Vaughan Williams - A Cambridge Mass and other early works

[albion]

The recent performance of a newly-discovered work by one of our greatest composers has largely passed unnoticed. Vaughan Williams wrote his large-scale setting of the Mass for soloists, chorus and orchestra in 1899 as his submission for a doctorate in music at Cambridge.

On March 3rd 2011 this work was first performed at the Fairfield Halls in Croydon, with the New Queen's Hall Orchestra conducted by Alan Tongue, who wrote about the piece -

Vaughan Williams's Mass is held in the Manuscripts Room at the Cambridge University Library. The manuscript is on two sizes of paper: 28 stave on 16x11¾ inches for the Credo, Sanctus, Hosanna and Benedictus and 22 stave on 14 x 10 inches for the Offertorium. I first came across the score in 2007 in the Exhibition Centre in the library, where a page was on display in the exhibition 'Keeping the Score: Music in the Library', curated by the Music Librarian by the Music Librarian Richard Andrews. The catalogue read: 'Vaughan Williams is one of a relatively small number of composers to have gained a doctoral degree in music by study, rather than being awarded an honorary doctorate later in life. The portfolio of compositions (the equivalent of dissertation) he submitted, which was required to be deposited in the University Library, comprised movements of a mass for chorus and orchestra. They have never been published, and probably never performed.' There was nothing academic about the notes on display, I thought they were fairly leaping off the page and demanding to be performed. After the exhibition closed I duly visited the Manuscripts Room and requisitioned the Mass. I sat enthralled for some time, turning over the manuscript pages in the quiet atmosphere and trying to imagine the sounds. It seemed to me that here was a substantial work, constructed on characterful themes and with rich counterpoint. At a dinner in London to celebrate the 150th anniversary of Elgar's birth I mentioned this to Michael Kennedy. He told me that he was aware of the work but had never seen the score. I asked how I could obtain permission to create a set of parts and perform the work. 'You write to me' he said. The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust gave me permission to start work. Before long I had two CD-ROMs of the 155 page work from the library, and using the Sibelius music programme I painstakingly transcribed the work: it soon became clear that no performance had ever taken place as there were too many uncorrected mistakes.

The performance was very well-reviewed in The Telegraph by Ivan Hewitt -

When someone stumbles over an unknown work by a great composer, it's normally a small thing: a song found in an attic, a sketch of something later abandoned. In the case of Vaughan Williams's Cambridge Mass, it's so big you wonder how it could have lain unexamined and unperformed for 111 years. Last Thursday, thanks to the efforts of scholar and conductor Alan Tongue, who saw the manuscript in an exhibition, the piece finally received its first ever performance.

To achieve it, Tongue called on the New Queen's Hall Orchestra and the Bach Choir - apt choices, not just because the choir and the original Queen's Hall Orchestra were key musical institutions in the young VW's life. The new orchestra's raison d'etre is to recreate the kind of late 19th-entury orchestral sound VW would have known, and one could certainly hear something distinctive in the two works that preceded the Mass, Elgar's Enigma Variations and Sir Hubert Parry's Blest Pair of Sirens.

There was a soft graininess to the string sound and a clarity and transparency to the brass, which suited both the melancholy and the uproarious good humour of the Elgar - though a more galvanised direction from Tongue would have made both even more vivid.

As for the Mass, it did sometimes betray its origins as an academic exercise to gain the Cambridge degree of Mus Doc (thus its name). There were several learned fugues, which reached their climax in the properly academic way by accelerating the voice-entries - a tough test of a composer's skill. And it's easy to tell this is the work of a 26 year-old unsure of his creative direction.

The opening Credo had strong echoes of Brahms Second Symphony, and its sturdy closing fugue recalled the Agnus at the end of Bach's B Minor Mass. And at the mid-point there was an extraordinary moment when one of Verdi's brooding father-figures seemed to stalk across the Fairfield Hall stage.

One could go on listing the influences, which sometimes weigh heavy on the music. And yet how strongly VW's personality emerges. There's a rugged refusal of sentimentality, combined – in the final Benedictus – with a visionary quality which looks forward to the patient, quiet ecstasy of later works like Pilgrim's Progress.

We should thank Tongue for his labour of love, which has rescued a fascinating piece from oblivion.

and received another positive response from Seven Magazine (John Allison) -

Fifty-three years after the composer's death, it's not often we get to hear world premieres of music by Vaughan Williams. Especially not of works as substantial as A Cambridge Mass, a 45-minute score that counts as a missing link in the evolution of his early style. Edited by Alan Tongue, who conducted this first performance with the Bach Choir and New Queen's Hall Orchestra in Croydon, it shows as clearly as anything what the composer was capable of before he found his personal, "open air" voice.

Completed in 1899, and the largest Vaughan Williams piece to predate his Sea Symphony, this newly disinterred work was never actually lost. It is listed in Michael Kennedy's catalogue of the composer's music and had been preserved at Cambridge University, where Vaughan Williams submitted it in fulfilment of his doctorate. But no one had treated it seriously until Tongue set to work a few years ago, appropriately enough adding the "Cambridge Mass" title.

The sprawling "Credo" that opens the work sets itself in motion with interjecting brass and choral outbursts, anticipating the start of A Sea Symphony.

With its double chorus and quartet of vocal soloists, the early piece also foreshadows the unaccompanied Mass in G minor of 1922, and there are striking melodic parallels between the Benedictus settings of these two works, with the first providing an early hint of Vaughan Williams's visionary style.

This is a non-liturgical setting designed for the concert hall that has moments of vivid theatricality. The writing for double chorus (which found the Bach Choir on excellent form) is often rich, and some harmonies in the Sanctus are daring for English choral works of the time.

Composed soon after Williams returned from studies with Bruch in Berlin, the work also reflects the positive influence of Dvorak. And it's hard not to feel the spirit of Brahms in the gentle swagger of the purely orchestral Offertorium, a very accomplished piece of writing that deserves to stand alone in its own, attractive right.

Maybe not a reclaimed masterpiece, A Cambridge Mass will still reward listeners as it begins its musical journey: next up, in Bath in October, and then Massachusetts in January.

Meanwhile, with the English Music Festival in Oxfordshire having announced the premiere on May 30 of another substantial but previously unknown work, The Garden of Prosperine, this looks set to be a good year for Vaughan Williams discoveries.

The vocal score is now published by Stainer & Bell (£7.50) -



Hopefully it won't be too long before we have a recording of this very significant milestone in the composer's development! 

[thalbergmad]

A friend sent me this today. One to look forward to.

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/classical-music-news/forgotten-vaughan-williams-work-to-be-recorded   

[albion]

Many thanks for this fascinating information on a work very few people knew even existed. Ursula Vaughan Williams was as (overly) protective of her husband's reputation as Imogen Holst was of her father's, and it is a great relief that the 'skeletons' are finally being let out of the cupboard.

The coupling of the two Mathias concertos is also very welcome news indeed! 

[Alan Howe]

Fascinating stuff indeed. We should, of course, know everything possible about our greatest composer. How about the Mass, then, Hyperion, Chandos, Dutton...?

[albion]

The Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust is also supporting the forthcoming publication by OUP of two significant early orchestral works by RVW: the Serenade (1898) and the Bucolic Suite (1902). 

[albion]

Under the aegis of the Vaughan Williams Society, the flood of interest in early works by the composer continues apace - a world premiere recording of the 1899 setting for soprano, chorus and orchestra of Swinburne's The Garden of Proserpine.

This 24-minute work is performed by a strong line-up including the Joyful Company of Singers and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra conducted by Paul Daniel, and the main coupling is the cantata Fen and Flood (1955) by Patrick Hadley - http://www.albionrecords.org/cddetail.php?CN=ALBCD012

A newly-prepared vocal score is being published by Stainer & Bell to coincide with the public premiere at this year's English Music Festival - http://www.stainer.co.uk/proserpine.html

The recording is available as a disc (£11) or download (£3.99 for The Garden of Proserpine only or £6.99 for the whole album) from the Albion Records label (a very tasteful choice of title, by the way). 

[albion]

I received a copy of the new RVW Society disc this morning, and it is strongly recommended: The Garden of Proserpine proves to be another very worthwhile and fascinating discovery from the composer's 'early' years when he was still striving to establish his own 'voice' -



and stands well beside the exquisite Willow-Wood (1909) -



The premiere recording of Vaughan Williams' arrangement for SATB of Patrick Hadley's cantata Fen and Flood (inspired by the catastrophic events of 31st January 1953 when 2,400 people were drowned in the Netherlands and along the south-east coast of Britain) is also very welcome indeed, and this valuable addition to the Hadley discography receives a powerful performance under Paul Daniel.

[Alan Howe]

Thanks for these recommendations, John. The Garden of Proserpine in particular sounds intriguing, so I have duly ordered it!

[albion]

Due for release by Somm (17th October) -



SOMM246

Vaughan Williams: Fantasy for Piano & Orchestra (1896, rev 1904)
William Mathias: Piano Concerto No. 1, Piano Concerto No. 2

[Dundonnell]

This a wierd coupling, don't you think?

[albion]

I prefer to think of it as creative.

[Dundonnell]

I prefer to think of it as creative.

Don't get me wrong......I don't mind if this is the way to get these works on disc.

I thought it odd that Avie should couple the Hans Gal symphonies with Schubert and Schumann but having bought the cds and listened to the music it isn't odd at all. Gal 's music is in linear descent from both of those 19th century masters.

[albion]

Sometimes I like to be surprised by quite arbitrary juxtapositions - although '120 Greatest Musical Masterpieces' took that perhaps a tad too far (see nostalgia thread). I know roughly what to expect from early VW, but Mathias is relatively unknown to me so I'm looking forward to making his acquaintance.

[eschiss1]

Have heard at least Mathias' (1934-92) 3rd symphony and probably some other works too; I gather his style changed throughout his career and that early-middle period works of his while not like a 1904 Vaughan Williams work may be somewhat close in style to some later ones of VW's, giving some appropriateness (or at least less than "total" inappropriateness) to the coupling.  There may be other connections I don't know about. The piano concerto no.1 dates from 1955 and is his op.2 if this has not been mentioned (so the tenuous link of a work composed a few years before VW died can also be considered. In the end it's the sound of the recording in your player that matters I know, and how it works front to back )

[Dundonnell]

Actually, the more that I think about it....

the coupling of the Vaughan Williams with the Mathias is no stranger than coupling York Bowen's Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra with Havergal Brian's Cello Concerto, written 40 years later(Dutton).