More Ralph Vaughan Williams
For those who want to know more about this composer I can recommend the following site…..
FAURE REQUIEM
The RSNO organised a Workshop on the above, in Sherbrook-St Gilbert’s Church in Glasgow on Sunday. It was intended to encourage more people to join the Chorus, as, like many institutions, they can always take on more members.
This was the first time I had taken part as a singer, as previouslyI had conducted it! I would reckon that there were over 100 ladies, with about 30 men….so we were well out-numbered!
We practised from 2pm to 5pm, during which we had periods of vocal training which I found very useful. It was during this time I found out the nitty-gritty problems of trying to pitch some of the notes. It is a complex piece as far as a singer is concerned. I would actually say that there was an element of in-built orchestral writing and harmony. This may have been influenced by the fact that both his parents died about the time of writing, and his mind was in a turmoil.
The performance at 6pm had an audience of about 30 brave souls. There were moments when I felt I had lost it, but just kept an ear open for clues. So whatever the difficulty it still has a certain solemnity/reverence/tunefulness which no doubt accounts for the popularity of this wonderful piece.
Gerald Finzi
At our Ascension Day Service on Thursday evening, in St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, we sang all the good old favourites, such as ‘Hail the Day…’ words by Charles Wesley, ‘The Head that once…..’ with Jeremiah Clarke’s tune St Magnus, and Saward’s ‘Christ Triumphant….’ to John Barnard’s great tune ‘Guiting Power’. ALL GOOD STUFF !!
The music of the Liturgy was Haydn’s Kleine Orgelmesse…..very much a ‘no-nonsense’ setting which does exactly what it says on the tin.
For the anthem, the Cathedral Choir sang ‘God is Gone Up’…..a title which is highly-suitable for such an occasion. It was written by Gerald Finzi, the son of a father of Italian/ Jewish descent and mother of German/Jewish parentage.
He was born in London in 1901, into a well-off household and was able to be educated privately. He lost his father at 7 and during the First World War the family moved to Harrogate. In his early years he also lost three of his brothers…..which no doubt had an influence on his writing. He took the chance to study with Edward Bairstow who was close-by, at York Minster.
At the age of 21 he moved to Gloucestershire where he could compose in the lovely rural countryside. However, five years later he returned to London where he became acquainted with Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and Sir Arthur Bliss. He married artist Joy Black in 1933 and moved to Wiltshire.
At the outbreak of war he moved to a farm in Hampshire, where he opened the house to German and Czech refugees, and he formed the amateur group the Newbury String Players. This allowed him to work on eighteenth century pieces, and several premieres by his contempories were given.
He was diagnosed in 1951 as having Hodgkin’s Disease but he continued with his work. In 1954 there was an all-Finzi concert in the Royal Festival Hall, and Sir John Barbirolli commissioned his Cello Concerto for the Cheltenham Festival of 1955. He died in 1956.
Whilst he is not a common name in the average listener’s vocabulary, and I don’t find ‘God is Gone up’ an easy piece to listen-to, I have to admit that perhaps his music does require a little more investigation.
Crimond
Today, at the Cathedral, we used a tune so well-known to church-goers and non-church-goers alike, that it is one of the favourites used at Burial Services (you just have to lookat the most-thumbed page in Burial Service Sheets!). The words are a paraphrase of Psalm 23, and the name of the tune is Crimond.
Jessie Seymour Irvine was born in July 1836, the daughter of a Scottish clergyman who served in Peterhead, and then in the village of Crimond, in Aberdeenshire. Whilst studying the organ, she wrote a tune, which was harmonised by David Grant in 1872, when it appeared in the Northern Psalter. It was thought that the original tune was by Grant but in the 1929 Scottish Psalter, she was acknowledged as the composer.
It seems to be a perfect example of the Scottish Psalter compositions, and whilst to some it may smack of sentimentality but it does have that simplicity of tune which makes it easy to learn and remember, and difficult to forget….it truly passes the ‘Old Grey Whistle Test’.
She died in 1887 and is buried in St Machar’s Cathedral, in Aberdeen…..and while she is mainly remembered for this tune alone….surely that is sufficient epitaph alone!
Felix Mendelssohn
We recently spent a weekend in Skye which has many interesting geological structures, and shows similarities to other islands off the north coast of Ireland and the west of Scotland, especially those of the Hebrides. When we think of Staffa we think of the Hebridean Overture by Felix Mendelssohn.
The picture above, which was painted in 1829 (by Thomas Duncan), during his trip to Scotland, has been loaned to the ‘Mendelssohn on Mull’ Festival. It will be on display in St John’s Oban Episcopal Cathedral during the opening concert on July 4th.
He was born in Hamburg 200 years ago, a German Jew, into an intellectual, well-to-do family and this no doubt allowed his precocious skill to develop.
His parents took the step of converting to the Lutheran Church, which would make them more socially-acceptable outside their ghettos, and they moved to Berlin where his parents took the added name of Bartholdy. It was here that he studied composition and piano playing. He was also very competent on the violin and was a good linguist.
Travelling to Paris, he studied the music of Mozart and J.S.Bach and started his prolific compositions. At the age of 12 he visited Goethe, with whom he continued to correspond. The overture to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was composed at the age of 17! This was just before he went to study music at Berlin University. Following his studies he travelled all over Europe, including, Italy, France, England and of course Scotland where he was intrigued by the landscape. It was from the same type of scenery as we saw recently, that he derived the inspiration for Fingal’s Cave.
As far as vocal music was concerned St Paul and Elijah are probably the best known. Now if he only lived longer than his 38 years, he might have given us an interpretation of the Isle of Skye!
Tenor or bass?
From my early choral youth, I sang tenor after my voice broke. Maybe this was because father, cousins and uncles all sang tenor, and there was an immense amount of pride in who could sing highest.
However as musical education and experience continued and increased, I was informed sagely by one of my uncles (who still sings in his 90’s!) that if I ever wanted to conduct or write music, then I had to be able to read and, if possible, sing, all the parts.
This did prove useful to me in my early composing days, in that I gained an appreciation about what is ’singable’, and how boring it is to sing a part which is difficult or un-interesting.
When writing, I usually compose soprano and bass parts together, then fit in tenor notes, and finish with the poor old altos. Of course it’s not always like that, but there are always notes , or ‘jumps’ which you would prefer not to have to use but are needed for completeness.
But now that my voice is dropping into baritone and bass levels, I revel in the simplicity of finding (hopefully) the bass notes at any time. Anyone with an awareness of chordal structures can generally fall into this line very quickly, whereas the poor old tenors and altos have the constant struggle of keeping in touch with their notes.
So one great advantage of aging, for me, is that I can really enjoy my singing and still make it difficult for the inner lines in my compositions….sorry folks!
The Wonderful Wesleys!
If I dropped the word ‘Wesley’ into a dinner-party conversation, there is a reasonable chance that someone would say ‘Methodist’. ….but maybe not much more. In fact within a relatively-small family there was a large amount of (largely-unknown) talent.
Many people know the phrase at the beginning of the Methodist Hymn Book
Rev John Wesley
which says ‘Methodism was born in song’, and this was largely due to the brothers John and Charles, who were both Anglican Ministers but decided to set up a new church …and we now know this as Methodism.
The two brothers showed a considerable appreciation of music, as well as the emotional effect which music can have within worship. John (1703-1791) was a friend of Pepusch, who arranged the music for ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ .
Charles (1707-1788) had two sons (Charles Jnr., and Samuel) who as children, gave musical concerts at their father’s home in Marylebone.
Charles .Jnr (1757-1834) could, before he was three, play on the harpsichord, any tune he heard, adding a correct bass. He was an organist at various London churches, and composed choral and organ works. The promise of this child prodigy was never completely fulfilled.
His brother, Samuel (1766-1837) was also a gifted child. By eight he had composed an oratorio. He became the finest organ soloist of his day, and was a great extemporizer, composer of choral music, he was one of the first to recognise and promote the music of J.S.Bach, and was a friend of Mendelssohn. In his late teens he temporarily joined the Roman Catholic Church, and at 21 he fell into a street excavation, and was incapacitated for some seven years.
Samuel had a son, Samuel Sebastian Wesley (1810-1876) who certainly continued the talent. He was a chorister of the Chapel Royal, and then organist of three London churches, where he showed his expertise in extemporization. Prime Minister Gladstone recommended that Queen Victoria give him a civil list pension of £100 per year. He is still well remembered by church musicians for his anthems, hymns, and services.
Another child of Samuel Wesley, was Eliza Wesley (1819-1895), who was 40 years a church organist and published correspondence from Bach to her father. Other brothers included…R Glenn Wesley,who was an organist at the Cathedral of Methodism ; Rev Charley Wesley, sub-Dean of the Chapel Royal; Matthew Erasmus Wesley, who was treasurer of the Royal College of Organists; Rev Francis Gwynne Wesley who bequeathed a scholarship to the Royal College of Music for the study of Extemporizing; and Gertrude Wesley who was a soprano and harpist……when the Wesley line finished.
SOME FAMILY!
To compose or not to compose?
With our up-coming visit to Ballachulish, we felt it would be nice to make something special out of our Service of Sung Evensong at St John’s. The building, the beautiful rural setting, the local history (gory as it is) …they all tell of a long-standing place of worship in this somewhat isolated (and perhaps a bit sad), community, close to the Vale of Weeping, Glencoe.
The choice of music for such a location and occasion must be determined by the wish of people to join in music they know, and the fact that evening hymns must be there. The Chants may or may not be known, the Responses should be known by a least some.
But to make it somewhat special, perhaps an anthem would be in order. So what should we do ?….pick an old favourite, do something extrovert with modern harmonies etc, or write and learn something original.
Scottish music has some rather unique features….the drone of the bagpipes, the scotch ’snap’, the almost-plainchant simplicity of the melodic line of local music, and the obvious ’sadness’ in much of the music, stemming from the nation’s history.
The name, St John’s, led me to thinking of some verses from Revelation about the ‘new heaven and earth’ replacing the ‘old heaven and earth’.
I used a mysterious organ introduction (with simulated bagpipe-drone) leading to a simple tune by the men, and a response from the ladies. A harmony of thirds gives the plainchant ‘feel’, small triplet figures simulate waves on the adjacent loch, and the climb to the high notes and descent indicate the soaring peaks of the area. Two part harmony only appears two thirds of the way through. A reprise of the early mysterious notes sweeps to the final phrases…’He shall wipe away each tear’, by the ladies, and then two- and four-part harmony take us to the final words of …’the former things have now passed away’. Instead of a gloriously-loud ending, the organ gives us a simple rendition of the original melody line……..
So there we have the dissection of this new piece. When it sees the light of day, I hope that it achieves the effects I wanted from it, but that has to be left to the listeners to decide. Let’s hope the Good Lord is forgiving of the paucity of the content, and the presence of all my errors!
Why an Apple Tree?
Along with the Authorised parts of the Bible there is a group of books which did not have the full backing of the Canonical Committee who decided what should be ‘in’ and what should be left ‘out’. And so the the Apocrapha contains some of the ‘doubtful’ ones which still have something to offer.
And so it is with some of our carols. Some are based on delightful stories, such as ‘Good King Wenceslas’, some such as ‘Candlemas Eve Carol’ and ‘The Holly and the Ivy’talk of the woodlands, plants and trees, whilst others such as ‘The Cherry Tree Carol’, about the life of Joseph are pure stories. And yet others such as ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ are quite nonsensical.
Recently at the Cathedral we heard the haunting piece ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’. Why should this carol (nothing to do with Christmas!) hold some special place in our psyche. Even Archbishop Robert Runcie loved it. It could be called an allegorical poem and was written with a very-simple verse construction by an anonymous New Englander, appearing in a collection in New Hampshire in 1784, so the words have been around for a long time. Open a Bible at The Song of Solomon, and you find in Chapter 2, lovely references to the Rose of Sharon, the lily, and, yes, there it is, the apple tree. The words of the carol refer directly to the Biblical verses….so no mystery there.
The music is extremely simple. Written in the key of C, with no incidentals it is easy to learn and memorise. It sounds a bit like a form of plainchant with many repeated notes. Also when sung it usually begins in unison and graduallybecomes more rich with other parts coming in. It was written by Elizabeth Poston, who only died in 1987.
So, another quirky set of words which add to the wonderfully-diverse tapestry of worship we have available to us.
How well do you know Carol?
Some facts you might not have known about Christmas Carols:-
- Originally a Carol was not a religious song, but a secular dance, often in triple time.
- The carol ‘In Dulci Jubilo’, when the words are sung as a mixture of English (from the German), and Latin, is an example of a ‘macaronic carol’. The melody can be found in a 14th century manuscript in Leipzig University.
- The wonderful combination of Charles Wesley and Felix Mendelssohn gave us ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’.
- The tune of the French carol ‘Whence is that Goodly Fragrance’ later appeared as the rousing drinking song ‘Fill ev’ry glass, for wine inspires us’ in John Gay’s ‘The Beggars Opera’ in the 18th Century. I remember well singing it with the Kirkie Players some 16 years ago!
- ‘Good King Wenceslas’ originally appeared in Piae Cantiones in 1582, as a Spring carol. It was only about 150 years ago that the 10th Century story of Saint Wenceslas of Bohemia was told. After his father died, he encouraged Christianity in Bohemia, against the wishes of his mother, and was murdered by his brother Buleslav.
- The Romans used Holly to decorate their houses at the feast of Saturnalia, which occurred in the winter season. Ivy was dedicated by them, to Bacchus from the idea that it warded-off drunken-ness!
- The Coventry Carol (‘Lul-ly, lul-lay’) is one of the oldest English Carols. The original tune comes from 1591 and was sung in the Coventry Plays of that era.
- There are several Wassailling Songs. The word Wassail means ‘Keep You Well’.
- Czechoslovakia has provided a number of lovely quiet carols including the ‘Rocking Carol’, ‘The Birds’, and ‘The Zither Carol’. ‘Infant Holy’ is from Poland.
- ‘We Three Kings of Orient Are’ was written in 1857 by Dr J.H.Hopkins of Pennsylvania, one of very few well-known carols from the USA.
So give a thought, when next singing over Christmas, that the words and music may have had a very strange history!
