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Allan Wicks
Edward Allan Wicks (6 June 1923, Harden, West Riding of Yorkshire − 4 February 2010) was an English cathedral organist, who served in Canterbury Cathedral for nearly 30 years. He was an early champion of the music of Olivier Messiaen, Peter Maxwell Davies and Kenneth Leighton. He also directed the specially-commissioned music for the 1951 revival of the York Mystery Plays, regarded as the greatest event in the Festival of Britain celebrations. Career The son of a parson, Wicks began his musical studies as a pianist at an early age, but did not think that he would be good enough to become professional. He was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead and at the age of 14 he was advised to convert to the organ. He took his degree at Christ Church, Oxford, where he was also organ scholar at the cathedral, assistant to Thomas Armstrong. Completing his studies after serving in the 14th Punjab Regiment, gaining an MA and an FRCO, he then took up post at York Minster in 1947 ...
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York Mystery Plays
The York Mystery Plays, or the York Corpus Christi Plays, are a Middle English play cycle, cycle of 48 mystery plays or pageants covering sacred history from the Genesis creation myth, creation to the Last Judgment. They were traditionally presented on the feast day of Corpus Christi (feast), Corpus Christi (a movable feast on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday, between 23 May and 24 June) and were performed in the city of York, from the mid-fourteenth century until their suppression in 1569. The plays are one of four virtually complete surviving English mystery play cycles, along with the Chester Mystery Plays, the Wakefield Cycle, Towneley/Wakefield plays and the N-Town, N-Town plays. Two long, composite, and late mystery pageants have survived from the Coventry Mystery Plays, Coventry cycle and there are records and fragments from other similar productions that took place elsewhere. A manuscript of the plays, probably dating from between 1463 and 1477, is still intact and st ...
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Harden, West Yorkshire
Harden is a civil parish and village within the City of Bradford Metropolitan District, West Yorkshire, England, west of Bingley. It had a population of 1,615 in the 2001 census, but by 2011 this had risen to 1,900. History Roman Excavations on Leech Lane, off Hill End towards Cullingworth, have suggested Roman settlement in the area from . Archaeologists have in the past unearthed pottery, coins and even elephant ivory on this site, suggesting that an Anglo-Roman villa may have stood here. There is a small section of Roman Road on Harden Moor which points in a rough north east direction. The route is lined with stones that have deep cart-groove marks. Industrial Between 1960 and 1997, Harden's biggest employer was Ellison Circlips. The huge factory adjoined another smaller factory producing similar products. On 24 February 1979, Ellison's Mill caught fire in the computer room and the resultant blaze gutted the timber floored mill. The outer stone walls stayed upr ...
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Royal College Of Organists
The Royal College of Organists (RCO) is a charity and membership organisation based in the United Kingdom, with members worldwide. Its role is to promote and advance organ playing and choral music, and it offers music education, training and development, and professional support for organists and choral directors. The college also provides accreditation in organ playing, choral directing and organ teaching; it runs an extensive education and outreach programme across the UK; and it maintains an internationally important library containing more than 60,000 titles concerning the organ, organ and choral music and organ playing. History The RCO was founded as the ''College of Organists'' in 1864 by Richard Limpus, the organist of St Michael, Cornhill, in the City of London, and received its Royal Charter in 1893. In 1903 it was offered a 99-year lease at peppercorn rent on a building designed by the architect H. H. Cole in Kensington Gore, west London. When it became clear in ...
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Lambeth Degree
A Lambeth degree is an academic degree conferred by the Archbishop of Canterbury under the authority of the Ecclesiastical Licences Act 1533 as successor of the papal legate in England. The degrees conferred most commonly are DD (Doctor of Divinity), DCL (Doctor of Civil Law), DLitt (Doctor of Letters), DMus (Doctor of Music), DM (Doctor of Medicine), BD (Bachelor of Divinity) and MA (Master of Arts). The relatively modern degree of MLitt ( Master of Letters) has been conferred in recent years, and the MPhil (Master of Philosophy) and PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) are now available. Nature of the degrees The continued authority of the archbishop to confer degrees is recognised in accordance with section 216(1) of the Education Reform Act 1988 by the Education (Recognised Bodies) (England) Order 2013. There are two types of degrees awarded: those for the recognition of service to the church and those for which an examination is required. Lambeth degrees are legally substantive de ...
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Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding valuable service in a wide range of useful activities. It comprises five classes of awards across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a Orders, decorations, and medals of the United Kingdom#Modern honours, knight if male or a dame (title), dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with the order, but are not members of it. The order was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V, who created the order to recognise 'such persons, male or female, as may have rendered or shall hereafter render important services to Our Empire'. Equal recognition was to be given for services rendered in the UK and overseas. Today, the majority of recipients are UK citizens, though a number of Commonwealth realms outside the UK continue to make appointments to the order. Honorary awards may be made to cit ...
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Archbishop Of Canterbury
The archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and a principal leader of the Church of England, the Primus inter pares, ceremonial head of the worldwide Anglican Communion and the bishop of the diocese of Canterbury. The first archbishop was Augustine of Canterbury, the "Apostle to the English", who was sent to England by Pope Gregory the Great and arrived in 597. The position is currently vacant following the resignation of Justin Welby, the List of Archbishops of Canterbury, 105th archbishop, effective 7 January 2025.Orders in Council, 18 December 2024, page 42 During the vacancy the official functions of the office have been delegated primarily to the archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, with some also undertaken by the bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, and the bishop of Dover, Rose Hudson-Wilkin. From Augustine until William Warham, the archbishops of Canterbury were in full communion with the Catholic Church and usually received the pallium from the pope. During the ...
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Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century classical music, composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernism (music), modernist music. Born to a musical family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the Saint Petersburg State University, University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied music under him until the latter's death in 1908. Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev soon after, who commissioned the composer to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka (ballet), Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913), the last of which caused a List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience respons ...
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Malcolm Williamson
Malcolm Benjamin Graham Christopher Williamson, (21 November 19312 March 2003) was an Australian composer. He was the Master of the Queen's Music from 1975 until his death. According to ''Grove Music Online'', although Williamson's earlier compositions aligned with Serialist techniques, "he later modified his approach to composition in the search of a more inclusive musical language that was fundamentally tonal and, above all, lyrical. In the 1960s, he was commonly referred to as the most often commissioned composer in Britain, and over his lifetime he produced more than 250 works in a wide variety of genres." Life and career Williamson was born in Sydney in 1931; his father was an Anglican priest, Rev. George Williamson. He studied composition and horn at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. His teachers included Eugene Goossens. In 1950 he moved to London where he worked as an organist, a proofreader, and a nightclub pianist. In 1952 he converted to Roman Catholicism. Fro ...
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John Dunstaple
John Dunstaple (or Dunstable; – 24 December 1453) was an English composer whose music helped inaugurate the transition from the medieval to the Renaissance periods. The central proponent of the ''Contenance angloise'' style (), Dunstaple was the leading English composer of his time, and is often coupled with William Byrd and Henry Purcell as England's most important early music composers. His style would have an immense influence on the subsequent music of continental Europe, inspiring composers such as Du Fay, Binchois, Ockeghem and Busnois. Information on Dunstaple's life is largely non-existent or speculative, with the only certain date of his activity being his death on Christmas Eve of 1453. Probably born in Dunstable in Bedfordshire during the late 14th-century, Dunstaple was associated with Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Joan of Navarre, and, through them, St Albans Abbey. Another important patron was John, Duke of Bedford, with whom Dunstaple may have trave ...
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John IV Of Portugal
''Dom (honorific), Dom'' John IV (; 19 March 1604 – 6 November 1656), also known by the Portuguese as John the Restorer (), was the List of Portuguese monarchs, King of Portugal from 1640 until his death in 1656. He Portuguese Restoration War, restored the independence of Portugal from Habsburg Spain, Habsburg Spanish rule by terminating the 60-year-old Iberian Union in which Portugal and Spain personal union, shared the same monarch, and by establishing the House of Braganza on the Portuguese throne. Before becoming king, he was John II, the 8th Duke of Braganza. He was the grandson of Catherine, Duchess of Braganza, a claimant to the crown during the Portuguese succession crisis of 1580. On the eve of his death in 1656, the Portuguese Empire was at its territorial zenith, spanning the globe. Early life John IV was born at Vila Viçosa and succeeded his father Teodósio II, Duke of Braganza, Teodósio II as Duke of Braganza when the latter died insane in 1630. He married Lu ...
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Manchester Cathedral
Manchester Cathedral, formally the Cathedral and Collegiate Church of St Mary, St Denys and St George, in Manchester, England, is the mother church of the Anglican Diocese of Manchester, seat of the Bishop of Manchester and the city's parish church. It is on Victoria Street in Manchester city centre and is a grade I listed building. The former parish church was rebuilt in the Perpendicular Gothic style in the years following the foundation of the collegiate body in 1421. Then at the end of the 15th century, James Stanley (bishop), James Stanley II (warden 1485–1506 and later Bishop of Ely 1506–1515) was responsible for rebuilding the nave and collegiate choir with high clerestory windows; also commissioning the late-medieval wooden internal furnishings, including the pulpitum, choir stalls and the nave roof supported by angels with gilded instruments. The collegiate church became the cathedral of the new Anglican Diocese of Manchester, Diocese of Manchester in ...
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James Clifford Brown
James Clifford Brown (1923–2004) was an English composer, former Senior Lecturer in the Department of Music and Organist at the University of Leeds. Life James Clifford Brown, usually referred to as James Brown, was born at 49 St. Matthew's Street, Ipswich on 18 August 1923. His father Henry John Brown was an electrical engineer and later professional cellist while his mother Lois was a junior school teacher. James also had a brother named Tom being a chartered engineer and a sister called Dulcie who has been a civil servant, a missionary and a music teacher of cello and classical guitar. He was trained in singing and organ-playing by Jonathan Job, the Ipswich Borough Organist, then himself became organist and choirmaster at All Hallows' Church. In 1941 he left Northgate School and won a choral studentship to St John's College, Cambridge, but his studies were interrupted by war service. He resumed study after his return in 1945, and was then appointed as organ student. From 19 ...
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