In 1937 Dyson was on his way to the next stage of his career at the Royal College of Music in London. His appointment and the story of his new post will be told in subsequent chapters. But first, we are going to look at four major works written during his first six years at the College. These are the Symphony, Part I of Quo Vadis?, the Violin Concerto, and the overture to The Canterbury Pilgrims, At the Tabard Inn.

The Symphony in G

Dyson, in common with many composers of his time, wrote music because he wanted to, or because he felt he had something to say, not usually because he was responding to a commission. It is likely that after the successes of his choral works at the Three Choirs Festival and elsewhere he wanted to consolidate his burgeoning reputation by writing major works in classic forms. As we have seen, he had already written an early choral symphony as his doctoral exercise for Oxford University. The distance travelled between that symphony and his 1937 work shows to what extent he had developed his own method and style in the intervening years. William McNaught, writing about the Symphony in the Musical Times in January 1938, made some telling points: