The Chiddingfold Suite

Description

Thomas Frederick Dunhill (1 February 1877 – 13 March 1946) was a prolific English composer in many genres, though he is best known today for his light music and educational piano works. His compositions include much chamber music, a song cycle, The Wind Among the Reeds, and an operetta, Tantivy Towers, that had a successful London run in 1931. He was also a teacher, examiner and writer on musical subjects.

This suite, written around 1922, was dedicated to the English painter W. Graham Robertson. The first movement is founded on an old Surrey Folk-Tune – Venus and Adonis, while the second movement captures the English pastoral style beautifully. The third movement (The Mummers Arrive) and fifth movement (Maypole Dance) depict an English country fair.

Dunhill included a detailed note regarding the third movement – The Vision of Richard Peyto. He writes: ‘In the reign of James I the village of Chiddingfold was famous for its stained-glass industry. Richard Peyto, the aged master of his craft, is engaged upon his life-work, the great Minster Window. A royal proclamation is posted upon the Church door, forbidding the use of timber or wood for the furnaces. The fires are to be quenched on the morrow, and Peyto, stricken by the tidings, is dying. On his couch he has a vision. Visionary Presences, glowing with the hues of stained glass, appear. They bear white lillies and move rhythmically to a stately measure…..They pause and melt into an arc-shaped cluster of jewelled brightness; flame-like shapes in crimson unfurl great golden wings, and the whole group bends and converges towards a centre, where a blue-veined Figure bows before a kneeling Archangel. Starting up on his couch the Master cries:-“My Work – my Great Work – finished!” ‘