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Culture of Great Britain

The Chichester Theatre Festival

The fame achieved by the Edinburgh Festival, to say nothing of the large number of visitors that it brings every year to the Scottish capital, has encouraged many other towns in Britain to organise similar festivals. Those at Bath, Cheltenham and Aldeburgh have all become considerable artistic successes, even if they haven't brought as much business to these towns as the local shopkeepers had hoped for.

The latest festival town to join the list is Chichester, which has earned a great deal of prestige by building, in record time, a large theatre holding over one thousand five hundred people. Here will be held each year a theatre festival in which many stars from the London stage will be eager to participate.

The first season scored a considerable success. The repertoire consisted of an old English comedy, a sixteenth- century tragedy and a production of Chekhov's “Uncle Vanya” in which every part was taken by a top star.

But the chief interest of the Chichester Festival is the new theatre itself, which has an apron stage. Most of you will know that the apron stage, which was common in Shakespeare's day, projects out into the auditorium. With an apron stage there is no proscenium arch, or stage sets of the kind we are used to in the modern theatre. This calls for the use of an entirely different technique on the part both of the players, who have their audience on three sides of them instead of just in front, and the producer. The players must make proper use of their voices, which, to a generation accustomed to mumbling into microphones, is not easy.

Chichester itself is a small country town in the heart of Sussex, and the theatre stands on the edge of a beautiful park. Unlike Glyndebourne where the entire audience wears evening dress, the clothes worn by the audience at Chichester are much less formal; but as the festival is held in the summer the pretty frocks of the women make an attractive picture as they stand and gossip outside the theatre during the intervals, or snatch hasty refreshments from their cars in the park.

The Welsh Eisteddfod

No country in the world has a greater love of music and poetry than the people of Wales. Today, Eisteddfod is held at scores of places throughout Wales, particularly from May to early November. The habit of holding similar events dates back to early history and there are records of competitions for Welsh poets and musicians in the twelfth century. The Eisteddfod sprang from the Gorsedd, or National Assembly of Bards. It was held occasionally up to 1819, but since then has become an annual event for the encouragement of Welsh literature and music and the preservation of the Welsh language and ancient national customs.

The Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales is held annually early in August, in North and South Wales alternately, its actual venue varying from year to year. It attracts Welsh people from all over the world. The programme includes male and mixed choirs, brass-band concerts, many children's events, drama, arts and crafts and, of course, the ceremony of the Crowning of the Bard.

Next in importance is the great Llangollen International Music Eisteddfod, held early in July and attended by competitors from many countries, all wearing their picturesque and often colourful national costumes. It is an event probably without parallel anywhere in the world. There are at least twenty-five other major Eisteddfods from May to November.

In addition to the Eisteddfod, about thirty major Welsh Singing Festivals are held throughout Wales from May until early November.

The Edinburgh Festival

It is a good thing that the Edinburgh Festival hits the Scottish Capital outside term time. Not so much because the University hostels - and students’digs - are needed of provide accommodation for Festival visitors but because this most exhilarating occasion allows no time for anything mundane. It gives intelligent diversion for most of the twenty - four hours each weekday in its three weeks (it is not tactful to ask about Sundays - you explore the surrounding terrain then). The programmes always include some of the finest chamber music ensemble and soloists in the world. There are plenty of matinees; evening concerts, opera, drama and ballet performances usually take place at conventional times - but the floodlit Military Tattoo at Edinburgh Castle obviously doesn't start till after dusk, and late night entertainments and the Festival Club can take you into the early hours of the morning.

In recent years, about 90,000 people have flocked into Edinburgh every year during the three weeks at the end of August and early September. The 90,000, of course, does not include the very large numbers of people who discover pressing reasons for visiting their Edinburgh relations about this time, nor the many thousands who come into the city on day trips from all over the country.

They wouldn't all come, year after year, to a city bursting to capacity if they didn't find the journey eminently worth-while. They find in Edinburgh Festival the great orchestras and soloists of the world, with top-class opera thrown in; famous ballet companies, art exhibitions and leading drama; the Tattoo, whose dramatic colour inspires many a hurried claim to Scottish ancestry.

Since the Festival started in 1947 as a gesture of the Scottish renaissance against post-war austerity, much has blossomed around it. Every hall in the city is occupied by some diversion: and you may find Shakespeare by penetrating an ancient close off the Royal Mile, or plain-song in a local church. "Fringe" events bring performing bodies from all over Britain and beyond, and student groups are always prominent among them, responsible often for interesting experiments in the drama. Then there is the International Film Festival, bringing documentaries from perhaps 30 countries; Highland Games, and all sorts of other ploys from puppet to photo shows.

The National Musical Instrument of the Scots

The bagpipe was known to the ancient civilisations of the Near East. It was probably introduced into Britain by the Romans. Carvings of bagpipe players on churches and a few words about them in the works of Chaucer and other writers show that it was popular all over the country in the Middle Ages. Now bagpipes can be seen and head only in the northern counties of England, in Ireland and in Scotland where it was introduced much later. Bagpipes have been used ill most European countries. It is also native to India and China.

In Scotland the bagpipe is first recorded in the 16th century during the reign of James I, who was a very good player, and probably did much to make it popular. For long it has been considered a national Scottish instrument.

The sound of the bagpipes is very stirring. The old Highland clans and later the Highland regiments used to go into battle to the sound of the bagpipes.