Holst: Beyond the Solar System...

I am a great fan of Gustav Holst (1874-1934), one of the most underestimated geniuses of British music. For many listeners he is the guy who wrote The Planets, but there's a large amount of music beyond The Planets. What lies beyond Neptune? 

This post - and the ones to follow - will attempt to provide an answer. Today's post will look at the early works - the period before he and Vaughan Williams set to work on the English Hymnal and promoting British folksongs.

To begin though, some generalities. 

The first thing to say about Holst's music is that it is one of the hardest to describe. The reason is that it is so various - and deliberately so. Holst always wanted to do something different. He cannot, therefore, be pigeon-holed. Few of his other pieces sound like The Planets. Few of his pieces sound like many of his other pieces. He really is a composer where you pretty much have to take each piece as it comes, and on its own terms.

There are, however, certain Holstian fingerprints. They are far from being present in all his pieces, but they do tend to stand out as being personal qualities. These include:

- memorable tunes

- chains of fourths in melodies

- strong bass lines 

- descending bass lines

- brilliant orchestration

- individual brass writing
- counterpoint

Onto the music. There's a lot of very early music that no one ever performs, so outlining his first steps as a composer is fairly hard. Standard account tell us that he began sounding like Grieg and Sullivan and read Berlioz on orchestration. He learned at the feet of Stanford, and picked up on Purcell and Bach. Then came Wagner. His progress to individuality, this stand account continues, was signalled by his attempts to free himself from the influence of Wagner. 

The earliest pieces I've come across certainly show that Holst began as a conventional late 19th Century Romantic composer - something worth noting given how original and unconventional he would become. From 1894-1896 come Four Part-songs for unaccompanied mixed chorus ('O Lady, Leave That Silken Thread', 'Soft and Gently through My Soul', 'The Autumn is Old' and 'Winter and the Birds'.) Young Gustav wrote a lot of part-songs and kept on writing them throughout his career. These pieces, though unexceptional, are already expertly crafted.

The Winter Idyll of 1897 was composed, like the part-songs, while Holst was still a student. As such it wears its influences on its sleeve, having several Dvorak-like passages. Dvorak is a composer usually not mentioned in standard accounts but who was highly popular in Britain at the time. The influence then may have been direct but, knowing (and loving) the Stanford symphonies well, it could have come through Stanford's influence. Stanford's symphonies contain some strikingly Dvorak-like passages. Except for the use of bold tunes as themes and the assurance with which Holst handles his orchestra, there's nothing about this piece that anticipates the mature composer. Moving on a couple of years to the Walt Whitman Overture and I would say much the same. The Dvorak/Stanford influence still strongly dominates. Wagner's is marginal at best, despite a couple of bars (as the exciting build-up to the main climax nears its height) sounding like echoes of the Ride of the Valkyries. Both pieces are adequately enjoyable, accomplished pieces. 

In the years 1899-1900 young Gustav wrote a symphony, his Symphony in F major, "The Cotswolds". Opening with a fanfare that might have come out of a pre-Ring Wagner opera, the likeable first movement Allegro con brio pursues the Stanford/Dvorak path again, though this time with an unmistakable additional dash of Stanford's beloved Brahms too, until the opening fanfare is transformed into a jolly English folksong-style tune - a taste of things to come. The Wagnerian influence truly makes itself felt in the second movement, the Elegy (In Memoriam William Morris). This heartfelt and deeply beautiful tribute to a socialist hero of the young composer's again speaks the language of 19th Century Romanticism, with added post-Ring/Tristanesque chromaticism, and does so persuasively. This is bound to be the movement that listeners to the symphony are sure to respond to with the warmest enthusiasm. The remaining movements - the Scherzo and the Finale - return us to the geniality of the opening movement and are just as easy to like. The Scherzo is orchestrated in an especially delightful way, proof that Holst was a brilliant orchestrator from an early stage. (He must have read his Berlioz very closely). I like this symphony. 

In 1900 Holst wrote a piece which when I first heard in on a CD many years ago I thought must have been a misattribution, an error on the record company's part. It sounded (with the exception of a few harmonies) like something from the end of the 16th/start of the 17th centuries. It was some time before I accepted that it was indeed by Gustav Holst. That piece is his breathtakingly lovely Ave Maria for eight-part female chorus. Along with his friend Vaughan Williams, who he first met in 1895, he had already developed an interest in Tudor church music. (RVW would take that interest into such works as his Tallis Fantasia.) That interest, if the Ave Maria is anything to go by, extended into Italian music of the time too (Palestrina, Monteverdi and the like). I love this Ave Maria.

You may be wondering (as I am) at this stage about where all the Wagnerism is. Presumably it's locked up in all the big works that no one bothers performing - like the opera Sita or the symphonic poem Indra, which he was writing in the first years of the 20th century. As I've never heard a note of either I can't tell you whether they really are Wagnerian or not. If they are as Wagnerian as the pieces already reviewed - i.e. not very Wagnerian at all! - then the standard outline of Holst's development needs updating! Their subject matter, however, betokens a subject area that will become of central importance to Holst's middle period output - the spirit of the mystical East (as he saw it).

The next work on the menu is the Wind Quintet in A flat Major, Op.14 of 1903. I can hear a few suggestions of Wagner's Siegfried Idyll in this piece, so that may be evidence of a Wagnerian phase being underway at the time of Sita. The gentle tone of the work, however, is one of relaxed Brahmsian warmth. There are four concise movements -  an Allegro Moderato, a lyrical Adagio, a Minuet in canon form and a Theme and Variations finale on a Renaissance-tinged air.

1903-05 also saw the writing of King Estmere, Op.17, his "Old English Ballad" for chorus and orchestra. There's still plenty of Stanford, Parry and Sullivan about it (no bad thing in my book!), but there is also an attempt to write in a folksong-like style throughout. And sign of Wagner? Perhaps at the climaxes, where there is something of the choruses from the final opera of the Ring about the music - though I wouldn't overstate that. There are too many catchy tunes for the mild faults of King Estmere to allowed to get in the way of a listener's enjoyment of it.

King Estmere marks the end of the first period of Gustav Holst's development and the beginning of the second. Folksong was about to become The Big Idea. All together now, "As I walked out one morning/In the spring time of the year..."!

Mahler's Flower Maiden

Klimt

As it's Gustav Mahler's 152nd birthday today (and he doesn't look a day over 121), I thought I might present him with a bouquet of flowers, his Blumine. 

Blumine is the 'Flower Piece' movement discarded from the composer's much-loved First Symphony and rediscovered only in 1966.  If you fancy a bit of well-written music journalism, the still mysterious history of Blumine and the unsettled questions surrounding Mahler's reasons for rejecting it are aired by Jeffrey Gantz here. 

As for the contentious issue of whether the piece should be restored to the symphony - as it sometimes is in performances and recording - I have to say that I prefer my Blumine to be planted as either a separate movement or as an encore. It's far too good to neglect though and is anything but sugary (as some of its harshest critics have described it). 

Blumine is a lyrical, romance-style piece with an attractive melody played initially by a solo trumpet over a murmuring string accompaniment (with horn support). To me it's plainly a love song and this tune sounds like a man's outpouring of tender passion. The strings carry the first paragraph to a warm, suspension-soaked conclusion before the melody yields over a soft tremolo and the melancholy middle section, with its plaintive woodwind melodies - offshoots of the trumpet tune -, carries us out into the Austrian countryside. The first theme then re-emerges and a short but expressive climaxes carries us to further soft, warm restatements of the melody led by the strings before the trumpet and various other soloists usher in the lovely string ascent to the heavens in the closing bars. The scoring is as well-judged as you would expect from the composer of the familiar First Symphony. 

I must say that I've got a real soft spot for Blumine. It seems from reading Mr. Gantz, that Mahler might have had one too.

Heavenly Cow-Calls

One of the most wonderful new music experiences I had in recent years was hearing a radio broadcast of Swedish composer Karin Rehnqvist's refreshing Requiem Aeternam for chorus and orchestra of 2008 - a life-enhancing tribute to the dead if there every was one. 

A key feature of this work, which unfortunately remains unrecorded to this day, is its use of the old Scandinavian folk tradition of kulning - the calling of cows and goats down from the mountains. In the Requiem these herding calls (from sopranos and orchestra) echo each other magically, principally through the technique of canon. One of its movements - the seventh - grew out of a beautiful work for unaccompanied treble/women's chorus and soloists from a decade earlier called I Himmelen ('In Heaven's Hall'). Here the memorable folk-style tune, canons and herding calls achieve a luminosity I hope you will find as pleasurable as I do. Amateur choirs seem to love it to. Please try it.

A Warlock and his Spells

Philip Heseltine (1894-1930) was born in the Savoy Hotel, London, and died in mysterious circumstances (probably suicide). He is said to have dabbled in the occult, and known to have practised sado-masochism and smoked cannabis. He also absolutely loved strong drink. Quite a character. (There's more besides). He's much better known under the pseudonym Peter Warlock.

Are his works as intriguing as his life? Well, here's a short survey to help you judge.

Warlock stood apart from most of his contemporaries in refraining from basing his music on English folk song. There are exceptions which prove the rule, including his only work for solo piano, the Folk Song Preludes - five early pieces with a tinge of Grieg but also many unexpected, dissonant harmonies - and his arrangement of a Norfolk folksong, Yarmouth Fair, where the harmonies get ever more surprising. Even they sound nothing like Vaughan Williams or Holst.

No, Warlock was much more at home basing his pieces on 16th Century French dances than English folksongs. One of his best-loved pieces, the Capriol Suite for string orchestra, takes five such tunes and gives them harmonies appropriate to the age but with added unexpected, dissonant harmonies. The scholarly Mr. Heseltine would have noted that some (but only some) of those dissonances echo the 'false relations' of composers like Tallis and Byrd. The Basse Dance (a transcription of which I return to like a happy dog with a huge bone from time to time when I'm seated at the piano) the Pavane and the Pieds-en-l'air are my favourite movements. (The other movements are Tordion, Bransles and Mattachins).

In preparing this survey I was surprised to find some further orchestral pieces that even the Warlock Society website doesn't mention - his Six Italian Dances. Like the Capriol Suite, these are Warlock's take on music of the 16th century. Though they aren't as sharp as the famous suite, they are certainly likeable pieces.

Warlock wrote few instrumental works, being essentially a song-writer. The few we have, however, are (as you will have heard from the Capriol Suite) of considerable value. The string orchestral Serenade was written as a birthday tribute to a composer whose music has a key influence on him, Frederick Delius. The influence of Delius is certainly felt in this lovely piece, with more than a few Delian slippery chromatic progressions and the presence of that lilting triple-time rhythm which runs through many a work of Delius. Gently undulating like the green and pleasant hills of England, it is a hidden classic of the English string repertoire. Another orchestral piece is the early An Old Song, where shades of Grieg and Delius mingle delectably. 

If you enjoyed those short but magnificent orchestral scores, I'll help ease you away from them and towards the choral pieces with a gorgeous arrangement (by that master arranger of buried British treasure, Philip Lane) of one of the composer's most magical choral miniatures, Bethlehem Down. Now please take a listen to the original, for four part chorus: Bethlehem Down.

Even though it's the height of summer here in the United Kingdom (not that you'd know it, with rain and flooding galore!), I'll stick with Christmastide Warlock and present some more of his carols. By the wonders of YouTube, you can savour a delightful old BBC recording of Warlock's Cornish Christmas Carol, 'In dark December', with its echoes of The First Nowell. Also to be relished are the lullaby Balulalow, Adam Lay Ybounden, The First Mercy (here arranged most beautifully for string orchestra by Mr. Lane) and, if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by all this slow-moving beauty, that remarkable foretaste of late Poulenc, Benedicamus Domino. (The Poulenc piece I have in mind is his Hodie, Christus natus est!)   

This sort of thing isn't the kind of music most typically associated with the name of Peter Warlock - a man who, as mentioned before, liked to live on the wild side and who loved nothing more than getting very, very drunk. That side of Philip Heseltine ("the old, bold mate of Henry Morgan") is most famously represented by Captain Stratton's Fancy - one of his "Two True Toper's Tunes to Troll with Trulls and Trollops in a Tavern". Though I prefer wine to rum, I'll gladly toast Warlock for writing that peach of a song! "And Always to be merry" why not also try The Lady's Birthday, for baritone and male voices? 

With Captain Stratton's Fancy we finally arrive at Warlock songs, which comprise the bulk of his output. Philip Heseltine first became 'Peter Warlock' when publishing a set of songs, including The bayley berith the bell away. Early English poetry was a particular love of his, with Anonymous taking his fair share of the writing credits - as with the lyrical Rest, Sweet Nymphs or the jolly ale-swigging Jillian of Berry. Examples include a setting of John Fletcher, Shakespeare's successor - one of Warlock's most admired songs, Sleep, a piece where the melodic spirit of Dowland seems to live again, albeit with the addition of impressionist harmonies. A less familiar Elizabethan poet, John Philips, was the lyricist behind Cradle Song - one of my favourite Warlock songs, with its beautiful melody and its harmonies that fuse Delius, Tudor modality, impressionism and dissonance into a winning package. Shakespeare was a natural choice, of course. Of Mr. Heseltine's settings of the Bard, you might like to try Sigh no more ladies from Much Ado About Nothing.

Warlock also set modern poetry. Captain Strattons' Fancy, for example, was a setting of John Masefield. Hilaire Belloc was a particular favourite, and his The Birds became one of Warlock's most beautiful songs. Another fine Belloc setting is My Own Country, a nostalgic song that hymns my own "pleasant land".

His best-known song-cycle was the deeply introspective The Curlew. This set four poems of unrequited love by W.B. Yeats (my poet of choice as a teenager!), scoring them for tenor, flute, cor anglais and string quartet. The poems themselves are bleak affairs and Warlock matches their mood with music of unremitting sadness, desolation and beauty. They are a world away from Captain Strattons' Fancy and you might find them a much tougher listen than any of the songs we've met so far. The cor anglais evokes the song of the curlew itself and the flute is said to imitate a peewit. The flute part is unusual in that it tends to remain in its lowest registers throughout. The strings help paint the scene. Yes, at heart Philip Heseltine was a melancholy man. (Yeats' poems can be read here).

The Curlew wasn't Warlock's only song-cycle. For something more cheerful to finish on you could perhaps try Candlelight, a Song cycle on Nursery Rhymes - a set of songs in his lighter vein, in miniature.

I hope you give this composer some time to cast his spell on you.

Barrios: Songs of Paraguay

I love finding a composer who really hits the spot and today's composer is just such a discovery for me.

The music of Paraguay's greatest classical composer Agustín Barrios (Mangoré) (1885-1944), 'The  `Paganini of the Guitar', is best known to guitarists and lovers of guitar music but is so full of delicacy and beauty that it should be known by all music lovers. In fact, getting to know the music of Barrios (hitherto just a name to me) has convinced me that the widely-quoted remark of classical guitarist John Williams that "As a guitarist/composer, Barrios is the best of the lot, regardless of era" is true. Mr. Williams goes on,  "His music is better formed, it's more poetic, it's more everything! And it's more of all those things in a timeless way." He's quite right on all points. There are so many gems by Barrios that it's hard to know where to begin. Still...

Barrios was steeped in the ways of the classical guitar. A virtuoso player himself, he studied the music of his great predecessors and himself stands firmly in that tradition. It was the Spaniard Francisco Tárrega from whom Barrios seems to have learned the most. (Tárrega is famed for his Memories of the Alhambra and for being the source for that old mobile phone ringtone, taken from his Gran Vals). Tárrega is often considered the 'Father' of 20th century classical guitar music but he was a true Romantic - and so was Barrios.

Like many of his contemporaries Barrios was keen to draw on the folk/popular music of his country, though - like Bela Bartok - he also drew generously on the folk/popular music traditions of several other countries in his region of the world. Also like Bartok, there are works based directly on existing folk tunes but also many that draw indirectly on the characteristics of genres of folk/popular song - their rhythms, accents, melodic shapes and modes. Some of the pieces associated with his own homeland are especially endearing - pieces like the Danzas Paraguayo No.1 (one of his most popular pieces)...

with its traditional galopa rhythm,...

...a rhythm also shared by the Danza Paraguayo No.2 (Jha, Che Valle! - "Oh my homeland!"), or the unforgettable Caazapá, with its characteristic Latin rhythms (mingling 6/8 and 3/4 time):

Nor can I resist the catchy Danza Paraguayo No.3, with its intriguing subtitle London Carapé. 

As an inveterate traveller, Barrios based many pieces on places he visited or lived in whilst away from his homeland. So we have the fleet-fingered Maxixe and the soulful Choro de Saudade, both based on a dances from Brazil; or Cueca from Chile; or a piece in Estilo uruguayo (in Uruguayan style)...and there's a Zamba and, of course, several tangos from Argentina, including the magical Don Pérez Freire (named after a Chilean composer/friend). His trip to Europe in the 1930s resulted in some Spanish-style pieces too, such as Leyenda de Espana.

There were other sides to Agustín Barrios. One was his fascination with the music of the past, sometimes resulting in pieces written in imitation of other composers. As a result there is a temptation to describe him as a neo-Classicist, especially when listening to some of his works imitating the manner of Bach or Mozart, but his was a wholly Romantic take on the masters of the past. 

The work where Bach's example shines brightest is the piece generally considered the composer's masterpiece, his La Catedral of 1921. There are three movements: Preludio (Saudade), Andante religioso and Allegro solemne. 'Saudade' means 'nostalgia' and this prelude certainly sounds to have more than merely a nostalgia for the beauty of Bach's music. It seems that the piece was composed while the composer was (as so often) abroad and in poor health, so a little nostalgia is entirely understandable. The movement certainly has the feel of a Bach prelude. The main melody of the Andante religioso was apparently suggested to him by the ringing of the church bells in Montevideo. (Can't say bells in England sound like that!) Barrios then enters the cathedral and hears the music of Bach on the organ and then, as the Allegro solemne begins, leaves the cathedral and re-enters the busy streets of the city to music that has something of the feel of a Bach toccata. 

This was far from being the only piece Barrios wrote inspired by his beloved Bach. There's also his tender Preludio in C minor (with shades of Chopin too) and the Preludio in G minor. 

Another masterpiece-in-miniature by Barrios (said to be his final piece) is Una Limosna por el Amor de Dios ("An Alm for the Love of God"). Here the tremolo style of Tárrega's Memories of the Alhambra is given a beautiful new lease of life - a magical fusion of harmony, melody, technical prowess and poetry. Apparently the repeated notes in the bass depict the knocking of a beggar at the door. Barrios was a true master of the tremolo technique, deploying it in other lyrical pieces, such as the spellbinding Un Sueño en la Floresta, Contemplación and the Canción de la Hilandera (inspired by watching a Mexican girl at a spinning wheel).

The romanticism of Barrios, also found in these pieces, blossoms again in the romance-style Confesión de Amor - a romantic love-song-without-words where the melody sings like a tenor. 

The influence of Romantic composers - Schumann and Chopin especially - can be heard in such pieces as the Romanza en Imitación al Violoncello (the tune is in the bass) and Estudio de Concierto (Schumann) and the Mazurka Apassionata (Chopin). The influence of the Classical composer is clearest in the minuets. You might like to try the Minuet in A major for a taste of Paraguayan-style Mozart.

Still, Tárrega was the truest guiding light for Barrios and the Paraguayan paid tribute to him with his Variations on a Theme of Tárrega. The theme (see below) was that of the Spaniard's wistful little gem Lagrima. Six variations follow, including more tremolo writing.

A few more random delights to finish. First, his Villancico de Navidad ('Christmas Carol'), a particularly lovely lullaby, and to follow that his similarly tender waltz El sueño de la muñequita ('The Sleep of the Little Doll'), with its enchanting use of harmonics in the middle section. Both are true beauties. Keeping to the family theme please also try his tuneful Madrecita! ('Little mother!'). For a charming Valse Boston (a French novelty the Paraguayan was quick to pick up on), please try his Junto a tu corazón. Last of all, why not try Barrios himself playing his understandably popular Vals No.3? 

Barrios wrote a lot of pieces, so this survey has just dipped a big toe into his output. I do hope it has whetted your appetite to further explore 'The Paganini of Paraguay'.

Top Billings

As today is Independence Day in the United States, who better to be the subject of a post than that nation's first great musical original, the pioneering William Billings (1746-1800)?

The largely self-taught Billings, a tanner by trade, composed hundreds of unaccompanied, four-part choral works. They were written to be sung by amateurs in parish churches and have something of the freshness of folk music about them. When I first came to the music of Billings a decade or so ago, I assumed (reading his dates) that his choral music would sound rather like Handel or, maybe, Haydn. I was in for a big surprise. It sounds so different to the kind of sacred music being written in Europe at the time; indeed, it sounds timeless. Out go many of the niceties of Baroque and Classical counterpoint and in come 'fuguing songs', modality, the fresh country air of open fifths, and fifths and octaves moving in parallel. Another unusual feature is that the main melody in a Billings piece lies in the tenor part, which he wrote first. The other lines - first the bass, then the soprano and finally the alto - were then composed around it. 

This may sound like music out of its time but it was, in fact, very much of its time - and place. Billings was a friend of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere and wrote one of the most popular revolutionary anthems, Chester ('Let tyrants shake their iron rod'). It was a great favourite with the revolting American colonists during the War of Independence and sounds great fun to sing. 

Chester later got a new lease of life when William Schuman used it as the basis of the third movement of his New England Triptych.

Billings' style can encompass a range of moods. If you fancy a bit of early Christmas good cheer then Billings is your man. His Shepherd's Carol ('Methinks I see an heaven'ly host') may have the traditional triple-time lilt of the old pastoral sicilienne but its energy, robust part-writing and memorable tune mark it out as pure Billings - as does Judea ('A Virgin Unspotted'). If you want to hear a forthright, dramatically-paced telling of David's Lamentation ('David, the King, was grieved and moved') over the death of his son, Absalom, then again Billings is your man. The 'anthem for mariners' Euroclydon ('They that go down to the Sea in Ships') is a similarly fine piece of word-painting. The latter pieces show how flexibly Billings could handle his four-part writing, using contrasting textures to get his hymn's message across. This reaches its height in I am the Rose of Sharon

Sometimes the harmonies of Billings could have come fresh out of the Renaissance, by-passing over one hundred and fifty years of Baroque harmonic innovation. The effects can be captivating, as you can hear with his touching Emmaus ('When Jesus Wept').

Billings is such a fascinating one-off.

Further listening:

The Lord is ris'n indeed

O Praise the Lord of Heaven!

Chesterfield

Kittery

Arkhangelic Music

Alexander Arkhangelsky

I've previously published a couple of posts that reflect my attempts to understand how Russia's great choral tradition developed. Each new discovery, however, seems to complicate matters somewhat.

It turns out that the 19th century nationalist flight from Bortniansky's Western European-influenced style that culminated in Rachmaninov's Vespers might not be quite so straightforward and linear as I first thought. As you will probably be aware, 19th century Russian music is often said to have split into two opposing camps - a nationalist camp (most famously represented by the Mighty Handful) and a westernising camp (circled around Anton Rubinstein). Does the way Russian composers tried to re-invigorate their nation's Orthodox choral tradition reflect this split? 

Only up to a point. 

A simple account might run like this: One group of composers (let's call them 'the Lvov tendency') chose a certain direction. Inspired primarily by German composers, principally Mendelssohn and Schumann, they started writing music of greater simplicity where the melody was placed in the uppermost part and set in the context of Western-style four-part harmony. Another, more nationalist set of composers (let's call them 'the Kastalsky tendency') chose to draw deep on old Russian chants, bringing appropriate modal harmonies to bear on them and sometimes employing Russian folk melodies. 

This, however, is where things get more complicated. That account is far too simplistic.

For starters, the so-called Germanising tendency came first, historically-speaking. It was the initial stage in the reaction against Bortniansky and all that he stood for. The nationalist tendency arose later. 

[Before we get to these composers it might be helpful to be reminded of what they were reacting against:

Bortniansky, Let God arise

Bortniansky, Cherubic Hymn

Bortniansky, Glory to God in the Highest]

Also, much of this seemingly Germanophile music sounds very much like Russian Orthodox music to me. Why? Partly, I think, because a lot of Russian Orthodox music does sound like this! Also because these composers began using chants as melodies in some of their pieces and because they sometimes mingle their Mendelssohnian diatonic harmonies with Russian modal ones. Also, the chant-like phrasing of some of these pieces (even when the melodies aren't chant-based) makes them sound closer to the nationalist camp than a simple 'dialectical' approach would suggest they should. Yes, they do have German-style Romantic moments and passages but they also contain moments and passages that are freshly informed by the beginnings of Russia's first serious period of study into its ancient chant traditions. On a simpler level, of course, the Russian language and the distinctive sound of Russian choirs in performances should also be considered factors! 

So all of this was a break with the previous decades of Russian music. It was the beginning of the great revival of chant as a basis for musical works. So it was then a Russifying project, even if it brought in other non-Russian influences too. The nationalists would only take it a few stages further - 'purifying' it of those remaining Western vestiges. The comparison of this 'camp' with the Rubinstein camp doesn't really seem to be a particularly firm one to make then. Ah, so the linear narrative might be safe after all - even if it isn't quite so straightforward! 

This tradition appears to have been founded by Alexei Lvov (1798-1870), a friend of Mendelssohn's and the successor-but-one of Bortniansky as head of the Imperial Chapel. Lvov is best known for being the man who wrote the music for the old Russian imperial national anthem - the one most of us know from Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, God Save the Tsar. An exemplary example of what he brought to the Russian choral tradition can be judged from Of Thy Mystical Supper, where (with occasional octave doubling) four-voice Mendelssohnian homophony and Western-style diatonic harmonies mingle with modal harmonies and the sound of a Russian choir singing chant-like melodies in Russian. It it almost as beautiful as the same composer's Lord Have Mercy, which might sound like every non-Russian listener's idea of Russian choral music were it not for the presence of some highly Western-sounding chords. 

Other composers followed him, including Gavriil Lomakin (c.1812-1885), a friend of Balakirev's (oh yes!) best known for his Cherubic Hymn. Keep listening to this piece and you'll hear how Western it turns in its final section. Another such composer was Mikhail Strokin (1832-1887), known for his charismatic setting of Let Thy Servant Depart in Peace (the Nunc dimittis). The tradition continued into the 20th century with composers such as Dmitry Allemanov (1867-1918), for a taste of whose music you might like to try the Nativity Kanon - and the main subject of this post, Alexander Arkhangelsky (1846-1924).

Before I get to Arkhangelsky though, it's time to take another detour and remind you of what the other side of the coin sounds like. The nationalist side's great name (before Rachmaninov came along) was my old friend Valery Kastalsky (1856-1926), whose works took up the emphasis on chants, thoroughgoing modality and Russian folk song - all of which can be heard in such pieces as On this day the Virgin, God is with us and Open the Doors of Compassion.

So onto Alexander Arkhangelsky then, and things get even more complicated. Arkhangelsky founded a highly influential choir. It had the distinction of being the first to features women's voices (instead of boys). The choir performed sacred music but also Russian folksongs and had a mission to revive the country's Orthodox repertoire and free it from certain of its westernised aspects. To that extent he too was in the nationalist camp. His music, however, certainly sounds to be closely in the spirit of Lvov.

Russian Orthodox churchgoers are, by all accounts, fond of their Arkhangelsky. The sheer number of videos on YouTube devoted to his music, especially when compared to these other composers, is testimony to his popularity. To those who are less sympathetic to his more Mendelssohnian brand of Orthodox liturgical music he can be found too sentimental - an accusation so often thrown at Mendelssohn himself. 

See what you think. 

In  Arkhangelsky's Vespers all the ingredients of the Lvov style are there - the four-part homophony, the touches of Mendelssohnian harmony, the essential simplicity, the melody in the uppermost part, plus the modal touches and chant-like melodies too. Lyrical warmth is the quality Arkhangelsky himself most brings to the table. For comparison (and for the sheer pleasure of hearing it), please then listen to Rachmaninov's ravishing Vespers, fully composed in the nationalist spirit and first performed in consultation with Kastalsky. In the Rachmaninov the voices packed into the harmonies rise beyond four as high (at one point) as eleven. Here Russian Orthodox chants (ten genuine, five of Rachmaninov's own invention) and modal harmonies reign supreme.

Further Arkhangelsky listening:

I Dread the Fearful Day

We have no other help

Hear my Prayer, O Lord

Let us come zealously to the Mother of God

The Lord looks from Heaven upon the helpless
I cried unto the Lord with my Voice

I doubt even now that I've really got to the bottom of all this. Even if I haven't there's been some very fine music along the way!

In the name of Taverner

Here's a strange English tale. There was an old Gregorian plainchant melody, Gloria tibi Trinitas ('Glory to the Trinity').  This tune was used, somewhere around 1520, as the cantus firmus (i.e. the melodic basis) of a substantial mass setting by the great Tudor composer John Taverner (c.1490-1545), namely his Missa Gloria tibi Trinitas. The chant pops up repeatedly throughout the mass, appearing in every movement. One of its appearances, however, is especially noteworthy. Please listen to part of the Benedictus - the exceptionally beautiful part beginning at 4.56 in this recording - where the mass's six-part texture shrinks to just four parts - the sopranos singing a deliciously florid line while the altos below it sing the plainchant melody in long notes. The passage sets the words "in nomine Domini". The particular beauty of this passage struck Taverner's contemporaries and arrangements of it began to be made, including for instruments, and this stand-alone extract became known as Taverner's In Nomine. Its melancholy, lyrical quality, especially when performed on viols (as it often was), helped spread the music's appeal yet further. 

More than that, Taverner's contemporaries began composing their own contrapuntal pieces, weaving their own descants around the old plainchant melody. These pieces were all given the name In Nomine. My favourite Tudor composer Thomas Tallis (c.1505-1585) seems to have been first out of the traps, writing two such works - In Nomine I and In Nomine II, both in four parts. Christopher Tye (c.1505-c.1572) went even further, composing over twenty In Nomines. Most are in five parts, though there is a four-part piece and a six-part one too. Whereas both of Tallis's takes kept the melancholy tinge of Taverner's original, Tye took the form into all manner of moods. His In Nomine XIV (subtitled Reporte) sticks close to the that original spirit while his In Nomine XX (subtitled Crye - seemingly reflecting the cries of street vendors) is positively frolicsome. In the In Nomine a 5, Farewell my good one forever the slight melancholy of the Taverner turns to deep melancholy. Other composers also took the form into contrasting moods, as with the pleasingly upbeat (and florid) In Nomine by Robert Parsons (c.1535-c.1572).

The intention seems clear. This was a case of composers trying to match or even outdo the beauty and skill of Taverner's original. It was a tribute to Taverner but also a show of that other composer's own compositional prowess. Tye's In Nomine XIII (Trust), for example, is audibly more complex than the original - as are many others. 

What is so remarkable is just how many English composers wrote In Nomines. All the greats of Tudor music wrote them, including those of later generations - including Tudor England's undisputed master William Byrd (c.1540-1623). Just listen to his 4-part In Nomine No.2 and 5-part In Nomine No.5 (the latter with some particular juicy dissonances - those false relations beloved of the composer) for music that more than rivals the original setting. John Bull (1562-1628) also wrote several examples, including this ingenious piece a 3 which brings the utmost fantasy to bear on the old chant, beginning in syncopated simplicity but growing ever more complex and brilliant. 

As the Tudors gave way to the Stuarts, the craze for writing In Nomines continued unabated. Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625) wrote several. His In Nomine a 5 No.2 initially has something of the grave beauty of the original but begins to smile and dance as the pace quickens. 

Most remarkably of all, 150 years or so after John Taverner, along come the greatest of all English composers, Henry Purcell, and started writing his own In Nomines. He was, however, writing at the very end of the craze. With Purcell's passing so passed the In Nomine - at least for the time being. As you would expect Purcell's examples are among the richest and most beautiful. Please try his In Nomine a 7 for a piece that might well have blown old Taverner's socks off!

Intriguingly, composers of the last hundred years have started composing In Nomines again - and the form has left our shores and spread its wings. Here, for instance, is a lovely example from 2001 by the Austrian spectralist composer Georg Friedrich Haas, simply called In Nomine. And, rather unexpectedly, there's an In nomine à 3 by Brian Ferneyhough. Both are part of a specific new music project. In several of the pieces that came out of that project the references to the Taverner original/the old plainchant - always apparent in the music of the Tudor-and-Stuart-era composers - are very difficult to hear. Ours is clearly a very different age to theirs. See if you can spot them in Wolfram Schurig's In Nomine for vibraphone, piano and string trio or in In Nomine -- all'ongherese by the wonderful György Kurtág. It's good to know though that some great ideas never quite die. 

Saying 'Hallo' to Mr. Sweelinck

After mentioning him quite a few times in passing it's time for that influential Dutchman Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621) to get a post of his own. I want to introduce him with one of his most far-reaching works - a work that took a late-Renaissance idea and sent it spinning across a century towards Bach: the Fantasia Chromatica.

The piece may have an improvisatory feel but is constructed along strongly contrapuntal lines.

It's a sign of the changing times, when Europe was crossing from the late Renaissance into the early Baroque, that Sweelinck's piece may be seen as being in the outgoing Dorian mode or in the incoming D minor. The chromatic nature of the piece comes from its pervasive theme, the essence of which is a fragment of a chromatic scale which falls through all the notes contained within the interval of a perfect fourth (falling from D to A) - D, C#, C, B, Bb & A. The theme's peculiar character can be heard as soon the piece begins and it is heard in all four voices. As a result of all these colourful notes meeting and greeting each other the piece contains a large number of pleasurable harmonic progressions. What stops the piece from becoming oppressive is the introduction of short non-chromatic passages (where the theme is briefly absent) and the sheer variety of Sweelinck's contrapuntal treatment of the theme, with the processes of augmentation (where the theme is presented in longer note-values than were previously used) and diminution (where the theme is presented in shorter note-values than were previously used) coming into play in the later stages of the Fantasia, culminating in a tumultuous passage of double-diminution. You will also feel the theme inverted (i.e. turned upside down).

The Fantasia Chromatica is Sweelinck's most famous piece. Maybe even Bach knew it.

Just a few other pieces to further whet your appetite for Sweelinck:

The contrapuntal richness of the Fantasia Chromatica is as nothing compared with the Ricercar in Aeolian mode which not only engages in augmentation and diminution but also has twelve subjects. The first subject, however, acts as a unifying feature of this long work, being woven into the texture (in various shapes and forms) throughout.

The other side of Sweelinck's keyboard style, however, can be heard in his delightful Echo Fantasy in A minor. Here the counterpoint, though hardly absent (as you can hear from the very start of the piece), takes more of a back sit and the improvisatory air feels even freer. The echo effects are charming but not blatantly achieved.

Another form the Dutchman excelled in was variations. One of his best-known sets is the masterly Mein junges Leben hat ein End'. The tune (a secular melody) sings out at the top of the texture, sometimes decorated, sometimes not, while fresh accompanying figuration pours in throughout the course of the six variations.

Subsequent posts will flesh out the achievement of Sweelinck in greater detail and introduce you to his vocal works, which are - I promise you! - just as splendid.

Gounod without voices

Jean-Marc Janiaczyk, Provencal bastide

Have you ever heard Charles Gounod's Petite symphonie in B flat major? It's a delightful late piece, dating from 1888, and is as light, sparkling and elegant as French music is often said to be - often by the French themselves. Gounod said, "France is essentially the country of precision, neatness and taste" and his work exemplifies all three of those qualities. 

The Petite symphonie can either be seen as a nostalgic tribute to Mozart and his genial wind divertimenti or as a neo-Classical piece before its time. (I'd choose the first option). Though called a 'symphony' it is much more of a chamber work. It was written for a society of wind players and requires only nine performers (a flute and pairs of oboes, clarinets, horns and bassoons). The quality of the part-writing throughout is exquisite and the piece also includes many attractive rustic touches.

The first movement begins with a beguiling slow section, full of warmly-blended wind sonorities and sounding not too remote from Mozart. The main allegro opens to a rhythmically-infectious tune which sounds as French as can be. Other tunes follow - one rising and falling lyrically, another evoking the bagpipes of Provençal folk music. All the tunes are hummable. The movement is in sonata form and a good-natured development section and recapitulation follows. 

The Andante cantabile second movement is, in its outer sections, a flute aria of friendly, operatic melodiousness (and accompanied accordingly), gentle and lyrical - as if Mozart had been reborn as a French composer of lyric operas! The middle section brings the other players to the fore and gives them solos too, passing through darker harmonies without casting a cloud.

The Scherzo (the star movement) has a considerable amount of charm, with catchy rhythms, varied colours and jolly tunes. The trio section carries us back into the countryside for a gentle, relaxed dance notable for its simple tunefulness and ever-changing scoring.

The Finale is clearly guided by the spirit of Mozart (as Gounod understood it) and is the epitome of grace. It begins well and just keeps on giving. Also in sonata form, it has little touches of Classical-style counterpoint as it proceeds.  

Vive Mozart! Vive la France!