News

Prince Charles meets Durham expert in documentary on composer of ‘Jerusalem’

(27 May 2011)

Prince Charles/Prof Dibble, copyright Clarence House/Crux/Rare Day

A Durham music expert features alongside Prince Charles in a programme about the composer of some of Britain's best known anthems.

Professor Jeremy Dibble from Durham University's Department of Music spent an hour with His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales discussing the music of Sir Hubert Parry as part of a unique BBC documentary.

 Professor Dibble is an expert on British music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and produced a major study of the composer in 1992.

 The Prince And The Composer, a film about Hubert Parry by HRH The Prince of Wales, is to be screened on BBC Four on Friday 27 May, 7.30-9.00pm. This is HRH's first film about classical music.

 Sir Hubert Parry is simultaneously one of Britain's best known and least known composers. Jerusalem is almost a national song, regularly performed at rugby grounds, schools, Women's Institute meetings, and the Last Night of the Proms.  Dear Lord and Father of Mankind is one of Britain's best-loved hymns.  Everyone knows the tunes, yet hardly anyone knows much about the man who wrote them.   

 In The Prince and the Composer, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, a longstanding enthusiast for Parry's work, sets out to discover more about the complex character behind it, with the help of members of Parry's family, scholars and performers.

 This feature length documentary by the award winning director John Bridcut offers fresh insight into the life and work of Hubert Parry through the unique perspective of HRH The Prince of Wales.

 Professor Jeremy Dibble said: "After important documentary films about iconic British composers, Vaughan Williams and Elgar, both of whom recognised Parry as the leader of their art in this country, this substantial documentary comes not a moment too soon in celebrating one our country's greatest and most influential composers.

 "I have long admired Parry's music and it is a particular thrill to see how the stature of this giant figure in British music is increasingly being recognised for his pioneering work as a composer, teacher, thinker and artistic leader.

 "Parry the man and musician is full of surprises. Often he is often thought to have been a traditional pillar of Britain's musical establishment, this documentary reveals how Parry was a tortured, melancholy, nervous, lonely, yet deeply passionate man, an unbeliever, a radical thinker and someone who refused to follow convention."

 Professor Dibble previews the documentary in the June edition of the BBC Music Magazine (http://www.classical-music.com/issue/june-2011) where he describes working with HRH The Prince of Wales during the making of the documentary and how, over a number of years, the Prince has nurtured a growing admiration for not only the well known works of Parry - many of which featured in the recent Royal Wedding celebrations - but also the symphonic and piano works. 

 The film will be broadcast on BBC FOUR on May 27. Additionally, BBC Radio 3 will broadcast Parry's Symphonies in Classical Collection, once a day starting May 23 and leading up to the broadcast of the film on BBC FOUR.

 Durham University's Department of Music is a world-leading centre for research on British music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Professor Dibble produced a major book on Parry published by Oxford University Press in 1992 and has been involved with a substantial number of commercial recordings of Parry's music as well as scholarly editions and articles.