Faronel

Saturday 24 October, All Saints, Waldron, East Sussex

We will be presenting an evening of medieval music centred around the theme of pilgrimage at Waldron in October. The first half will focus on music from the time of Chaucer and is inspired by The Canterbury Tales and some of his other works. It will feature music for voices and instruments that might have been heard by pilgrims of the 14th century treading the Pilgrims Way or the Old Way to Thomas Becket’s shrine at Canterbury. In the second half we cross the channel to explore the music of pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago, the ancient route to Compostela in Spain, including works from the Llibre Vermell de Montserrat, compiled around 1399 near Barcelona.

We will be making our third appearance at the Medieval Music in the Dales Festival in Castle Bolton, North Yorkshire in September (actually, the fourth appearance if you count the virtual lockdown festival). You can hear us on the castle hearth stage on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 (times to be confirmed).

We were very sad to hear of the death of Jil Segerman earlier this year. Before the days of Faronel we played with her for many years in Schola Noctis (see picture: Jil is far left with the lute). Jil did much important work in the early days of the early music revival through her research into historic strings, and was a great fount of knowledge as well as the player of a wide range of instruments. We contributed to a very lovely afternoon of music in Kingston, where she had lived for many years, in which many of her musical friends came to celebrate her life.

It was our great pleasure to lead a study day on medieval music with students from the History department of the University of Chichester, and to give a concert in the beautiful chapel of St Mary’s Hospital, a medieval institution that has been providing shelter to the sick, poor and travellers since the 13th century.

Sunday 3 May, St Dunstan’s Mayfield, 7.30pm

We are delighted to be playing at the biennial Mayfield Festival in the spring at which we will present a programme spanning half a millennium of music, incuding early medieval English hymns, music from the court of Henry VIII, and Elizabethan wind consort repertoire. For the latter, we will be joined by the festival director, Jeremy Summerly, as a special guest.

Tickets and further information are available via the festival website here.

Here is a clip of this merry hunting song as performed at our concert at St Matthew’s, Redhill, on October 23. William Cornyshe was one of Henry VIII’s court composers and is best known for his liturgical works, but here he is letting his hair down after a day in the saddle with his bow and arrow!

Saturday 3 January 2026 6.00pm

We present a merry programme for Christmas tide at St Bartholomew’s Church, Cross in Hand, East Sussex. Details below.

We are currently halfway through a two-day recording session preparing our next CD, entitled Be Merry All! With the car packed with instruments (including portative organ, recorders, buzzing winds, strings, percussion, bells and much else), not to mention recording equipment, stands and all the other paraphernalia, we set off for St Bartholomew’s Church near Heathfield to start work. Despite the best efforts of aircraft approaching Gatwick, dogs, birds, children, motorbikes and even a traction engine trying to get in on the act, we have about half of it in the bag. More details coming soon!

Wealden Music Box’s picnic concert at Pevensey Castle was blessed once again by glorious weather. We played our set, based on the theme ‘All’s fair in love and war’, three times to a capacity crowd in the dungeon, heralded by David and Michael calling the audience to attention from the battlements with the fifteenth-century war-song of the Burgundian army, L’homme armé.

We enjoyed playing for a fund-raising supper for the Mayfield Consort at Lucks Farm Barn recently. Among the delights on the menu was Faronel pie…!