ARTS PRESS RELEASES

British choir chosen for International Choral Conducting Competition

Bristol Bach Choir have been chosen as one of three choirs who will participate in the 2005 Mariele Ventre International Competition for Choral Conductors, to be held the Museo Internazionale della Musica, Bologna, between 5 and 9 October 2005. They will rehearse and perform primarily contemporary repertoire for the Concorso, but also undertake concerts outside the competition with their conductor Peter Leech. It is a great honour for Bristol Bach Choir, which has developed a reputation in Bristol and the South-West for imaginitive and exciting concerts with a wide variety of repertoire from the Renaissance to present day.

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British Conductor wins International Competition

Australian-born British choral and orchestral conductor Peter Leech won first prize at the Mariele Ventre International Competition for Choral Conductors held in Bologna between 9 and 12 October 2003. A total of 12 conductors competed, selected out of 48 applications from 20 countries. His award includes a cash prize and the Silver Cup of the Presidency of the Italian Republic. An informal offer has been made for an appearance at the 2004 Ravenna Festival.

Peter is a graduate of the Elder Conservatorium (Adelaide) and Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne University). He won the Henry Krips Conducting Scholarship in 1994 whilst working as conductor of New Holland Baroque (Adelaide), Ensemble Esterhaza (Melbourne) and the Tudor Choristers (Melbourne). He was Director of Music at St.Peter's Cathedral, Adelaide, from 1993-94 and a regular guest conductor with the Melbourne International Festival of Organ and Harpsichord from 1991 to 1995. In 1996 Peter was guest director of The Song Company (Sydney) for their award-winning CD recording 'Quito'.

Since 1996 Peter has been based in the United Kingdom, where he has directed numerous choral and orchestral ensembles, including the Cathedral Singers of Christ Church, Oxford (1997-99), Chandos Chamber Choir (2000-02), Frideswide Ensemble (1999-) and Esterhazy Chamber Choir and Orchestra (2000). Peter was appointed Musical Director of the City of Oxford Choir in 1998 and Bristol Bach Choir in 1999. In 2002 and early 2003 he was guest Chorus Master with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, preparing major choral works for concerts conducted by Walter Weller and Frederic Chaslin and a world-premiere CD recording of Edward Collins 'Hymn to the Earth', conducted by Marin Alsop.

JESUIT MUSIC MANUSCRIPT DISCOVERY

'THE FORGOTTEN MAESTRO' - Article by Peter Leech published in The Catholic Herald, 7 October 2005

It is probably the secret dream of every researcher, in whatever subject, to make an important life-changing discovery. Over the last hundred years music historians and musicologists have occasionally come across previously undocumented manuscripts hidden in public and private libraries. Lost musical works have also turned up at auction, or been found at flea markets and in dusty attics. These are of course not typical situations and in many cases the discoveries are accidental and not directly related to the interests of the researcher. The odds stacked against the possibility of a discovery having a direct bearing upon the specialised research topic of the discoverer are probably high, but sometimes miracles do happen.

On a very cold and damp Saturday morning in February 2004 I was preparing for a viva-voce examination as the final part of my PhD in musicology from Anglia Polytechnic University. For the last six years I had been researching the music of the Roman Catholic community in seventeenth century England. Desperately in need of some fresh air and a change of scene, I decided to go out for a few hours in the hope that a walk around the markets at Camden Lock might clear my head and help me to focus. As I wandered casually past a second-hand book stall full of a variety of material ranging from early Victorian editions of Dickens to Biggles, something caught my eye. I have been a collector of antiquarian books for twenty years, and have spent many hours in British and French libraries studying seventeenth century music manuscripts but none of this quite prepared me for what happened next. Sticking out from above a series of crumbling Penguin paperbacks was a small volume bound in brown leather, the rich gold tooling of the spine contrasting sharply with a background of dull orange. Instinctively I pulled it out, but had only flipped through a few pages when I started trembling with excitement. I was convinced that in my hands was a seventeenth-century keyboard manuscript in almost pristine condition!

The seller was obviously totally unaware of what the item was. A description pencilled inside the front cover read ‘old music’ with a correspondingly low price below it. Having paid for the item, I walked towards Camden tube station reeling from the shock of what had just transpired. My only thought was to get home safely to examine the manuscript privately. An inscription on the flyleaf indicated it was a collection of keyboard pieces by ‘Padre Antonio Mason, alias Selosse’. Putting the manuscript on the piano, I started playing through some of the pieces and realised how special this find was. The majority of works (mostly comprising suites and sets of variations) were clearly intended for harpsichord, but there were others for which organ seems to have been envisaged. It was obvious that the music was carefully crafted and composed by a musician of high calibre, but I was determined to get a second opinion, even though I felt sure my initial instincts had been correct. What better opportunity was there than to take the manuscript with me to the viva-voce, where my supervisor and another two examiners would be present, all three being experts in seventeenth-century music manuscripts. All of them were totally amazed by the find and happily declared it to be authentic. My supervisor even recognised one or two pieces which he had seen in another source. Needless to say, there cannot be many PhD students in musicology who have turned up to their viva with a seventeenth century keyboard manuscript!

With the help of the Professor Maurice Whitehead at Swansea University, Father Tom McCoog at the Jesuit Archives and my own investigations, further light has been shed on the composer. Father Antoine Selosse S.J. (1621-87) was Professor of Music at the English Jesuit College of Saint Omers from around 1658, probably until shortly before his death. The College was one of the leading foundations of its type in Europe, with a rigorous and varied curriculum typical of Jesuit scholastic models. Almost no music survives from the English Jesuit colleges (indeed very little at all has come down from the European Jesuit colleges as a whole from the period 1550-1773) so the importance of the Selosse manuscript for the history of English Catholic music, as well as Catholic music in general, cannot be overstated. There is tantalising evidence in the volume which suggests a connection with another Jesuit musician Anthony Poole (one of Selosse’s colleagues at Saint Omers) and with an English late seventeenth century manuscript derived possibly from the Protestant community copied around 1680-90. It therefore seems likely that the Selosse manuscript may well have arrived in England during or shortly before this period. This also suggests evidence of a link between Catholic and Protestant musical circles at a time when penal laws made life for English Catholics extremely difficult. The transmission of music across religious boundaries in seventeenth century England has yet to be fully appraised.

A considerable amount of further work has to be undertaken to determine the nature of Antoine’s Selosse’s musical training and his influence upon the many students who studied at Saint Omers during his tenure as music Professor. The manuscript has lifted him out of obscurity, but the primary task at hand is to set him in the context of his time. The period when he was at his prime witnessed the emergence of several French virtuoso keyboard players such as Louis Couperin and D’Anglebert. It could be that Selosse is a more important part of the history of keyboard music in Northern France and England at this time than has previously been known. Hundreds, if not thousands of English Catholics passed through Saint Omers on their travels over the years, so it is possible more of his music has been dispersed to other parts of Europe (perhaps other Jesuit archives) where it languishes in anonymity. There are still many questions which have yet to be answered but one thing is certain. The chances of a manuscript derived from the English seventeenth century Catholic community being discovered by a researcher for whom that topic is his primary interest must surely be one in a million!

As a conductor as well as a musicologist I have long championed the Catholic musical culture of seventeenth century England, convinced that more evidence of its richness was out there somewhere and that we should not be too eager to assume that the full story has been told. The discovery of the Selosse manuscript could not have been a better vindication of my enthusiasm for a topic which many have regarded with scepticism in their belief that there was nothing to find.

Peter Leech