The Stephen Dodgson International Choral Project celebrates the rich choral output of composer Stephen Dodgson and seeks to encourage performances of his works in the lead-up to his centenary in 2024.
Dodgson’s choral works are full of colour and vividly evoke the poetry of the texts that he loved to set and include everything from simple miniatures for upper voices to large-scale choral works with orchestra, as well as settings with more unusual scoring including different works accompanied by flute (Four Poems of Mary Coleridge), guitar (River Songs) and harp (Home-Bred Pictures).
The year-long project, bookended by the 10th anniversary of his death in 2023 and his centenary in 2024, is a collaboration between the Barnes Music Festival (Dodgson was a local Barnes composer along with Holst and Howells) and the Stephen Dodgson Charitable Trust. We are seeking to engage with choirs around the world and offer support, resources and potential opportunities for them discover, perform and potentially record his delightful, and enable these choirs to reach new audiences, share interpretative ideas.
About Stephen Dodgson
Stephen Dodgson was a composer of great breadth, his style ranging from from angularly playful to deeply movingly evocative. Himself a professor of composition at the RCM, many of his orchestral works were performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and the Royal Northern Sinfonia, and there has been a resurgence in his chamber work and solo songs with recent recordings by the Tippett Quartet, Karolos, Magnard Ensemble, Ailish Tynan, James Gilchrist, Roderick Williams, Marcus Farnsworth and Christopher Glynn, and many others.
Dodgson was particularly known for his works for guitar (he was commissioned by both John Williams and Julian Bream) but had a prolific output across many idioms including a wealth of choral music, with performances and recordings by The King’s Singers, BBC Singers and King’s College Cambridge among others. But there remains much untapped choral music and the International Choral Project aims to engage with choirs at every level and provide them with free resources and support to help discover this treasure trove.
Choral project resources
Resources available for choirs include:
- Licence-free scores
- Catalogue of choral works (detailing forces required, style, difficulty level, themes of each piece)
- Dodgson’s own programme notes on some pieces
- Additional promotion to the Stephen Dodgson newsletter list and other followers
- Potential support advertising performances (across broadcasting media)
- Potential support around new performance opportunities (festivals, choral collaborations), especially in the Dodgson 2024 centenary
- Possible commercial recording opportunity in 2024–25
Limited grants may also be available for choirs. (Please use the contact form to get in touch and find out more.)