MEMBERS of The Ebor Singers have been invited to share family stories to give a personal context to Saturday's First World War memorial concert, Songs Of Farewell.

Among them will be musical director Paul Gameson's recollections of his own grandfather, Lawrence, who was a medical officer at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, and whose war diaries are held in the Imperial War Museum.

"It has been very sobering reading through his accounts," says Paul. "His reflections and descriptions vividly portray the trauma, guilt and pointlessness of the conflict, as well as the humour and camaraderie of the troops – and his quest, whenever off-duty, to find a serviceable piano to play Chopin on as a means to create some normality."

Saturday's 7.30pm concert in York Minster's Chapter House takes its title from the centrepiece of the York choir's centenary commemoration of the end of the Great War: a complete performance of Hubert Parry’s epic choral cycle Songs Of Farewell.

"Parry is best known for his Coronation anthem I Was Glad and his patriotic hymn Jerusalem, sung at the Last Night of the Proms, but his Songs Of Farewell, composed during the First World War and exploring themes of loss and mortality, could not be further from the pomp and ceremony usually associated with his music," says Paul.

"Parry himself died a few weeks short of the Armistice, so this month also marks the centenary of this death."

Gameson's programme includes echoes of these themes across the centuries, such as the words – set to music by Philip Moore – of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran pastor who, during the 1940s, dared to stand up to the Nazis and was executed for his part in the Resistance, or back 450 years to Thomas Tallis, who, as a Catholic in Protestant Elizabethan England, was no stranger to the idea of loss and resistance.

The choir’s forthcoming season continues with Monteverdi’s Vespers on November 25 and A Ceremony Of Carols on December 16; more details can be found at eborsingers.org.

Tickets for Songs Of Farewell cost £15, concessions £12, students £5, via York Minster’s box office, at yorkminster.org/whats-on/ or on the door.