
date: October 11, 2002
This was an enhanced version of a programme originally commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, in 1984 and entitled An Afternoon with Jane Austen. It was repeated the next year at the Guelph Spring Festival in Ontario, then enlarged and performed as Jane Austen’s Music for the Jane Austen Society of North America in Chicago (1988) and in our own Sunday Series (1991). This performance in 2002 was again at the invitation of JASNA, whose annual conference that year was in Toronto and who dedicated the concert to the memory of Joan Austen-Leigh (who had died almost exactly a year previously). She (a great-great-granddaughter of Jane Austen’s brother, James Edward Austen-Leigh) was crucial in our original project and became a great friend of the Artistic Directors. Having been asked by the ROM to prepare a Jane Austen concert, we found that this descendant of the family was living in Victoria, B.C. While on a concert tour there, Bruce Ubukata visited Joan and, amid the energetic conversation which soon developed, discovered not only that she had spent schoolgirl years in Aldeburgh (where she recalled meeting the youthful Benjamin Britten) but that she had a cousin, Henry Jenkyns, who was still living there and who had an equally direct descent from the 19th century Austens. Mr Jenkyns possessed some volumes of Jane Austen’s collection and it was from these, and from the collection in the Jane Austen Museum in Chawton, Hampshire, that the repertoire for this concert was drawn.
Song | Artist | Composer | Poet |
---|---|---|---|
Little Jack Horner | Cleland, Rachel, soprano; Ainsworth, Colin, tenor; Ralls, Stephen, piano | anon. | anon. |
To Fair Fidele’s Grassy Tomb, with variations | Ralls, Stephen / Ubukata, Bruce, piano | anon. | anon. |
The Soldier’s Adieu (The Wags, or The Camp of Pleasure) | Ainsworth, Colin, tenor; Ralls, Stephen, piano | Dibdin, Charles | anon. |
The Duke of York’s New March | Ralls, Stephen, piano | Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus | n/a |
Captivity | Cleland, Rachel, soprano; Ralls, Stephen, piano | Storace, Stephen | Dibden, J. |
Lotharia | Ainsworth, Colin, tenor; Ralls, Stephen, piano | Arne, Thomas | Hill, Aaron |
A Pastoral Song | Cleland, Rachel, soprano; Ubukata, Bruce, piano | Haydn, Franz Joseph | Hunter, Anne |
Recollection | Cleland, Rachel, soprano; Ubukata, Bruce, piano | Haydn, Franz Joseph | Hunter, Anne |
She never told her love | Ainsworth, Colin, tenor; Ubukata, Bruce, piano | Haydn, Franz Joseph | Shakespeare, William |
Rondo Pastoral (Grand Concerto, Op.33) | Ralls, Stephen / Ubukata, Bruce, piano | Steibelt, Daniel | n/a |
Andante with variations, K501 | Ralls, Stephen / Ubukata, Bruce, piano | Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus | n/a |
William | Cleland, Rachel, soprano; Ralls, Stephen, piano | Haydn, Franz Joseph | anon. |
The Yellow-Hair’d Laddie | Cleland, Rachel, soprano; Ainsworth, Colin, tenor; Ralls, Stephen, piano | Scottish folksong | Ramsay, Allan |
The Irishman | Ainsworth, Colin, tenor; Ralls, Stephen, piano | anon. | anon. |
Robin Adair, with variations | Ubukata, Bruce, piano | Kiallmark, George | n/a |
The Match Girl | Cleland, Rachel, soprano; Ubukata, Bruce, piano | anon. | anon. |
Begone, dull care! | Cleland, Rachel, soprano; Ainsworth, Colin, tenor; Ralls, Stephen / Ubukata, Bruce, piano | anon. | anon. |