(Reproduced from "And Choirs Singing" - An Account of the Leith Hill Musical Festival 1905 - 1985)

At first there was only one competition day, and that was confined to villages. Before the time of cars or motor buses it meant a long day for the choir from an outlying village to arrive in Dorking by nine o'clock in the morning and not finish till ten o'clock in the evening. But that is what these heroic pioneers did. I hear complaints nowadays of the difficulties of turning out on a damp night for a practice. When I think of those times when it was a matter of walking or bicycling, often through snow and rain, I sometimes think we have got rather soft!

The opening event was, I think, always the sight-reading test which, by a beneficent regulation, was obligatory on every choir. It was a terrifying experience, but occasionally the stars in their courses fought for us. Once the tenors had to take up a lead by themselves, they funked it and all seemed ready for collapse, but at the critical moment a passing motor car hooted out the required note, the tenors took the hint and marched on to victory.

The organisers of the Festival insisted, rightly, that the competition should only be a preliminary to a combined concert: that those who spent the day in friendly rivalry should finish it in brotherly and, of course, sisterly co-operation. These concerts were a revelation both to performers and hearers and were a standing proof of the choral society mathematics that 2 + 2 = 40.

Those who only heard the finished result knew little of the preparation period when week after week a devoted band of singers would meet in a cold but stuffy school room, half lit by two smelly oil lamps, accompanied by an astonishing machine which had once been a pianoforte. Here these hierophants struggled with music which was often in an idiom new to them, and sometimes at first incomprehensible. Occasionally the leading soprano lost her voice and could not sing, or one of the only two tenors, being the local doctor, was called out in the middle of a practice to assist at one of the joyful occasions that are so frequent in our village; leaving Mr Smith of Kosikot to wrestle with Bach's difficult intervals or Handel's runs alone. And so it went on for the first few weeks. Then suddenly, as by a miracle, the music came alive and we sang on full of hope waiting for the great climax of the spring. At last it arrived. What had been a set of disintegrated units became one whole.

I shall never forget the effect at the final, full rehearsal of the opening phrase of Charles Wood's 'Full fathom five' which during the morning competitions had been sung rather tentatively by five or six basses at a time, now thundered out by fifty.

I used to go round to each village in turn hearing them sing through their music. In later days Miss Cullen always came with me and did more than I could by her splendid playing to show them what the music meant. These practices were not without their amusing side: for instance, as when the local schoolmaster expressed his admiration of the way "Dr Vaughan Williams came in in the nick of time". Another time, one of the basses said to the local conductor, with perhaps mistaken loyalty, "The Doctor took it all rather quicker than you, but I sang it your pace all the way through."

Continued...