Tintern Festivals Association
Tintern Sacred Site and Sound Festival
July 18th and 19th 2014
Celebrating sites of inspiration and beauty, with sacred music and poetry
An invitation:
The Tintern Sacred Site and Sound Festival, unique in Wales, celebrates in words and music a
special place of outstanding beauty and historic appeal. It is a site where for over a
thousand years there has been worship on the banks of the River Wye in praise of Nature and
of God as Lord of Nature, and where during the Romantic period artists, poets and travellers
extolled the picturesque landscape in art and poetry, and delighted in the ancient ruins of
Tintern Abbey, a Cistercian foundation dating from the twelfth century. The Abbey’s lesserknown older sister, the intimate and enchanting church of St. Michael, was originally built
beside the Wye in the seventh century on an old Celtic sacred site.
The timeless quality of the river, an oft quoted metaphor for the inexhaustible flow of time, is a
theme which runs through the whole festival, beginning with a mediation on music and the
muse at St. Michael’s Church and culminating the following evening with Sir John Tavener’s
Towards Silence, involving a sound and light installation within the atmospheric nave of the
Abbey, sublimely evoked in Turner’s depiction of the site.
Friday evening at St. Michael’s will be marked by music for solo voice, violin and choir
commissioned from Celia Harper, founder of Sulis Music, a group of eminent classical
musicians interested in the healing power of music, and by the poetry of the award-winning
Welsh poet and author Grahame Davies, who hails from the coalmining village of
Coedpoeth. The Saturday evening at Tintern Abbey will be marked by sacred choral and
orchestral works by John Tavener, Arvo Pärt, Henryk Gorecki and Benjamin Britten, performed
by the Welsh Chamber Orchestra under their director Anthony Hose, and Cantemus
Chamber Choir under Huw Williams who is director of music at the Chapel Royal in St. James’
Palace, and former principal organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
At the spiritual centre of the festival will be a performance of Sir John Tavener’s Protecting
Veil for cello and strings, an ‘icon in sound’ as it has been called, inspired by the Virgin Mary
to whom the Abbey is dedicated, performed by the Welsh Chamber Orchestra and
internationally acclaimed Welsh cellist Kathryn Price. Tavener achieved world-wide fame for
his Song for Athene which closed the funeral service of Princess Diana, and as a fitting tribute
to Tavener’s own life and to his work in giving a new universal meaning to the ancient spiritual
traditions of music, the evening will end with his haunting and atmospheric work Towards
Silence, moving us into the darkness and peace of the Abbey as night closes in.
Booking details will be posted here shortly…..
Local hotel and B&B accommodation…..
Tintern is situated……
This project has been supported by the Sustainable Development Fund, a countryside
Council for Wales intiative in the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB)