11.30am
Opening Service
Three Cathedral Choirs
Festival Chorus Philharmonia Brass
Worcester Cathedral
Entrance: by ticket but free of charge

Howells Te Deum & Jubilate - Collegium Regale
Vaughan Williams - Lord, Thou hast been our refuge

The Cathedral Choirs of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester have been at the heart of the Festival from its inception. The Cathedral Lay Clerks still form part of the Festival Chorus, and services remain central to each annual festival. This opening service draws the festival chorus together with the three Cathedral Choirs to celebrate this powerful combination of forces.

Howells's unique contribution to the music of the Anglican Church began in earnest in 1944 when he won a bet (one guinea!) from the Dean of King's College, Cambridge which provided the College choir with a new setting of the Te Deum. This laid down a template in sound which was to see cathedral organists queuing up to secure their own ‘piece' of Herbert Howells.

Composed in 1921, Vaughan Williams' Lord, Thou hast been our refuge combines a setting of Psalm 90 with Issac Watts's metrical version of the same Psalm - ‘O God, our help in ages past' - and the fine tune ‘St Anne', to which the latter is commonly sung. As an organist Vaughan Williams would certainly have been aware, in this context, of Bach's so-called ‘St Anne' Fugue, the first phrase of whose subject is identical with the first phrase of the ‘St Anne' tune.