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Choirs unite to revive forgotten Easter cantata

Katy Prickett
BBC News, Suffolk
Kevin Slingsby 21 people, men and women, in three rows, lined up and looking at the camera. they are holding scores, some open and others tucked under their arms. To their left is their choir director Kevin Slingsby. They are standing in a hall. Kevin Slingsby
Suffolk choirs the Horringer Singers (above) and Tudor Rose are performing an Easter cantata which appears not to have been heard since the 1930s

Two choirs have come together to revive a piece of Easter music rediscovered by their musical director as he was sorting through his father's music scores.

Gethsemane to Calvary was composed in 1906 by John S Witty, a composer and teacher from Yorkshire who appears to have "fallen into obscurity".

Kevin Slingsby, director of the Suffolk-based Horringer Singers and Tudor Rose Singers, said: "The more I looked at it, the more I liked it - it's got some nice moments."

It will be performed at St Mary's Church, Woolpit, near Stowmarket, at 19:00 BST, and at St Leonard's Church, Horringer, near Bury St Edmunds, on Wednesday.

Kevin Slingsby The score of Gethsemane to Calvary opened up to its first two pages. The page on the left lists the contents. The page on the right shows the music and words for part 1 of the cantata. Kevin Slingsby
Choir director Kevin Slingsby, who is also the musical director of Lavenham parish church, discovered two scores of Gethsemane to Calvary among his father's music

"My first thought was, let's look it up and see if any scores are available online - but all I could find was two had been sold on Ebay," said Mr Slingsby.

"I then thought, well, someone will have performed it on YouTube, everything's there, but there was nothing at all."

The 68-year-old retired music teacher unearthed two scores for the cantata among his father Geoffrey's music - one marked up by his grandmother Dolly and the other by Geoffrey.

Dolly Slingsby was a member of St John's Church, Bury St Edmunds, and by the early 1930s, Geoffrey was one of its boy singers.

"Looking through, I could see my grandmother's writing in pencil, saying, 'stand' or 'sit' - and I surmised it must have been performed at St John's in the '30s," said Mr Slingsby.

Kevin Slingsby Kevin Slingsby who has ear-length grey hair back from a high forehead. He is wearing heavy rimmed glasses and a checked brown jacket over a pale blue shirt. He is sitting at an organ in a church, with its stained glass window behind.Kevin Slingsby
Notes on the scores reveal the cantata was performed the 1930s at St John's Church, Bury St Edmunds, where Mr Slingsby's great-uncle Sid Pannant was the organist

All he could find out about Mr Witty online was a census return, describing him as a teacher and composer of music who had been born in 1865 in Amersham, Buckinghamshire, and lived most of his life in Hull and Bradford, Yorkshire.

"I thought, the piece must have fallen into obscurity, let's do it," he said - and the amateur choirs agreed.

It shows influences of well-known Easter pieces like Stainer's The Crucifixion (1887) or John Maunder's Olivet de Calgary (1904), according to Mr Slingsby.

"But unlike Stainer, it tells the whole Easter story from Gethsemane to the triumphal Resurrection," he said.

"Sometimes, the more you do music, the more it grows on you and this has grown on me - and it seems to have hit the spot with the choirs."

Kevin Slingsby The front page of the Gethsemane to Calvary score by John S Witty. As well as it title and composer, it says it costs sixpence and was published by James Broadbent & Son Ltd. The paper is yellowing.Kevin Slingsby
The scores were published by James Broadbent and Son Ltd of Leeds, and on their backs were a few lines about Mr Witty's other compositions of mostly choral music

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