Herbert Sumsion host cities, along with Worcester and Hereford, of the Three Choirs Festival, an annual festival of choral emphasis first held in the early 18th century. Sumsion would later write of his musically formative experiences at the cathedral: ‘Quite soon after my entry into the choir I was singing with the [Three Choirs] Festival Chorus and gradually absorbing the choral music of the great classical composers and the contemporary writers, of whom the giant was certainly Elgar.' When Sumsion’s treble voice broke at age 15, he became an ‘articled pupil’ to Brewer, a designation connoting a three-year apprenticeship in organ, choral
Bristol Cathedral it reopened as a cathedral under the secular clergy. In an edict dated June 1542, Henry VIII and Thomas Cranmer raised the building to rank of Cathedral of a new Diocese of Bristol. The new diocese was created from parts of the Diocese of Gloucester and the Diocese of Bath and Wells; Bristol had been, before the Reformation, and the erection of Gloucester diocese, part of the Diocese of Worcester. Paul Bush, (died 1558) a former royal household chaplain, was created the first Bishop of Bristol. The new cathedral was dedicated to the Holy and Undivided Trinity. In the 1831