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A Concert for St Cecilia

Part of the Leeds Baroque - 25th Anniversary Season

Add to my Calendar 23-11-2025 03:00 23-11-2025 05:00 36 A Concert for St Cecilia In the last twenty or so year of the seventeenth century musicians in London gathered together annually on 22 November to celebrate St Cecilia’s Day in Stationers’ Hall near St Paul’s Cathedral. Here they held a feast and performed musical odes, large scale pieces for instruments, soloists and choir, set to poems in praise of the saint. The foremost composers and poets contributed to the yearly event, notably Henry Purcell and John Dryden. Though the meetings stopped at the turn of the century, the idea of the ode for St Cecilia lived on, and had a stunning renaissance in the 1730s with composers including William Boyce and G.F. Handel. Handel returned to the Cecilian poetry of John Dryden to inspire his music, first setting the latter’s Alexander’s Feast, and subsequently Song for St Cecilia’s Day, 1687, ‘From harmony, from heav’nly harmony’. Boyce worked with two living poets, setting Peter Vidal’s ‘The charms of harmony’ and John Lockwood ‘See fam’d Apollo and the nine’. While Handel’s odes are regularly performed today, Boyce’s have fallen into underserved obscurity. This concert offers an opportunity to hear ‘The charms of harmony’, a work that is a worthy heir to those created for the Cecilian celebrations of the previous century. Pre Concert talk at 2:00pm given by Dr Bryan White (author of Music for St Cecilia's Day) admission free to ticket holders. Clothworkers Centenary Concert Hall, Leeds DD/MM/YYYY

Details


The School of Music
University of Leeds
Leeds
LS2 9JT
England

Tickets

Prices: £22 (students and under-18s FREE)
Season tickets: £75 (students and under 18's free)

Programme

–
–

Performers

– director / harpsichord
 – soprano
 – countertenor
 – tenor
 – Bass


Other concerts in this Series (+)

Programme Note

In the last twenty or so year of the seventeenth century musicians in London gathered together annually on 22 November to celebrate St Cecilia’s Day in Stationers’ Hall near St Paul’s Cathedral. Here they held a feast and performed musical odes, large scale pieces for instruments, soloists and choir, set to poems in praise of the saint. The foremost composers and poets contributed to the yearly event, notably Henry Purcell and John Dryden. Though the meetings stopped at the turn of the century, the idea of the ode for St Cecilia lived on, and had a stunning renaissance in the 1730s with composers including William Boyce and G.F. Handel. Handel returned to the Cecilian poetry of John Dryden to inspire his music, first setting the latter’s Alexander’s Feast, and subsequently Song for St Cecilia’s Day, 1687, ‘From harmony, from heav’nly harmony’. Boyce worked with two living poets, setting Peter Vidal’s ‘The charms of harmony’ and John Lockwood ‘See fam’d Apollo and the nine’. While Handel’s odes are regularly performed today, Boyce’s have fallen into underserved obscurity. This concert offers an opportunity to hear ‘The charms of harmony’, a work that is a worthy heir to those created for the Cecilian celebrations of the previous century.

Pre Concert talk at 2:00pm given by Dr Bryan White (author of Music for St Cecilia's Day) admission free to ticket holders.

Leeds Baroque choir & orchestra in Clothworkers Concert Hall

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