Thornbury Choral Society

Spring Romance in England - Summer Wedding in North America

Our exciting concert in May will be two great works – 'A Cotswold Romance' and 'Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast'.

'A Cotswold Romance' is based on Ralph Vaughan Williams's opera 'Hugh the Drover', which was written at a time when there were an enormous number of choral societies looking for new works to perform but it was not in a suitable form. So Vaughan Williams enlisted the help of his associate and colleague, Maurice Jacobson, to revise the work as a cantata suitable for performance by choir and two soloists. The plot of the opera set in Napoleonic times includes a bare knuckle fight (difficult to orchestrate!) and refers to ‘Boneyparte’ and his spies. It is typically simple but, as always, the plot’s shallowness is completely compensated for by the music. It is melodic, tuneful and has a flavour of the English folk song which so interested Vaughan Williams throughout his life. “Tally Ho!” they sing, “We’re after the foe like true born Cotsall men”.

'Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast' is a setting of words from Henry Longfellow’s poem by the composer Samuel Coleridge Taylor and tells the story of Hiawatha and his bride, Minnehaha. It was Taylor’s first major musical success. After the first performance, Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) wrote of Taylor: “He is a composer, not a music-maker. The music is fresh and original - he has melody and harmony in abundance, and his scoring is brilliant and full of colour - at times luscious, rich and sensual.” The work soon became almost as popular as “The Messiah”. It describes the feast, the music making and the story telling rumbustiously but ends contemplatively, even romantically: “…and the guests departed leaving Hiawatha happy – happy with the night and Minnehaha.”