A Coup for the Dartington Community Choir

A piece of musical history will be made in Dartington this summer when the Dartington Community Choir performs excerpts from an Imogen Holst opera which has been performed only once before – nearly 70 years ago.

Imo, as she was known, set up the original school of music while a guest of Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst during the Second World War.

The daughter of Gustav Holst, Imo had been travelling around Devon and Somerset working for the Government’s Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, which brought culture to rural areas much in need of some entertainment during the war.

The Elmhirsts offered her a place to rest and , alongside many of the couple’s refugee and artistic friends, Imo made herself a niche as music teacher to students from the local area and beyond. In 1945 she wrote Young Beichen, an opera in seven scenes to be performed with puppets from the Elmhirst’s extensive collection. But, as Wendy Newman, the choir’s concert manager told me, its first and presumed last performance was without the puppets. “This was in 1946 and as far as we know it is the only record of it being performed. She dedicated the opera to the Elmhirsts and it may be that they were the only two in the audience, although it is possible that Beryl de Zoete, who wrote the libretto, was also there.”

Beryl was an English ballet dancer and critic and became an expert on Balinese dance. In 1933, de Zoete gave Kurt Jooss, the founder of the Jooss Ballet, and his troupe a place of refuge with her friends at Dartington Hall when Jooss needed to escape the Nazis after refusing an order to fire all the Jews from his company. De Zoete may have saved the lives of some of the Jewish ballet dancers. Beryl was exotic and Imo was, Wendy says, jolly and eccentric. Sounds like a tantalising combination….

Young Beichen wasn’t recorded so when Wendy and Simon Dunbavand, the choir’s musical director, discovered Imogen’s hand written score in the Dartington archives – held in Exeter – they had no clear idea of what it sounded like, although it has folk tune elements. Taking items from the archive isn’t allowed so Simon had to transcribe the hand written score for use by the choir. “We knew the score existed and to out astonishment we found it,” Wendy said. “We have discovered some other music of Imo’s , which is loosely folk influenced.”

This July’s concert – without puppets, but with a narrator and performers playing Leonard and Dorothy – is a huge coup for the choir, which Imogen formed in 1943. “Oh it’s massive,” Wendy says. “Especially as it is the centenary this year of the Elmhirsts buying the estate.” Imogen left Dartington in the early 1950s to work for Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival. But she returned to Dartington in the 1960s , as the article title photo shows… conducting the choir she formed.

Rather overshadowed by her father’s music, Imogen work is having something of a renaissance. She is finally getting credit for her compositions and her work with CEMA, which laid the groundwork for the Arts Council. “The women who worked for the CEMA were known, disparagingly, as the Pilgrim Spinsters,” Wendy said.

The community choir’s historic performance will be in the Great Hall on July 7.