Sherborne School’s Festival of Five Lessons and Carols

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols was first held on Christmas Eve 1918 at King’s College Cambridge, created by Dean Eric Milner-White and based upon an order of service drawn up in 1880 by the Bishop of Truro, Edward White Benson. Other churches quickly adapted the service for their own use and Sherborne School’s Director of Music, Archibald Tester (1882-1925), devised a Festival of Five Lessons and Carols which was first performed in the School chapel on the evening of Sunday, 7th December 1919.

Sherborne School choir in 1999. Photographer: Chris Hamon.

Archibald Tester’s 1919 order of service comprised ‘Christmas carols ancient and modern, with a bidding prayer, collect, three Christmas hymns, and five short lessons from the Bible, bearing on Christmastide, interspersed among the carols.’ The carols were sung by the choir only and the hymns by all present, with the service opening with the hymn ‘O Come all ye Faithful’. It was not until 1946 that ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ became the School’s opening hymn, in line with the tradition established by the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College Cambridge.

Archibald Tester FRCO LRAM (1882-1925) joined Sherborne School’s music staff in 1903 as organist and instructor in piano, and in 1905 he jointly composed with Clive Carey the score for the Sherborne Pageant. During the First World War, Tester was absent on military service, serving in Mesopotamia with the Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment. He was invalided to India where he was attached to the General Staff and organised concert parties for troops in Simla and Baghdad, later claiming to have been the first person ever to have played J.S. Bach’s Italian Concerto on the River Tigris when travelling with an orchestra of six onboard an old paddle steamer.

On returning to Sherborne in 1919, Tester was made Director of School Music. The Headmaster, Nowell Smith, was conscious that the end of the war had given the School ‘a fresh opportunity for labouring to build up Christian characters and Christian enterprise among the successive generations of our boys’, and it may have been with this in mind that Tester instigated the holding of the first Festival of Five Lessons and Carols in the School chapel on the 7th December 1919. The service proved popular and became an annual event.

Archibald Tester seated at the School’s Érard grand piano in the Big School Room, surrounded by members of the Musical Society, c.1904.

Tester was also music master at Sherborne Girls’ School and ran their choir. On the 28th November 1921, he suggested that the Girls’ School choir should join the Boys’ School choir for the Festival of Five Lessons and Carols held that year in Sherborne Abbey. The solo chorister that year was the future poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis:

‘The Abbey was full of boys and girls, or young men and maidens. The choir stood in the centre under the tower. Mr Tester conducted and Mr Wearden was at the organ. The service began with a quivering voluntary, but if this was meant to illustrate the supposed apprehensions of the young singers it was thrown away. The singing throughout seemed to us assured and finished, the choir well-balanced and in good tune, and this with the quaint beautiful old music sung in such a place produced an effect of rare harmony such as might belong to the music of the spheres. One felt that however distracted the world was ‘Such harmony alone could hold all heaven and earth in happier union.’ So none of the carols are to be picked out for special praise, lest we should mar this harmony by any disagreement. Between the carols there were sung three Christmas hymns, and five short lessons on the Christmas theme were read by Canon Goodden, the Headmaster, Mr Bensly, the Head of the School, and one chorister, Day-Lewis.‘ (The Shirburnian, December 1921)

Unfortunately, having contracted a debilitating disease during his time in India, Archibald Tester was not a well man. By January 1922 he was wearing a splint to relieve the pressure on his knee, which made climbing to the Abbey organ loft very difficult for him. In July 1922, he took part in the service of consecration and dedication of the School’s ante-chapel and war memorial, but was soon afterwards confined to bed with increasing paralysis which eventually resulted in his death on 4 October 1925, aged 43. By his will, he left to the School two volumes of Tudor music and eighteen volumes of madrigals and motets.

The tradition of the Festival of Five Lessons and Carols established by Archibald Tester at Sherborne School in 1919 continued unbroken until 1928. That year a new Headmaster, Charles Boughey, was appointed to succeed Nowell Smith. Boughey believed that carols were secular in origin and should not be associated with prayers, lessons and hymns. He was also not a great supporter of the School chapel or Abbey and ordained that the School’s carol service should be held in the Big School Room (BSR), where he instructed the congregation to remain seated during the singing of the carols. This did not go down well with the traditionalists and when Boughey left Sherborne five years later the School resumed its Festival of Five Lessons and Carols.

In 1958, the School adopted the format of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, as established in 1918 by Eric Milner-White at King’s College Cambridge. The service that year was held in Sherborne Abbey, where it has been held every year since.

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