Composer: EDWARD JOSEPH COLLINS

Information:
This recording in the continuing series of Edward Collins’ music ( the other three alos available via request from ClassiQuest) features the grand choral work, Hymn to the Earth. The motivation to compose a choral work on a grand scale seems to have arisen from a commission from New York’s Society of the Friends of Music to Edward Collins. There is, however, no record of a performance by the Society. A microfilm copy of the score was found in the late 1980s by composer and choral conductor William Ferris. He conducted what may have been the first performance on June 2, 1989 in Chicago. The Society’s commission likely prompted action by Collins on an idea that may have been percolating for some time, something that could encompass his feelings about nature and life. Inspiration was found in the Wisconsin countryside each summer at the cottage of his wife’s family on Cedar Lake, or on the Door County Peninsula. By the time Collins addressed himself to his Hymn, choral works were no longer quite as fashionable as they had been in the 19th century. The score achieves a distinct grandeur, while Collins’s own text reflects his familiarity with great writing: it is, if somewhat elevated and archaic in tone, literate and eloquent.
Though the source scores are not clearly dated, the composer’s journals indicate that the composition of Variations on an Irish Folksong was probably completed after the 1927 Irish Rhapsody and the 1929 Hibernia (Irish Rhapsody- Albany #630). These Variations are based primarily on “Oh! The Taters they are small over here!” the “potato famine” folksong that also is used by the composer, sparingly, in Hibernia.
The earliest version of Cowboy’s Breakdown for piano solo, is found in a music notebook. Collins initialed and dated the score December 10, 1935, near the title; above the final measure he wrote the date January 10, 1936. It is interesting to note that Aaron Copland’s “cowboy” ballets, came after Collins’s concise, though equally energetic, Cowboy's Breakdown, published in 1938.
Who was Edward Collins?
Collins was born in 1886 to Irish-American immigrants, in Joliet Illinois. He steamed to Europe and studied in Berlin with Bruch and Humperdinck. Just before WWI he served as assistant conductor of the New York City Century Opera Company (at the time a competitor of the Metropolitan Opera) and again ended up in Germany as assistant director for the Bayreuth Festival. Collins served as a translator in the US Army intelligence during WWI, eventually winning an award for bravery. After the war he wrote a musical, acclaimed at its Paris premiere attended by such notables as President Wilson. Collins was a much sought after recital collaborator with renowned artists such as the contralto Ernestine Schumann Heinck. He carried on a four-decade long career as a virtuoso pianist, winning continual plaudits for his technical virtuosity and expressive performances. Much of this time he spent composing during the summers at his family cottage in Cedar Lake and, later, at a home/studio near Fish Creek, Wisconsin. He performed with and conducted major orchestras, including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra - his compositions grabbed the attention of and were performed often by Frederick Stock and the CSO. In 1939 he was awarded the David Bispham Prize for his one-act opera Daughter of the South, joining Herbert, Hanson, and Gershwin; subsequent winners included Menotti and Weill.