Dundee University director of music Graeme Stevenson is, in his own words, a “sucker for something new” when it comes to the university’s music society.
So when Brian Clark of Prima la Music (a local early music publishing company) brought a couple of rediscovered works by a highly successful 19th century composer from Dundee to his attention, he was intrigued.
Now Dundee University Music Society is to give the first public performance in around a century of ‘King Arthur’ – a dramatic cantata composed by John More Smieton who was an accomplished contemporary of Gilbert & Sullivan and who combined his creative endeavours with his role in the family’s jute dynasty.
The Smieton family lived at Panmure Villa – most recently known as Armistead House and currently an at-risk building – at a time when Broughty Ferry famously had more millionaires per square mile than any other town in Britain thanks to Dundee’s jute boom.
The family, though little-known these days, made a remarkable contribution to Scotland’s cultural scene in the Victorian era.
John’s parents had their paintings exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy while his mother was also the first Scottish woman to compose an opera.
The Smietons’ wealth allowed John and his brother James, a poet, to indulge their passions for the arts.
But their commitment to the family business also curtailed their achievements in them and John took over the running of the family’s jute mill in Carnoustie upon his father’s death in 1886.
Despite this he still managed to compose songs and piano solos as well as choral setting, a string quartet and an orchestral overture.
He was best known for his Dramatic Cantatas, an extremely popular form in late Victorian times.
He produced four cantatas, his first as a 10-year-old, with the latter three all to libretti by his brother James.
King Arthur (1889) was the most successful of these, receiving 100 performances across the UK and seeing a dozen editions of the score published by the time of his death in 1904.
John’s memory has been kept alive by a handful of local history enthusiasts and music buffs and it was they who brought his work to the attention of Graeme Stevenson, director of music at the university.
Graeme told The Courier: “The vocal score ie the choir book was very easy to get hold of off the internet, and indeed I was able to get an 11th edition of it from Abebooks.com (11 editions shows how popular the work was at the time!).
“The orchestral parts are long gone sadly.
Score
“I was able to get copies of original scores from the Royal Academy of Music in London in the summer last year and then spent the next few months creating my own score and then from that making all the parts.
“The choir and orchestra have enjoyed working on it and it is something a bit more special working on a piece that was conceived and first performed in Dundee all those years ago.
“The first performance took place in Broughty Ferry Volunteer Hall which is now West End Honda.”King Arthur by University of Dundee Music Society, Caird Hall, Dundee, March 25, www.dundeebox.co.uk
