Monday, April 15, 2013

Byron Hanson:'Sir Dan Godfrey...established the band/orchestra ensembles at Bournemouth in the 1890s'

[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is profiled at AfriClassical.com, which features a comprehensive Works List and a Bibliography by Prof. Dominique-René de Lerma, www.CasaMusicaledeLerma.com. We are collaborating with the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Foundation of the U.K., www.SCTF.org.uk]
Heritage HTGCD249


I note that this CD (much welcomed reissue) includes recordings by the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra which was founded in 1893 by Dan Godfrey and which premiered Coleridge-Taylor’s Symphony in A minor  in 1900.


Byron Hanson, Archivist at the Interlochen Center for the Arts, writes:


Dear Bill and Michael S. Wright,
This is just a quick reply to the minor confusion in Michael's comment about "Dan Godfrey", which is understandable, considering that there were three generations of Dan in a very active musical family. You can read about all of them in the 2nd edition of The New Grove, so I'll not go through all of that, but the quick answer is that the second of the three Dans was Sir Dan Godfrey, and he established the band/orchestra ensembles at Bournemouth in the 1890s. His work is little noticed here in the US, except for alert band musicians who will have seen some of the excellent arrangements of important works he made for military bands. These were widely circulated in the early 20th century the publisher Boosey and Hawkes. I think the Godfrey/Bournemouth question is similar to the American example of Theodore Thomas, who had his own orchestra and then became a key figure in establishing orchestra traditions in New York, Cincinnati and Chicago. At the outset of any of these it would have been natural to describe them as Theodore Thomas's orchestras.

Byron

Byron Hanson
Archivist
Interlochen Center for the Arts

No comments:

Post a Comment