Peace and Reconciliation

My last day at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, so it’s about time I featured the cathedral, which is the big venue (others are used for smaller concerts and performances). I took this at the interval of tonight’s concert, foregrounding Edward Elgar leaning on his bicycle (he was an enthusiastic cyclist). Since a ceremony following Sunday’s Eucharist service he’s been sporting a fetching floral garland.

Lots more good music today. This afternoon I went to a concert featuring vocal ensemble Stile Antico, lovely Renaissance polyphony. Earlier I had caught them rehearsing (extra). Outside I spent some time listening to the Hereford Veterans Choir ( extra). Then this evening it was the turn of the Three Choirs Festival Youth Choir. John Tavener, JS Bach, Vaughan Williams, and (with an added mezzo soprano and the Flowers brass band) the premier of Bob Chilcott’s Mass for Peace and Reconciliation. Never more timely. I was sitting next to the parents of one of the youngsters, who is studying for her A levels. They must be very proud - the youngsters were fantastic.

I also spent some time today in another part of the cathedral complex looking at the Mappa Mundi (extra) and the chained library. Both fascinating. The map is the largest complete world map drawn on vellum to have survived from the Middle Ages (it was made around 1300). . It’s not drawn in the way we would draw a map of the world. Christ sits in majesty above and Jerusalem sits at the centre, so the Christian view of the world is central to how it’s drawn. The map makers apparently knew the world was not flat though, which is interesting.