ABSTRACT
George Dyson enjoyed his whole life, an unusually ardent bond with the Royal College of Music (RCM). Upon Hugh Allen's retirement, he became the first alumnus of the institution to assume its chief administrative office, a position he held for fifteen years. Dyson's astonishing ascendancy to professional eminence is comparable to that of Rubbra in that he, too, originated at the other end of the social scale. Naturally, the latter award was Dyson's carte blanche into an invigorating ambience of truly brilliant faculty and students. The cross-fertilization of ideas and knowledge occurred in their company at the College or at orchestral concerts, the Covent Garden gallery, and London rehearsals for provincial festivals. Quo Vadis is one of the visionary twentieth-century choral-orchestral works conceived or completed by 1939 but not performed for a decade or more. The design of Quo Vadis may have been influenced by Walford Davies, who set an early precedent for it with Noble Numbers.
