PROGRAMME OF EVENTS IN 2013
TO MARK OUR 150th ANNIVERSARY

4 May – Concert:  Parry – Invocation to Music.  “Carleton Etherington took us on a journey of discovery, giving some neglected, yet magnificent, music by an eminent son of Gloucestershire the kind of performance it really deserves.”  Roger Jones, Gloucestershire Echo website.  Sir Hubert Parry conducted the Society in April 1905 and family links with the Society continue to this day.

15 June – Choral Workshop led by Ralph Allwood:  Vivaldi – Gloria & Magnificat.  Some 70 singers from across the south joined a similar number of CCS members and two professional soloists to rehearse and give a free informal concert under the expert guidance of the former Director of Music at Eton College.

28 July – 150th Anniversary Garden Party.  The sun shone as members celebrated the Society’s anniversary with a traditional tea party, including musical entertainment and birthday cake, in the fine Cotswold garden of one of the Society’s members.

9 October – 150th Anniversary Lecture by David White:  Rituals, Riots & Royalty:  The Victorian Choral Revival.  Former CCS Conductor David White gave a fascinating account of the forces that were at work in the mid-19th century that led to great change and development in the place of music in the Anglican Church.  Among the leading proponents were the ‘Musical Missionary’ Frederick Helmore, the Society’s founding conductor and his successor Richard Mann, a former Child of the Chapel Royal.

30 November – Concert:  Mendelssohn Elijah.  “Mendelssohn’s Elijah is a wonderful work, sprinkled with his trademark sumptuous melodies.  It is anything but straightforward for the performers.  However, last night’s concert in Cirencester Parish Church was a triumph”.  Allen Prior, The Gloucestershire Echo.  Our records show that Mendelssohn’s music was hugely popular with the Society in its early decades and deserved to feature in our 150th Anniversary celebrations.

17 December – Concert:  Christmas Celebration.  Festive music for choir, soloists and audience to raise funds for The Churn Project, a Cirencester Charity which aims to reduce isolation and exclusion and open up opportunities for local people, focusing on the most vulnerable people in the community – older people, young families and the unemployed.