ABSTRACT
At the beginning of the twentieth century, English composers looked toward the provincial music festival as a sure venue for national recognition. While the mainstays of the festival repertory remained the oratorios of George Frederick Handel and Felix Mendelssohn, festival officials sought to enlarge their repertoires by promoting the creation of large-scale choral compositions, steadily commissioning native English composers for this purpose. By 1910, Vaughan Williams was thoroughly steeped in the world of the music festival, and choral music in general. The division between 'sacred' and 'secular' music became increasingly polarized with the introduction of civic festivals like that in Birmingham at the end of the eighteenth century. Two important festival municipalities, Birmingham and Leeds, removed festivals from churches by building town halls. Once festivals moved morning concerts out of the churches, change was inevitable, if gradual. Opening services disappeared, and the practice of segregating oratorio performances to morning concerts vanished.
