The Historical Pageant of British Music, 1200-1682
Pageant type
Performances
Place: New Court of St John's College (Cambridge) (Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England)
Year: 1951
Indoors/outdoors: Outdoors
Number of performances: 3
Notes
5–6 August 1951
[Two of the performances had to be held inside due to heavy rain.]
Name of pageant master and other named staff
- Director [Pageant Master)]: Ord, Boris
- Director: John Sevens
- Costume Designer: Diana Petroff
- Producer: Camille Prior
Names of executive committee or equivalent
n/a
Names of script-writer(s) and other credited author(s)
Names of composers
- Dunstable, John
- Purcell, Henry
- Fornsete, John of
- Morley, Thomas
- Handel, George Frideric
- Byrd, William
- Lawes, William
Numbers of performers
n/a
Financial information
The Pageant was sponsored by the Arts Theatre Trust
Object of any funds raised
n/a
Linked occasion
The Festival of Britain
Audience information
Prices of admission and seats: highest–lowest
n/a
Associated events
- An Opera, The Mayor of Casterbridge,
written by Peter Tranchell
- Performance by Madrigal Society.
- River Concerts.
- Concert by the Band of the Royal Horse
Guards and the Scots Guards.
- Exhibition of silver plate from Colleges
and local history at the Fitzwilliam Museum
Pageant outline
The Writing of ‘Sumer is icumen in’
John Fornsete complains about the ugliness of plainsong and creates choral polyphony.
Procession of the Chaucerian Canterbury Pilgrims
Henry V and his soldiers return from Agincourt singing ‘The King Went Forth’
Visit of Elizabeth I to St John’s College, 1564
Thomas Herrick and his friends sing harvest songs, scandalizing Puritan Parsons
Charles II’s Journey through Cambridge on his way to London from Newmarket
Key historical figures mentioned
- Henry V (1386–1422) king of England
and lord of Ireland, and duke of Aquitaine
- Elizabeth I (1533–1603) queen of
England and Ireland
- Charles II (1630–1685) king of
England, Scotland, and Ireland
Musical production
Performed by singers and musicians from the Cambridge University Music Society (CUMS). A number of pieces were performed for orchestra and voice, including:
- John Fornsete, ‘Sumer is icumen in’
- William Lawes, ‘Gather ye Rosebuds’
- Anon. ‘The King Went Forth’
- Thomas Morley, ‘Sing we and chant it’
Newspaper coverage of pageant
The
Times
Manchester
Guardian
Cambridge
Review
Bury
Free Press
Bedfordshire
Times and Independent
Book of words
- None known
Other primary published materials
- Festival of Britain 1951. Cambridge: Programme of Festivities. [Cambridge, 1951].
References in secondary literature
- ‘Rain (almost) stopped play: Cambridge and the 1951 Festival of Britain’, MusiCB3 Blog, 13 July 2011, accessed 17 January 2016, https://musicb3.wordpress.com/2011/07/13/rain-almost-stopped-play-cambridge-and-the-1951-festival-of-britain/
- Tranchell, Peter. ‘The Historical Pageant of British Music’, Cambridge Review, Volume LXXIII, 13 October 1951, accessed 4 January 2021: https://peter-tranchell.uk/writings/blog/the-historical-pageant-of-british-music-tranchell-the-cambridge-review-volume-lxxiii-13-october-1951
Archival holdings connected to pageant
n/a
Sources used in preparation of pageant
n/a
Summary
The Cambridge Historical Pageant of British Music was one of hundreds of pageants held up and down the country during the Festival year, though no other pageant was specifically dedicated to music. Cambridge had previously held a pageant in 1924, written by Arthur Bryant. The 1951 Pageant was sponsored by the Arts Theatre Trust, and featured a number of performers from the Cambridge University Music Society (CUMS). As the Times put it, ‘In a festival that does not want for ambition’, the pageant ‘has belonged to the most pretentious events’, noting also that the site ‘which, if hardly notable for historical associations or architectural nobility, at any rate provided a broad façade’.1
The pageant focused on the evolution of British music, from the creation of polyphony in 1200 through to the music of Handel in the 1680s. The story of the music was linked to scenes from Cambridge’s illustrious history, featuring a number of Royal visits— which was itself something of an oddity as most Festival Pageants focused on ordinary life, foregrounding social history above the actions of royals or aristocrats (see e.g. the entries for Boston, East Grinstead and Rushden). The Manchester Guardian described the scenes and songs as ‘admirably devised to give listeners some kind of perspective view of a period of musical history of which most modern concert-goers have only the haziest, if any, conception’. The newspaper compared the difference in musical form between Fornsete’s ‘Sumer is icumen in’ (long a staple of pageants) and the music of Purcell as ‘a difference greater, perhaps, than that between the B minor Mass [by Mozart] and the “Rite of Spring” [by Stravinsky]’2
The Guardian felt that script, though ‘occasionally stilted’, was ‘historically illuminating and mostly to the point’, and whilst the musical performance was of professional quality, the ‘acting [was] not so high’.3 This was a view shared by Peter Tranchell in the Cambridge Review, who suggested that ‘A timely cut would have been welcome in nearly every scene, for conversation had been allowed to outgrow its place, and one kept wanting to hurry on to some music. When the music did ultimately arrive the show came to life in no uncertain manner.’4
Both the reporters for the Times and the Manchester Guardian seem to have witnessed the only outside performance, the other two having to be held inside due to rain, which caused Tranchell (whose own opera The Mayor of Casterbridge was premiered in Cambridge during the Festival celebrations), to note that
Out of doors, the effect alone of torchlight and horses, of groups and processions, made the evening a memorable one. But when the production had to be compressed in the cramping and somewhat disillusioning daylight conditions of St. John’s Hall, the pageant seemed shorn of its most important attribute—pageantry.5
Despite these misgivings, however, Tranchell nevertheless stated that ‘the conception as a whole was grandiose, and a real laurel must be awarded to the ladies in the back room who so admirably clothed such a large cast.’6
Rain and somewhat implausible acting notwithstanding, the pageant seems to have been a moderate success, and a further modified musical pageant was staged in St John’s College for the Coronation in 1953, featuring scenes from the life of Elizabeth I, with Peter Tranchell as conductor.
Footnotes
1. ^ The Times, 7 August 1951, 8.
2. ^ Manchester Guardian, 6 August 1951, 3.
3. ^ Ibid.
4. ^ Peter Tranchell, Peter. ‘The Historical Pageant of British Music’, Cambridge Review, Volume LXXIII, 13 October 1951, accessed 4 January 2021: https://peter-tranchell.uk/writings/blog/the-historical-pageant-of-british-music-tranchell-the-cambridge-review-volume-lxxiii-13-october-1951
5. ^ Ibid.
6. ^ Ibid.
How to cite this entry
Angela Bartie, Linda Fleming, Mark Freeman, Tom Hulme, Alex Hutton, Paul Readman, ‘The Historical Pageant of British Music, 1200-1682’, The Redress of the Past, http://www.historicalpageants.ac.uk/pageants/1376/