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Music
- Evening Services in G for Trebles, SATB, and ATB men’s voices (Novello)
- Evening Service in D
- Te Deum in G (Novello)
- In Exile
- They that go down to the sea in ships
- The Holy Birth (Oecumuse)
- Watt’s Cradle Song (from The Holy Birth)
Life
Sumsion was born in Gloucester in 1899, was a chorister in that city, and became an articled pupil of Sir Herbert Brewer, the Cathedral Organist. He later studied at the Royal College of Music before proceeding to organ and teaching posts in or near London. After a short period in America (1926-1928) as Professor of Harmony at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, he accepted the appointment of Organist and Master of the Choristers at Gloucester Cathedral on the sudden death of Brewer. He was able to take up his duties just in time to conduct the 1928 Three Choirs Festival, immediately justifying the confidence placed in him by the high standard of his direction and musicianship. It was ‘John’ Sumsion’s performance at that Festival that prompted Sir Edward Elgar’s now-famous remark: ‘What at the beginning of the week was assumption has now become a certainty.' Sumsion was honoured with the Lambeth Doctorate of Music in 1947 and awarded the CBE in 1961.
He retired from the post at Gloucester Cathedral in 1967 and continued to be active with teaching and composition until shortly before his death in 1995. He had a special sympathy for the works of the English composers stemming from Vaughan Williams and Elgar, and was responsible for bringing works of younger composers to the attention of the British public. It should not be forgotten that two great English choral works of this century - Herbert Howells’s Hymnus Paradisi and Gerald Finzi’s Intimations of Immortality - received their premieres at the 1950 Gloucester Festival. These two composers were particularly close friends of Sumsion. It would follow then that Sumsion’s own compositions are in this same mould, yet there is a very distinct style that endears his music to singers and listeners alike. Word setting is always felicitous and, as might be expected, the organ accompaniments are imaginative - and playable! Church music has benefitted tremendously from his work, for his compositions in this medium have been prolific and wide-ranging. (taken from liner notes, CDH55009 English Choral & Organ Music, Hyperion Records, a "must" for your collection!)
Paul Wigmore wrote three hymn texts in collaboration with John. That was in 1993. They are published by Oecumuse.
- When rays of that first morning... Tune: ‘Gloucester’
- Day, when creation... Tune: ‘Rodborough Common’
- Peace came at evening... Tune: ‘Hartley’
- O Lord, be with me... Tune: ‘Philadelphia’