All are welcome to an evening of traditional songs and festive carols from the southern counties, with Leith Hill Timeline Choir, on Saturday 24th November, 7:30pm, in Rusper Church. Sussex was at the forefront of the English Folk revival of the late 19th-early 20th centuries. Alongside their more famous peers Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams, the choir celebrate the names Burstow, Belloc and Broadwood: a shoemaker and bell ringer, an Anglo-French writer, historian and enthusiastic drinker of Sussex beer, and the daughter of a famous family of piano manufacturers, who was, more importantly, one of history’s greatest champions of English traditional music.
Henry Burstow boasted a vast repertoire of 420 songs, some of which he passed onto Broadwood for her first volume English Country Songs, published in 1893, as well as contributing to the folk-song collections of Vaughan Williams. Hilaire Belloc was one of the most prolific writers of early 20th century England. He spent most of his life in West Sussex, loving the county to the point of idolatry, and writing several works about the area. He loved Sussex songs (particularly the ones about drinking) and wrote about singing as if it were the soul of Sussex. Lucy Broadwood, the unsung heroine of the English folksong, bridged the divide between traditional and art music. Eschewing the conventional harmonies of the Victorian drawing-room ballad, she was instead drawn to the stunning simplicity of the folk song, believing them to possess “perhaps the most beautiful, original and varied cadences to be found in music”. She is buried here in Rusper Church. Interwoven with songs collected, written and sung by these three Sussex greats will be some favourite Christmas carols, lending a seasonal slant to the timeless themes of love, loss and compassion, which have been at the heart of the English folksong since time immemorial. There will be one or two opportunities to sing along!
Tickets cost £12, including a glass of wine, and are available to reserve by calling either Maggie (01293 851906) or Louise (01293 871600)
Leith Hill Timeline Choir is proud to present Southern County Songs in association with Rusper Church’s Belloc, Broadway and Beyond project: www.rusperchurch.org.uk/belloc-broadwood-and-beyond