Cyril Jenkins

Cyril Jenkins, born in Swansea on 9 October 1889, was 88 when he died at Hove on 15 March 1978. He, too, is associated with the brass band world, no fewer than four of his major works having been test pieces: Coriolanus at the National (1920), Life Divine (National 1921), Victory (National, 1929) and Saga of the North (Open, 1965). The first two remain popular even to this day and were among the first major original works to be commissioned for the brass band movement's major championships. They earned criticism at the time for being of technical, rather than musical, interest - but the fact that they are still programmed in concerts in the 1980s surely answers such a charge. Jenkins was appointed as Director of Music to the LCC in 1922 but his health compelled him to reside in Australia for some years. He had studied composition with Stanford and briefly Ravel and no doubt regarded himself as a "serious" composer. He composed indeed in all the main musical forms except opera. For orchestra he composed a Symphony, an Oboe Concerto, a Keltic Rhapsody and the Welsh Fantasia Op 27 for strings; for chorus with orchestra there was a setting of Young Lochinvar (1911), very popular in its time, the Easter cantata Calvary for baritone solo, chorus and piano and short partsongs like Deep Jordan's Banks, Faery Song, The Lee Shore, the Yarn of Loch Achray, A Shepherd Lullaby, Out of Silence, The Butterfly and Snowflakes (both the latter for women's voices) and arrangements of Welsh traditional tunes - for solo voice he set As The Moon's Soft Splendour and My Love is Like a Red Red Rose among many other songs, A Grecian Landscape and Ode to the West Wind were sung by Doncaster choruses between the wars. His published instrumental music comprises short pieces such as the Elegiac Poem of 1922 for string quartet, a Mood Phantasy for violin and piano, a Legend in D Minor for trombone and piano and a Serenata in G Minor for B flat baritone and piano, the latter two also from 1922. A major work for solo piano was a suite, The Seasons, Opus 136. For organ were published a Fantasia on an Old Welsh Hymn Tune (1916) and a Sonata in D Minor.