Wilson, Christopher

Christopher Wilson – Suite pour instruments à cordes

(b. Melbourne, South Derbyshire, England, October 7, 1874 — d. London, February 18, 1919)

(1899?)

Prélude. p. 1
Air p.12
Scherzo p.15
Bourrée p.22
Romance p.26
Rigaudon p.31

Preface
Christopher Wilson was born into a musical family. Both his mother and grandmother were pianists; his father was an amateur musician; and his uncle, Frank Davenport, taught harmony and composition at the Royal Academy of Music. Wilson demonstrated very strong musical aptitude at a young age, as a composer and as an instrumentalist (piano, organ, violin, and viola).

While studying at the Royal Academy, he was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship in 1895. This scholarship allowed Wilson to study abroad for several years: in Cologne (with Franz Wüllner), in Berlin (with Heinrich von Herzogenberg), and in Paris (with Charles-Marie Widor).

A small amount of concert music by Wilson is known to exist—including two suites for strings, a handful of chamber works for strings (in part with piano), a mass, an opera/operetta, and piano music—but his largest musical output was for the stage. As early as 1900, Wilson began serving as conductor, musical director, or composer for a profusion of stage productions. The majority of these were straight plays, involving incidental music and sometimes songs. By 1918, Wilson had worked on nearly sixty productions for London theaters. Roughly half were plays by William Shakespeare, including no less than four productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was common practice at the time to cobble together music from various sources for such productions, but for this particular play, Mendelssohn always received credit as composer. However, there exists published music for the song “On the Ground,” with music by Wilson, that was performed in Otho Stuart’s production of the play at the Adelphi Theatre, in December 1906. Published songs by Wilson exist for numerous straight plays on which he worked. …

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