George Dyson

Stick with me and this blog for any length of time and you will quickly realize that I have a really intense fondness for British music.

Starting in the late 1800s, England and Scotland in particular began an extraordinary flowering of composition after a long period easily (and perhaps unfairly) dismissed as "nothing much".  Three key figures in that flowering were Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, and Ralph Vaughan Williams.  I dearly love the music of all three, but for today I want to talk about someone else.

Like the three composers I just named, George Dyson had the misfortune to become popular in his lifetime, only to have his music go through a period of neglect following his death.  It's unfortunate, because he really was something much better than merely a competent craftsman. 

Fortunately, there are now quite a few recordings of his pieces that are worth investigating.  In his own day, he was famous for his "choral suite", The Canterbury Pilgrims.  This cantata (for lack of a better word) covers the Prologue of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in a modern English adaptation made by the composer himself, and his wife.  The music for choir, soloists and orchestra paints very deft character portraits of the pilgrims.  My own favourite is the riotous waltz for the Wife of Bath, but there are many other fine moments as well.  It comes on a 2-CD Chandos set harnessed with In Honour of the City of London, Dyson's first big success, and a concert overture which he wrote years later based on the themes of The Canterbury Pilgrims.  Listen and be amazed at how deftly he recomposes the sometimes 4-square phrases of the original melodies into smoothly-flowing triple time!

A fine disc on the sadly-defunct Unicorn Kanchana label contained The Blacksmiths, another work set to Dyson's modern version of a mediaeval poem.  Here he perfectly captured the monochromatic sights and hammering sounds of the blacksmiths' forge by using only two pianos and percussion to accompany the chorus.  Other pieces included here add up to a memorable collection.

Three concertos for strings make up another memorable Chandos CD.  One in particular, titled Concerto da Chiesa (Church Concerto) makes memorable use of the Advent plainsong tune Veni Emmanuel (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel), harmonizing it with mournful minor chords to turn it into a "frozen lament", as one writer aptly called it.  A succeeding movement makes equally deft use of Divinum mysterium (Of the Father's Love Begotten), another plainsong tune.

Of all Dyson's music that I've heard, the choral cycle Quo Vadis is the most memorable and the one I return to most often.  It's about 100 minutes long, in 2 parts, and sets excerpts from a dozen poems by various poets addressing the themes of immortality and the great beyond.  Some of the poetry seems a little lame, but Dyson performs the miraculous feat of redeeming it by his music.  There are beautiful melodies in plenty for soloists and choir, and the orchestra plays a very significant role -- much more than simple accompaniment.  At the end of Henry Vaughan's poem The Country Beyond the Stars, Dyson delays resolving his suspended chord for several bars, repeating the suspension in the choir as the orchestra strings slowly climb a rising arpeggio until at last the orchestra paradoxically falls onto the resolved triad by rising into it's next highest position -- a magical moment indeed.  I could talk for hours about the beauties of this sadly neglected work, but get the 2-CD Chandos set and hear for yourself.

Must mention a huge vote of thanks to such musicians as Christopher Palmer and especially to conductor Richard Hickox for all they have done to revive Dyson's music for our times.