Frederick Haggis inaugurated the Goldsmiths' Choral Union in 1932 as an Adult Evening Class when he was Lecturer in Music at Goldsmiths' College. In 1933, he also founded the Goldsmiths' Symphony Orchestra, which, until the war, always accompanied the choir's concerts. (Today the choir no longer uses an apostrophe.)
The membership was then, as now, drawn from the general public: teachers, civil servants, businessmen, housewives, secretaries - but, strangely enough, students at Goldsmiths' College had to get special permission from their tutors to join the choir, in case singing should interfere with their studies!
The first-ever concert was a performance of Parts I and II of Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha, which then appeared regularly in the repertoire until the early 1950s. There are no details of that concert in the records, but ten days before the choir was due to perform the work again, on 21 May 1941, at the Queen's Hall, the building was bombed and reduced to rubble. An alternative venue was hastily arranged (the Stoll Theatre) and the public informed by advertisements in the Press, posters at railway stations, and by men parading the streets with sandwich boards – at five shillings a time! – that the show would go on. In the event, the concert was a great success and appears to have been one of the first of the GCU's concerts to be broadcast by the BBC. The Daily Telegraph commented: "The transition ... did not affect in the least the efficiency of the Goldsmiths' Choral Union on Saturday. Their performance of Hiawatha had all the required qualities of vitality, alertness and accuracy".
The photograph opposite shows a typical concert in the mid-1930s. By then, the GCU had a membership of over 100 and its repertoire included Handel's Messiah, Bach's Mass in B Minor and Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius.
Even in its early days, the GCU was able to attract well-known soloists, and Frederick Haggis also had a good ear for a promising young singer; many of those talented youngsters went on to become household names. Soloists in prewar concerts included Freda Townson, Isobel Baillie, Elsie Suddaby, Stiles Allen, Harold Williams, Topliss Green, and Webster Booth.
In 1939, Mr Haggis announced at a Messiah rehearsal that he had engaged the services of a young tenor whom he felt had a promising career ahead. The young man was Peter Pears, and he was paid the princely sum of five guineas for his services. Pears returned to sing Obadiah in Mendelssohn's Elijah in September 1943. The Times noted that he sang "efficiently, if not without occasional dullness".
1939 was a significant year in the choir's history. In March, it successfully survived a last-minute change of conductor when, at short notice, Charles Proctor took over from the indisposed Mr Haggis for George Dyson's Canterbury Pilgrims. The Daily Telegraph and Musical Opinion agreed that the substitute conductor and choir combined to produce an assured and delightful performance.
In June 1939, the choir's success to date led to the suggestion that it should promote a concert at the Queen's Hall during the following season. A circular was sent to regular patrons asking if they would support this concert and asking for guarantors in the event of a loss. The work performed was Elijah and was the first of many GCU concerts at the Queen's and Royal Albert Halls. (It was at this point that the GCU ladies began wearing the now familiar long black dresses at concerts.)
With the outbreak of World War II, Goldsmiths' College was evacuated to Nottingham, the college buildings were occupied for war work, and the GCU lost, at one stroke, both its rehearsal facilities and its concert hall. The members, however, were keen to go on singing and another place to rehearse was found in a South London school, where the GCU became a "Club" within the London County Council's Evening Department of Adult Education. Practices began again in November 1939 for a performance of Messiah at the Central Hall, Bromley, in March 1940.
