As I went to Walsingham

Long before Beverley became a centre for Georgian entertainment, pilgrims flocked to the shrine of John of Beverley – the canonised 8thcentury cleric who effectively founded the town. This came to an abrupt end in the 1540s, in the wake of the Reformation. However, folk memory of pilgrimage and a nostalgia for its places and symbols remained strong even as 16th century England made its transition to Protestantism.

A ballad, As I Went to Walsingham – recounting an enigmatic meeting between a pilgrim and a woman who spurns his affections – remained widely known well into the 1600s. This ballad is a thread running through this concert of 16th century instrumental and vocal music untilising many of the wind and stringed instruments heard in court, chapel, theatres and on the streets of Tudor England.

The repertoire includes compositions – sacred and secular – by composers such as Byrd, Tallis and Campion who retained their Catholicism but adapted their music and public lives to the prevailing orthodoxy. There is musical ribaldry in the concert too – a reminder that, as Chaucer showed us, pilgrimage had its social and roistering element alongside the search for spirituality and salvation.

“characteristically infectious” York Press