This is a four-day event held alternately each year in England and Switzerland. Between 500 - 1,000 musicians and friends from as many as 10 countries on 5 continents gather to sing and enjoy classic sacred choral literature under the leadership of such world-renowned musicians as English-born Sir David Willcocks and Paul Leddington Wright and the American duo pianists, (Stephen) Nielson & (Ovid) Young.

British composers at the beginning of the 20th century seem to have found the freethinking, free-verse poetry of the American poet Walt Whitman irresistible. Delius, Holst, Hamilton Harty, W. H. Bell and Charles Wood all fell under his spell, but none more thoroughly than Ralph Vaughan Williams. Perhaps it was not surprising: for in Whitman a mystical awareness of nature and humanity is expressed in forthright, commonsense terms that very much mirror the basic contradiction in the British character.

The poetry of Toward the Unknown Region, taken from the 1870 section of Whitman's Leaves of Grass, subtitled Whispers of Heavenly Death, had a particular significance for Vaughan Williams. It deals with the challenge of facing the unknown (and unknowable) armed only with faith in the human spirit. Such motives appear again and again in his work and reach their culmination in the opera The Pilgrim's Progress (1951).

Vaughan Williams called his setting a 'Song for Chorus and Orchestra', completing it in 1906. Its first performance at the Leeds Festival on 10 October 1907.

The unsettled nature of its opening, with the chorus entering with the words:

"Darest thou now, O soul, Walk out with me toward the unknown region, Where neither ground is for the feet, Nor any path to follow?"

is designed to evoke a mixture of trepidation and exhilaration, such as the explorer might feel at the outset of a voyage or journey of discovery. Trepidation is uppermost at the beginning, as the shifting harmonies indicate, but as the music slowly builds to a climax through the piece, exhilaration finally wins the day, for the work ends in a radiant mood.

Gustav Holst was born in Cheltenham into a family of long-standing professional musicians. Ever since he could remember, there had been music going on around him every day - pupils, rehearsals and the rest of it. He became a leading figure in the great flowering of English music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Hymn of Jesus is a short work in a style highly unusual for English religious music. It is scored for semichorus, double chorus and a lively orchestral accompaniment. The text is in two parts - Latin verses from two 6th-century hymns by Fortunatus; and Holst's own translation from the Greek of the 2nd-century 'dancing hymn' from the 'Apocryphal Acts of St. John', which employs a variety of techniques and moods. The fundamental theme is affinity with God through dancing - as the original description in the scene in St. John puts it, 'Having danced these things with us, the hand went forth'. The central emphasis in Holst's work, embodied in a lively but difficult extended five-four section is that, '... all things join in the dance! Ye who dance not, know not what we are knowing'.

[Ian Rich]

In preparation for the 200th anniversary of the Sons of the Clergy service in St Paul's Cathedral, Sir George Martin, the Cathedral organist, commissioned a work from Elgar. Having chosen Psalm 29 for his text, Elgar started work on it in January 1914. In March, his wife recorded in her diary that 'E[dward] much inclined to play with anything to avoid working with the anthem'. From a somewhat acid aside comment, it seems that this was 'as usual'. The first performance was given on 30 April.

The writing is essentially sequential and serves well what Jerrold Northrop Moore calls 'the comfortable Anglican style for such things'. Although the work opens in a quite dramatic and nobilmente way, the pace quickly moves on at the words 'worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness'. These are set to the distinctive rhythm of the words and to a musical line which has a similar contour to that of the opening three bars.

Elgar illustrates the increasingly aggressive nature of the words in an onomatopoeic way, combined with modulations into unexpected keys remote from the confident opening E flat. A brief tranquil section recollects 'Worship the Lord' but a return to E flat brings a suitably majestic mood for the confidence that 'The Lord shall give strength unto his people'... [and] ... 'the blessing of peace'. The music moves quickly to a gentler mood of prayer for 'the blessing of peace', which is repeated quietly to the end. Little could the composer or the first listeners have realised how quickly that peace was to be shattered.

[Bryan Cresswell]

Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris, and as his father died a few weeks after his birth, he was brought up by his mother and grandmother. He began learning the piano at three, and later took lessons in organ and composition. Intellectual interests included astronomy, ancient Greek musical instruments, and the music of Rameau.

In 1886, the Royal Philharmonic Society of London commissioned Saint-Saëns to write a symphony for its seventy third season and the result was his most celebrated work in that form. He dedicated it to the memory of Liszt. The important part given to the organ has resulted in the nickname, the Organ symphony. Although it is known as his Third Symphony it was in fact the last and fifth that he wrote. Two remained unpublished during his lifetime.

After the Adagio, the strings introduce the initial theme which is sombre and agitated. The first transformation of this theme leads to a second motive which is distinguished by greater tranquillity and after a short development in which the two themes are presented simultaneously, the motive appears in characteristic form for full orchestra.

In the Poco Adagio the peaceful and contemplative theme is given to violins, violas and cellos, which are supported by organ chords. After a variation in arabesques performed by the violins the initial theme of the Allegro appears again with somewhat dissonant harmonies giving way to the theme of the Adagio. The first movement ends in a coda of mystical character in which are heard the chords of D flat major and E minor.

The second movement begins with an energetic phrase which is followed immediately by a third transformation of the initial theme in the first movement. Swift arpeggios and scales on the piano are accompanied by a syncopated rhythm in the orchestra in different tonalities; a second Presto in which a new grave, austere theme from the heavy brass and basses is contrasted with the fast moving theme from the first Presto. Finally the initial theme of the first movement with full orchestra, piano (four hands) and organ is followed by the coda.

[Southend Philharmonic Orchestra]