Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Dyson: The Canterbury Pilgrims

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

"When that April with his showers sweet / The drought of March hath pierced to the root." So begins the Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer's immortal Canterbury Tales. George Dyson (1893-1964) set the Prologue to music in 1931 as a kind of secular oratorio he called The Canterbury Pilgrims. Dyson's music is very much in the line of Elgar, only perhaps even more vigorous and coloristic. Martin Anderson, in writing about the world premiere recording of Dyson's work, says it's like "The Dream of Gerontius without the mysticism." (Fanfare, Sept/Oct 1997 issue) Anderson praises conductor Richard Hickox (now deceased) in his equally vigorous interpretation of this onetime favorite of English choral societies. Dyson's oratorio fell out of favor as the twentieth century proceeded. So the 1996 Chandos studio recording, the world premiere recording, was something of an attempt at revival, to reacquaint the public with the worthiness of Dyson's music. Hickox directed the London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

Piggybacked on the two-CD Chandos issue is a short choral ode to the city of London, In Honour of the City (1928), which is Dyson's setting of the Scots poet William Dunbar's poem of praise. The old Scots dialect of Dunbar's verse is close to Chaucer's Middle English. As you might expect, Dyson's music employs the Westminster chimes as a kind of leitmotif. I last presented The Canterbury Pilgrims on this program on Sunday, April 19, 1998.