Early Music in Yorkshire - Period performance in historic venues – great halls, a moorland church, a castle and a cathedral – in the windswept beauty of the North
6
days
from
£3,770
ex flights
6th May 2026
- Eight private performances on period instruments, in the rich historic centre of York and magnificent surrounding countryside.
- The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Tallis Scholars, Consone Quartet, Rose Consort, Liz Kenny, Nicholas Mulroy, English Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, Justin Taylor and ApotropaÏK all perform.
- Concerts exclusively for our audience in landmarks such as Castle Howard and York Minster, as well as a private stately home, medieval halls, a frescoed church and others.
- Music predominantly from the Renaissance and Baroque eras, with a few excursions both earlier and later (medieval, 19th century) as we explore how to define ‘early’ music.
- Talks on the music by Professor John Bryan.
- Choose from three very comfortable, well-run hotels in the centre of York.
For beauty of cityscape and density of great architecture, York has few rivals.
The old centre is extensive but small enough to be traversed easily on foot, presenting a rich array of historic buildings at every turn. Beyond the city walls, England’s largest county is also one of its most beautiful, renowned for the spectacular countryside of the North York Moors and Yorkshire Dales – punctuated with significant houses, churches and historic monuments. We make the most of these varied and magnificent settings in a series of unmissable private concerts.
The incomparable Tallis Scholars open the festival with a concert in the dramatic setting of York Minster, the largest of English medieval cathedrals and in the opinion of many the greatest. The performance takes place in the evening, when the Minster is at its most hushed, sacred and atmospheric. A very special programme centres around John Taverner, who worked for Cardinal Wolsey (Archbishop of York 1514–1530).
Our final concert is equally unique and compelling. The internationally-renowned Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment performs at Castle Howard, one of the finest of great houses in England and the epitome of Baroque grandeur. To match the splendour of Vanbrugh’s masterpiece (in the 300th anniversary year of the architect’s death), there couldn’t be a more appropriate musician as our subject than Handel. His creative rivalry with, and ultimate ascendancy over, the Italian composer Giovanni Bononcini is the focus of our grand finale.
In between, the Italian thread continues, with a harpsichord recital based around Bach’s Italian influences by rising star Justin Taylor; and the wonderfully titled ‘Legal Aliens’, a wind programme highlighting Italian immigrant musicians who flourished at the English Tudor courts, performed by the virtuosic English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble.
At Hovingham Hall, a splendid stately home where the Worsley family have lived for 450 years, the Consone Quartet perform string quartets on period instruments. By contrast, the French ensemble ApotropaÏK delve into medieval works in a frescoed church on the edge of the moors.
Back in York, we commemorate the 500th anniversary of composer John Dowland’s death, in the atmospherically alluring Holy Trinity Church, with a lute and voice recital by Elizabeth Kenny and Nicholas Mulroy. The timbered Merchant Adventurer’s Hall is among the best-preserved medieval guildhalls in England, and is the site of both a 16th-century programme by the acclaimed Rose Consort of Viols, and our final gala dinner.
Like all our festivals, the concerts are private occasions, with access exclusive to those who take the full package, which includes accommodation, dinners, talks by Professor John Bryan, transport to each venue and much else besides, all carefully curated with every other element in mind. Another feature in favour of York the good-quality hotels. We have selected three of the best for you to choose from.
Brochure
Musicians
Programme
Getting to York
By rail to York. There are regular direct trains from London, Manchester, Oxford and various other places. We recommend that you book train tickets as soon as possible after they are put on sale about three months before the festival.
Taxis. There is a taxi rank at York railway station and there are usually one or two waiting at the station exit.
Travelling by car. There is parking at all hotels, for a fee.
A drinks reception and talk on the music precede the concert.
Though a Norman predecessor determines some of the proportions, above ground York Minster is all Gothic, from Early English to Perpendicular, but predominantly 14th-century. It retains by far the largest quantity of original medieval stained glass of any English church.
Concert, 6.00pm:
York Minster
Taverner, Tallis & Tye
The Tallis Scholars
Peter Phillips director
Taverner, Tallis and Tye: three giants of early Tudor church music, each negotiating the demands of the changing religious outlook of their employers. Taverner’s music for Thomas Wolsey at Cardinal College, Oxford, includes a motet that prays to St William of York for the Cardinal’s soul (O Wilhelme pastor bone). Tallis’s supreme craftsmanship enables him to create refined music for Edward VI’s Anglican church, despite the need for simplicity and clarity demanded by this firmly protestant king (Te Deum ‘for meanes’, If ye love me). Tye returns to the lavishly elaborate style of his predecessors in music for the church of the Catholic Mary Tudor (Miserere, Peccavimus).
Dinner is included after the concert, at festival hotels and restaurants in the centre of York.
The first event this morning is a talk on the music, which precedes the first concert.
York’s Mansion House is an impressive Palladian design of 1725–33. A fine wooden staircase leads to the State Room, which is elaborately panelled and displays 18th-century portraits of local worthies. Recently restored in time for the 300th anniversary of the building, it is also the oldest offical residence of a Lord Mayor in the country.
The State Room holds only half of our audience, so the concert is performed twice.
Recital, 11.00am or 3.00pm:
Mansion House, York
Bach & Italy
Justin Taylor harpsichord
Johann Sebastian Bach hardly ever left his native Saxony, yet he was always up to date on what was going on elsewhere in Europe. Naturally, he paid close attention to innovations from Italy, the cradle of the concertante style, and instilled transalpine sparkle in his brilliant counterpoint, especially in his keyboard works. Proof of this may be found in the pieces based on originals by the Venetians Antonio Vivaldi and Benedetto Marcello, in which Bach transcends everything with his polyphonic genius. In the large-scale Italian Concerto, the future composer of the Goldberg Variations revisits Corelli and, once again, Vivaldi.
Dinner is before the evening concert, at festival hotels and restaurants in the centre of York.
The Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, built between 1357 and 1361 for meetings and trading, is the largest of its kind in the country. Originally home to a powerful mercantile guild, the hall reflects York’s commercial importance and civic organisation in the Middle Ages.
Concert, 8.30pm:
Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, York
Verie Sweete and Artificiall: variations on themes c. 1500
Rose Consort of Viols
with
Elisabeth Paul mezzo soprano
An exploration of the first great body of European music to rework existing songs,
from the years around 1500. At the courts of northern Italy and in the first published songbooks, settings of courtly love poetry were treated to highly inventive reworkings, sometimes with elegant textless parts suitable for the newly developed consort of viols. These songs travelled from France and Italy as far as the courts of Henry VIII and Maximilian I in Vienna. The Rose Consort plays a unique set of viols derived from a Bolognese painting of 1497 by Lorenzo da Costa, later Isabella d’Este’s court painter.
Coaches depart for Hovingham either after breakfast or after lunch.
Unusually for an English country house, Hovingham Hall is situated in the centre of a village, a charming stone-built settlement on the edge of the North York Moors. Another unusual – possibly unique – feature is that one enters the house through the Riding School. Devoted equally to horses and architecture, Thomas Worsley built the house for himself between 1750–1770 (his descendants still live here). The result, though eccentric, is a noble compendium of classicism from the Age of Elegance.
The Ballroom at Hovingham Hall holds only half of our audience, so the concert is performed twice.
Concert, 10.15am or 3.15pm:
Hovingham Hall
Haydn, Mozart, Schubert
Consone Quartet
Performing classical and early romantic string quartets on period instruments (with gut strings, lighter bows) and using historically researched style shows these well-known Viennese masterpieces in a newly transparent light, redolent of the intimate ‘chamber’ world for which they were conceived. Haydn’s witty and masterly Op.33 quartets (from which we hear No.5) may have inspired Mozart to compose his deeply-felt set of 1785 that includes the ‘Dissonance’ with its mysterious opening, also heard today. While Haydn regarded Mozart’s quartets as the epitome of taste and learning, Schubert’s A minor quartet is suffused with the depth of feeling and elegance of his song-writing.
Return to York by coach for the evening concert at the Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate.
Embedded in the matrix of narrow streets and ancient masonry in the centre of York, this former parish church is virtually hidden from passers-by. Parts date to the 12th century, but most of the fabric is of the 14th and 15th centuries. This attractive building is architecturally unpretentious but alluringly atmospheric. Seating consists entirely of box pews, a rare survival. It is now looked after by The Churches Conservation Trust.
The Holy Trinity Church holds only half of our audience, so the concert is performed twice.
Recital, 6.15 or 9.15pm:
Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate
Who was John Dowland?
Elizabeth Kenny lute
Nicholas Mulroy tenor
Semper Dowland semper dolens (always Dowland, always mournful) was his motto. And yet Thomas Fuller claimed: ‘A cheerful person he was, passing his days in lawful merriment’ (The History of the Worthies of England, 1662). He has been taken up as an inspiration by great singer-songwriters of our own time. But despite being lauded across Europe as a prodigious lute player and composer, there is no record of him ever working as a singer. This programme explores the extreme contradictions and radical expressionism of the writer who gave us ‘In darkness let me dwell’ but also ‘All in a Garden Green’ and the ironical ‘Away with these self-loving lads’.
Coaches depart for Pickering.
The Church of St Peter and St Paul dates to the 12th century, but is most renowned for its remarkable 15th-century wall paintings. These frescoes, covering nearly the entire nave, depict biblical scenes and saints in vivid detail. Whitewashed during the Reformation and rediscovered in the 19th century, they offer rare insight into pre-Reformation religious art in England.
Concert, 11.00am:
St Peter & St Paul, Pickering
Bella Donna
ApotropaÏK
The ‘Bella Donna’, an idealised female figure, occupies a central place within the tradition of courtly love. Simultaneously, she evokes the image of the sublime yet toxic flower – long associated with witchcraft and the preparation of magical potions. Few metaphors more aptly capture the profound ambiguity surrounding representations of the feminine in the medieval imagination.
This programme evokes a rich mosaic of female figures as inspiration, each embodying contrasting qualities such as temperance, charm and torment. Through these thematic perspectives, the music reveals a diversity of compositional approaches and stylistic developments. The programme begins with a canso composed by a trobairitz – the female counterpart to the troubadour – and unfolds through a selection of both monophonic and polyphonic works from predominantly the 13th and 14th centuries.
Return to York by coach.
There has been a tradition of choral singing at York for a millennium or more, with clergy singers ab initio, boy choristers for much of that time and lay songmen for around 500 years. There are currently 12 men, songmen and choral scholars, and choristers aged 7–13, now including girls, all of whom attend St Peter’s School (founded in 627). One of the leading cathedral choirs in the country, they sing eight services each week and have made several recordings.
This event is a service, not a concert, and therefore not exclusive to festival participants.
Evensong, 5.30pm
York Minster
The Choir of York Minster
Robert Sharpe director of music
There is a talk on the music before a late-morning recital.
The 14th-century Hospitium is a two-storey listed building set within the beautiful Museum Gardens, overlooked by the striking ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. One of the abbey’s support buildings, its name derives from its most likely original use – a place for visitors to stay. Our concert takes place in the timbered upper hall.
Concert, 11.00am:
Hospitium, York
Legal Aliens: the Bassanos
English Cornett & Sackbut Ensemble
While Tudor monarchs pursued international conflicts abroad, at the English court immigrant musicians like the Ferraboscos and the Venetian wind-playing Bassano family were free to arrive and thrive. The Bassanos in particular created a dynasty of royal musicians, and brought with them the latest dazzling playing techniques and an unrivalled skill in the making of wind instruments.
They also performed an international repertoire of music by Italian, Flemish and English composers including Byrd and the Italian John Coprario, who became such a part of the Stuart establishment that it was assumed he was really John Cooper.
Politically, England was suspicious of foreigners (the Bassanos were even beaten up in the street for looking too Spanish). Musically, however, there was openness and vibrant exchange between cultures.
The core of this concert is based upon the international repertoire found in the surving partbooks belonging to the cornett and sackbut players of James I (and VI of Scotland).
Coaches depart for Castle Howard in the early afternoon.
One of the finest sights in England, this palatial mansion sits amid a magnificent landscaped park in the Howardian Hills. Begun in 1699, it was Sir John Vanbrugh’s first major work as an architect, though he relied heavily on the genius of his assistant, Nicholas Hawksmoor. It is the epitome of Baroque grandeur: a monument rather than a home, Continental in inspiration but unmistakably an English variant. The concert takes place in the Long Gallery in the south wing.
Concert, 5.00pm:
Castle Howard
Handel and his rival Bononcini: Opera Wars in London in the 1720s
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment
George Frideric Handel rose to prominence in London through his successful operas at the Royal Academy of Music, but the directors, wary of relying solely on him, also worked with Giovanni Bononcini, sparking a fierce rivalry. Their contrasting styles and political alliances divided audiences. The competition peaked with the collaborative opera Muzio Scevola, in which Handel’s contribution outshone the others. Though Bononcini initially gained ground, Handel struck back by recruiting star soprano Francesca Cuzzoni and triumphing with Ottone, Flavio, and Giulio Cesare. Bononcini faded from the scene after a scandal, while Handel reshaped English opera and cemented his legacy.
The programme is inspired by this rivalry, and includes arias from operas by both composers, as well as instrumental works by Handel such as various concerti grossi.
Coaches depart Castle Howard and return to York, where a gala dinner is held at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall.
There are no festival events this morning. Check out is by 11.00am for all three hotels, and all are able to store luggage.
Participants on Yorkshire Houses & Gardens either stay on in the same room if staying at The Grand during the festival; or check out of their festival hotel late morning and leave their luggage at The Grand hotel if not. Yorkshire Houses & Gardens starts from The Grand at 2.00pm.
Practicalities
The price includes:
— All eight concerts.
— Accommodation for five nights – choose between three hotels. See page //.
— Breakfasts, three dinners, and interval drinks.
— Talks on the music by Professor John Bryan.
— All coach transfers.
— All tips and taxes.
— The assistance of festival staff and a detailed programme booklet.
There is a choice of three hotels in York city centre. For location, amenities, comfort, service and price, we believe these are the best in the area.
Your choice of hotel is the sole determinant of the different prices.
Quiet? Traffic noise may affect some people given that all the hotels are in or around the city centre.
Rooms vary. As is inevitable in historic buildings, rooms vary in size and outlook.
If you would like extra nights before or after the festival, ask us or contact the hotel directly. This would be better done sooner rather than later.
All prices given here are per person.
The Milner (4*)
The Milner York is a large Grade II listed hotel located on Station Road, adjacent to York railway station. It has 155 elegant, comfortable bedrooms and suites in balanced, neutral tones. Originally built in 1878 as the Royal Station Hotel, it was rebranded as The Milner in 2024 and features a blend of late-Victorian architecture and modern comfort.
Standard rooms are smaller and are located at the back of the hotel, towards the station; Deluxe rooms have king-size beds and views of the gardens and/or York Minster.
Most bathrooms have walk-in showers; only a few have baths (and only in the Deluxe category).
Public amenities include a restaurant and bar, and a leisure club with a 13-meter pool, hot tub, steam room, gym, and gardens.
Prices, per person:
Two sharing:
Standard • £3,140
Deluxe • £3,510
Single occupancy:
Standard • £3,660
Deluxe • £3,930
No. 1 York (5*)
Located 10 minutes on foot from the Minster, this award-winning boutique hotel occupies a fine Georgian town house and a purpose-built wing. Bedrooms are bright and airy, with light, neutral colours and high ceilings, whereas the décor in some of the public areas is dark and atmospheric.
Rooms all have super-king-size mattresses (except twins), and all come with tea and coffee facilities concealed within a doll’s house. There is also a well-stocked pantry available 24 hours a day.
‘Large’ rooms come with more space than Standard, though the amenities in each room category are the same. The ‘Large’ rooms also have a bath with shower attachment or a separate bath and shower, whereas the Standard rooms have a shower only.
There is an excellent restaurant and bar, and spa treatments available to book.
guesthousehotels.co.uk/no-1-york
Prices, per person:
Two sharing:
Standard • £3,490
Large • £3,590
Bootham Suite • £4,010
Single occupancy:
Standard • £3,970
Large • £4,170
The Grand (5*)
An award-winning five-star hotel, out of earshot but just a five minute (0.2 miles) walk from York station. Originally built in 1906 as a ‘Palace Of Business’ for the North Eastern Railway Company, the hotel retains many of its Edwardian features and is a Grade II* listed building.
The hotel’s décor blends Edwardian grandeur with contemporary luxury, featuring original architectural details such as mosaic floors and sweeping staircases alongside modern amenities.
Bedrooms are well furnished, spacious and comfortable – bathrooms are sizeable; Standard rooms have showers over baths, Executive rooms mostly have a separate bath and shower. Executive rooms are also larger than Standard but have the same amenities.
Public areas include two very good restaurants and a bar, a luxury spa with a 14-meter indoor pool and a gym.
Prices, per person:
Two sharing:
Standard • £3,770
Executive • £3,960
Heritage Suite • £4,430
Single occupancy:
Standard • £4,190
Executive • £4,380
– Extra dinners: Choose to join two extra dinners in York on Friday 8th and Saturday 9th May. This ensures that you eat in the company of other festival participants on all evenings. Details of how to sign up to these will be sent closer to the festival.
– Optional walks and visits: We will offer guided walks and visits within York, to fit around the concert times. Full details are available nearer the time.
– Some walking is unavoidable on this festival, to traverse York city centre and also between the coach and the concert venues in the surrounding countryside.
– We ask that you take the simple fitness tests here before booking.
– If you have a medical condition or a disability which may affect your holiday or necessitate special arrangements being made for you, please discuss these with us before booking – or, if the condition develops or changes subsequently, as soon as possible before departure.
– Private. All the performances are planned and administered by us, and the audience consists exclusively of those who have taken the festival package, with the exception of evensong at York Minster.
– Seating. Specific seats are not reserved. You sit where you want.
– Audience size. There will be up to 140 participants on the festival. Three of our venues cannot hold this number, so at these, the performance will be repeated.
– Acoustics. This festival is more concerned with locale and authenticity than with acoustic perfection. The venues may have idiosyncrasies or reverberations of the sort not found in modern concert halls.
– Changes. Musicians fall ill, venues may close for repairs, airlines alter schedules: there are many circumstances which could necessitate changes to the programme. We ask you to be understanding should they occur.
Dates & prices
2026
Date
Speaker
Price
Testimonials
“I was greatly impressed with the amazing quality of the musicians and the breadth of what was covered.
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“The festival really provided so many special moments that I will carry with me for years to come.
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“The programme was varied, the musicians outstanding and it was a privilege to have been able to experience it.
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