Not ‘Four weddings and a funeral’, but one wedding, a birthday, a coronation and, sadly, a farewell, that of leader Rebecca Boyle.

Conductor Terry Edwards opened the celebrations with, probably, the best loved item on the programme, the magnificent anthem ‘Zadok the priest’ written by proud new British citizen, Handel, for the coronation of George II in 1727. Both choir and orchestra were in splendid form, voices, instruments and acoustics blending superbly. The remaining three anthems may lack the same ‘tingle factor’, but were equally excellent in performance.

The one hundred and fiftieth birthday of Edward Elgar was celebrated by the Society -as was his one hundredth, I recall- with a beautiful performance of ‘Sea Pictures’ featuring mezzo-soprano Rosie Aldridge. The audience responded warmly to each of the songs, especially the delicate ‘Where Corals lie’ and the more serious ‘The Swimmer’ which was applauded enthusiastically. 

The wedding, of course, was that of Hiawatha, who, like many bride-grooms, seemed to have a minor role in the proceedings which were dominated by his three best friends and his mother in law. Written by the young Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, ‘Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast’ enjoyed great popularity for many years. The staged and costumed performances at the Albert Hall must have been rather jolly events, as indeed was this, more conventional, performance. The pleasant rumpty- tumpty music exactly suited the hypnotic rhythms of Longfellow’s verse. Tenor Henry Moss sang the romantic ‘Onaway! Awake, beloved!’ and the guests, and we, were contented. 

by Julian Taylor

Rosie Aldridge (Mezzo - soprano)

Born in Hertfordshire, Rosie is currently a scholar at London’s Royal College of Music, where she studies with Kathleen Livingstone. As a sixth-form vocal scholar at Haileybury Imperial College, Rosie performed many different roles including, Dido in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas; the Baker’s Wife in Sondheim’s Into The Woods, and Carmen in excerpts from Bizet’s opera performed in concert with the College Orchestra. She also performed the role of Speranza in Monteverdi’s Orfeo, with The Opera Group. 

Rosie has enjoyed extensive oratorio and concert experience, performing the mezzo-soprano solos for many works including Verdi’s Requiem, Mozart’s Requiem and Vespers, Copland’s In The Beginning, Lambert’s The Rio Grande, Elgar’s Sea Pictures with the Corinthian Chamber Orchestra at St James’s, Piccadilly, Holst’s The Cloud Messenger, several Schubert Masses, Haydn’s Marie Therese Mass, Nelson Mass and St. Nicholas Mass, Dvořák’s Stabat Mater at the Cadogan Hall with the Brandenburg Sinfonia and Vaughan Williams’ Serenade to Music at the Queen Elizabeth Hall with the Concordia Young Artists’ Foundation.

Rosie has taken part in many prestigious master classes with artists such as Dame Sarah Walker, Michael Chance, Stephen Varcoe and Patricia Macmahon. She recently won the R.C.M. English Song Prize and is also a Josephine Baker Trust scholar. Rosie’s recent solo performances have included Bach’s Mass in B Minor with the Welsh Baroque Orchestra, Haydn’s Maria Theresa Mass and Duruflé’s Requiem in Chichester Cathedral with Jonathan Willcocks, performances of Verdi’s Requiem in Godalming, Eton and Oxford and a further performance of Elgar’s Sea Pictures conducted by Leon Lovett at the West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge. Future projects include Elgar’s The Music Makers and Vivaldi’s Gloria with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra at Winchester Cathedral.

Henry Moss (Tenor)

After practising as a solicitor, Henry Moss joined the Royal Academy where he studied with Kenneth Bowen and Antony Saunders and was awarded Princess Alice’s Prize and the Tom Hammond Opera Prize.

His concert repertoire includes many of the oratorios of Bach, Elgar, Haydn, Handel, Mendelssohn, Mozart and Beethoven. He has recorded Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde and he sang Denis Apivor’s Landscapes for the Redcliffe Concerts of 20th Century English Music. He also sang in the Premiere of Ray Davies’ first classical composition at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival.

In 1997 he made his Royal Opera debut as The Western Union Boy in Britten's Paul Bunyan at the Snape Maltings. Other roles have included Tchaplitzky in Pique Dame at the Royal Opera House, First Spirit / Echo in Orfeo for English National Opera, General Konovnitsin / Gerard / 1st Russian Staff Officer in Prokofiev's War and Peace for the Spoleto Festival, Moser in Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg for Theatre de Geneve, Flamand in Capriccio at the Opera de Nantes, Goro in Madama Butterfly, Cecco in Il Mondo della Luna and Gonzalve in L’Heure Espagnole, all with Opera Zuid in the Netherlands, Flute in A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Copenhagen, Fracasso in Mozart's La Finta Semplice at the Buxton Festival and Varo in Arminio for the London Handel Society. He sang Second Jew in Salome under Zubin Mehta in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and several roles in the world premiere of Casken’s God’s Liar for the Almeida Theatre in London and at the Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels.

Other work has included the title role in Albert Herring, Marco in The Gondoliers and Slender in Sir John in Love, all for British Youth Opera, of which he has been a director. 

Coronation Anthems

One of the last acts of George I before his death in 1727 was the signing of the papers for granting Handel British nationality. This made it easier for his son George II to request that Handel should write the principal music for his coronation, in preference to the newly-appointed organist of the Chapel Royal, Maurice Greene.

Of the four anthems two, Zadok and My Heart is Inditing, were set to texts which had been used at the last big-scale coronation, that of James II in 1685. Handel chose the texts for the others, brushing aside ecclesiastical offers of assistance. Each belonged to a particular moment in the ceremony: Let Thy Hand be Strengthened for the Recognition, Zadok the Priest for the Anointing, The King shall Rejoice for the Crowning of the King and My Heart is Inditing for the Crowning of the Queen. Queen Caroline was known as a patron of the arts and the gentler and warmer tone of the music for her crowning is noticeable.

Time for composition and rehearsal was short and the practical difficulties of performance considerable. There were probably only about 40-50 singers, basically the choirs of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey somewhat augmented, with about 90 instrumentalists and communication between groups in the Abbey was a problem. Archbishop Ware noted afterwards “The anthems in confusion; all irregular in the music”. One of the other anthems, not Handel’s, had to be abandoned. Notwithstanding, the music created a great impression and it was given regular performances throughout Handel’s lifetime, particularly the final section of Zadok the Priest. In fact Zadok with its exciting build-up and dramatic choral entry has featured in every coronation since.

Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934)

Sea Pictures

Though there is much fine vocal writing in his oratorios it is not as a songwriter that Elgar is chiefly remembered. These are probably his best songs. They were written in 1899, in the period between the Enigma Variations and the Dream of Gerontius and were first performed by Clara Butt. The poems are all by different authors, the second being by his wife, Alice and this song had in fact been composed two years previously, with piano accompaniment.

After the deep calm of the first song, in the second the lovers watch a storm at sea from the safety of their haven and secure in their love. The third, Sabbath Morning at Sea, is on an altogether grander scale and towards the end quotes from the music of the first song. Where Corals Lie has long been the favourite of the set and returns to a simpler and more intimate mood. The final song describes a swimmer struggling against a rough sea. After a more peaceful recollection of happier times in the middle, the storm returns to finish the song and the cycle.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875 - 1912)

Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast 

Coleridge-Taylor was born in London, the son of a doctor from Sierra Leone and an English mother. Finding few openings for a black doctor in England his father returned to Africa and the boy was brought up by his mother in Croydon. His musical gifts were spotted early; he sang in the church choir and learnt the violin and progressed so rapidly that he was accepted at the Royal College of Music at the age of 15. He was already composing and had several anthems published the following year. He studied composition under Stanford who recommended him highly to others including Elgar, who got him a commission from the Three Choirs Festival.

Longfellow’s poetry was very popular at the time and appealed to Coleridge-Taylor (partly, he admitted, because of all those four-syllable names). The Wedding Feast was first performed at the R.C.M. in 1898 under Stanford’s direction and was an immediate success. It was soon being widely performed in England and the U.S.A. It was Novello’s biggest earner since Elijah, though the composer only got 15 guineas for it. In the following years the Wedding Feast was followed by The Death of Minnehaha and Hiawatha’s Departure.

In Iroquois tradition Hiawatha was a hero, teacher and prophet who sought to promote peace and goodwill among men and in Longfellow’s poem he represents the progress of civilisation among the Indian peoples. The description of the wedding feast gives the composer a chance to write contrasting music for three very different characters, the dancer Pau-Puk-Keewis, the singer Chibiabos and the entertaining boaster Iagoo. The emphasis is all on describing the entertainment; Hiawatha himself hardly figures.

Coleridge-Taylor had a short but immensely busy life, conducting, composing – particularly theatre music - and teaching composition. He visited the U.S.A. where a Coleridge-Taylor Choral Society was founded in Washington for black singers. For all his successes and fame he seldom made much money and died, aged 37, from a combination of pneumonia and overwork.

Some years after Coleridge-Taylor’s death, staged versions of Hiawatha were mounted in the Albert Hall, partly conducted by his son (christened Hiawatha). His daughter Avril was also a conductor and composer.