City in England. A Saxon church, built before the Norman cathedral, had before 951 one of the most remarkable organs of its period. It was described in a dedicatory epistle to Bishop Alphege of Winchester of c990 by the monk Wulfstan (see Organ, §IV, 4). The Winchester Troper (GB-Ccc 473), dating from some 30 years later, contains the earliest known collection of two-part organa. The Chapter Acts of the cathedral are incomplete, but among the earliest recorded organists Christopher Gibbons is the best known. Adrian Batten, while a chorister, was a pupil there of John Holmes, a lay vicar who contributed to Morley's The Triumphes of Oriana.
Winchester College is closely connected with the cathedral. There, 16 ‘Quiristers’ were included in William of Wykeham's foundation of 1394, and subsequent organists have often been associated with both establishments. Weelkes was at the college from 1598 until 1601 or 1602, and John Reading (i), organist from 1681 to 1692, was the composer of Dulce domum and the ‘Election Graces’. From the time of the departure of Jeremiah Clarke in 1695, one organist held both posts until S.S. Wesley left in 1865 after persuading the cathedral authorities to buy the Willis organ built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. From 1924 to 1937 George Dyson was master of music at the college.
On St Cecilia's Day 1703 a performance of ‘Vocal and Instrumental Musick, compos'd by Mr. Vaughan Richardson, Organist of Winchester Cathedral’ was advertised to take place at the Bishop's Palace at Wolvesey. In 1756 a performance of Handel's Acis and Galatea was given in St John's House in the city, and in 1760 there began an annual festival, normally taking place in August or September. Until 1766 the festival occupied two evenings, on each of which an oratorio was performed; the following year this was extended to three days. In 1775 Messiah was sung in the cathedral on the second morning and in 1779 another oratorio was sung in addition on the third morning. This pattern continued more or less until 1800 when Messiah was dropped in favour of Haydn's Creation, until that time ‘performed but twice in the kingdom’. Between 1807 and 1814 there was no festival and the last took place in 1817. Occasionally the sacred music was performed in St Maurice's Church. These celebrations, known from 1780 as the Hampshire Music Meeting and from 1808 as the Hampshire Musical Festival, were not based on a local musical society as at Salisbury; nearly all the artists came from London or from other cathedral cities. These included the Linleys (1772), Venanzio Rauzzini (1776 and 1777), Nancy Storace (1776), Tenducci (1781 and 1782), Mara (1785, 1797 and 1798), and Mrs Billington, who came annually from 1786 to 1791. Peter Fussell and George Chard conducted during their periods of office as cathedral organist, while, on occasions from 1781, Salomon was one of the leaders of the orchestra. Since 1904 Winchester Cathedral Choir has taken part with Salisbury and Chichester in the annual Southern Cathedrals Festival. The choir has retained its position as one of Britain's finest cathedral choirs. Organists at Winchester Cathedral in the 20th century included William Prendergast (1902–33), Martin Neary (1972–88) and David Hill (from 1988).
The Winchester imprint is found on psalm books published by W. Colson (1710) and John Edmund (c1745). James Robbins published Harmonia Wykehamica in 1811.
W.H. Husk: An Account of the Musical Celebrations on St Cecilia's Day in the Sixteenth, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1857)
R.N. Quirk: ‘Winchester Cathedral in the Tenth Century’, Archaeological Journal, cxiv (1957), 28–68
B. Matthews: The Organs and Organists of Winchester Cathedral (Winchester, 1966, 2/1975)
D.J. Reid and B. Pritchard: ‘Some Festival Programmes of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Part 1: Salisbury and Winchester’, RMARC, no.5 (1965), 51–79 [addenda and corrigenda by B. Matthews, no.8 (1970), 23–33]
A. Holschneider: Die Organa von Winchester: Studien zum ältesten Repertoire polyphoner Musik (Hildesheim, 1968)
A. Rannie: The Story of Music at Winchester College, 1394–1969 (Winchester, 1970)
K. Körte: ‘Die Orgel von Winchester: Rekonstruktionsversuch einzelner Teile’, KJb, lvii (1973), 1–28
J. McKinnon: ‘The 10th Century Organ at Winchester’, Organ Yearbook, v (1974), 4–19
B. Matthews: The Music of Winchester Cathedral (London, 1974)
K. Vellekoop: ‘Die Orgel von Winchester: Wirklichkeit oder Symbol?’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, viii (1984), 183–96
BETTY MATTHEWS