Orpheus with his Lute: A Glasgow Orpheus

First edition, first impression. xvi, 314pp with colour plate frontispiece and further monochrome plate illustrations interleaved in text. Patterned beige cloth-covered boards with brown lettering to spine. Top edge sprayed red. 8vo. Cloth a little rounded at corners and spine ends. Internally neat, clean, bright and tight. In its original paper dust wrapper, shelf worn, chapped all round edges, scattered chipping, hint of toning on inner flaps.

The Glasgow Orpheus Choir was very much a product of its times – the unsettled years of the early part of the 20th century – and of a man – Hugh Robertson, its founder and visionary leader. A different alchemy might have produced a choir of equal achievement and fame but not one with the distinctive character which gave the Orpheus so wide a following and made it, as well as a musical phenomenon, the people’s choir and choristers ‘choir par excellence.