Thursday, November 25, 2010

1901 Leeds Festival Chorus Premiere: 'The Blind Girl of Castél Cuillé' by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

[Samuel Coleridge-Taylor]

The Afro-British composer and conductor Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) is profiled at AfriClassical.com. The website of the Leeds Festival Chorus in the United Kingdom includes a listing for a work composed for the ensemble in 1901:

Many new works were specially written for Leeds Festival Chorus or performed in Leeds for the first time. Most of these were conducted by the composer including St Ludmilla (Dvorák) and Caractacus (Elgar). Belshazzar's Feast, however, was conducted by Malcolm Sargent.

“Premières performed by Leeds Festival Chorus:
“1901 The Blind Girl of Castél Cuillé Samuel Coleridge-Taylor”

Google Books has digitized a copy from the Harvard Library:
“To my friend NICHOLAS KILBURN, Esq.
Composed For The Leeds Musical Festival, 1901
THE BLIND GIRL OF CASTÉL-CUILLÉ
Cantata
For Soprano And Baritone Soli, Chorus, And Orchestra
The Poem Translated From The Gascon of Jasmin By
H. W. Longfellow
The Music Composed By
S. Coleridge-Taylor.
(Op. 43.)
Price Two Shillings And Sixpence
London: Novello And Company, Limited
And
Novello, Ewer And Co., New York

"THE BLIND GIRL of CASTÉL-CUILLÉ.
PART I.
At the foot of the mountain height
Where is perched Castél-Cuillé,
When the apple, the plum and the almond-tree
In the plain below were growing white,
This is the song one might perceive
On a Wednesday morn of Saint Joseph's Eve:
'The roads should blossom, the roads should
bloom,
So fair a bride shall leave her home!'

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