A note from the Chairman – October
Dear members and friends of the Stanford Society,
When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in March most of us thought that there would be three of four months of lock down and/or other restrictions and then life would gradual return to normal. Unfortunately things have not turned out that way. It now looks as if there will be significant restrictions on normal activity in the UK, Western Europe and North America until at least the middle of 2021, when hopefully an effective vaccine will be widely available.
The New York Philharmonic and The Metropolitan Opera in New York have just cancelled their entire 2020/2021 seasons and Broadway theaters are remaining closed until at least June 1st of 2021. Everything is not, however, all doom and gloom. A lot of music has been made available on line and record companies have continued to record and release new material although much of this has been chamber music and song recitals.
Last year the Lyrita Record label released a CD of Stanford’s Missa Via Victrix (Op. 173) and his choral piece, At the Abbey Gate (Op. 177).. These works were recorded by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and their Chorus with soloists, conducted by Adrian Partington. They were both first recordings. The recording of the Mass was taken from a live concert in Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff. This was the first full performance of this work, which had been written by Stanford in 1919 without a commission, shortly after the end of the First World War. The Society’s President, Jeremy Dibble, edited the manuscript score of the Mass for both the concert and recording.
Both the BBC and Lyrita were delighted with the concert and recording of the Stanford Mass and asked Adrian Partington if there were any more Stanford choral works of the same quality that had been neglected and never been recorded. Adrian asked the Stanford Society if we had any suggestions? As it happened we did, as we had started to prepare a list of Stanford works to recommend to the Three Choirs Festival for future performance.
The two specific works which we recommended to Adrian are The Elegiac Ode (Op. 21) and the Te Deum (Op. 66). The Elegiac Ode was written by Stanford in 1884 to a commission from the Norwich and Norfolk Festival. It was warmly received at its premier but has had very few performances since. This work was the first time that Stanford set a poem by the American metaphysical poet Walt Whitman (1819-1892). Stanford set several stanzas from the poem “When lilacs last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”. He had first considered setting this poem in 1873. It is really an ode on the death of the American President, Abraham Lincoln.
Stanford was one of the first composers to set Whitman’s poetry. He returned to Whitman for three of his Songs of Faith (Op. 97) in 1906-08. In 1913 he combined and orchestrated two of these songs for a short choral work, Song to the Soul (Op. 97b). This was written for a planned trip by Stanford to the USA in 1914. He was to receive an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Yale University, as Elgar had done in 1905 and to conduct his own music with several American orchestras including those of Boston and New York.
This would have been Stanford’s first visit to North America. The planned trip for 1914 was postponed until 1915 and passage was booked on the Lusitania. Sadly the Lusitania was sunk by German U boats on the voyage before Stanford’s and his planned trip to America was cancelled. In the event Stanford never made the trip nor received the Honorary Doctorate from Yale. His Second Piano Concerto which Stanford had written for the trip, was premiered in Connecticut but the choral work, Song to the Soul, was put aside. The score was edited by Jeremy Dibble and finally premiered in Dublin in 2015.
Stanford introduced Whitman’s poetry as suitable to be set to music to several of his students. Vaughan Williams, Holst, Wood, Coleridge Taylor, Bridge and Rutledge Broughton all subsequently set poems by Whitman’s.
The Latin Te Deum of 1998 was written for the Leeds Festival of that year. This is another of Stanford’s large scale choral work which was well received at its premier but has subsequently been neglected.
We have provided the scores of both the Elegiac Ode and Latin Te Deum to Adrian Partington. After review and discussion with the BBC he plans to conduct both
works with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, its Chorus and appropriate soloists early in 2022. We are hopeful that these works will then be released on CD by Lyrita. I am very much looking forward to this concert and the subsequent recording.
We hope that you are keeping well.
John Covell
Chairman of the Charles Villiers Stanford Society
