George Dyson

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Life and career

Dyson was born in Halifax, Yorkshire, the eldest of John William Dyson's three children, as well as his wife, Alice, née Greenwood, a weaver. Dyson senior served as both organist and choirmaster at a local church, and both parents were members of amateur choirs. They praised their son's musical talent, and they were given as a church organist at the age of 13. He earned an FRCO (Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists), three years later, and in 1900, he received an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music (RCM), where he studied composition with Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. He helped himself during his time at RCM by serving as assistant organist at St Alfege Church, Greenwich.

In 1904, he won the Arthur Sullivan Prize for composition while still a RCM undergraduate, and was given a Mendelsohn Scholarship, which enabled him to spend three years in Italy, Austria, and Germany. Richard Strauss, whose style is said to have inspired Dyson's early compositions, was among him. The symphonic poem Siena (1907) was considered to stand out from many young composers' works, but his score hasn't survived.

Dyson was appointed director of music at the Royal Naval College, Osborne, on the recommendation of Sir Hubert Parry, RCM director, when he returned to the United Kingdom in 1907. In 1911, he matriculated to Marlborough College.

Dyson joined the Royal Fusiliers in 1914, becoming the 99th infantry brigade's grenadier. He produced a grenade warfare training pamphlet for which he became well-known. He was invalidated back to England in 1916, after being trapped by shell shock. Parry narrated how sad he was when he saw Dyson, "a shadow of his former self," in his journal.

Mildred Lucy Atkey, the daughter of a London solicitor, was born in November 1917. They had a son, Freeman, who became a well-known theoretical physicist and mathematician, and Alice, who became a well-known theoretical physicist and mathematician, as well as a daughter. Dyson received the degree of DMus from the University of Oxford in 1917.

Dyson was hired as a major in the newly formed Royal Air Force (RAF), serving until 1920. He completed the brief score of Henry Walford Davies's RAF March Pasture by arranging RAF bands, adding a stumbling middle section and fully scoring the whole piece.

Dyson's composition career flourished in 1920 when his Three Rhapsodies for string quartet were selected for publication under the Carnegie Trust's publication policy. He began teaching composition at Wellington College and professor of composition at the RCM in 1921. He changed colleges in 1924, heading to Winchester, when he remained at the RCM. Lewis Foreman, a biographer, claims that "the various strands of his mature career as a composer developed" during his two stints at RCM and Winchester.

Dyson, in addition to teaching at RCM and Winchester and directing the school's music, was conductor of an adult choral society and a visiting lecturer at Liverpool and Glasgow universities; composition had to be carried out into what spare time he had. The cantata In Honour of the City (1928), which The Musical Times has described as "a vivacious imagination for chorus and orchestra [which] shows the composer's talent for diatonic modulation contrived with appreciable ingenuity, as well as his effective handling of orchestral subtleties." The cantata was so popular that Dyson produced The Canterbury Pilgrims (1931), "a series of evocative and vivid Chaucerian portraits... and possibly his most popular score."

Dyson's new creations were ordered by British choral festivals. He composed St Paul's Voyage to Melita (1933) and Nebuchadnezzar (1935), as well as for Leeds, The Blacksmiths (1934). A Symphony in G (1937), which The Times lauded for its simplicity, undersidement, and a hesitance against "the strangely obscure or the pompously grandiose."

Dyson and others had been worried about the future of amateur music in the United Kingdom, which had been under increasing strain from the Great Depression and "the invasions of mechanical music," Dyson described as "the invades of mechanical music." In 1935, Carnegie Trust Dyson co-founded the National Federation of Music Societies as an umbrella group and financial bulwark for music companies and performing societies.

Dyson was appointed RCM's director in 1938 after he had been the RCM's first former undergraduate to serve as the RCM's first director. He obtained funds for the College from the University Grants Committee and established a pension plan for the employees. He undertook a complete renovation of the college's facilities, from rehearsal space to lavatories, in order to create a more conducive learning environment for students. He also modernized the curriculum and examination procedures of the college. He maintained a strong belief that with first-rate performances of music now easily and often available on radio and record, people who are new to the musical field must meet the highest requirements if they were to compete. His reliance on technological excellence sparked outrage, according to the Times, he "reversed the humanistic trend that had been the ideal of the college."

Many educational and other organizations were evacuated from London when the Second World War began in 1939 to prevent the bombing from occurring. Dyson was adamant that the RCM should remain in its home in South Kensington. His decision had far-reaching ramifications outside the college, as other institutions followed suit, with the result that continuity of training was a possibility and that standards were maintained. Malcolm Sargent took over the college orchestra and Karl Geiringer, who was displaced by the Nazis from Vienna's Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, joined the faculty.

Dyson had to cope with a surge in demand for places in the college, students who had abandoned their studies to join the military service, and the post-war generation of new applicants swelled, prompting Dyson and his board to tighten the admissions criteria. He urged the college's library and archives to be discarded of several old books and manuscripts, provoking some colleagues' outrage.

Dyson's encouragement of talent occasionally resulted in a willingness to abandon normal routine as long as he deemed it necessary. Despite Colin Davis's participation in the conducting class was refused because his pianistic abilities were judged ineffective, Malcolm Arnold pushed him to return and smoothed his way in doing so; not part of the college's curriculum.

Dyson was knighted in the 1941 New Years Honours List and was named Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1953. He earned honorary degrees from Aberdeen and Leeds universities as well as honorary fellowships from the Royal Academy of Music and Imperial College London.

Dyson resigned from the RCM in 1952. He went to Winchester and enjoyed "a marvel Indian summer" of composition, although some listeners' ears by this time, his music appeared old-fashioned. His late works were published and performed, but he did not have "that immediate following" of the music from earlier in his career, according to Foreman.

Dyson died in Winchester on September 28th, 1964, at the age of 81.

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