Reginald Steggall

[kansasbrandt]

Sunday night on a Public Radio show called Pipedreams (a mostly pipe organ vehicle as you might expect), I was introduced to the name of Reginald Steggall and his Concertpiece for Organ and Orchestra, Op. 7.  The work itself contained attractive material and had something of a "big tune" at the end of it - for those of us who like that sort of thing at the end of our concertante works.  However charming it was though, it wasn't really something that reaches out and grabs you or leaves you with much to remember once it's finished.   If interested in hearing it, the Pipedreams program number is 1035 and can be found at pipedreams.publicradio.org   All I have been able to glean about Mr. Steggall is that he was the youngest of six children and lived from around 1867 to about 1938 or so.  Apparently his father, Charles Steggall (1826 - 1905), was a celebrated organist and hymn composer.

[Gareth Vaughan]

Steggall's surviving MSS are in the Royal Academy of Music. They include full scores of 2 concert overtures (held on microfim), + a Dramatic Symphony Op. 13 after Longfellow ("The Spanish Student") and 3 suites for orchestra - also a dramatic scene for contralto and orchestra and sketches for another symphony (one movt. complete). There is, in addition, a quantity of chamber music, songs and solo piano pieces. I have not seen any of it, so can offer no opinion as to its merits. Some of his music was published by Breitkopf and Hartel, so there is a good chance copies of such pieces exist in German libraries (though nothing is listed in the online catalogue of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). Steggall gets a brief mention in Josef Holbrooke's book Contemporary British Composers as being someone who, together with Somervell and Ashton, was not afraid to tackle large scale works.

[Mark Thomas]

Thanks for dragging this piece out of oblivion, Brandt. I really enjoyed it. It's around 16 minutes long, could have been written 20 years before its actual 1897 date and, as you say, has attractive material both for the orchestra and the soloist. Not a great find, maybe, but certainly worth the odd airing.

[eschiss1]

Apparently according to http://musicsack.com/PersonFMTDetail.cfm?PersonPK=100048680 and its sources, 17 April 1867 to 16 November 1938.  Brief biography written during his lifetime here.
Eric