Since his tragically early death in 1892, English composer Arthur Goring Thomas has been sadly neglected. We’ve recently uploaded two of his beautiful atmospheric songs ‘A Summer Night’ and  ‘The Viking’s Daughter’ and hope that these might stand as a small tribute to his skills as a composer.

Arthur Goring Thomas studied in Paris with Emile Durand – whose pupils included Debussy and Pierné - and it is easy to see the influence of Goring Thomas’ French contemporaries. 

‘A Summer Night’ is very much a through-composed ‘mélodie’ rather than the characteristic English art-song or parlour-song of his day. As in Fauré’s work, the melody is an evident part of the harmonic scheme, consisting of short and exquisitely shaped phrases. The initial optimism of the song’s opening question is transformed into understated desolation in the impassioned and rhetorical coda – ‘have you forgotten, Love, so soon?...’

Goring Thomas appeared to prefer to set songs in French and this originally French lyric,’ Une Nuit de Mai’ is by Theo Marzials (the English-born son of a French Protestant minister in London).  The English version is a free translation of this poem and possibly also by Marzials (who was rather harshly judged to be Britain’s worst poet as recently as 2007 but was much favoured by his contemporaries). In English, it differs in that the month of May is not mentioned at all.

Goring Thomas also collaborated with Marzials and Randegger when they were co-librettists for his opera ‘Esmeralda’ (based on the novel by Victor Hugo). This was a great success at the time and ran to performances in German in Cologne and Hamburg as well as being translated into French.  (http://www.musicwithease.com/thomas-esmeralda.html)

Why then was he almost ‘air-brushed’ out of the musical picture in Britain some twenty years after his death? It’s tempting to speculate that perhaps the stigma associated with his suicide may have had something to do with it. Fortunately now his condition is now better understood. Perhaps it was just the changing tastes of post WW1 Britain - strange too, because creatively, he was actually much ahead of his time.

‘A Summer Night’ in D Flat – has a range of just under two octaves and would be suitable for mezzo or baritone. We hope be adding more of his songs to the catalogue soon.

Find the accompaniments at www.youraccompanist.com.