A Life-long Composer

Ronald Corp always wanted to be a composer and began writing music even before he was taught to play the piano. There were frequent opportunities for performances at school and University where the art of planning and directing concerts quickly became second nature. His compositions fall into various categories: choir with orchestra, choral (SATB) with or without piano/organ accompaniment, choral for upper voices or children, again with or without accompaniment, larger scale works for children, solo songs and song-cycles, orchestral works, chamber music and community projects.

Works for Choir and Orchestra

Having, in 1970, destroyed most of his childhood and juvenile pieces, the first major work which Corp today acknowledges is the cantata, And All the Trumpets Sounded (1988) – a commission of Highgate Choral Society who gave the first performance in 1989 (published by Stainer and Bell in 2011). Other substantial choral works with orchestra followed. Laudamus (1994) was performed to great critical acclaim at St. John's, Smith Square by the London Chorus leading, in time, to a third performance at a Royal Festival Hall Gala Concert. Then came A New Song (1999, OUP), a cantata set to the Psalms praising God for singers and singing; Adonai Echad (‘The Lord is One’, 2000) with its mixing of texts from the Jewish and Christian faiths and premiered at the Hampstead and Highgate Festival in 2001; Mary's Song (2001), Jubilate Deo (2008) and The Hound of Heaven (2009) after Francis Thompson’s mystical poem.

Settings of the Mass

The catalogue includes three settings of the Mass. In the first year of the new millenium Christ our Future (1999, OUP) was premiered at the Greenwich Arena with the New London Orchestra before an audience of 10,000; the Missa San Marco (2002, Stainer and Bell) was written for a cappella choir and given its second performance by Highgate Choral Society at St. Mark’s, Venice in 2003; and A Christmas Mass (Stainer and Bell) for choir and organ was released on an EMI CD entitled Hark! Chantage at Christmas in 2008. Prior to this, Chantage had given the first performance and been voted the 2007 BBC Choir of the Year iin 2007. This is not forgetting a Missa Brevis and, more significantly, an unaccompanied cycle of seven songs taking the form of a Requiem, Forever Child (OUP), first sung by Voces Cantabile and lending its name to the title of their CD, Forever Child and Other Choral Works.

In 2003 BBC Radio 3 commissioned a major work for the BBC Singers – a setting of Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach, with its atmospheric opening of wordless chanting, subsequently recorded on the Forever Child CD.

Smaller works include a hushed setting in Latin and English of Psalm 23 and Laurence Binyon for choir and organ, We will remember Them; Verbum Patris umanatur (‘Word of God now made incarnate’, OUP) for a capella choir with its springing metrical changes; and There is no Rose (Novello). Somewhat better-known may be Give to my eyes, Lord as it is published in various vocal/choral versions by OUP and appears on no less than three recordings (Pigs Could Fly, Forever Child, The Songs of Ronald Corp).

Music for Children

An expert in working with children's choirs, Ronald Corp has a large output of upper-voice music. Works published by OUP include Four Elizabethan Lyrics (1994), a commission for the Farnham Youth Choir enabled by the choir's success in the prestigious Sainsbury Choir of the Year competition; and Cornucopia, premiered in 1997 by a number of choirs affiliated to the British Federation of Young Choirs and scored for upper voices and orchestra. The work consists of twelve songs divided between three sections: Seasonal Songs, Sad Songs and Sillier Songs. In 2002 he wrote a second work in this expanded format, Kaleidoscope, this time with fourteen songs. For SA choir and thirteen instruments, its gala première at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall was voted a huge success by both its young performers and audience. Both these works have had a number of performances, while individual songs have occasionally been show-cased alone or in new arrangements, such as Mark Stone’s solo rendition of 'The Owl and the Pussycat' (from Kaleidoscope) and 'Weep Ye no more, Sad Fountains' and 'The Irish Pig' (Cornucopia) on his CD of The Songs of Ronald Corp.

Of his numerous part-songs and carols for children's choir, perhaps the most notable are A Cradle Song (Novello) and Five Flower Songs, settings of Robert Herrick with an immediacy yet wistfulness that match the poetry’s playful and buoyant imagery of transience and loss (on the Pigs Could Fly CD). Two other works in this category, For a Child and All Ye Works of the Lord, call beyond the usual piano accompaniment for a chamber ensemble.

His Christmas opera for children’s voices, Wenceslas, was premiered in 1982 and staged again in 2008. A more recent opera, The Ice Mountain (2010), with libretto by Emma Hill on a dark tale from Swiss folklore, has been recorded by the New London Children’s Choir with accompanying chamber ensemble, and was released on the Naxos label in May, 2011.
 

Songs and Song-cycles

Besides solo songs like Break, break break (1966), O admirabile and The Bargain (both 1972), Toward the Unknown Region, the tongue-in-cheek The Bath and the darkly humorous He Kicked the Chair, Corp has written several sets of songs which may form smaller groupings (eg. Three Elizabethan Songs) or fully-fledged song-cycles like Miscellanie and Flower of Cities – a celebration of London through various poets’ eyes. His love of literature is strikingly evident in the numerous sets of songs devoted to a single poet: Blake, Catullus, Clare, Donne, Drayton, Emily Dickinson, Fletcher, Hardy, Rossetti, Tennyson, Thompson, Wilde and Wordsworth – mostly dating from the early to mid-70s. The Music of Housman, The Music of Whitman and Flower of Cities form the bulk of the disc recorded by baritone Mark Stone in 2010, and represent the first commercial recording of The Songs of Ronald Corp. Unique among the cycles is the satirical Country Matters calling, as it does, for accompaniment by string trio (featured on a Naxos disc ) and whose poems by Steven Mainwaring are described by the composer as 'variously poignant and riotously outrageous'.

Orchestral Music

In the orchestral catalogue are the Concerto Grosso, Guernsey Postcards (2004), Symphony No. 1 (2009) and Piano Concerto No. 1: the latter’s première was given by Julian Evans in a New London Orchestra concert in 1997 at St. John's, Smith Square, with a second performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall five years later and a third rendition at Cadogan Hall in 2009, this time with Leon McCawley as soloist. The work, together with Guernsey Postcards and Symphony No.1 has been recorded by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ronald Corp, again with McCawley as soloist. Details of the CD are under Recordings. He has also worked as an arranger: for example, his orchestrations of Satie's Trois Gnossiennes are featured in the film, Chocolat (2000), directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Juliet Binoche; and a suite of Purcell pieces arranged for violin and string orchestra was performed in 2003 with a revised version being aired in 2008.

Chamber Music

His chamber compositions embrace pieces for various solo instruments plus piano, notably the Rhapsody for Bassoon and Piano – Notes from 'The Egoist', the Rhapsody for Double Bass and Piano, and the Homage to Martinů for flute and piano which was performed at a recital at Covent Garden in 2003. Exploration of the soundworlds of bigger chamber structures resulted in two String Quartets (2008 and 2010) championed by the Maggini Quartet. No. 1, subtitled ‘The Bustard’, had its première at the Wigmore Hall, and a Naxos CD featuring both works came out in early 2011, coupled with the song-cycle, Country Matters, for tenor and string trio. String Quartet No. 3 was premiered in June 2011 by the Wihan Quartet.
 
Large-scale children's and community cantatas include Playing with the Sun (2002), Urban Voices (Gospel Oak, London, 2003-4), One World (Bracknell), The Waters of Time (Wells Cathedral, 2006), The Journey Begins (Newham, 2007) and In Training (2009). Indeed, projects with Newham community groups have become a fixture of the calendar.

A concert of Ronald Corp’s choral pieces and songs was given in 2007 at the Wigmore Hall, featuring Voces Cantabiles and highlighting works from their Forever Child recording.

New Works

Recent works include a setting of texts from the Dhammapada (2010) – Buddhist verses on finding happiness and fulfilment in daily life, the String Quartet No. 2 (2010) written to celebrate the birth of a baby boy and String Quartet No. 3 (2011), lighter in mood and shorter in span than the first two.

A new anthem, Laudate Dominum, commissioned by The Musicians Benevolent Fund, was performed at the St. Cecilia Service on 23 November, 2011. The massed choirs of Westminster Abbey, Westminster Cathedral and St. Paul’s Cathedral were directed by Martin Baker in Westminster Cathedral.
 
New works due to be recorded in 2012 include the Clarinet Quintet, written for Andrew Marriner and inspired by the engravings of Joseph Crawhall of Northumberland; The Yellow Wallpaper, a dramatic solo cantata exploring themes of depression and insanity with text by Francis Booth based on the short story of Charlotte Perkins Gilman; String Quartet No. 3; Songs of the Elder Sisters and Lullaby for a Lost Soul.