The Gaudete Singers – Founder and Foundation (17/11/24)

Best known for a single work, the choral song Jerusalem, this forgotten English Romantic was instrumental in bringing about the English musical renaissance at the end of the nineteenth century, and who, for the first time since Purcell, brought a distinctively English quality to western music.

Parry’s early musical career at Eton and Oxford was fairly undistinguished, with a concentration of small-scale works such as songs, anthems and piano music in a Mendelssohnian vein. It was only after he began studies with the famous teacher Edward Danreuther in London in 1873 that his individual style came to the foreand from 1875 Parry began to produce significant works.

In later years, Parry would go on to write in virtually every major large form: five symphonies, a piano concerto, a symphonic suite, an opera, an oratorio, and more than 30 works for chorus and orchestra. By 1893, he was appointed director of the Royal College of Music where he taught such future composers as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, George Butterworth and Herbert Howells. In 1898, he took on additional duties as Professor of Music at Oxford. He was endowed with a warm personal charm and this made him an influential teacher. “At last I had met a man who did not terrify me” Gustav Holst said of him, “he gave us, so it seemed to me, a vision rather than a lecture”. He wrote several books about music and music history, the best-known of which is probably his 1909 study of Johann Sebastian Bach.

He was also an enthusiastic cruising sailor and owned successively the yawl The Latois and the ketch The Wanderer. In 1908 he was elected as a member of the Royal Yacht Squadron, the only composer so honoured.

Also in 1908, Parry suffered a downturn in the state of his health, due primarily to the rigorous schedule he had taken on with activities associated with the Royal College and Oxford. On his doctor’s advice, he resigned his post at Oxford and curtailed his compositional activities for a while, retiring to Sicily for a period to regain his strength. The prescription did the trick, and his recuperation afforded him a further 10-year period in which he was to produce some of his best work, including his last symphony “Symphonic Fantasia” and the symphonic poem “From Death To Life”.

Songs of Farewell is a set of six choral motets composed between 1916 and 1918 and were among his last compositions before his death. The songs were written during the First World War when a number of Parry’s pupils at the Royal College of Music were being killed in action. Parry’s choice of texts are thought to reflect a yearning to escape the violence of a world at war, and to find peace in a heavenly realm.

It is therefore fitting that we sing Songs of Farewell nos 1 and 2  at this time of remembrance for all those who have died in war.

Come to our concert on 17th November in the Lady Chapel of St Patrick’s Catherdral at 8pm and hear these works in this beautiful setting.