Festival of Saint Cecilia
The Festival of Saint Cecilia is held each year as a tribute to the Patron Saint of Music and brings together over 1000 people to celebrate music and musicians.
The Festival of Saint Cecilia 2011, which took place on 23 November at Westminster Cathedral and Banqueting House, was a great success.
The 2012 Festival will take place on Wednesday 21 November. Booking will open in September 2012; in the meantime, save the date!
About the Festival of Saint Cecilia
The Festival of Saint Cecilia is our biggest event of the year and features a service at Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral or St Paul's Cathedral and is followed by a reception and lunch.
The choirs of Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral and St Paul's all join their voices in the service of praise to the Patron Saint of Music. A unique feature of the service each year is the performance of a new anthem, specially commissioned for the Festival by the Musicians Benevolent Fund and the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust. Composers of anthems for previous festivals include Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi, John Tavener, John Rutter, Roxanna
Panufnik, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Tarik O’Regan, Jonathan Dove and Ronald Corp.
2011 Festival of Saint Cecilia Anthem
Working with national singing programme
Sing Up and the Choir Schoo
ls’ Association, a new initiative this year is to promote the Festival of Saint Cecilia anthem across the UK to cathedrals, parish churches and faith schools as well as established organisations involved with singing.
The initiative was launched on 28 February in Birmingham and supports Sing Up’s strong ethos to place singing at the heart of every school child’s life, in the belief that singing can change lives and build stronger communities.
Ronald Corp’s anthem, a setting of Psalm 150
Laudate Dominum, has been written in several versions so it can be sung according to the skill of the choir. Faber Music have published
Sing a New Song performance guides, also featuring anthems by Sally Beamish and Christopher Fox.
The full score is available to purchase via download at
Ronald Corp's website.
You can listen to a recording of
Laudate Dominum in the audio player below:
A special version of the anthem was premiered at the Festival of Saint Cecilia on 23 November 2011.
Saint Cecilia
According to legend, Saint Cecilia was a Roman woman of noble birth who
was martyred for her Christian faith circa 230. She devoted herself to
Christianity with obsessive fervour at a time when the faith was
outlawed, Pope Urban himself having been forced into hiding in the
catacombs. Having resolved to live a chaste existence a crisis occurred
when, without her consent, Cecilia’s father betrothed her to Valerian, a
non-Christian, who awaited the arrival of their wedding day with eager
anticipation of the consummation of his love for her. The wedding day
arrived and whilst musical instruments were playing, Cecilia is said to
have “sung in her heart to God alone saying: Make my heart and my body
pure that I be not confounded.” On their wedding night Cecilia told her
new husband of her devotion to chastity, adding that an angel watched
over her constantly to protect her purity. Valerian was ‘somewhat
troubled’. Cecilia’s evangelical zeal converted her husband and he, in
turn, his brother. Together they preached the gospel until they were
captured and executed for their faith. Cecilia, having been arrested
after her husband’s death, refused to renounce her religion and was
condemned to death by being baked in a bath for three days. When this
had no effect, she was given three blows to the neck but remained alive
for three days, during which time she gave all her possessions to the
poor.
Entombed in the catacombs by Pope Urban, her burial place was lost for
600 years until Cecilia appeared in a vision to Pope Paschal in 824 and
told him where her remains could be found. Reputed to cure blindness and
deafness, her tomb was a place of pilgrimage over the ensuing
centuries. In 1683 the Musical Society was formed to counteract the
Puritan view that music, whether sacred or secular, was dangerous fare –
an opinion that had survived the Commonwealth. In order to keep St
Cecilia’s Day, on 22nd November each year, the Society attended a
service in London, usually at St Bride’s, to enjoy a sermon preached in
defence of cathedral music and an Anthem newly written for the Festival.
Eventually the congregation moved to a City company’s hall where,
before banqueting, they were entertained by a performance of an Ode. The
composer at the first Festival was Purcell.
In 1942 Benjamin Britten, whose birthday was on St Cecilia’s Day,
revived the practise of composing an Ode in honour of St Cecilia. Sir
Henry Wood wished to recreate the Festival but died before its revival
in 1946. Since then, the Musicians Benevolent Fund has organised the
Festival to give thanks for and celebrate music and musicians.