Musical Destinations
Gareth Thomas explores a famous university city that embraces both tradition and the latest innovation in its richly varied music making
Gareth Thomas enjoys the varied musical delights of the bustling university city of Cambridge
Take a walk around Great St Mary’s Church and you’ll be greeted by a kaleidoscopic display of posters advertising a breathtaking array of events of infinite genres: musical, theatrical and artistic. Could these really all be happening within a three-mile radius of this building? Of course they can. For this is Cambridge, the site of a bustling market town for 1,000 years and, since 1209, a world-famous university. Standing on the edge of the
East Anglian Fens, this compact city is brimming with culture and history that few other destinations can match.
Music wasn’t on the curriculum in the earliest days of the University, but it does lay claim to have awarded the first ever Bachelor of Music degree, in 1464. Over the centuries, some of the most prominent names in British music have studied and taught here, ranging from composers Vaughan Williams and Thomas Adès to pianist Joanna Macgregor and conductor John Eliot Gardiner. Unsurprisingly, then, high quality student-led music-making – from chamber ensembles to gamelans – flourishes alongside the University’s formal teaching.
However, for many around the world, the words ‘Cambridge’ and ‘Music’ immediately call to mind the annual BBC broadcast of A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Chapel. The service marked its centenary in 2018 and its customary blend of well-known carols and specially commissioned
A rich history: (above) The Eagle pub, a regular haunt of Francis Crick among other notables; the Fitzwilliam Museum, home of world-famous art works (recently from composers such as Judith Weir, Michael Berkeley and Carl Rütti) sung by the choir of choristers and undergraduate choral scholars is seen as emblematic of the English choral tradition.
But choral music in Cambridge isn’t just for Christmas, or King’s College. In fact, it’s difficult to imagine another city so densely packed with top-class choirs. Of the University’s 31 colleges, 27 offer choral awards to students and five offer choristerships to children (three colleges for boys, two for girls). Pop into a college chapel towards the end of the day during University Term and you may hear the beautiful music of Evensong. With grand chapels and illustrious histories, King’s and St John’s colleges have the most famous choirs, but other colleges provide a unique musical offering – head to each college choir’s website for full details of services and concerts. No matter which chapel you attend, the combination of flickering candles, majestic buildings and glorious music are a quintessential Cambridge experience and part of a living tradition.
College chapels are often intimate spaces. In contrast, Cambridge’s largest concert hall is the 500-seat West Road Concert Hall, built in 1978 and situated within the Faculty of Music. The hall hosts several long-standing resident ensembles – including early music specialists The Academy of Ancient Music and innovative chamber orchestra Britten Sinfonia – and is a major venue for the Cambridge Music Festival, celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Previously held in November, the festival’s events are now beginning to take place throughout the year and attract a wide variety of performers to Cambridge – ‘musicians that wouldn’t normally come here’, in the words of festival director Justin Lee. In recent years, pianist Murray Perahia, violinist Joshua Bell and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields have been regular visitors, but neither is the festival afraid to experiment. ‘You can call it “classical” – it’s just great music’ declares its website, and this year, alongside more traditional performances from pianist Stephen Hough, The Brodsky Quartet and King’s College Choir, it has co-commissioned A Percussionist’s Songbook: nine ‘songs without words’ for pitched percussion and electronics.
Besides the festival, there are plenty of other cultural attractions. The Fitzwilliam Museum on Trumpington Street not only houses an invaluable collection of music manuscripts including the Fitzwilliam Virginals Book, but also over half-a-million exhibits dating from antiquity to the 20th century; it has also recently been used as a venue for more intimate chamber recitals. There’s Kettle’s Yard, too, home to various modern art exhibitions and smaller-scale musical performances. The University Botanical Gardens provide a retreat from the busy city centre; or simply stroll along The Backs admiring the world-famous skyline, and dip in and out of colleges until you find yourself in one of Cambridge’s many welcoming and historic pubs – a blue plaque outside The Eagle on Bene’t Street, for instance, commemorates Francis Crick’s interruption of patrons’ lunches to announce the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953.
Ultimately, Cambridge is a cultural superpower whose broad musical ecosystem – both ‘town’ and ‘gown’ – is appreciated by audiences and performers alike. As Daniel Hyde, director of music at King’s College, says ‘you can do musical things in Cambridge that you can’t do in many other places!’
Further info: Cambridge Music Festival:
A living tradition of flickering candles, majestic buildings and glorious music