THE Edington Music Festival is finally back in its traditional form this month, following two different and unusual festivals due to Covid and Covid restrictions.
The festival will run for its usual eight days – Sunday 21st to Sunday 28th August, with four services a day, three choirs of top-flight singers under three of the country’s leading choral directors, all under the direction of a new festival director, Robert Quinney, director of the choir at New College Oxford (and former festival organist and director of the nave choir.)
Robert has themed the music for this special festival under the heading “Creation and Recreation”, a nod both to its re-emergence and to its capacity for promoting relaxation and fulfilment.
The week will follow the traditional form starting each day with Matins (plainchant), followed by Eucharist, then Evensong and ending with Compline by candlelight, also plainchant.
Wednesday 24th will be both the return of the BBC recording, (to be broadcast at a later date), and the Festival Supper in the evening; the Friday evening service will be a Requiem Mass (by Michael Haydn, younger brother of Joseph), and the week will also include Vaughan Williams’ ‘Mass in G Minor’, Copland’s ‘In the beginning’, and Dove’s ‘Seek him that maketh the Seven Stars’.
Leaflets containing the whole programme are widely available; full information is also on the website, www.edingtonfestival. org. All services are free and unticketed.