A NEW choral work by internationally renowned composer Tarik O'Regan is to feature in a gala concert to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta.

The Magna Carta Gala Concert takes place on Saturday June 13 at Salisbury Cathedral, starting at 7pm.

A Letter of Rights, commissioned for the occasion by Salisbury Cathedral, will be performed alongside classics from Elgar, Mozart and Pergolesi.

The programme will be introduced with a fanfare written by the director of music of The Royal Artillery Band, Captain Anthony Adams and during the concert celebrated actor, Edward Fox, will read an extract from Shakespeare’s King John.

Composer Tarik O’Regan's choral work has a libretto by Alice Goodman. Speaking about his Magna Carta inspired work said: "I was drawn in particular to the idea of poise, something which came directly from Alice's libretto. By which I mean both the extremely intricate way in which parchment was made in 1215 and which Alice references beautifully in her text, but also the delicate nature of the very language which was written upon that parchment 800 year ago, and its subsequent interpretations. As a result, A Letter of Rights has an almost ritualistic quality to it: palindromic, divided into several text-driven movements interconnected by instrumental interludes for strings and percussion.”

The Gala Concert will be the first performance of an Alice Goodman libretto since the furore over the Death of Klinghoffer in 1991.

Alice Goodman added: “The title that I chose with Tarik O’Regan for our cantata, A Letter of Rights, comes from Directive 2012/13/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 May 2012 on the right to information in criminal proceedings. Persons arrested on suspicion of a crime must be given a letter of rights in a language they understand, a letter that they can hold and keep, read, and refer to. We are back to the thing itself. We open the glass case in which we’ve entombed Magna Carta. It comes up fresh and smelling of roses, newer than the latest news from the new government.”

David Halls, Salisbury Cathedral’s director of music conducts La Folia orchestra and the full Salisbury Cathedral Choir.

Another musical highlight on the anniversary weekend is the Magna Carta Eucharist at 10.30am on Sunday, June 14, which will feature a new work commissioned by the Cathedral Chapter.

Missa Festiva by David Halls will be sung by the cathedral choir with John Challenger, the assistant director of music, playing the organ.

It is based on melodies from the plainsong Veni Sancte Spiritus, also known as the Golden Sequence. The words are believed to have been written by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury at the time of Magna Carta.