The Canterbury Pilgrims Oratorio

On Sunday 15 November the Choral Society performed one of the most neglected oratorios of the past century, George Dyson's The Canterbury Pilgrims.

The young Dyson became an FRCO at the age of sixteen, and he won an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1900. Despite his working class background, Dyson was to become the voice of public school music and later Director of the RCM, the first College-trained musician to do so; a fact of which he was very proud.

It was at Winchester College that Dyson enjoyed possibly the most productive part of his life as a composer. There, as Director of Music, he was organist, had a choir, an orchestra and also an adult choral society. It was for these forces that he started writing music, and for them he developed choral music of a tuneful vigorous cast. This started in 1928 with In Honour of the City which was so successful he soon produced a more ambitious piece, The Canterbury Pilgrims, a succession of evocative and colourful Chaucerian portraits written for Winchester in 1931 and, in the 1930s, certainly his most famous score.

Characters from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are brought vividly to life through choruses and solos, in music which is both attractive and musically interesting. The majority of the solos were sung by professional tenor Oliver Brewer, from St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, Edinburgh. He was joined by pupils Cathy Stockall (soprano) and Sandy McCleery (baritone).

Robert Gower had the not inconsiderable duty of reproducing a large romantic orchestral score single handed on the organ, and the performance was directed by Glenalmond's new Director of Music, Tim Ridley, and greatly appreciated by upwards of sixty visitors.