Little Missenden Festival
- Ted Hughes's Season Songs started life as "Five Autumn Songs for Children", written for the 1968 Little Missenden Harvest Festival pp. 53-4
- JSTOR reports - 1965 1968 1969 1969 1991 1995 --- and more
- Google Scholar?
- Highbeam - [1]
- Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians (on HighBeam)
- "This village festival, which takes place for a week in early October, was founded in 1960 and has been successful in giving encouragement to young Buckinghamshire musicians and artists, as well as pleasure to residents and their friends and a number of visitors. Little Missenden's position in a valley of the beech-clad Chiltern Hills makes it an ideal objective for day's outing, and the musical fare provided is always of a high standard. The major events take place on the last four days of the festival week, from Thursday to Sunday. In one recent year there was a performance of works by Mendelssohn, Schonberg and Richard Drakeford (whose octet was specially commissioned for the festival) by the London Octet, a recently formed group from the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra, and a recital of works by Handel and Bach, with psalms by Niel Saunders, also specially commissioned for the festival, by Geraint Jones on the organ supported by strings and oboe. Both these concerts were given in the church, a lovely medieval building, one of the most interesting in the county. A concert by outstanding young Buckinghamshire musicians, and a children's concert, were other interesting events. A recital by candlelight in honour of the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Christopher Marlowe was also given in the church, and there were a number of interesting meetings in the village hall, including a talk by Marie Rambert, d.b.e., the founder of the Ballet Ram- bert. This gives some idea of the scope of one of the most instructive of the smaller community festivals of music whichare becoming an important part of the cultural life of the countryside". [2]
- A few other things on GBooks