Vaughan Williams: Confident First Steps

Sometimes composers can be their own worst enemies. Ralph Vaughan Williams was prone to over-modesty and kept making comments about his early music being "clumsy" and lacking in technique. As the early works in question were never heard, critics understandably took him at his word and parroted these self-disparaging remarks. In recent years, however, we've had the chance to finally hear some of these early pieces and they've blown this self-created myth clean out of the water. RVW had bags of technique and was a far from clumsy young(ish) composer. 

As proof of this please try the String Quartet in C minor from 1898 - a work that only saw the light of day again in 2002. My goodness, what a peach of a work it is!

Yes, it may owe a good deal to the examples of Dvorak and Tchaikovsky but the examples are applied with considerable expertise and the result is a delightful listen. The Dvorak influence is clearest in the opening movement - RVW's 'American Quartet movement'! That same influence probably also accounts for the strange fact that the opening theme of the second movement Andantino may well strike many a Vaughan Williams fan as being somewhat characteristic of the mature composer, in its being modal and folk-like (and beautiful). We are in the world of co-incidences here, are we not? After all, RVW's discovery of folk song in 1902-1906 is his (longish) transformational moment. The third movement Intermezzo has a main theme that, if you concentrate on the pitches of the melody rather than its rhythm, is intriguingly like the tune of the composer's much-loved early song Linden Lea (about which much more shortly). It is also full of modal touches. Its trio is the most virtuoso part of the piece. The Quartet ends with a carefully-wrought theme and variations, of which the waltz-like variation is the most irresistible. 

Not bad, eh? 

From the same year comes the Quintet in D major for clarinet, horn, violin, cello and piano. This has much less of the future RVW in it, sounding to be strongly under the influence of Brahms. Brahms isn't a composer anyone thinks of when listening to mature Vaughan Williams, so this must be seen as an utterly uncharacteristic piece. Might it be the influence of that great Brahmsian Parry? Isn't it a joy though? 

As light as a serenade, it is unfailing attractive throughout and, as in the Quartet, brings forth, from a clear influence, music of considerable skill and charm. That side of Brahms is one some people miss. Evidently RVW was in sympathy with it though, as you'll hear above all in the delectable Intermezzo second movement. I challenge you to hear a single bar of clumsiness in the piece. You won't find any however hard you try. The warmth of the Andantino is something you won't fail to pick up on either. Were you to 'blind listen' someone to this movement I would be very surprised if they came up with the name of Vaughan Williams as its composer. It sounds so unlike him. The finale sparkles too. 

Did you like that as much as I did? Does it baffle you as much as it does me why Vaughan Williams was so dismissive of his early works?

Remarkably, RVW was also inclined to be over-modest about his first - and initially most enduring - popular success, the 1901 song Linden Lea.

I love alliteration and assonance like a lark loves the light of a bright sky, so I could hardly fail to feel affection for (minor poet) William Barnes's poem. (Yes, I know it's old-fashioned Victorian poetry, but what's wrong with that?) That, however, is as nothing compared to my love for RWV's music for Linden Lea. The song has been popping into my head several times a year every year, for donkey's years - each time a welcome visitor. The immortality of its melody certainly helps, and so does the perfection of its piano accompaniment. There's nothing showy or Brittenesque about the latter, given that RVW wasn't a piano man, but it works nonetheless. Linden Lea certainly owes some debts to Schumann but it sounds to me like no one other than Vaughan Williams. Why does this art song from before the composer's discovery of folk song sound so like a timeless folk song though?

Within the woodlands, flow'ry gladed,

By the oak trees' mossy moot,

The shining grass blades, timber-shaded,

Now do quiver underfoot;

And birds do whistle overhead,

And water's bubbling in its bed;

And there, for me, the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

When leaves, that lately were a-springing,

Now do fade within the copse,

And painted birds do hush their singing,

Up upon the timber tops;

And brown-leaved fruits a-turning red,

In cloudless sunshine overhead,

With fruit for me, the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

Let other folk make money faster

In the air of dark-roomed towns;

I don't dread a peevish master,

Though no man may heed my frowns.

I be free to go abroad,

Or take again my homeward road

To where, for me, the apple tree

Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

I hope my tendency to count things might come in handy here - and may be probably my only genuinely original contribution to musicology on the whole of this blog! The melody of the song, heard three times, contains 64 notes yet only 5 of those notes (all Cs and Fs) fall outside the compass of a folk-like pentatonic (i.e. five-note) scale. It's this (I believe) that gives Linden Lea its folksong-like character. Pentatonic-based tunes are, as Dvorak fans will know, a far from uncommon feature in folk music from many countries. Again, we may choose to ascribe the song's largely pentatonic melody to the influence of Dvorak. It doesn't sound anything like Dvorak though. It sounds English. (Does it sound English to non-English readers?)

And, to throw a spanner into the works, please take a listen to his very rarely heard Three Elizabethan Part-Songs, which appear to have been written prior to any of the pieces we've encountered so far. They set a poem by my favourite poet George Herbert ('So Sweet') and two poems by Shakespeare ('The Willow Song' from Othello and 'O Mistress Mine' from Twelfth Night).  The beautiful Herbert setting (the first part-song) in particular seems to show the composer hinting strongly at the interest in music of the Tudor age which was to manifest itself so famously in the Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis, but which also has harmonies and melodic turns that put me in mind of an even later work, the Five Variants on Dives and Lazarus. (I love that Herbert setting). 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,

The bridall of the earth and skie:

The dew shall weep thy fall to night;

                                    For thou must die.

Sweet rose, whose hue angrie and brave

Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye:

Thy root is ever in its grave

                                    And thou must die.

Sweet spring, full of sweet dayes and roses,

A box where sweets compacted lie;

My musick shows ye have your closes, 

                                    And all must die.

Onely a sweet and vertuous soul,

Like season’d timber, never gives;

But though the whole world turn to coal,

                                    Then chiefly lives.

Talking of almost completely unknown but attractive early part-songs by RVW, how about the Christina Rossetti setting Rest from 1902? 

Christina's brother, Dante Gabriel, was the poet set in the other early RVW song that has won him many an admirer over the years - Silent Noon. This is lovely song.

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, --

The finger-points look through like rosy blooms:

Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms

'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.

All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,

Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge

Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.

'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.

Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly

Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: --

So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.

Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,

This close-companioned inarticulate hour

When twofold silence was the song of love.

I detect a hint of Brahms again (especially when a slow triple-time lilt enters the music), and a fruitful one. In it we get a glimpse of the mystical side of the composer, so powerfully projected later in his output. 

From the same year as Silent Noon came another of the composer's finest early songs, Orpheus with his Lute. This may be a setting of Shakespeare, or of his associate John Fletcher. It appeared in Henry VIII. This delightful song is the nearest RVW came to writing in the manner of Reynaldo Hahn. (I'm sure by complete coincidence, though you can never quite be certain). There is a definite touch of Bach about this piece, though the melody is purely Romantic.

Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass, 

Orpheus with his lute made trees,

And the mountain-tops that freeze,

Bow themselves, when he did sing:

To his music, plants and flowers

Ever sprung; as sun and showers

There had made a lasting spring.

Everything that heard him play,

Even the billows of the sea,

Hung their heads, and then lay by.

In sweet music is such art:

Killing care and grief of heart

Fall asleep, or, hearing, die.

Vaughan Williams was beginning to awaken to the world of folk music, but before we meet his first ventures in trying to incorporate this influence into his work we have one final early chamber work to encounter - the Piano Quintet in C minor of 1903 - another piece no one could justifiably accuse of being the work of a clumsy composer.

It's scored for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass - the same combination Schubert called for in his Trout Quintet. Again, however, it's Brahms who springs to mind most when listening to this piece; perhaps under the influence of Parry again. Just listen to the slow movement though and you can clearly hear the same composer who wrote Silent Noon and Orpheus with his Lute. You probably still wouldn't guess it was by Vaughan Williams though. As with the earlier chamber pieces, it doesn't have the familiar hallmarks of mature RVW. It still sounds fully mature however, taken purely on its own terms. The finale is a theme and five variations. The theme was one RVW was to return to later in life, even though he withdrew the Quintet. Even if we gave up sounding like Brahms soon after, that Brahmsian tendency to purge his output of works which he didn't want to be heard remained strong. Fortunately he didn't go as far as Brahms in destroying these fine early works.

Hope you enjoyed these early works. We're off to the Fen Country next.

The Running Set

In anticipation of an approaching major Serenade to Music survey...

Ralph Vaughan Williams himself said that his "fantasia on jig-rhythms for orchestra" The Running Set, a 'minor' work composed in 1933, is based on an old British folk dance whose original version has been lost forever. So, the composer gathered together four folk songs associated with the dance and wove them all together, creating this short orchestral piece - a genial quodlibet on English folk songs. The result is catchy and colourful, with (to my ears) something of RVW's tutor Ravel about its orchestration. An exciting whirl of activity ensues.

Good 'ol RVW!

Constant Delights

Constant Lambert (1905-1951) was the only British composer Serge Diaghilev commissioned to write a work for his Ballets Russes. That's quite a distinction, especially as the invitation came when he was a mere 20 years of age. 

A prodigy then, perhaps comparable to William Walton? Well, Lambert himself had performed in Walton's name-making Façade (an early Épater la bourgeoisie kind of piece that set the avant-garde poetry of Edith Sitwell and made use of popular idioms) and shot to fame with a work in a somewhat similar vein - Rio Grande. This 1927 masterpiece sets a poem by Edith's brother Sacheverell for alto solo and chorus accompanied by piano and an orchestra consisting of strings, brass and tons of percussion (but no woodwinds). Façade had been a succès de scandale; Rio Grande, however, was a succès, full stop. The public loved it. It's not hard to guess why. It was something new to our shores - a jazz-inspired concert piece by a British classical composer. Moreover, it's a work of considerable feeling, covering a range of moods from the energetic to the nostalgic. What's not for audiences to like?

Fans of Walton's Belshazzar's Feast (from 1931) will surely recognise the debts Walton owed to Lambert's Rio Grande in achieving his own subsequent "succès, full stop". Belshazzar's Feast's has often been acclaimed as the work that shook British choral music out of its complacency, but Constant Lambert was there first. 

The comparison with Walton keep on coming. Belshazzar's Feast and the First Symphony of a few years later marked the high point of Walton's success. The second half of his life was a long anti-climax (acclaim-wise). Something similar happened with Lambert, who never repeated his triumph with Rio Grande, making him (unlike Walton) something of a one-hit wonder who peaked too soon. (Lambert had other strings to his bow - as a highly influential critic and as a leading British conductor - so can get put away your handkerchiefs!). 

What more is there to Constant Lambert than Rio Grande? 

Well, there's another large-scale choral work, the choral masque Summer's Last Will and Testament of 1936, setting poems by  the Elizabethan playwright Thomas Nashe. Baritone soloist, chorus and large orchestra (this time including woodwinds) join forces for a work that lasts some fifty minutes. Nashe's 1592 play, from which the poems are taken, deals with the then-annual plague that struck at the end of each summer. Lambert's score (successfully) attempts to encompass its satirical, nostalgic and tragic elements. There are seven sections, of which the Intrata and the remarkable Dies Irae-haunted Rondo Burlesca are purely orchestral:

1. Intrata

2. Madrigal Con Ritornelli

3. Coranto

4. Brawles

5. Madrigal Con Ritornelli

6. Rondo Burlesca (King Pest)

7. Saraband

The work adopts several forms from the Elizabethan era - the madrigal, of course, but also dances like the sicilienne of the Intrata, the courante and the sarabande (to Frenchify their names into something familiar).  This, at times, puts him in close musical proximity to fellow boozer Peter Warlock (of Capriol Suite fame). There are a few touches of jazz, but they aren't a major element in this score.

Unfortunately for Lambert, his most significant statement fell flat at its première as it just happened to follow in the wake of the death of King George V, when the public wasn't in the mood for a largely upbeat piece about the plague. The set-back knocked the composer for six, especially as he was (understandably) very proud of Summer's Last Will and Testament. He composed very little after that and his tendency towards alcoholism grew, eventually killing him after his final ballet Tiresias received critical drubbing sent him spinning into despair. (You can get you hankies out again now!). The revival in Summer's Last Will and Testament's fortunes in recent years hasn't come a moment too soon. It's an absorbing piece and I expect it will surprise you.

On a smaller scale (speaking length-wise!), you will also find the nostalgic vein found in parts of Summer's Last Will and Testament in the beautiful orchestral score Aubade Héroique of 1941 - a piece depicting   a particular dawn in The Hague, where the composer had been conducting, when German parachutists began their invasion of the Netherlands and Lambert and the Sadler's Wells ballet troupe made their escape.

If you feel (as I do) that the Aubade Héroique has some of the qualities of film music about it, then it might not surprise you to learn that Lambert was a fine (if not very prolific) composer for the cinema. From around the same time came the irresistibly tuneful music for the patriotic Merchant Seamen...

and from 1948 came his sweeping music for Anna Karenina (starring Vivien Leigh).

If Rio Grande is Constant Lambert's best-known piece, then Horoscope (1937) is his best-known ballet. It almost makes him a two-hit wonder. Legendary ballerina Margot Fonteyn danced in the first performance. Lambert surely enjoyed her moves, given that he was also having an affair with her at the time! It has nine movements:

1. Palindromic Prelude

2. Dance for the Followers of Leo

3. Saraband for the Followers of Virgo

4. Man's Variation

5. Woman's Variation

6. Bacchanale

7. Valse for the Gemini

8. Pas de Deux

9. Invocation to the Moon and Finale

Though a piece for dancing to, Horoscope was written in a way that will appeal to lovers of symphonic music. It's Palindromic Prelude is precisely what it says it is - it may be read backwards as well as forwards. Both the Dance for the Followers of Leo and the Bacchanale feature a catchy phrase with syncopated rhythms which will probably stick with you for hours afterwards. The latter movement isn't the only one where thoughts of Holst and The Planets spring to mind, perhaps not unsurprisingly in a work with astrological matters at its heart. I was especially thinking of Uranus for the Bacchanale. (As Frankie Howard might of put it, "Ooh, missus!"). Ravel comes to mind in some of the slower sections. Still, it's the music of William Walton (the later Walton of the film scores) which Lambert feels closest too here.  Incidentally, for fellow waltz-lovers, don't forget to check out the delightfully nonchalant Valse for the Gemini. 

It may not have the sharp individuality of Rio Grande but Horoscope deserves to be as widely performed as possible as it's a loveable score. 

Hope you'll enjoy listening to Lambert's music.

...An Interrupted, Panicky Black Bird

"Where's the melody? Typical modern music!", some people may cry on hearing For O, for O, the Hobby-horse Is Forgot. (Hopefully not you though!) Well, melody may not be important in For O, for O, the Hobby-horse Is Forgot but Harrison Birtwistle is a composer whose music is usually very much driven by melody. 

Please take a listen to the subtle and finespun Night's Black Bird of 2004. This is a slow-moving, mysterious orchestral score, conveying the gloom of night with lots of low-register grumbling but contrasting this with evocations of birdsong on high clarinets and piccolos. The work has a strong flow of melody and, despite its dark tone, falls easily on the ear. This flow of melody is some way from being the kind of melody associated with "nasty modern music"; yes, it may not be "sweetly melodic" but it is memorably and beautiful in its melodic contours, with (perhaps) something of Berg about it. Behind the work lies a song by John Dowland...

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs!

Exiled for ever, let me mourn;

Where night’s black bird her sad infamy sings,

There let me live forlorn.

...and an engraving by Albrecht Dürer called Melancholia I:

The music's mixture of grace and heft makes for a compelling listen, from its initial quiet growl on double basses to the final muted stroke on tubular bell. 

I love Night's Black Bird as much as I love For O, for O, the Hobby-horse Is Forgot and they each show very different sides to the composer. 

If you want to hear the lyrical, melodic side of Birtwistle at its most open, the smaller chamber works are the best place to begin. ...An Interrupted Endless Melody for oboe and piano, written in memory of the oboist Janet Craxton, is a particularly approachable example. As it's another of my favourite Birtwistle pieces, it's a pleasure to share it with you.

This gentle and refined piece pretty does what it says on the tin, doesn't it? It sings a long, elegiac oboe melody but divides it between three short movements, each with its own distinctive piano part. The "endless melody" itself is absolutely beautiful, isn't it? Were you expecting that of Birtwistle?

Perhaps what you were expecting was something much louder and fiercer - something like the "notorious" Panic for solo saxophone, drum kit and wind band which "scandalised the world" at its 1995 première at the BBC Last Night of the Proms. I remember being a bit scandalised myself at the time. What does it sound like now, 18 years on? Is it as scary and cacophonous as it's reputation suggests? Well, listening to it for the first time since that famous Last Night reveals a much better piece than I remembered. It's never going to be a favourite of mine but it's wild and fun and has more than a bit of free jazz and rock about it, with free-wheeling, improvisatory-sounding melodies. Panic can be abrasive at times, driving on deliriously, but is far from completely lacking lyricism. It evokes the old priapic Pan of ancient Greece, coarse and terrifying but also sensual and heady.

It should make your head spin - for one reason or another!

Tintagel

By some way its composer's best-known work and by common consent also its composer's masterpiece, the tone poem Tintagel by Arnold Bax is one of music greatest seascapes. 

Tintagel is a castle in Cornwall (found in the village of Tintagel) associated with the legends that surround King Arthur, his Knights of the Round Table and Merlin. That's a world of Celtic mythology which the ultra-Romantic composer felt close to. 

Entering his world we find ourselves facing the sea - the strings shimmering on its surface, Cornish cliffs looming on brass, gulls calling on woodwinds. Bax weaves together a number of ostinati here. Then the brass swell, magnificently, as the castle hoves into view with a mighty theme - a musical 'moment' I treasure. This glorious crest of a musical wave is prolonged by a Wagnerian chord sequence and Arthurian fanfares. The great wave breaks and in the wake of its ebb comes a long string melody of much beauty, tinged with Celtic colour. 

The next few minutes take us into a different place. This section is akin to a development section but with, on the one hand, a rhapsodic slant and, on the other, a Debussy-inspired flavouring that draws on the French master's magical orchestral piece, La Mer. This section is the score's most turbulent passage.

The 'recapitulation' restores majesty and an Elgarian sweep (dare I say?) with the swelling brass figure returning and ostinati generating a good deal of wave energy. The big tune returns satisfyingly to provide the work's climax and other golden ideas are remembered before the work's coda gives us a beautiful, burnished sunset. 

Readers beyond British shores, what did you make of that?

For O, for O, the Hobby-horse Is Forgot

Few works demonstrate the dramatic power of Harrison Birtwistle's instrumental rituals than the stunning For O, for O, the Hobby-horse Is Forgot for six percussionists from 1976. It's a piece you need to see as well as hear.

Taking its title from Hamlet ("..he shall suffer not thinking on, with the hobby-horse, whose epitaph is, 'For O, for O, the hobby-horse is forgot."), it conjures up a dumb show analogous to the "play within a play" within Shakespeare's drama. A King and a Queen, two of the percussionists placed at either end of the stage, direct the other four percussionists, placed centrally as a group, in an elaborately choreographed "ceremony", all the players making use of their sticks for mime as well as for music. The effect is not  remotely gimmicky. As for the music, well, the play of pulses from the unpitched percurcussion, as so often with Birtwistle, gathers pace and complexity as it proceeds, reaching an extraordinarily exciting central climax, before returning to something starker towards the end. 

For me, this masterpiece is a riveting and beautiful experience. In some ways it has the character of an Eastern ritual, or Chinese opera; in other ways it's thoroughly modernist - a mingling of ancient and modern that Xenakis, the composer Birtwistle often seems closest to, was also able to achieve. You might want to compare Birtwistle's For O, for O, the Hobby-horse Is Forgot with the Greek's glorious Pleiades. You will surely hear the similarities in sensibility between the two composer. Birtwistle is not copying Xenakis though. The Xenakis was written in 1978, two years after the Birtwistle.

Britten Appears - and inspires

This year marks the centenary of the birth of Britain's most bankable composer (as the receipts show), Benjamin Britten. British critics have long agonised over our country's seeming inability to sell our own composers abroad. Ben is the exception. He sells. As I'm slightly ambivalent about Britten's music myself, I hope this year will also sell him to me.

As a first step in celebrating the Britten centenary (which BBC Radio 3 is already fully in the swing of), I want to talk about a piece of his that I'm already sold on - the Hymn to St. Cecilia, Op.27. 

Written in the early 1940s, it seems to me to be one of Ben's most beautiful and enduring works. He was taken with the idea of hymning the patron saint of music given that he himself was born on her saints day. Setting W.H. Auden and written for unaccompanied chorus, its opening bars initiate us into the delights of its main theme. This dancing tune, introduced by women's voices over a sequential skeleton of itself (built on interlocking falling fourths) sung by the men, acts as a refrain ("Blessed Cecilia/Appear in visions to all musicians/Appear and inspire"), sung in unison at the close of the piece's first section (based on the same tune), being re-harmonised at the end of the second section, being developed in the third, then closing the piece gently. It's a magical idea and its nature gives rise to many enchantments of harmony. The second section sounds for all the world like a (very fast) children's round and is a breath of dancing joy until the breaking-in of Blakean experience at its close. The third section is the most complex part of the score, contrapuntal and dominated by a descending, trudging ostinato. Despair, however, is banished as the opening mood, reintroduced ravishingly by a solo soprano, carries us towards the luminous closing pages. 

Is it the Englishman in me that responds so strongly to this piece? Is this one of those pieces the rest of the world take to too, or not?

Rubbra: Visions of Albion

Some ten years ago I had something of a compulsion to hear as much of the music of the English composer Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986) as possible. I found his music very much to my taste, though in the intervening decade I've not listened to any more of his pieces - until now. 

Rubbra's music is of the kind that rewards the closest attention, especially the cycle of eleven symphonies which forms its backbone. His style is driven by melody and in his works you will hear a flow of singable melody throughout piece after piece. The themes within a single movement usually grow out of its initial melody (or motif), ever-evolving new melodies as they go. The process is evolutionary - or, to use a popular term, 'organic'. In this respect he is quite close to late Sibelius. The old rigidities of sonata form, complete with second subjects and development sections, are alien to his mature style. This method of composing is often called 'intuitive' but it calls for considerable control over the used material as each work grows. 

Now, a work driven by singable melody might sound like easy listening. What deepens Rubbra's music and makes it more difficult is that those melodic lines are expressed through polyphony - a form of counterpoint inspired by the composers of Renaissance England. His scores, therefore, can be full of melodic lines singing away at the same time. These have a tendency to break, Bach-like, into formal structures such as fugues or passacaglias. His works are, as a result, rarely crowd-pleasing. His music isn't pastoral nor is it folksong-inspired (in contrast to so much British music of its time). It isn't modernist either, nor impressionistic, nor does it place any great importance on orchestral colour for the sake of orchestral colour (i.e. it isn't glamorous). It is content to unfold its stream of singing polyphony through subtle harmonies, often to serene, ecstatic, radiant, visionary effect - though it can be strongly emotional too. 

Rubbra was a visionary type, inspired (like his teacher Holst) by Eastern mysticism and loving the Metaphysical Poets of Stuart England, later fervently embracing Roman Catholicism. He aimed at creating music of beauty and substance, music that (by fusing the spirit of Tudor polyphony with a modern sensibility) would would sound timeless. In his best, most luminous works I think he achieves that. The occasional use of the term 'The English Bruckner' to describe him might give you a sense of where he is coming from (though his symphonies are nowhere near as long as those of the great Austrian!)

Perhaps the place to begin is at the end. The magnificent Eleventh Symphony from 1979 is a single-movement, 15-minute symphony which exemplifies the qualities of Rubbra's music as just sketched out. It opens in a mood of mystery with a French horn playing a theme dominated by the interval of a perfect fifth. This interval remains a key player throughout as new melodies grow with seeming naturalness out of the ur-theme (the loveliest beginning at 9.37 on the linked video) and the music passes through other moods (serenity, exultation), always beautifully. The symphony may be small but it has the strength of a slumbering giant awakening. 

Like most composers, Edmund Rubbra took a while to evolve a personal style, though the essentials were there from the start. Going back to the other end of his long career, the First Symphony - an impressive début which wowed the audience at its première in 1937 - you can hear that Rubbra could write dramatically as well as serenely. The passionate opening movement is like the gradual dying-away of a great storm and is full of the spirit of symphonic striving, with resolute brass conflicting with tense, scurrying strings at the angry start before a mood of expansiveness begins to seep into the music and the tensions ease. The second movement is based on an old French dance called a Perigourdine. You'll hear its eight-bar tune at the very start. This tune comes again and again but is set against an ever-changing background which carries it from cheerfulness towards a manic state in a way that transforms the movement into a sort of danse macabre. (I hear the voice of his teacher Holst here). The longest movement by some margin, the closing Lento, is the one where the visionary aspect of the composer's art comes to the fore. To a quiet march rhythm, it begins like a scene of mourning before building to a powerful climax around five minutes in. This subsides onto an beautiful passage dominated by high strings. A return to the mournful mood of the opening leads to a prolonged climax at around ten minutes in, with those high strings singing a chant-like melody with radiant passion over a marching rhythm. An expectant stillness leads to a richly contrapuntal section and (eventually) a mighty concluding peroration. No wonder the first audience was impressed. 

In my opinion, the finest of Rubbra's eleven symphonies is the Sixth. The first movement should win over any remaining doubters. It has a mystical slow introduction which returns at the movement's end and frames a delightful allegro that has plenty of Italian sunniness to it. The even-more-mystical slow movement, Canto, is sublime. It displays the timeless, serene, visionary side of Rubbra better than anything else. I wrote in a diary when I first heard it that "I kept holding my breath throughout it". The movement has so much to recommend it that it would be pointless pointing the finger at particular passages - though, that said, I will now do so! Please listen out for the modulation just before the end as it is a 'tingle factor' moment for me (and hopefully for you too). The Scherzo - a boisterous movement with an unexpected ending - provides necessary contrast. The Finale is more elusive but fascinating, with a very beautiful opening passage. 

Talking of very beautiful opening passages, please try that of the Fourth Symphony as well. Its serenity provides another 'takes your breath away' moment in Rubbra's output. The passage mingles consonances with dominant sevenths and modulations and yet creates a feeling of stillness that is remarkable. The movement, through the composer's characteristic processes, then expands into more epic territory. The movement grows out of another ur-motif - this time a falling fifth and rising major third. After the noble expansiveness of this wonderful movement comes a short Intermezzo - a wistful waltz-like section that acts as light relief between the substantial outer movements. The polyphonic Finale comes in two parts - the first quiet, dark and inward-looking, the second full of epic striving. I think the first movement is in a league of its own here.

The symphony Rubbra himself was proudest of was his Ninth, the Sinfonia Sacra. This is a choral symphony (as someone else's Ninth Symphony had also been!!), with oratorio-like uses of Latin hymns and Lutheran chorales depicting the Resurrection. Serene, restrained and radiant, this piece is one you may need to hear a few times to fully appreciate. Repeated listening certainly brings out the symphonic processes particular to the composer which underlie the work. The stepwise rising-and-falling theme you here at the very start is the ur-theme from which much else springs. 

The symphony that always just about managed to maintain a foothold (or a toe-nail hold) on the repertory was the Fifth. The first movement is one of the glories of Rubbra's polyphonic style, using singing melodies and weaving them into a powerful symphonic statement. All the melodic lines grow out of a phrase heard  almost immediately, introduced by a solo oboe and containing the intervals of a perfect fifth and a tritone, the struggle between which (one stabilising, the other destabilising) plays such an important role in the symphony. The roots of the style in Renaissance polyphony becomes overt as the movement proceeds - as I'm sure you will hear for yourselves. The central Scherzo again seems to come as light relief after the intensity of the first movement. It fairly skips along. If it seems, despite the cheerfulness of its Renaissance dance-like tune, to be generating a surprising amount of symphonic energy that is because its tune and rhythms are constantly being modulated through key after key. The long Grave section that opens the final movement returns us to the mood and music of the first movement. Its bleak introspection eventually gives way to an Allegro vivo that is surprisingly uncomplicated and cheerful. At the end the symphony again dips back quietly into the mood of its opening. I have to admit that the finale of this piece fails (I think) to meet the high standards of Rubbra's usual symphonic writing. Please see what you think though. 

The Seventh Symphony is, in contrast, a wholly successful piece. Its first movement Lento should appeal to those who enjoy Bruckner,  those who enjoy Mahler and those who enjoy Rautavaara, with its mystical and beautiful opening, gorgeous shifts of harmony and powerful growth. That opening passage is one of Rubbra's finest, with harp and horn adding their magic. A short fate motif assumes prominence as the movement proceeds, driving it on. The central Scherzo is a delight - full of engaging rhythms and (unusually for the composer) orchestral colour, with a Renaissance dance-style trio. The finale takes the form of a Passacaglia and Fugue and is a movement of deep beauty and contrapuntal mastery. It seems to have been written in memory of the composer Gerald Finzi and begins in elegiac mood. Listen out for the lovely duet (about halfway) between solo violin and celesta, just before the fugue begins. 

The final symphony I can offer you is the Third, the one where the composer's admiration for Sibelius shines through (especially in some of the woodwind writing) from time to time. It has a lighter, more relaxed tone than the other symphonies I've reviewed and has a first movement full of energy and attractive melody. You will immediately notice that it sounds more Classical than any of the other symphonies and it comes closer than any of the others to using Classical sonata form. There's a good natured scherzo to follow with a charming tune and a particularly laid-back air - at least for the most part. The start of the slow movement is particularly lovely, wistful, with lots of aching yet restrained dissonances adding to its emotional tug. The rest of the movement doesn't (I think) maintain this high standard. The final movement takes the form of a set of a theme, variations and fugue and is a pleasant listen. If you listen to this movement and then listen to Rubbra's excellent contemporaneous orchestration of Brahms's Handel Variations you might get an idea about where this somewhat uncharacteristic movement came from.

The Rubbra symphonies (and, of course, there are three others) are one of the hidden treasures of British music and I hope you will take the chance to explore them.

Further listening:
Variations on "The Shining River"
String Quartet No.2
Lyric Movement
Sinfonia Concertante
Two Sonnets by William Alabaster
Viola Concerto 
String Quartet No.4  

The Morning Watch
The Virgin's Cradle Hymn
Overture Resurgam
A Tribute

William Walton: Beyond the Façade

A general outline of the musical career of William Walton (1902-1983) would say that be was no prodigy but, perhaps due to being a choirboy at Oxford Cathedral, was capable of writing so beautiful and harmonically interesting a piece as A Litany by the age of 14. He quickly acquired a professional approach to composing, writing such accomplished pieces as the teenage Piano Quartet - a work whose pervasive use of modality (including pentatonic melodies) isn't a sign of the future as far as this composer is concerned but which still sounds fully mature. The vigour and force of argument found in later Walton is found most clearly in the finale, along with obvious signs of the influence of the Stravinsky of Petrushka. 

The serious tone of that early chamber piece was soon pushed aside by Façade - Walton's breakthrough piece. Smart, slick and entirely in the spirit of light-hearted of the time, Façade was a sensation in its day. The abstract poetry of Edith Sitwell is spoken, the rhythms of which are reflected in the accompanying music which has more than a little of Les six and the chicest Stravinsky about it - and seems to show the influence of Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire. This was William Walton leaping straight to the front of the stage of British music with a work of brazen cheekiness. I like the daftness of the poetry and the parodic panache of Walton's music. You should definitely experience the piece in its original form (see link below). Partaking of some of the same spirit, the breezy brilliance of the concert overture Portsmouth Point - depicting a bustling scene of 18th Century British sailors contained in a Rowlandson print (see below) - also shows the influence of Stravinsky but also demonstrates that, despite the scandalous intent of Façade, Walton was a man who liked to write music that people would enjoy. The rhythmic ingenuity of the piece, with its hint of jazz, is a sign of things to come. The other concert overture of that time, Siesta,  also inhabits the world of Façade, sounding rather like an extension of one of its slumber songs. 

This 'radical' enfant terrible phase was not long in lasting and with the Sinfonia Concertante Walton's 'inner Romantic' begins to emerge - especially in the sensuous decoration of the somewhat Ravel-like slow movement. Then came the first of his three concertos, the masterly Viola Concerto. Here the snapping, irregular rhythms of Portsmouth Point (now established as a trait of the composer's mature style) are allied with bitter-sweet lyricism and symphonic breadth. The harmonic language is strongly rooted in tonality, though Walton makes it more astringent through the use of dissonance -including his trademark use of 'false relations'. 

His most famous work, Belshazzar's Feast ('Belli's Binge', as he liked to call it!), was a large-scale public statement for soloist, choral and orchestra - an unconventional oratorio that conveys the harshness and pity of the Bible story. The harshness is heard in the opening prophecy, with its dissonances and irregular rhythms, while the short orchestral passage that introduces the lament 'By the Rivers of Babylon' (which follows straight on) switches miraculously to pity. The work is powerfully dramatic, especially the climactic scene - the death of Belshazzar - which ends on a great shout of "slain". The piece contains much that has its roots in the jazzy works of the 1920s and is a virtuoso feat of composition from someone who had been a virtuoso composer for some ten years by that stage. It also contains passages of more traditional choral writing which may be traced back to A Litany and certainly can be projected forwards to the later choral works. 

The First Symphony is the next masterpiece in this string of masterpieces. My favourite movement is the first. Its grinding, tragic symphonic sweep and fruitful echoes of Sibelius place it among the greatest pieces of symphonic writing of the last century. It is based on three essential ideas - a rhythmic figure, a tune that hovers between two keys, and the interval of a falling seventh. The scherzo, written after an unhappy break-up with a girlfriend (who dumped him), is marked con malizia (with malice) and crackles like spat-out venom. Cross-rhythms (most notably five-against-three), false relations, unexpected cut-offs of phrases, misplaced accents and all the tricks of orchestration are placed in the service of creating the effect of a musical hissy-fit. The con malinconia (with melancholy) slow movement is full of wistful woodwind writing and musical sighs. The finale is not quite on par with the rest of the symphony, being composed later (and more effortfully) than the first three movements, and shows the first significant arrival in Walton's music of that Elgarian streak of pomp and circumstance that he was to make his own shortly after in the coronation march Crown Imperial - the first of a long line of such pieces (all very much to my tastes), as you will hear if you explore the music in the list below. 

The Violin Concerto returns to the world of the Viola Concerto, its first movement beginning with the delicious presentation of a long, lyrical, bitter-sweet melody; however, it has sharper contrasts (of ferocity and tranquillity) that give it its own, more hedonistic character. As in the Viola Concerto, a scherzo comes second. This is a capricious affair marked alla napolitana, full of dazzling solo writing. It has a gorgeously-scored trio for contrast. A sonata-form finale follows. This contains another of the composer's unforgettable melodies among its main themes. 

Scapino is a comedy overture concerning the mischievous servant of Commedia deli' Arte, inspired by an etching by Jacques Callot, and shows Walton recapturing some of the spirit of  Portsmouth Point. It was written at the time of the Second World War, a period when the composer took to film writing with a vengeance - most famously for Laurence Olivier's patriotic Henry V. Oliver credited Walton's score for making the film the triumph it undoubtedly is. It is truly superb music, putting all the composer's knack for pastiche to the best possible use. 

The great debate concerning William Walton has long been whether the post-war part of his composing life (marked by his move to live on the Italian island of Ischia, where he was to settle with his new wife Susana)  represents a significant falling-off from his pre-war mastery and originality. You can judge that for yourselves by clicking through the links in the list below. Is the Second Symphony inferior to the First? Is the Cello Concerto a thin re-brew of the Viola and Violin Concertos? Is Orb and Sceptre less lustrous than Crown Imperial? Are the Gloria and Te Deum pale shadows of Belshazzar's Feast? (My answers would be qualified yeses to all of those questions). 

The String Quartet of 1946 - and its glorious reincarnation in 1971 as the Sonata for Strings - unequivocally belongs with the great pre-war works. It has a very clear structure and superb themes, with a powerful fugato section in the development section of the first movement, another scintillating scherzo, a particularly beautiful slow movement and an energetic finale full of characteristic cross-rhythms. 

The Cello Concerto certainly does re-brew elements from the early concertos but its warm, nostalgic first movement has always been one of my favourite things by Walton - the lyrical melody which opens it being one of his finest tunes. The central scherzo is a capricious but symphonic affair. The third movement - a variations-plus-coda with two long solo passages for the cellist - doesn't hold the attention so strongly (the cadanzas sap it of some of its energy). 

The Second Symphony has another beautiful opening, seemingly evoking the sparking seas around Ischia and if the first movement cannot quite match the sweep and drama of its counterpart in the First Symphony it has sufficient energy and inventiveness (part nervous, part sardonic) to hold the interest. The introspective yet lyrical Lento is beautifully orchestrated. The problem is the finale, a Passacaglia built on a 14-note theme employing all twelve notes of the chromatic octave - an importation of serialism into Walton's style that feels (to me) added-on rather than integral. 

The work that dominated these years was the Shakespeare-based opera Troilus and Cressida - a work that has passionate supporters but also sharp detractors. I'm afraid I don't know the whole opera and cannot comment, but extracts suggest it is a sensuous and lyrical work. 

Besides all the delightful pieces in Crown Imperial mode (about which I've enthused elsewhere), please try the Johannesburg Festival Overture which has some of the bright, breezy character of Portsmouth Point.   The Partita is similarly lively and light in tone. One of the best of the late orchestral works, the Variations on a Theme by Hindemith, takes as its starting point music from the slow movement of Hindemith's Cello Concerto. 

Hope you enjoy exploring the music of William Walton!

• A Litany (1916) 
• Piano Quartet (1921)
• Façade, for reciter and chamber ensemble (1922, subsequently revised)
• Portsmouth Point, concert overture (1925)
• Siesta (1926, revised 1962) for small orchestra
• Sinfonia Concertante for piano and orchestra (1927, revised 1943)
• Viola Concerto (1929, revised 1961) 
• Belshazzar's Feast (1931, revised 1948)
• Escape Me Never (1934)
• Symphony No. 1 (1935)
• Crown Imperial (1937)
• In Honour of the City of London (1937)
• Set me as a seal upon thine heart (1938)
• Violin Concerto (1939)
• Scapino: A Comedy Overture (1940)
• The Wise Virgins (1940), based on music by J. S. Bach
• Major Barbara (1941)
• Spitfire Prelude and Fugue (1942), from the film The First of the Few
• Henry V (1944), including The Battle of Agincourt, Touch her Soft Lips and Part, The Death of Falstaff   
• String Quartet No. 2 in A minor (1946)
• Hamlet (1948)
• Coronation Te Deum (1952)
• Orb and Sceptre, ceremonial march (1953)
• Variations on an Elizabethan Theme, jointly composed with Benjamin Britten, Lennox Berkeley, Arthur Oldham, Humphrey Searle and Michael Tippett (1953)
• Troilus and Cressida (1954, revised 1963, 1976)
• Richard III (1955)
• Johannesburg Festival Overture (1956)
• Cello Concerto (1956)
• Partita for Orchestra (1957)
• March: A History of the English-speaking Peoples (1959)
• Symphony No. 2 (1960)
• Gloria (1961)
• Four Carols (1961)
• Granada Prelude (1962)
• Variations on a Theme by Hindemith (1963)
• The Twelve (1965)
• The Bear (1967)
• Improvisations on an Impromptu of Benjamin Britten (1969)
• Battle of Britain (1969)
• Five Bagatelles (1971)
• Sonata for Strings (1971), orchestrated from String Quartet in A minor
• Jubilate Deo (1972)
• Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (1974)
• Varii Capricci (1976), free transcriptions of Five Bagatelles for guitar
• Passacaglia for solo cello (1980)

Reeling with Delight

British composer Andrew Toovey (b.1962) has certainly taken to YouTube, setting up his own channel to offer listeners to opportunity to hear and see many of his scores. Thank you, sir!

As an example of Andrew's work, please try his Lament, Strathspey and Reel for solo violin. As you might expect from the title, there's a strong Scottish folksong influence to this piece. The beautiful Lament takes up most of the piece and is largely quiet, except for occasionally outbursts. It initially floats a modal melody over a near-continuous drone but later the lament begins to rise up the registers of the violin, eventually ending up being played in high harmonics, thus giving the music a strange quality - as if the listener is hearing the music sung by the Aurora Borealis as it passes overhead. The pace then quickens for the Strathspey, a dance in 4/4 time marked by the 'Scotch snap' - an exaggerated rhythm comprising a short note followed by a long one, here buzzing like an angry reincarnation of Bartok's fly. The Reel, a fast dance marked by more even quaver/semiquaver movement and accents on the first and third notes, then strikes up and is gradually whirled to an exciting climax.

If you now fancy hearing another strathspey and reel, then please try the first two movements of Malcolm Arnold's Scottish Dances for orchestra. The first movement is a strathspey, the second a reel,  while the third is a very beautiful Hebridean song and the finale a Highland fling.

From bells to accordians

I do like the simplicity of the idea behind Arvo Pärt's tintinnabuli style. You start with a the tonic triad of a particular key, say F minor:

In a four-voice piece you will then have two of the voices sounding the three notes of the triad (F, Ab and C) and their part will consist of arpeggiated lines made from just those notes. The other two voices sing any of the notes from the scale of the tonic key, including those three notes - except for obeying the simple rule that the movement of those two voices must only proceed stepwise. They can, however, change direction - upwards or downwards - at will. The piece is thus rooted on and around a single chord and its various inversions. The effect is to compared with the pealing of bells - hence tintinnabuli from the Latin word for 'bell'. That may all sound very constricting, but the results can be rich, beautiful and expressive. Take Pärt's setting of the De Profundis for male chorus, organ and percussion for example. Tenors and basses emerge from the depths, crescendoing slowly against flickering figures from the organ, with barely audible drum beats and occasional chimes from a tubular bell, before fading back into quietness again and ending. Beautiful, isn't it?

Arvo Pärt is, of course, continuing the long tradition of setting Psalm 130, Out of the Depths. Having looked at Renaissance and French Baroque setting, I thought I might leap forward to settings by  composers written since the end of the Second World War (before moving back in time again in later posts). I think you will find that there is a great deal of variety out there!

John Rutter's Requiem features an English language setting of De Profundis as its second movement. It is one of my favourite Rutter movements. Forget about the John Rutter of the carols and all thoughts of sugariness. Here his style sails very close to Vaughan Williams at his most serene and the warmth of harmony and sound he draws from his forces (mixed chorus, solo cello, orchestra and organ) achieves a deeply consolatory effect. The solo cello's soulful pleading meets the beauty of a modally-inflected melody at the start is immediately winning and the composer certainly knows how to write a radiantly tonal climax. 

Now, if Arvo Pärt and John Rutter take a solacing view of the text of Psalm 130, the same cannot quite be said of Arnold Schoenberg, whose unaccompanied choral work De Profundis, Op.50b encompasses all the moods of the psalm, including anguish. There are many contrasts of texture, usually proceeding simultaneously, with solos, duos and full 6-part choral writing. Most of the music is sung but against these lines are counterpointed chanted phrases, cries, whispers (Sprechstimme), very effectively - as if many voices are crying out from the depth, in whatever way they can. Listen out in particular for the gorgeous passage (setting "My soul waits for the Lord", beginning at 4.10 into the linked video) where Schoenberg's writing becomes almost Brahms-like. Yes, the piece is twelve-tone and, thus, atonal, but the harmonies often strike a passing tonal note and you can feel as if you are hearing tonal music where the keys are modulating so fast that the mind cannot catch them. The setting is in Hebrew. The composer dedicated the piece to the newborn State of Israel. If performed with passion, this piece can really hit the spot. (Dry performances do it no favours). I love hearing it. 

Krzyzstof Penderecki's Symphony No.7, Seven Gates of Jerusalem (a cantata/choral symphony written in honour of Jerusalem) features an a cappella movement called De Profundis that seems to me to contain clear echoes of the Schoenberg. His language combines (or juxtaposes) tonality with chromaticism and modality and has space for writing that comes close the the spirit of the gorgeous passage in the Schoenberg and other writing that nears the various Sprechstimme effects of that other piece. 

Naturally, there are also instrumental works that draw on the words of Psalm 130 for their inspiration. You might (or you might not) like to try Sofia Gubaidulina's extraordinary De Profundis for solo accordian, a piece whose opening certainly does evoke the sound of voices crying out of the deep. After a while you will hear a slow chorale. This begins to make repeated efforts to escape from darkness to light, from the depths to the heavens. In the end it succeeds. The range of sounds she conjures out of the instrument have to be heard to be believed. An organ could hardly do more. It's not always a comfortable listen but it is worth hearing and makes for a dramatic contrast to the Pärt piece with which this post began.