1950). These men trained their own choruses and established the practice whereby about half the festival choir is drawn from the ‘home’ locality and a quarter each from the other two localities. Their programmes were also more adventurous and drew on a less stereotyped repertory. Sinclair was succeeded by P.C. Hull (1918) and Brewer by H.W. Sumsion (1928), and under these five men, up to the outbreak of World War II, the festival enjoyed the most significant period of its history. By the time they came on the scene Parry was already established as a festival composer; Scenes from Prometheus Unbound and Job were given first performances in 1880 and in 1892 respectively, both at Gloucester, and he continued to figure prominently up to World War I. Between 1910 and 1930 a number of compositions by Walford Davies and Bantock received first performances. Other first performances given at the festival were Vaughan Williams’s Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis (1910), Five Mystical Songs (1911) and Magnificat (1932), Bliss’s A Colour Symphony (1922), Holst’s Choral Fantasia (1931), Bax’s The Morning Watch (1935) and Lennox Berkeley’s Domini est terra (1938).
The performance at Worcester in 1911 of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, edited by Atkins and Elgar, initiated a new approach to the work in England. Particularly important in this period were the performances of Elgar’s music given under his own direction until his death in 1934. The performance of The Dream of Gerontius at Worcester in 1902 did much to help the work recover from its unhappy premičre in Birmingham in 1900.
After the intermission of the war years the festival was revived at Hereford in 1946 when a committee, representative of the three festival organizations, was set up to advise and assist the host association in the promotion of its festival. This committee in 1956 evolved into the Three Choirs Association, thus strengthening the festival’s artistic and financial status.
In 1950 the first performance of Hymnus Paradisi by Herbert Howells was given at Gloucester. In the same year, with the retirement of Atkins and Hull, and later in 1967, of Sumsion, direct links with the Elgar tradition were broken. The younger organist-conductors who followed did much to bring the festival into line with modern trends, replanning the week to secure higher standards and more varied concerts, using not only the cathedrals but other city buildings and outlying venues such as Tewkesbury and Pershore Abbeys and Leominster Priory.
While the principal aim of the festival continues to be the promotion and development of the great English choral tradition, the modern festival encompasses in its wide-ranging main and fringe programmes virtually all forms of music (both sacred and secular), poetry, drama and the visual arts. Its encouragement of contemporary British composers is noteworthy; among those whose music has been given first performances at festivals since 1950 are Richard Rodney Bennett, Lennox Berkeley, Gordon Crosse, Peter Maxwell Davies, Gerald Finzi, Peter Racine Fricker, John Joubert, William Mathias, John McCabe and Malcolm Williamson.
Since 1950 the cathedral organists, festival directors and conductors have been David Willcocks (Worcester, 1951, 1954, 1957); Meredith Davies (Hereford, 1952, 1955); Melville Cook (Hereford, 1958, 1961, 1964); Douglas Guest (Worcester, 1960, 1963); Christopher Robinson (Worcester, 1966, 1969, 1972); Richard Lloyd (Hereford, 1967, 1970, 1973); John Sanders (Gloucester, from 1971 to 1992); Donald Hunt (Worcester, from 1975 to 1996); Roy Massey (Hereford, from 1976); and David Briggs (Gloucester, from 1995).
D. Lysons and others: Origin and Progress of the Meeting of the Three Choirs of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester (Gloucester, 1812, enlarged 5/1932 by C.L. Williams, H.G. Chance and T. Hannam-Clark as Annals of the Three Choirs of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester
W. Shaw: The Three Choirs Festival … 1713–1953 (Worcester and London, 1954)
A. Boden: Three Choirs: a History of the Festival (Gloucester, 1992)
WATKINS SHAW/JOHN C. PHILLIPS