Three Choirs Festival is their cathedral's turn to host the festival) are Geraint Bowen (Hereford), Adrian Partington (Gloucester) and Peter Nardone (Worcester). The festival, originally held over two days in September (but also held in September in 1933 and 1947, since C. S. Lewis's brother Warren is known to have attended), is one of the world's oldest classical choral music festivals. Publicity for it in 1719 addressed "Members of the yearly Musical Assembly in these parts". Its music obviously tended towards the ecclesiastical. In early gatherings, Purcell's setting of the "Te Deum" and "Jubilate" was a regular part of the repertoire until 1784,
Three Choirs Festival he co-featured with Elgar as a central prop to the musical repertoire. Sumsion fostered a relationship with Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály and programmed Kodály's works at six Gloucester festivals. Other names include Gustav Holst, Arthur Sullivan, Herbert Howells, Gerald Finzi, William Walton, Arthur Bliss and Benjamin Britten and recently, Lennox Berkeley, John McCabe, William Mathias, Paul Patterson and James MacMillan. A timeline of some of the more significant events in the festival's history from 1709 until the present day has been compiled by Anthony Boden: Three Choirs Festival timeline In 1995, a Festival Society was established to provide a means