I
recall a well-known conductor once telling me that one of the hardest things to
do is to write about music that one has never heard: and with this I totally
agree, having tried it a number of times. However, what can be interesting is
to read tantalising accounts of music that has disappeared from the repertoire
– and because the score/manuscript has been lost, will never be heard. The main justification for this is twofold –
firstly it allows the listener to gain more contextual knowledge about the composer
in question and secondly it may spur someone to look for and maybe even
discover the ‘lost’ work. Who knows?
Charles
Villiers Stanford’s Festival Overture
was composed around 1870 [1] and was given its first performance in the Shire
Hall at the Gloucester Three Choirs Festival on 6 September 1877, conducted by
Charles Hartford Lloyd. It was
subsequently performed at the Crystal Palace on 17 November of that year, conducted
by August Manns. The manuscript has been
lost. The reviewer in the Musical Standard
wrote:-
“The
performance of the seventh Saturday concert contained, as usual, some works
which had not been previously heard at Sydenham, the novelties being C[harles]
Villiers Stanford’s Festival Overture
(written for the Gloucester Festival lately held [1]), the scene of Isolde’s
death from Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde,
and the ballet music from Mose in Egitto ...
[2]
Mr
Stanford’s overture is rather disappointing to those who watch the career of
this rising young English composer, not much on account of any lack of constructive
skill, but simply because inventive power appears, to a great extent, to be
wanting. Mr. Stanford masters the technicalities
of his task with ease, and his method of scoring proves him to be quite at home
in all matters appertaining to the treatment of the orchestra. But the themes
of his overture do not display much originality, nor are they attractive in
themselves, which leaves all the commendation we can bestow upon the production
for the ingenuity it undoubtedly reveals. The tone of the compositions hardly
appears to warrant the fact of its being written for a festal occasion; but
this, after all, is a mere matter of opinion.”
CRYSTAL
PALACE CONCERTS Standard 26 Nov.
1877
Jeremy
Dibble gives some interesting information about this work in his book Charles Villiers Stanford: Man and Musician.
He notes that Hubert Parry had gone to Gloucester especially to hear this
work. In his diary he [equivocally]
wrote ‘’It is better than the ordinary run of such things well enough scored;
with plentiful use of brass- and figures of little significance much used,
rather made up I think altogether.’ CHHP Diary 6 September 1877.
Dibble
also observes that the analytical notes written by George Grove suggested that
‘the spirit, rhythm, and power over the Orchestra which characterise this
interesting work, augur well for Mr. Stanford’s artistic future, and encourage
us to look for more orchestral works from his pen’.
Certainly
this last wish was granted, and we are fortunate in having the vast majority of
Stanford’s orchestral compositions available on CD or MP3.
NOTES
[1]
Jeremy Dibble suggests that this work was composed c. 1870 whereas Paul Rodmell
concludes that it was in 1876.
[2
Mose in Egitto (Moses in Egypt)
is a three-act opera written by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by
Andrea Leone Tottola, which was based on a play by Francesco Ringhieri, L'Osiride,
of 1760. It premiered on 5 March 1818 at the recently reconstructed Teatro San
Carlo in Naples, Italy. [Wikipedia]
[3]
Other major works at this concert included Robert Schumann, Symphony No.3 in E
flat ‘Rhenish’ and Beethoven’s Piano Concerto in C minor No.3.
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