Richard Ayleward, a harmonic link between Tudor and Restoration music.

Born in 1626, Richard Ayleward was the son of a minor canon at Winchester Cathedral, also called Richard. Ayleward sang as a chorister in the Winchester cathedral choir under the director of music Christopher Gibbons, son of Orlando Gibbons. Ayleward must have paid attention, or received a significant amount of tuition since his handwriting style for text and music is almost identical to Gibbons! During the English Restoration, Ayleward was organist and choirmaster of Norwich Cathedral from 1661-1664, and again from 1666-1669. It's not clear why Ayleward gave up his post temporarily in 1664 but he was reappointed in 1665 and remained until his death in 1669.

During the Civil War Interregnum Ayleward must have privately composed many choral pieces, since after the Restoration he was able to quickly produce twenty highly original anthems, one written for the Coronation of Charles II. Ayleward seems to have had distinct Royalist sympathies, and possible connections to the Royal Court, which would have not made him a popular figure during the Interregnum and hence suggests a possible reason for composing privately until the Restoration.

And that was as much as I could discover about this Restoration composer whose Preces and Responses I have sung with our choir for some years.

However Dr. Hugo Janacek, a member of a Facebook Choral Evensong group, piqued my interest recently when he shared some research of his. Janacek researches East Anglian choral music, and has used a complete set of 17th century partbooks written in Ayleward’s hand and signed by him. All the manuscripts of Ayleward's compositions were owned by Norwich Cathedral, purchased by A. H. Mann in the nineteenth century and published.  However whilst Mann deserves much credit for preserving Ayleward's work, he seems to be the source of some confusion around Ayleward's dates, writing in 1886 that Ayleward's birth year was 1626, later admitting he was without proof. As part of his research, Janacek ha in fact uncovered a good candidate for Ayleward’s baptism record, which suggests he was in fact baptised in April 1625 in a village close to Winchester.

The surviving choral music consists of 20 verse anthems, 2 verse settings of the evening canticles (the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis) and the Short Service, which contains settings of music for the whole daily office. it is his Short Service which is best known. His responses, with which I was already familiar, are from this Service.

Dyson in D - Magnificat

Those of you who know me are well aware of my love of Howells' wonderful music, and will be unsurprised to learn of my support on Twitter for Howell's in G over Dyson in D in the "World Cup of Evensong Canticles! Sadly my "team" were knocked out of the second round, but I graciously concede we lost to an equally impressive canticle setting!!

(If you want to follow the "World Cup" of evensong canticles, follow @TheEvensongCup on Twitter! You can even vote for the equally wonderful Howell's Gloucester service later today...)

The wonderful Rodolfus foundation under the baton of Ralph Allwood, is launching a Virtual Choir to create a Choral Evensong, inviting everyone to take part. This will be a wonderful chance to unite in musical harmony at a time when we will be missing our usual singing.

There is an introductory video (below) publicly available on YouTube. Instructions to download material are here  if you want to get involved!

 

Biography
George Dyson (1883-1964) began his musical career in the world of Church and organ music. By way of several scholarships, Dyson received formal musical training on the organ and in composition at the Royal College of Music. In 1904 he won the Mendelssohn travelling scholarship which enabled him to study in Italy and Germany for four years. It was during his stay in Dresden in 1907 that Dyson composed the Magnificat and Nunc dimittis in D major. After the War, Dyson became head of music at Wellington College and joined the staff of the Royal College of Music. From 1924 to 1937 he was director of music at Winchester College.

In his Evening Service in D Dyson uses broad, expansive phrases and imaginative, descriptive writing like his predecessors Parry and Stanford, and he also understood the power of unison writing. The overall feeling in this setting is one of exaltation.

One of my favourite nuggets of information on Dyson is that in addition to composing and writing books on music he also authored a Manual of Grenade Fighting, which was adopted by the War Office in the First World War!

Music
You can sing along with the Kings' College, Cambridge recording on Youtube below, and you can currently download the score from the Rodolfus links above. If you are ready to sing with only an organ accompaniment, download the Rodolfus .mp3 file and have a go!