The Divine Office: Choral Music in Oxford - A unique event of exceptional musical intensity and spiritual potency

Seventeen concerts, including the complete Divine Office: this festival is a truly extraordinary musical, architectural and spiritual experience. Caution need not inhibit the use of the word unique.

The oldest and finest college choirs

Provision for music to accompany the liturgy was stipulated by the founders of the major early colleges at Oxford, and choral church music there is still very much a living tradition. Magdalen, Merton, New College, Christ Church Cathedral and Queen’s College choirs remain the finest in Oxford and enjoy international reputations for excellence.

Acclaimed professional ensembles

Eight professional choirs also participate: Stile Antico, whose wonderfully engaging ethereal style has won them an international following; Tenebrae, the passion and precision for which they are renowned making them likewise one of the most sought-after choral ensembles in the world; the Choir of the London Oratory, the UK’s senior Catholic church choir and among the finest liturgical groups in Europe; Contrapunctus, an Oxford-based consort that couples powerful interpretations with path-breaking scholarship; founded in 2014, Siglo de Oro is one of the leading vocal ensembles of its generation, praised for its golden tone, fresh interpretations, and innovative programming; I Fagiolini, whose inimitable performances are characterised by superb ensemble playing, sensitivity, wit, pathos and sheer beauty; Collegium Gregorianum, who are dedicated to thoughtful and musically engaging performances of liturgical music; and Recordare, perhaps the most brilliant of Britain’s new crop of exciting young choirs.

Instruments of Time & Truth, a top-class period instrument ensemble, performs in two concerts. Based in Oxford, its members are among the leading specialist players in England.

500 years of music, Europe-wide

You will hear music from across a span of five hundred years, a heterogeneous selection with some skewing in favour of those with Oxford associations. Polyphony from the Golden Age provides recurring content, with English composers – Taverner, Tallis, Byrd, Sheppard, Weelkes – very well represented alongside continental peers such as Palestrina, Victoria, Lassus and Caterina Assandra. There is a programme of English Restoration composers (Blow, Purcell, Humfrey), and Handel and Haydn make brief appearances.

The second Golden Age of choral music is inaugurated by such figures as Rheinberger and Stainer, continued into the next century by Parry, Stanford and Bairstow, and thence carried forward by some of the great names in 20th-century music – Holst, Stravinksy, Duruflé, Walton, Britten.

We are particularly proud to be able to present the works of several living composers, including Kerensa Briggs, Grayston Ives, Derri Lewis, Cecilia McDowall, Philip Moore, Arvo Pärt, Owain Park, Judith Weir and Eric Whitacre.

The Divine Office Day

The central component of this festival is the performance of the complete Divine Office, within the span of a single day and at the appropriate times. No other musical experience could be as sublime and spiritually charged.

The principal features of the Offices are the chanting of psalms with their antiphons, the singing of hymns and canticles, and the chanting of readings from the Bible with sung responsories. The tradition has changed little in nearly 1,500 years, and aspects may go back further: the roots of plainchant (‘Gregorian’ chant) may lie in Jewish or Pharaonic practice.

Though this ‘performance’ of the Divine Office (they are concerts, not services) is basically as authentic a rendering as might have been performed in late-medieval or Renaissance Britain or Europe, there are some departures from liturgical correctness. It does not follow the texts prescribed for a particular day, and we err on the side of musical elaboration beyond what is canonically necessary. The polyphonic passages have been selected from among the finest ever composed, within an overarching Marian theme, though this is hardly limiting.

Were you to attend all eight Hours, you would become one of an elite few among living souls to have done so, so rare is the opportunity now. Even were you to skip the less agreeably timed ones, you would be exposed to what is one of the most potent spiritual and aesthetic experiences available in the world today. Moreover, it could be said, at the risk of divine wrath for extreme hubris, that, musically, this manifestation of the Divine Office will rank as the finest ever performed (along with the four previous editions of this festival), being performed by such first-rate choirs.

As the capacity of the chapels is limited, all of the Offices are performed in two chapels simultaneously. Audience members are assigned to a particular stream of the eight Hours to ensure maximum variety of chapels and an equal number of performances by each of the choirs.

Tenebrae, Stile Antico and Collegium Gregorianum participate in all eight Offices. Apart from sleep deprivation there are two challenges facing contemporary choirs wishing to perform the complete Divine Office: vocal stamina and the quantity of plainchant whose singing is a specialist skill. Tenebrae are taking on both the polyphony and chant for all of their Hours, and Stile Antico and Collegium Gregorianum are performing the polyphony and chant respectively for theirs.

We shall ask that there be no applause at any time during this extraordinary day, and that silence prevails while in the chapels.

Oxford: A beautiful and suitable city

Oxford is one of the world’s great historic cities: a dense accumulation of buildings in every style from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Architectural greatness is embedded in a web of improbably picturesque streets and alleys and dappled with lawns, veteran trees and riverside meadows.

The city is also a uniquely apposite location for a celebration of church music – especially for a recreation of the monastic hours. Reflecting their quasi-monastic origins, many colleges are equipped with cloistral layouts and magnificent chapels. All the selected chapels are architecturally remarkable, and all have a strong musical tradition. The audience sit alongside or opposite the choir, giving rise to rare proximity and sense of collegiality.

At Christ Church, liturgical singing has an almost unbroken tradition for well over 800 years. Thomas Wolsey intended the college to outshine all its predecessors when he founded it in 1525, and it has the largest quad and the most capacious chapel – which doubles as a cathedral. Wolsey established 16 choristers and chose John Taverner, greatest of early Tudor composers, as Informator Choristarum (director of music).

There are earlier foundations, but by the generosity of its endowment and by the prescriptions of its 1264 statutes, Merton qualifies as the first fully-fledged college in either Oxford or Cambridge. The chapel is also Oxford’s earliest, and many hold it to be the most beautiful. From the outset, there was provision for vocal music to accompany the liturgy.

The ambitions and endowment of Magdalen exceeded those of all previous foundations when established by Bishop Waynflete in 1458. Reformation iconoclasm was made good by 19th-century restorations and the glorious chapel is little changed since it was built in 1474–80. Waynflete made provision for eight clerks, four chaplains, 16 choristers and an Informator Choristarum. John Sheppard was among the many distinguished holders of this post (1543–48).

New College enjoyed unprecedented munificence when founded by William of Wykeham in 1379, and its chapel is the biggest of the medieval new-builds in Oxford. The college was the first to be planned around a large quadrangle, and the first in which there were lodgings for undergraduates as well as for fellows. From the outset there was provision for ten chaplains, three clerks and 16 choristers.

Though founded in 1340, no trace of the medieval buildings of The Queen’s College survive as it was entirely rebuilt in the decades around 1700. The result is a pleasing version of English Baroque with a screen to the High Street which constitutes the finest stretch of Classicism in Oxford. The chapel is marked by its restrained beauty and excellent acoustics.

University College Chapel was begun in 1639 but was not completed until 1666, building having been interrupted by the civil wars and interregnum. Fittings from that time include the painted windows and the antechapel screen. Its founder, William of Durham, died in 1249, so the college is entitled to claim to be the oldest in any English university.

The parish church of Oxford, University Church of St Mary, was also the place where all university ceremonies took place before the Sheldonian Theatre was opened in 1669, where the governing body gathered and where the embryonic library was first kept (in the oldest library building in the world). Even after the 17th century it continued to be used for university and public functions and concerts. It is exceptionally capacious for an English parish church but architecturally is no barn, ranking with the finest churches in the country. Building began at the end of the 13th century and enlargements and embellishments continued until the end of the 15th century.