t is our good fortune that the composer of the music for the 1951 revival, James Brown, is local and we have been able to retrieve this important archival music score. Writing for chorus and orchestral brass - allowing the musicians to withstand the vagaries of the English summer - James Brown set the standard for future productions.

In 1984, the music was commissioned from Robert Walker and recorded well in advance of the Plays - creating something of a problem when director Toby Robertson cut the script at the last moment, leaving the music ‘hanging’ in the air as the actors themselves had left the stage. The re-recording was expensive and uncomfortable - clearly live musicians were a much more flexible option for the future!

The historic research that accompanied the major revival of the wagon plays in the 1990s encouraged musicologist Richard Rastall to reconstruct various pieces appropriate to the Plays. Richard found one piece by studying a picture of an Angel - housed in The National Gallery in Washington DC - turning the music upside down, transcribing it and then preparing it for performance.

The music for the York Millennium Mystery Plays in 2000 was also based on considerable research but presented in a much more modern idiom by composer Richard Shephard. The two magnificent anthems that completed each half can still be heard in York Minster at special services.

A rich variety of music has contributed to the Mystery Plays’ recent heritage. No doubt future productions of the Plays will continue to be an outlet for powerful and expressive music making.