Nonet in F minor

Coleridge-Taylor wrote his Nonet in 1894, while still a teenage student at the Royal College of Music. At its premiere that same year, The Musical Times praised the ‘fresh and vigorous’ melodic material; it certainly feels like the work of a composer full of youthful exuberance, flexing his musical muscles and taking sheer delight in trying out all the different instrumental combinations from within his unusual nine-musician line-up. That Coleridge-Taylor regarded the Nonet as a significant work in his musical development seems evident from the way he proudly inscribed ‘Gradus ad Parnassum’ at the top of the manuscript.

This edition has been prepared directly from the autograph score, kindly made available by the Royal College of Music Library. Because the Nonet was never published in the composer’s lifetime, the autograph manuscript may not have reached a definitive state and therefore leaves certain questions open to editors — there are often discrepancies between the score and the separate instrumental parts; dynamic and articulation markings (slur lengths in particular) are sometimes inconsistent or unclear; and there are various textual errors which require a bit of creative sleuthing. Additionally, Coleridge-Taylor made substantial revisions to the work’s first movement, and wrote two entirely different versions of the Finale, so the autograph score and parts contain multiple versions of the piece. In making editorial decisions, I have always endeavoured to realise as faithfully as possible what I believe the composer’s final intentions are most likely to have been. I have also drawn on my experiences performing the piece in order to create a practical performing edition which I hope can make this wonderful music accessible to as many people as possible.

Coleridge-Taylor’s Nonet has become something of a signature piece for Kaleidoscope Chamber Collective, ever since we first performed it at Wigmore Hall in 2020 and subsequently recorded it for Chandos Records. Through my work with Kaleidoscope in particular, I have become increasingly aware of the fact that audiences generally only get to hear a small fraction of the outstanding chamber music which has been written over the centuries. Sadly, composers and works which have not been granted the hearing they deserve have often suffered the additional injustice of being presented in substandard and error-riddled editions. This new edition aims to redress that wrong, and to do full justice to Coleridge-Taylor’s glorious Nonet, helping it to claim its deserved place in the chamber music canon.

© 2025 Tom Poster