SCUNA history » Groups with a link to SCUNA
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Some SCUNAe wanted to sing more frequently than the two rehearsals per week with the main choir. Small groups sprang up and served the useful purpose of increasing our exposure to sight-reading and the choral repertoire.
Conducted by Judith Clingan during 1969. Equipped with the Penguin Book of English Madrigals, a bunch of SCUNAe assembled weekly in a downstairs room in the centre block at Burton/Garran. We spent our lunch hour learning jewels of the madrigal repertoire such as Bennett's Weep, O mine eyes (aka Weepo) and Wilbye's Thus saith my Cloris bright. We also tackled Byrd's This sweet and merry month - the "easy", four-part version - which nevertheless gave us a great deal of trouble. I learnt a lot from these sessions with Judy.
Performances took place:
RECITAL OF CHURCH MUSIC
The Canberra Childrens Choir
Madrigal group of the ANU Choral Society
Conducted by Judith Clingan
St Johns Church Reid. Sunday, October 26, 8pm
(after Evensong)
Hartley's Group may only have performed once, but the performance was memorable - see Note 4 to Alison Whish's Oyez of July 1976.
Oyezes and concert programmes contain scattered references to small groups, which were often appointed as required. Sometimes they sang whole works; sometimes they functioned as a semichorus. When a small group was regularly presenting parts of a SCUNA concert, it tended to be given a name. The first mention I can find of a small group in a SCUNA concert was in the Spring Term Concert of September 1970, conducted by Ayis Ioannides.
This was the original name of the small group during Ayis Ioannides's term as conductor. A list of members appears in the Spring Term Concert programme mentioned above. The group's name was changed, by October 1971, to:
Further information about this short-lived successor to the real Consort may be found on the Successors page.
This was a stable and very competent group during Brian Hingerty's first term as SCUNA conductor. They performed in SCUNA concerts, presented concerts on their own, and sang at functions such as University House dinners. See separate page about the Chamber Choir.
SCUNA every year is invited to join hordes of people from choirs around Canberra in presenting a massed choral work in the Canberra Theatre with the Symphony Orchestra. Those who participated in the 1969 performance of Beethoven's 9th can still be heard bragging about the standing ovation it received. This year [1973] Elgar's "The Dream of Gerontius" is the work to be done, and rehearsal schedules will be circulated later.2
In his history of choral singing in Canberra,3 Peter Campbell identifies other major choirs in the Singers of Canberra as the Canberra Choral Society, the Canberra Society of Singers, and the Canberra Philharmonic Society. He lists eleven performances, the last in 1979:
1969 | Beethoven | Symphony No. 9 |
1970 | Verdi | Requiem |
1971 | Orff | Carmina Burana |
1972 | Walton | Belshazzar's Feast |
1973 | Elgar | Dream of Gerontius |
1974 | Honegger | King David |
1975 | Orff | Carmina Burana |
1976 | Verdi | Requiem |
1977 | Britten | Spring Symphony |
1978 | Beethoven | Symphony No. 9 |
1979 | Vaughan Williams | A Sea Symphony |
Ken Healey (SCUNA President, 1967-68) started Canberra Opera in 1970. SCUNA was very much involved, as audience and as participants, from the beginning.
Canberra Opera's debut - a series of lunch-hour operas, which included Menotti's The Telephone and Holst's The Wandering Scholar - was supported by SCUNA to the extent of cancelling a lunchtime rehearsal so that members could attend! Canberra Opera productions were regularly advertised in Oyez.
SCUNA made up much of the chorus for Dido and Aeneas, Canberra Opera's first full-scale production, in August 1971. Canberra Opera was still known as "The Opera Group" at that stage. The advertisement, programme, and review of Dido and Aeneas appear on a separate page.
Robert Taylor has provided photos of SCUNA members singing with Canberra Opera in 1976-77.
According to Peter Campbell,4 Canberra Opera "was the first local organisation to present opera on a grand scale in Canberra" but that "[s]adly, after almost fifteen years of visionary productions, Canberra Opera folded in 1984."
A group which formed in the Midlands of England in the early 1970s. See separate page.
A partnership between SCUNA members Mark Hyman and Phil Thomas to present - and do justice to - the lesser-known choral and vocal repertoire. There may only have been one concert, on 4 May 1980, but it was a splendid one and, without question, the best-organised performance I've ever been in.
Start here for the five pages representing the poster and programme.
Some of the members and one of the kites were significant in SCUNA. See separate page.
1Source: Advertising. (1969, October 25). The Canberra Times (ACT : 1926 - 1995), p. 24. Retrieved June 4, 2013, from Trove: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article107900079
2From Oyez ~11 March 1973 by Richard Dixon
3Peter Campbell, Canberra Choral Society: A Capital Choir for a Capital City, PC Publishing, Canberra, 2002 pp64-65
4Ibid. p76 and p77