Illustrated talk in aid of St Swithun's Church roof appeal.
Tickets are £5 and will be available on the door.
Further details from Dr Browne:
My aim is to give a brief, partial and entertaining history of church music in Mid-Devon, from the middle ages to the present day. This will include choirs, organs and church bands, and the way liturgical fashion has veered from one to the other over the last eight centuries. We will hear about such things as church barrel organs, the sometimes less than reverent behaviour of church bands, and the terrible fates that befell those who removed the organ from Ashburton Church in 1579.
Musical examples will be sung by members of the choir of the church of St. Michael and All Angels, Mount Dinham, Exeter, including excerpts from the 14 th century manuscript surviving from Tavistock Abbey, the great flowering of English liturgical music in the 16 th century, and the establishment in the 19 th century of what we usually think of as the ‘traditional’ parish church choir. The West Gallery Quire, directed by Claire Willman, will sing examples of ‘west gallery’ music from the 17 th to the 19th centuries; the kind of music described by Thomas Hardy in ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’. We are very fortunate that Sandford church still possesses its very fine west gallery, which we will use on this occasion.