ABSTRACT
During the period 1890-1914 several new festivals were established. Of these, the festivals at Glastonbury and Leith Hill proved the most important. Each was associated with a particular composer Glastonbury with Rutland Boughton and Leith Hill with Ralph Vaughan Williams. A festival at Glastonbury was announced by Boughton for the year 1913 but was then postponed, taking place eventually in August 1914, just after the outbreak of war. Festivals were now an essential part of many musical societies and institutions. Paradoxically, it was at this very moment when the festivals had permeated so many areas of society that activities were curtailed by the outbreak of war. The festival at Bristol, which had been established in 1873, operated more or less triennially during this period, although its activities were temporarily curtailed when Colston Hall burnt down on 1 September 1898. The hall was rebuilt, and the festival series then continued from 1902 until the outbreak of war in 1914.
