From a British Classical Music: The Land of Lost Content post on Stanfords 1st Symphony:
It was written for a competition organised by the Alexandra Palace in London in 1876. It was for the best two symphonies written by British composers with prizes of £20 and £5 pounds being awarded respectively. Porte notes that the judges were George MacFarren and Joachim. Apparently there were some 46 entries with the first prize being awarded to a certain Francis Davenport and second to Stanford.
This competion could prove an interesting target for research, Francis Davenport has a brief mention on IMSLP as the arranger of one of George MacFarrens compositions, so there may have been skulduggery involved in the judging. One also wonders if any of the other works mentioned ended up in print or even survived.
jossuk wrote:It seems that Davenport was Macfarren's son-in-law, so how could Macfarren's choice be anything other than ... totally ... objective?
Indeed. I did a quick websearch (Using both Bing & Google) after posting and turned up nothing other than brief references in the context of Stanford's 1st symphony.
I've taken the step of adding Davenport to the wishlist.
I have found a reference to the competion in something I found on Google Books, it looks like one of the entrants may have been a woman with a connection to Macfarren.
...it appears that a third prize was created for Oliveria Prescott's Aikestis Symphony. Prescott was amanuensis to Macfarren at this time and this work is, as far as is known the only other symphony by a British woman composer in the nineteenth century.
Charles Villiers Stanford started his career through a symphony competition in 1876. Alexandra Palace (where a broadcast performance of Brian’s Das Siegeslied took place in 1974) had been opened in 1873, to rival the Crystal Palace, but it burned down a fortnight after its opening and was only re-opened in 1875—being used for concert purposes for only a short time, largely due to being ineffectively run. The judges for the 38 symphonies submitted to the 1876 competition (only three of which can still be identified) were Sir George Alexander Macfarren, professor of Music at Cambridge, and Joseph Joachim. The only symphony score known to have survived is that of Charles Villiers Stanford’s First Symphony, which won second prize.
Searching on google news turned up an announcement of the competition in the Boston Evening Telegraph of the 3rd of April 1876.
Thirty-five composers have entered for the symphony competition at the Alexandra Palace. The only conditions were that the symphonies should be hitherto unpublished and unperformed, that the the composers should be British subjects, and that the works should be sent in for competiton anonymously. The two prize works will be performed at the Alexandra Palace Saturday Concerts, and their composers will receive prizes of £20 and £5 respectively, given by an anonymous amateur.
35 full scale symphonies?
Makes one realize the massive amount of music that's been written in the 19th century, and the possibilities of digging up some hidden gems.
Too bad most modern orchestras are reluctant to program anything that isn't a proven success with the audience, so the same couple of dozen symphonies keep getting recycled.
Rob Peters wrote:35 full scale symphonies?
Makes one realize the massive amount of music that's been written in the 19th century, and the possibilities of digging up some hidden gems.
Too bad most modern orchestras are reluctant to program anything that isn't a proven success with the audience, so the same couple of dozen symphonies keep getting recycled.
I agree it's a pity, thank god for the recording industry.