Green and Pleasant Land
A celebration of England, its spirit and humour, its landscapes and its people.

Merrie England, the Church of England, the losses of the 1st World War, the Music Hall, the cricket field, and the pub are celebrated from prehistory (place-names), through Elizabethan England (Shakespeare, madrigals), and the eighteenth century (glees, Trafalgar, Jane Austen), right up to the welfare state. Dickens and Betjeman, with music by Purcell, Tallis, Dowland, Elgar, Music Hall song, glees, and many others join in a happy and joyful sequence of laughter and reflection.

Many of the various elements which go towards making up the programme have a place in defining a mythic aspect of our cultural identity. For example, Edward Thomas for the love of the pastoral, and Dickens for the love of London; Merrie England (Stubbes); the profound psychological shock of the losses of the 1st world war (The Memorial); the music hall; the cricket field (England Their England); the pub (John Moore); the pre-occupation with naval warfare and the death of Nelson at Trafalgar; the omnipresent sense of history and the past.

The historical perspective moves from the prehistoric place-names of the Celtic (British) people that we still use today (Place Names), through Elizabethan England (Shakespeare, madrigals), and the eighteenth century (Trafalgar, Jane Austen), right up to the welfare state (Timothy Winters). Some of the greatest English composers are represented; Purcell, Tallis, Dowland, and Elgar. Much of the music is well-known and familiar, as are some of those songs which are the legacy of a long urban tradition of glee clubs and musical societies, and which until thirty years ago were learnt by most schoolchildren.

This cannot pretend to being anything other than an entertainment; but it attempts in a small way also to mirror the sentiments of Blake's small poem from his epic Milton, which in itself may be seen as representing another strand of Englishness, the desire to establish a just and equal society, to create heaven on earth (symbolically Jerusalem), and represented by movements such as the Guild of Handicrafts which a hundred years ago moved from London to create a rural idyll in the Gloucestershire countryside at Chipping Campden. The whole is a splendid carnival of humour, pathos, nostalgia, joy and happiness.

PROGRAMME

Fairest Isle Henry Purcell
Reading: Adlestrop Edward Thomas
The Blue Bird Charles V Stanford
Reading: King Offa (Mercian Hymns) Geoffrey Hill
Vicar of Bray Anon
Reading: The Parish Church Porch John Betjeman
A Psalme before Morning Prayer Thomas Tallis
Reading: London (from Nicholas Nickleby) Charles Dickens
Drink to me only with thine eyes Anon
Reading: from Oxford Dictionary of Place Names
O Mr Porter George LeBrun
Reading:The Red Lion bar (from "Dance and Skylark") John Moore
Where did you get that hat James Rolmaz
Reading: Timothy Winters Charles Causley
Flow my tears John Dowland
Reading: Mistress Quickly William Shakespeare
The Silver Swan Orlando Gibbons
Reading: The Memorial Wookey Parish Church
Deo Gracias Anglia 15th c carol
Reading: Admiral Croft (Persuasion) Jane Austen
A Grand Ode in honour of Great Britain Thomas Arne

INTERVAL

Now is the month of Maying Thomas Morley
Reading: May Morning (Anatomie of Abuses) Philip Stubbes
Ho who comes here Thomas Morley
Reading:Trafalgar, the Log of HMS Victory
Tom Bowling Charles Dibden
Reading: The Cricket Match (from "England Their England") A. G. Macdonell
The Prince of Sleep Edward Elgar
Reading:In the Backs Frances Cornford
Thou knowest Lord Henry Purcell
Reading:Jerusalem (from "Milton") William Blake
Old 100th (arr.) John Dowland

Programme sequence devised & produced by John Rowlands-Pritchard.