Music-based workshops will be taking place in each primary school. The workshops will be led by musicians Karen Wimhurst and Paul Hutchinson, working with traditional music and creating new music based on apples and orchards. The schoolchildren will compose original songs based on the traditional themes of procession, dance and wassailing, helping to develop the pupils’ understanding of orchards
Background
The apple, so common yet the most exotic of fruits, embodies the age-long collaboration between humankind and nature. Evolving in the Heavenly Mountains (now Kazakhstan), it travelled the silk roads into Europe, arriving on this island with or before the Romans. Endlessly prolific (each pip is potentially a new variety), records of grafting begin in Babylon, move on through Virgil, continuing to Henry VIII, the Victorians and on into the present with urban scrumpers and Community Orchards. However, in the 1950’s a trend began of orchard clearances and two thirds of England’s orchard area has disappeared. Meanwhile, supermarket pressure replaced most local varieties with a handful of imported ‘brands’. In 1990 Common Ground initiated the calendar custom ‘Apple Day’ to stem this unnoticed destruction. Since then we have seen a resurgence of interest in British apple varieties, replanting of local orchards, community action on all fronts. Long may it continue!
Each school will be sharing their wassail songs and celebration with friends and family on the following dates:
Great Bedwyn Primary: Monday 20 January at 6pm
Newton Tony Primary: Tuesday 21 January at 5pm
Abbotswood Primary: Wednesday 22 January at 5pm
Wylye Valley Primary: Thursday 23 January at 5pm
The Pippin Project 