London Chorus
Encyclopedia
The London Chorus is an amateur choir, under the musical direction of Ronald Corp
. It was founded in 1903 by Arthur Fagge as The London Choral Society. Its first concert was a performance of Sullivan
's The Golden Legend in October 1903. The following February the choir gave the second London performance of Elgar
's The Dream of Gerontius
.
In October 2000, the choir changed its name to The London Chorus, performing its inaugural concert, Delius
's A Mass of Life, at the Royal Festival Hall
.
Comprising around 130 members the choir rehearses on Tuesday nights at Baden-Powell House
in South Kensington
, London. As well as promoting its own concerts, The London Chorus works with major orchestras and promoters, both in London and abroad. The choir performs regularly in The Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Cadogan Hall, as well as making such diverse appearances as backing singing for The X-Factor, singing on the pitch at the Rugby Cup Finals, and on Christmas Day in BBC1’s Songs of Praise.
in London. The choral finale of the Ninth Symphony was entrusted to the Dulwich Philharmonic Society, whose conductor was Arthur Fagge. It was the success of this event, together with a desire to mount a performance in London of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius which encouraged Fagge to found a new choir, the London Choral Society, to be based in central London.
An early programme of the London Choral Society contains this announcement of its aims and ideals:
In fact the Society's first concert, in October 1903, was a performance of Sullivan's The Golden Legend (which the choir has recently recorded for CD). The following February they gave the first London public performance of The Dream of Gerontius (saving only a performance in Westminster Cathedral, for which a choir had been imported from the Midlands) at the Queen's Hall, at which the soloists were Marie Brema
, John Coates
and Ffrancon-Davies, and went on to perform all of Elgar's major choral works, Other first performance mounted by the Society included Bantock's Omar Khayyam in February 1910, and, in December the following year, Coleridge-Taylor's A Tale of Old Japan. In April 1914 they gave the first performance in English of Parsifal.
Other works performed by the LCS (all at the Queen's Hall) included a concert version of Saint-Saens' Samson and Delilah, Parry's Pied Piper of Hamelin, Holbrooke's The Bells, Walford Davies' Everyman, Brahms' Requiem, Berlioz' Faust, Balfour Gardiner's News from Whydah, Wolf Ferrari's Vita Nuova and Franck's Hundredth Psalm. The Society generally gave five concerts each season: in addition they were engaged for some of the Richter concerts and concerts of the Royal Philharmonic Society.
In 1912 and 1913 the LCS took part in an outstanding series of concerts with the New Symphony Orchestra (which had been founded in 1905), arranged by Balfour Gardiner, at which a large number of works were heard for the first time, including Bax's Enchanted Summer, Grainger's Father and Daughter, Sir Eglamore and the wordless, unaccompanied version of the Irish Tune from County Derry, and Holst's The Cloud Messenger, which was conducted by the composer. In May the following year the LCS was engaged to take part in a Festival of British Music at the Queen's Hall which was conducted by Emil Mlynarski and Thomas Beecham, with some works being conducted by Elgar and Arthur Fagge. The programmes consisted of the "best and most characteristic music" written and produced during the preceding ten years.
The decision to start again was taken and rehearsals began in 1946. The resources were modest and no attempt was made to promote a concert in the first season. The first concert took place in February 1948 when Bach's Jesu Meine Freude and Faure's Requiem were the main choral items. Having decided to promote a performance of Handel's Messiah, John Tobin said that he would spend "two or three weeks" at the British Museum looking at the various manuscripts. (This eventually led to several years of research by John Tobin into all the various manuscript sources of Messiah, the publication of two books and the eventual acceptance of his edition by the Hallische Handel-Ausgabe for its new edition of all Handel's works.) The first performance of this edition was given by the Society on 18 March 1950 in St Paul's Cathedral to outstanding critical acclaim, the Guardian describing the edition as being "as near to the original as modern scholarship and resource can get". Following a further performance in the Royal Festival Hall, the Hall's management requested a repeat performance which they promoted. Shortly afterwards the Royal Festival Hall offered the Society the Good Friday date and on Good Friday 1953 the Society gave the firsts of its annual performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, a tradition which continued for more than forty years.
Thus within a few years of its post-war revival the Society can be said to have truly arrived on the London concert scene.
As well as performances of standard works, the Society established a reputation for the performance of contemporary music and has a number of first performances to its credit. In 1968 the Society took part in the City of London Festival giving the first performance of The Song of the Highest Tower by Roger Smalley while other new works performed over the years include Pax Dei by Wilfred Mellers (dedicated to the Society), Tentatio Jesu by Anton Heiller, The City of Desolation by Anthony Milner, Changes by Gordon Crosse and Voices of Sleep by Paul Patterson, as well as the well-known War Requiem by Benjamin Britten and A Child of Our Time by Michael Tippett.
In 1975 Leon Lovett, already the Society's Associate Conductor, succeeded John Tobin as Musical Director and during his time was successful in getting the Society its first appearance at a BBC Promenade Concert, performing a modern British work by Elisabeth Lutyens to words by Chaucer entitled De Amore. Leon was also instrumental in obtaining two visits to Holland for the Society as well as maintaining full London concert seasons.
From September 1978 the Society was fortunate to appoint the young Simon Rattle as Principal Conductor and Nicholas Cleobury as Chorus Master, and during the next five seasons presented a series of exciting concerts at the South Bank. As may be expected from such musicians, these concerts were very important for the choir's musical development, although it has to be said that the Treasurer's nerve, as well as our Bank Manager's, was equally put to the test!
Following Simon Rattle's appointment to Birmingham, the Society appointed Jane Glover as Musical Director, firstly with Martin Merry as chorus master and then, from 1985, Ronald Corp. Ronald Corp remains with us, now as Musical Director in charge of the artistic direction of the Society. These years have seen the continued success of the Society and as well as standard repertoire we have continued to present new works in our concerts, including the first concert performance of Mirror of Perfection by Richard Blackford and the first performance of Ronald Corp's Laudamus.
The Society is an independent concert-promoting organisation and, in common with similar bodies, has found the cost of promoting concerts, against a background of declining official funding, increasingly burdensome. Much help has come from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts and from grant-making trusts. None the less the number of our own promotions has declined and it is a particular sadness that, solely on grounds of cost, the annual performance of St Matthew Passion has had to be given up. We have been fortunate in being invited to sing for other concert promoters and were particularly rewarded by being asked to provide the chorus for three concert performances by the Kirov Opera under Valery Gergiev and a performance of Rimsky Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or under Rostropovich. We are also grateful to Raymond Gubbay for inviting us to sing in a number of his promotions. .
1946 - 1975 John Tobin
1971 - 1975 Leon Lovett: Associate Conductor
1975 - 1978 Leon Lovett: Musical Director
1978 - 1983 Simon Rattle: Principal Conductor
1978 - 1982 Nicholas Cleobury: Chorus Master
1982 - 1983 Brian Kay: Chorus Master
1983 Jane Glover: Musical Director, Martin Merry: Chorus Master
1985 Ronald Corp: Chorus Master
1994 - 1999 Jane Glover: Principal Guest Conductor
1994–present Ronald Corp: Musical Director
The Choir tours every other year, this year they went to South Africa where they performed with local choirs.
Ronald Corp
Ronald Corp is a composer, conductor, and Church of England priest. He is founder and Artistic Director of the New London Orchestra and the New London Children's Choir. Corp is Musical Director of the London Chorus, a position he took up in 1994, and is also Musical Director of the Highgate Choral...
. It was founded in 1903 by Arthur Fagge as The London Choral Society. Its first concert was a performance of Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
's The Golden Legend in October 1903. The following February the choir gave the second London performance of Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
's The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius
The Dream of Gerontius, popularly called just Gerontius, is a work for voices and orchestra in two parts composed by Edward Elgar in 1900, to text from the poem by John Henry Newman. It relates the journey of a pious man's soul from his deathbed to his judgment before God and settling into Purgatory...
.
In October 2000, the choir changed its name to The London Chorus, performing its inaugural concert, Delius
Frederick Delius
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family of German extraction, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce...
's A Mass of Life, at the Royal Festival Hall
Royal Festival Hall
The Royal Festival Hall is a 2,900-seat concert, dance and talks venue within Southbank Centre in London. It is situated on the South Bank of the River Thames, not far from Hungerford Bridge. It is a Grade I listed building - the first post-war building to become so protected...
.
Comprising around 130 members the choir rehearses on Tuesday nights at Baden-Powell House
Baden-Powell House
Baden-Powell House, colloquially known as B-P House, is a Scouting hostel and conference centre in South Kensington, London, which was built as a tribute to Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting...
in South Kensington
South Kensington
South Kensington is a district in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. It is a built-up area located 2.4 miles west south-west of Charing Cross....
, London. As well as promoting its own concerts, The London Chorus works with major orchestras and promoters, both in London and abroad. The choir performs regularly in The Royal Albert Hall, Royal Festival Hall and Cadogan Hall, as well as making such diverse appearances as backing singing for The X-Factor, singing on the pitch at the Rugby Cup Finals, and on Christmas Day in BBC1’s Songs of Praise.
Pre-war history
In May 1903 Felix Weingartner conducted an all-Beethoven festival at the Queen's HallQueen's Hall
The Queen's Hall was a concert hall in Langham Place, London, opened in 1893. Designed by the architect T.E. Knightley, it had room for an audience of about 2,500 people. It became London's principal concert venue. From 1895 until 1941, it was the home of the promenade concerts founded by Robert...
in London. The choral finale of the Ninth Symphony was entrusted to the Dulwich Philharmonic Society, whose conductor was Arthur Fagge. It was the success of this event, together with a desire to mount a performance in London of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius which encouraged Fagge to found a new choir, the London Choral Society, to be based in central London.
An early programme of the London Choral Society contains this announcement of its aims and ideals:
"This Society is founded on the belief that the ability to develop and appreciate good choral singing is not confined to the North of England… Its avowed object of presenting unfamiliar and unjustly neglected works has always been kept steadily in view… Though it would be obviously impolitic to neglect occasional performances of works that are rightly established in public favour, yet no question of a too cautious expediency will hinder the preparation and presentation of those that have a right to be heard."
In fact the Society's first concert, in October 1903, was a performance of Sullivan's The Golden Legend (which the choir has recently recorded for CD). The following February they gave the first London public performance of The Dream of Gerontius (saving only a performance in Westminster Cathedral, for which a choir had been imported from the Midlands) at the Queen's Hall, at which the soloists were Marie Brema
Marie Brema
Marie Brema was an English dramatic mezzo-soprano singer in concert, operatic and oratorio work in the last decade of the 19th and the first decade of the 20th centuries...
, John Coates
John Coates
John Henry Coates, FRS is a mathematician who holds the position of Sadleirian Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.-Early life and education:...
and Ffrancon-Davies, and went on to perform all of Elgar's major choral works, Other first performance mounted by the Society included Bantock's Omar Khayyam in February 1910, and, in December the following year, Coleridge-Taylor's A Tale of Old Japan. In April 1914 they gave the first performance in English of Parsifal.
Other works performed by the LCS (all at the Queen's Hall) included a concert version of Saint-Saens' Samson and Delilah, Parry's Pied Piper of Hamelin, Holbrooke's The Bells, Walford Davies' Everyman, Brahms' Requiem, Berlioz' Faust, Balfour Gardiner's News from Whydah, Wolf Ferrari's Vita Nuova and Franck's Hundredth Psalm. The Society generally gave five concerts each season: in addition they were engaged for some of the Richter concerts and concerts of the Royal Philharmonic Society.
In 1912 and 1913 the LCS took part in an outstanding series of concerts with the New Symphony Orchestra (which had been founded in 1905), arranged by Balfour Gardiner, at which a large number of works were heard for the first time, including Bax's Enchanted Summer, Grainger's Father and Daughter, Sir Eglamore and the wordless, unaccompanied version of the Irish Tune from County Derry, and Holst's The Cloud Messenger, which was conducted by the composer. In May the following year the LCS was engaged to take part in a Festival of British Music at the Queen's Hall which was conducted by Emil Mlynarski and Thomas Beecham, with some works being conducted by Elgar and Arthur Fagge. The programmes consisted of the "best and most characteristic music" written and produced during the preceding ten years.
Post-war history
Arthur Fagge died in 1943 so that at the end of the war any revival had to be in the hands of others. An attempt made by the conductor Leighton Lucas, who had been an associate of Mr Fagge, came to nothing but shortly afterwards a chance meeting between the distinguished tenor Parry Jones and the conductor John Tobin led to its revival. The singer suggested to John Tobin that he ought to take on the LCS and that he remembered that the secretary was "a chap named Garnham". This was quite sufficient information for someone of John Tobin's energy and drive and he quickly tracked down Ben Garnham and arranged to meet such members of the former committee as could be found.The decision to start again was taken and rehearsals began in 1946. The resources were modest and no attempt was made to promote a concert in the first season. The first concert took place in February 1948 when Bach's Jesu Meine Freude and Faure's Requiem were the main choral items. Having decided to promote a performance of Handel's Messiah, John Tobin said that he would spend "two or three weeks" at the British Museum looking at the various manuscripts. (This eventually led to several years of research by John Tobin into all the various manuscript sources of Messiah, the publication of two books and the eventual acceptance of his edition by the Hallische Handel-Ausgabe for its new edition of all Handel's works.) The first performance of this edition was given by the Society on 18 March 1950 in St Paul's Cathedral to outstanding critical acclaim, the Guardian describing the edition as being "as near to the original as modern scholarship and resource can get". Following a further performance in the Royal Festival Hall, the Hall's management requested a repeat performance which they promoted. Shortly afterwards the Royal Festival Hall offered the Society the Good Friday date and on Good Friday 1953 the Society gave the firsts of its annual performance of Bach's St Matthew Passion, a tradition which continued for more than forty years.
Thus within a few years of its post-war revival the Society can be said to have truly arrived on the London concert scene.
As well as performances of standard works, the Society established a reputation for the performance of contemporary music and has a number of first performances to its credit. In 1968 the Society took part in the City of London Festival giving the first performance of The Song of the Highest Tower by Roger Smalley while other new works performed over the years include Pax Dei by Wilfred Mellers (dedicated to the Society), Tentatio Jesu by Anton Heiller, The City of Desolation by Anthony Milner, Changes by Gordon Crosse and Voices of Sleep by Paul Patterson, as well as the well-known War Requiem by Benjamin Britten and A Child of Our Time by Michael Tippett.
In 1975 Leon Lovett, already the Society's Associate Conductor, succeeded John Tobin as Musical Director and during his time was successful in getting the Society its first appearance at a BBC Promenade Concert, performing a modern British work by Elisabeth Lutyens to words by Chaucer entitled De Amore. Leon was also instrumental in obtaining two visits to Holland for the Society as well as maintaining full London concert seasons.
From September 1978 the Society was fortunate to appoint the young Simon Rattle as Principal Conductor and Nicholas Cleobury as Chorus Master, and during the next five seasons presented a series of exciting concerts at the South Bank. As may be expected from such musicians, these concerts were very important for the choir's musical development, although it has to be said that the Treasurer's nerve, as well as our Bank Manager's, was equally put to the test!
Following Simon Rattle's appointment to Birmingham, the Society appointed Jane Glover as Musical Director, firstly with Martin Merry as chorus master and then, from 1985, Ronald Corp. Ronald Corp remains with us, now as Musical Director in charge of the artistic direction of the Society. These years have seen the continued success of the Society and as well as standard repertoire we have continued to present new works in our concerts, including the first concert performance of Mirror of Perfection by Richard Blackford and the first performance of Ronald Corp's Laudamus.
The Society is an independent concert-promoting organisation and, in common with similar bodies, has found the cost of promoting concerts, against a background of declining official funding, increasingly burdensome. Much help has come from the Foundation for Sport and the Arts and from grant-making trusts. None the less the number of our own promotions has declined and it is a particular sadness that, solely on grounds of cost, the annual performance of St Matthew Passion has had to be given up. We have been fortunate in being invited to sing for other concert promoters and were particularly rewarded by being asked to provide the chorus for three concert performances by the Kirov Opera under Valery Gergiev and a performance of Rimsky Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or under Rostropovich. We are also grateful to Raymond Gubbay for inviting us to sing in a number of his promotions. .
Musical Directors
1903 - 1940 Arthur Fagge1946 - 1975 John Tobin
1971 - 1975 Leon Lovett: Associate Conductor
1975 - 1978 Leon Lovett: Musical Director
1978 - 1983 Simon Rattle: Principal Conductor
1978 - 1982 Nicholas Cleobury: Chorus Master
1982 - 1983 Brian Kay: Chorus Master
1983 Jane Glover: Musical Director, Martin Merry: Chorus Master
1985 Ronald Corp: Chorus Master
1994 - 1999 Jane Glover: Principal Guest Conductor
1994–present Ronald Corp: Musical Director
Present activities
The London Chorus recently recorded the “Big Sing” at the Royal Albert Hall for programmes to be broadcast on BBC1’s “Songs of Praise” for Christmas morning (11am) and New Year’s Day (5pm) 2011. Each year the London Chorus perform in a concert at the Royal Albert Hall for the impresario Raymond Gubbay, this year’s concert is “Christmas Classics with Lesley Garrett” both at the RAH and Symphony Hall Birmingham.The Choir tours every other year, this year they went to South Africa where they performed with local choirs.