Geoffrey Toye

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Edward Geoffrey Toye (February 17, 1889 - June 11, 1942) was an English conductor, composer, and opera producer.

Contents

[edit] Life and career

Born in Winchester, Hampshire, Toye was the younger son of John Toye, a housemaster at Winchester, who for many years ran a music society for the boys.[1]

[edit] Early years

Toye studied at the Royal College of Music and, beginning in 1913, conducted in London theatres.[2] In 1914, he was entrusted by Ralph Vaughan Williams with conducting the première of his London Symphony at the Queen's Hall. When the manuscript was lost (having been sent to Fritz Busch in Germany just before the outbreak of war) Toye, together with George Butterworth and the critic Edward J. Dent, helped Vaughan Williams reconstruct the work.[3] Toye was also an intimate of Gustav Holst. The night before the première of The Planets, Toye dined with the composer and Adrian Boult and took exception to one bar in Neptune, where the brass play chords of E minor and G# minor together: 'I’m sorry, Gustav, but I can’t help thinking that’s going to sound frightful.' Holst agreed, and said it had made him shudder when he wrote it down, but insisted that it must be that way.[4]

Toye joined the Army in 1914, retiring with the rank of Major. After the war, he was engaged as assistant conductor of the Beecham Opera Company and also conducted the concerts at the Royal Philharmonic Society (1918-19).

Rupert D'Oyly Carte, a fellow Wykehamist, appointed Toye as music director for three D'Oyly Carte Opera Company seasons at the Prince's Theatre in London: 1919-20, 1921-22, and 1924.[5] In his first season there, Toye arranged a new overture for Ruddigore, removing themes that had been cut from the score and making other cuts throughout the score.[6] Thereafter, his overture was always used by the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, even when some cut numbers were restored in the 1970s. He also arranged a new overture for The Pirates of Penzance, but that did not remain in use.[7]

[edit] Later years

Toye became a governor of Sadler's Wells Opera in 1931, where as co-director with Lilian Baylis he managed the Opera until 1934. For the Sadler’s Wells Ballet company, in 1934, he composed The Haunted Ballroom to his own scenario. The ballet portrays the Masters of Treginnis, who are cursed to dance themselves to death in the gloomy ancestral ballroom by the ghosts of their former womenfolk. After the present Master meets his appointed fate, his son and heir is forced by the ghosts to realise that the curse has now passed to him. Ninette de Valois’s choreography of this ballet survives only in fragments. The Waltz from the score is probably Toye's best-known composition and has been recorded several times.[8]

Toye's other compositions included several books of songs (including some sea chanties), a symphony, another ballet, Douanes, also choreographed by de Valois,[9] a masque, Day and Night, an opera, The Fairy Cup, a radio opera, The Red Pen, and two short choral items: Henrichye's Death, with orchestra, and The Keeper, with brass accompaniment.[10]

From 1934 to 1936, Toye became Managing Director of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, working alongside the Artistic Director, Sir Thomas Beecham. Despite early successes, Toye and Beecham eventually fell out, and though as Managing Director Toye was theoretically the stronger man on the board, Beecham remained and Toye resigned.[11] Toye also conducted at the Old Vic, among other theatres, and for the Royal Philharmonic Society, and he founded the Lloyds Choir.[12]

Toye obtained the film rights to the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In 1938, he adapted, produced, and conducted The Mikado, starring Martyn Green, but the onset of war prevented further screen adaptations. Toye composed and arranged the music for two other British films of the 1930s: Men Are Not Gods and Rembrandt, both for Alexander Korda in 1936.[13]

Toye's elder brother, Francis, was a well-known critic and Verdi scholar. Their niece, Jennifer Toye, was a D'Oyly Carte soprano in the 1950s and '60s. Toye died in London at the age of 53.

[edit] Recordings

Toye made very few gramophone records. For HMV in 1928, he conducted the London Symphony Orchestra in a recording of Delius's Brigg Fair, On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring, and In a Summer Garden. Delius wrote thanking Toye: ‘All three... are excellent and I shall be glad to have them sold as authorised by me.’[citation needed]

Of Toye’s original music, the waltz from The Haunted Ballroom has been recorded several times,[14] including a recent recording by Marco Polo.[15]

Toye’s overture to Ruddigore has been recorded numerous times, conducted by Harry Norris, Isidore Godfrey, and Sir Malcolm Sargent (who each recorded the complete opera) and Sir Charles Mackerras, among others. Norris, Godfrey and Sargent all observe some or all of Toye's cuts and other minor alterations in the score.[16] Toye's only recording conducting a G&S work is the 1938 film of The Mikado referred to above.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Chislett
  2. ^ Chislett
  3. ^ Mann
  4. ^ Boult, p. 32
  5. ^ Rollins and Witts
  6. ^ Hughes
  7. ^ Oakapple
  8. ^ Music Web
  9. ^ Sadler's Wells programme, 9 October, 1935
  10. ^ 1997 article by Philip L. Scowcroft that includes information about Toye
  11. ^ Jefferson, p. 175
  12. ^ Scowcroft article
  13. ^ IMDB
  14. ^ Information about recordings of The Haunted Ballroom
  15. ^ Scowcroft article
  16. ^ Summary of Ruddigore recordings at the G&S Discography

[edit] References

[edit] External links