George Dyson - Sweet Thames Run Softly (1954)

Описание: Sir George Dyson KCVO (28 May 1883 – 28 September 1964) was an English musician and composer. After studying at the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London, and army service in the First World War, he was a schoolmaster and college lecturer. In 1938 he became director of the RCM, the first of its alumni to do so. As director he instituted financial and organizational reforms and steered the college through the difficult days of the Second World War.

Cantata "Sweet Thames Run Softly" (1954)
Librettist: Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) from "Prothalmion"
Dedication: For the Winchester and County Musical Festival, 1955

Stephen Roberts, baritone
Royal College of Music Chamber Choir and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by David Willcocks

Dyson said of himself as a composer, "My reputation is that of a good technician … not markedly original. I am familiar with modern idioms, but they are outside the vocabulary of what I want to say". The music critic of The Times remarked that Dyson's works had a certain ambiguity, "due probably to the fact that great musical skill was allied, exceptionally, with an extrovert temperament." The same writer observed that although everything Dyson wrote was well made, he never developed a personal idiom, "nor engendered much emotional sap in his larger works".

On the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 Dyson joined the Royal Fusiliers, becoming grenadier officer of the 99th infantry brigade. In that role he wrote a training pamphlet on grenade warfare for which he became well known. In 1916, incapacitated by shell-shock, he was invalided back to England. Parry recorded in his diary how shaken he was when he saw Dyson, "a shadow of his former self"

After a long convalescence Dyson was commissioned as a major in the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF), serving until 1920.[4] In this capacity, organising RAF bands, he completed the short score of Henry Walford Davies's RAF March Past, adding a slow middle section and fully scoring the whole piece.

In 1920 Dyson's composing career advanced when his Three Rhapsodies for string quartet were chosen for publication under the Carnegie Trust's publication scheme. In 1921 he took up the posts of music master at Wellington College and professor of composition at the RCM. In 1924, while remaining at the RCM he switched schools, moving to Winchester College.

In 1938 Dyson was appointed director of the RCM on the retirement of Sir Hugh Allen; he took great pride in being the first former student of the RCM to become its director.

He held the strong view that with first-rate performances of music now easily and regularly available on radio and record, people now coming into the musical profession needed to attain the highest standards if they were to compete. His emphasis on technical excellence led to criticism; The Times said that he "reversed the humanistic trend that had been the ideal of the college"