The Canterbury Pilgrims is a 1931 oratorio by George Dyson. It is one of the composer's best known large scale works. [1]
Dyson: Canterbury Pilgrims (At The Tabard Inn) Yvonne Kenny, Robert Tear, Stephen Roberts, London Symphony Chorus, London Symphony Orchestra, Richard Hickox. Chandos: CHAN 241-43 2CD [2]
Sir Henry Walford Davies was an English composer, organist, and educator who held the title Master of the King's Music from 1934 until 1941. He served with the Royal Air Force during the First World War, during which he composed the Royal Air Force March Past, and was music adviser to the British Broadcasting Corporation, for whom he gave commended talks on music between 1924 and 1941.
Dame Janet Abbott Baker is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.
William Crotch was an English composer and organist. According to the American musicologist Nicholas Temperley, Crotch was "a child prodigy without parallel in the history of music", and was certainly the most distinguished English musician in his day.
The BBC Symphony Chorus is a British amateur chorus based in London. It is the dedicated chorus for the BBC Symphony Orchestra, though it performs with other national and international orchestras.
Sir George Dyson was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, and army service in the First World War, he was a schoolmaster and college lecturer. In 1938 he became director of the RCM, the first of its alumni to do so. As director he instituted financial and organisational reforms and steered the college through the difficult days of the Second World War.
Saul is a dramatic oratorio in three acts written by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Charles Jennens. Taken from the First Book of Samuel, the story of Saul focuses on the first king of Israel's relationship with his eventual successor, David—one which turns from admiration to envy and hatred, ultimately leading to the downfall of the eponymous monarch. The work, which Handel composed in 1738, includes the famous "Dead March", a funeral anthem for Saul and his son Jonathan, and some of the composer's most dramatic choral pieces. Saul was first performed at the King's Theatre in London on 16 January 1739. The work was a success at its London premiere and was revived by Handel in subsequent seasons. Notable modern-day performances of Saul include that at Glyndebourne in 2015.
El Niño is an opera-oratorio by the contemporary American composer John Adams. It was premiered on December 15, 2000, at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris by soloists Dawn Upshaw, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and Willard White, the vocal ensemble Theatre of Voices, the London Voices, La Maîtrise de Paris, and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, with Kent Nagano conducting. It has been performed on a number of occasions since, and has been broadcast on BBC Television.
Stephen Paulus was an American Grammy Award winning composer, best known for his operas and choral music. His style is essentially tonal, and melodic and romantic by nature.
Matthew King is a British composer, pianist, and educator. His works include opera, piano and chamber music, and choral and orchestral pieces. He has been described by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen’s Music, as “one of Britain's most adventurous composers, utterly skilled, imaginative, and resourceful."
Frederick Charles Haggis was a British conductor and founder of the Goldsmiths Choral Union, for which he was principal conductor and musical director for forty years.
William Henry Bell, known largely by his initials, W H Bell, was an English composer, conductor and lecturer.
Paul Spicer is an English composer, conductor, and organist. He taught choral conducting at the Royal College of Music and conducted the RCM Chamber Choir between 1995 and 2008. Until his retirement in July 2022 he also taught at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire and conducted their chamber choir which records for Somm Records. He also teaches at Oxford and Durham universities. Since 2004 he has been the conductor of the Petersfield Festival. He was Senior Producer for BBC Radio 3 for the Midlands Region based in Birmingham between 1984 and 1990 after which he moved to be artistic director of the Lichfield Festival. He also produced for various record companies over many years. He founded the Finzi Singers in 1984 making many recordings for Chandos Records. He conducts the Birmingham Bach Choir and the Whitehall Choir in London. His compositions include two oratorios for Easter and for Advent with libretti by the Dr Tom Wright and a choral symphony 'Unfinished Remembering' (2014) to a libretto by Euan Tait commemorating the outbreak of World War 1. He runs a series of choral courses under the banner of The English Choral Experience based mainly at Abbey Dore in Herefordshire.
Charles James Kennedy Osborne Scott was an English organist and choral conductor who played an important part in developing the performance of choral and polyphonic music in England, especially of early and modern English music.
Roderick Gregory Coleman Williams OBE is a British baritone and composer.
Messiah, the English-language oratorio composed by George Frideric Handel in 1741, is structured in three parts. This listing covers Part III in a table and comments on individual movements, reflecting the relation of the musical setting to the text. Part I begins with the prophecy of the Messiah and his birth, shows the annunciation to the shepherds as a scene from the Gospel of Luke, and reflects the Messiah's deeds on Earth. Part II covers the Passion, death, resurrection, ascension, and the later spreading of the Gospel. Part III concentrates on Paul's teaching of the resurrection of the dead and Christ's glorification in heaven.
This is a summary of 1931 in music in the United Kingdom.
George Dyson's Psalm CVII Symphony and Overture, is a choral symphony written in 1910 as part of the composer's studies at Oxford for his Doctorate in Music. Not rediscovered until 2014, it is one of the few compositions surviving from the composer's early years.
Quo Vadis is a cycle of poems for chorus and orchestra in nine movements, composed between 1936 and 1945 by George Dyson. It has been described as an "anthology cantata", where poems from more than one author are used to explore a subject - in this case 'where are you going?' (the literal translation of the Latin phrase "quo vadis". Christopher Palmer summed up the work's theme as "man’s earthly pilgrimage, his spiritual odyssey and its consummation in Shelley’s 'white radiance of Eternity'"
In Honour of the City of London is a 1937 cantata by William Walton for mixed chorus and orchestra. The text is by the 15th–16th-century poet William Dunbar. It was written for the Leeds Triennial Festival for which Walton had composed Belshazzar's Feast in 1931, but it failed to gain the popularity of the earlier work and is comparatively infrequently performed.