On Saturday I sang in a performance of this given by the St. Mary’s Festival Chorus (an choir expanded around the choir of the other church in the parish). This work is sufficiently good not to disappear into obscurity but not so good as to be a standard part of the repertoire. I think Dyson was hampered by his text, which is extracts from Chaucer’s prologue to the Canterbury tales, somewhat modernised (thereby losing some of their natural rhythm). It’s pretty wordy and there aren’t always obvious places for the big climaxes needed to keep an audience’s attention. (e.g. there has to be one on the words ‘And gladly did he learn and gladly teach’). I believe the orchestration is good, but we lost that as we were accompanied on piano in this performance.
Sadly we had a small audience, possibly because of competing events on the same day (I was invited to sing in four).
Our conductor is organist of the Lord Mayor’s Chapel in Bristol, so I took the opportunity to check that I’m still on his dep list (I’ve been on it for several years without ever having been called on to sing a service!)
Do you know where they got their copies from? I want to do it with the Warwick & Kenilworth Choral Society, but can’t find copies anywhere. We’d need about 100 copies.