Ronald Geoffrey Corp OBE (born January 4, 1951) is a composer, conductor, and Church of England priest. He is founder and Artistic Director of the New London Orchestra and the New London Children's Choir. Corp is Musical Director of the London Chorus, a position he took up in 1994, and is also Musical Director of the Highgate Choral Society.
Corp was born and grew up in Wells, Somerset. He studied music at Oxford University.
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See also New London Orchestra
Ronald Corp founded the New London Orchestra in 1988 which launched his conducting career. In the years following, Corp’s engagements as a conductor have included concerts and recordings with the BBC Concert Orchestra, the Ulster Orchestra, the BBC Scottish Orchestra, the Royal Scottish National Orchestra and Scottish Chamber Orchestra, as well as appearing at the BBC Proms.[1]
Through his role as conductor and Artistic Director, Corp programmes and aims to bring to life repertoire written in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries which is rarely heard in concert. Together with the New London Orchestra, Corp's reputation in championing neglected music has resulted in 20 recordings with Hyperion Records which feature composers such as Milhaud and a series of Light Music Classics, four of them of British, and one each of American Light Music Classics and European Light Music Classics. One of the most recent of these releases is a CD of pieces for string orchestra, written by the Polish female composer Grażyna Bacewicz.[2] His introductions from the stage are a key part of his mission to make music more accessible.
See also New London Children's Choir
The New London Children’s Choir was launched by Ronald Corp in 1991 with the aim of introducing children to the challenges and fun of singing and performing all types of music.is one of the busiest and most successful children’s ensembles in the country. The choir has commissioned more than 40 new pieces and has premiered numerous other works by composers including its patrons Louis Andriessen and Michael Nyman. It has performed frequently at the Proms, made a number of film soundtrack and TV recordings, including the soundtrack to Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace and been engaged for concerts and recordings with all the major London orchestras and opera companies. The choir and its members have appeared regularly in major London concert halls working with orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and sing onstage at the English National Opera.
Ronald Corp began writing music at a very early age. Learning the piano gave him a means of hearing and notating the pieces. He wrote throughout his teens and his undergraduate days at Oxford.
Through his musical association with choruses and singers, particularly the Highgate Choral Society and the London Chorus, Corp has written a large amount of material for choirs, both accompanied and unaccompanied. Most notably, Ronald Corp’s first major choral work And All the Trumpets Sounded was premiered in 1989 by Highgate Choral Society, who commissioned it. His cantata Laudamus (1994) was premiered at St John's, Smith Square by the London Choral Society (now the London Chorus) to great critical acclaim.[3] In 2003 BBC Radio 3 commissioned a major work for the BBC Singers - a setting of Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach.
Following his work with youth choruses and the formation of the New London Children's Choir, Corp has also established himself as a composer for young voices. In 1998, on the strength of this reputation, Corp was commissioned to write for the Farnham Youth Choir, who were winners of their section of the Sainsbury Choir of the Year. This commission resulted in the composition of Four Elizabethan Lyrics. Other works for children’s choir include Cornucopia (OUP), a cycle of songs with orchestra (1997), and its successor Kaleidoscope (2002). His Christmas opera, Wenceslas, was premiered in 1982, having another performance in 2008 again by the New London Children's Choir.
Orchestral works include Guernsey Postcards, commissioned by the Guernsey Camerata, a Concerto Grosso and the Symphony No.1. Corp's orchestrations of Erik Satie's Gnossiennes are featured in the film Chocolat of 2000. Other large-scale compositions include the Piano Concerto No.1 (1997) which has received three performances by pianists Julian Evans and Leon McCawley and was described by one critic as:
"... possibly the most winningly successful British Piano Concerto of the last forty years or so. It is wholly exceptionally, very well written in true virtuoso pianistic style." Review of the Piano Concerto from Musical Opinion
Corp's String Quartet No.1 "The Bustard" was premiered at the Wigmore Hall by the Maggini Quartet in 2008.[4] His song-cycle, The Music of Francis Thompson, received its world première at Benslow Music Trust in January, 2010.[5] In July 2011, his song-cycle, The Music of Whitman had its première at the Tardebigge English Song Festival in Worcestershire, performed by Mark Stone (baritone) and Stephen Barlow (piano); his most recent song-cycle, The Music of Browning, was first performed in October, 2011, as part of the Little Venice Music Festival with Robert Presley (baritone) and Andrew Robinson (piano).
On Saturday 9 July 2011, 7.30pm, Corp celebrated his 60th birthday year at the Royal Festival Hall in London with a performance of And All the Trumpets Sounded and the World Première of The Wayfarer (In homage to Mahler) for 16 solo singers and orchestra, a setting of two of Mahler's own poems from his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and of his early poem, 'Im Lenz'. Ronald Corp conducted the New London Orchestra, and the combined forces of Highgate Choral Society, the London Chorus and the New London Children's Choir were deployed in the rest of the concert. A pre-concert talk took place with Corp in conversation with Richard Morrison.
Corp was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 New Year Honours for services to music.[6]
Recordings of music by Ronald Corp include:
Symphony No. 1, Piano Concerto No. 1, Guernsey Postcards (orchestral triptych). Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Ronald Corp, conductor, Leon McCawley, piano. Recorded 2009, released 2010. DUTTON EPOCH CDLX 7233
Dhammapada for a choir of eight soloists and pre-recorded temple bells. Apsara (chamber choir), Ronald Corp, director. Recorded 2010, released January 2011. STONE RECORDS 5060192780055
The Songs of Ronald Corp (Song-cycles: The Music of Housman, The Music of Whitman and Flower of Cities; Give to my Eyes, Lord (Colin Coppen); Break, break, break (Tennyson); The Owl and the Pussycat (Lear); Sleep (John Fletcher); Toward the Unknown Region (Whitman); The Bath (Harry Graham); and song arrangements from Cornucopia.) Mark Stone, baritone, Simon Lepper, piano. Recorded and released 2010. STONE RECORDS 5060192780031
String Quartet No. 1 'The Bustard', Country Matters (song-cycle) for tenor and string trio, String Quartet No. 2. Maggini Quartet, Mark Wilde, tenor. Recorded 2010, released March 2011. NAXOS 8.570578
Forever Child and Other Choral Music (Forever Child; Verbum Patris; Give to my Eyes, Lord; 'May the Lord Bless You and Keep You' (from Adonai Echad); Dover Beach (Arnold); 'Weep You no more, Sad Fountains' (from Cornucopia); Two Partsongs ('Heraclitus' and 'I Strove with None'); Missa San Marco; Four Elizabethan Lyrics; Fear No More the Heat o' the Sun (Shakespeare); Lute-Book Lullaby (Sweet was the Song); Requiem (R. L. Stephenson). Voces Cantabiles, Ronald Corp, conductor. Recorded 2005, released 2006. DUTTON EPOCH CDLX 7171
Other of the compositions of Ronald Corp on CD include A Christmas Mass (sung by Chantage on the disc Hark! Chantage at Christmas on EMI) and his Five Flower Songs and other children’s choir works (on Pigs Could Fly, performed by the New London Children's Choir on Naxos[7]).
The music of Ronald Corp is published by Boosey and Hawkes (BH), Chester Music (C), Colla Voce (CV), Faber Music (F), Novello (N), Oxford University Press (OUP), Royal Society of Church Music (RSCM), Stainer and Bell (SB), Trinity Guildhall (TG) and the Ronald Corp website (RC). Where no publisher is given, please refer to the Ronald Corp website which is also undertaking a project to publish the other listed works.
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Orchestral
Choir with Orchestra
Instrumental and Chamber
Children's voices and instruments/orchestra
SATB with organ/keyboard
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Unaccompanied SATB
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Songs
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