Choral and Orchestral Concert from the Cathedral, Canterbury
THE FESTIVAL CHOIR
THE BBC ORCHESTRA
(Section B)
Leader, ARTHUR CATTERALL
Conductor, ADRIAN BOULT
Canterbury Festival
The BBC will again participate, as it has done for the last seven years, in the Canterbury Festival, which takes place this year from June 20-27. This participation began in a small way in 1929 when Dr. Boult and the old Wireless Symphony Orchestra went down and played at the Festival ; in the following year the newly-created Symphony Orchestra took ipart in the Festival, and ever since then it has been an annual event.
The Festival itself is the creation of the ' Friends of Canterbury Cathedral', a society which was founded by Dean Bell about 1925, and the proceeds of the Festival are devoted to the Fund for the upkeep of the Cathedral. The Society has a large membership, and the Festivals attract many visitors from all over the country as well as from abroad.
Picture of a Castle
Arnold Bax describes his tone poem , Tintagel ' as follows : ' This work is only in the broadest sense programme music. The composer's intention is simply to offer a tonal impression of the castle-crowned cliff of (now sadly degenerate) Tintagel, and more especially of the long distances of the Atlantic, as seen from the cliffs of Cornwall on a sunny, but not windless, summer day. The literary and traditional associations of the scene also enter into the scheme. The music opens, after a few introductory bars, with a theme, given out on the brass, which may be taken as representing the ruined castle, now so ancient and weatherworn as to seem an emanation of the rock upon which it is built. The subject is worked to a broad diatonic climax and is followed by a long melody for strings, which may suggest the serene and almost limitless spaces of the ocean.
' After a while, a more restless mood begins to assert itself, as though the sea were rising, bringing with it a new sense of stress, thoughts of many passionate and tragic incidents in the tales of King Arthur and King Mark, and others among the men and women of their time.... and the piece ends as it began, with a picture of the castle still proudly fronting the sun and wind of centuries.'