ABSTRACT
In due course Hugh Allen would owe his appointment as Musical Director of the choir to Henry Wood's recommendation. Hubert Parry and Walter Parrattknew the choir intimately, while Alexander Mackenzie, Principal of the Royal Academy of Music, was an experienced choral conductor. Morton Latham's had continued to organize his private concerts but had taken to composition, producing songs and anthems but a series of light operas in the Gilbert and Sullivan style for his friends to perform. Charles Villiers Stanford's prediction was correct in that the strength of the choir in February 1902 was 131, an increase of only seventeen since the preceding summer, and this number was inadequate to provide the funds required for a public concert with orchestra. His paper showed that he regarded the Leeds standards as considerably higher than those of the Bach Choir and he had demonstrated the view by his insistence upon reinforcements from the Yorkshire choir in 1898 and 1899.
