British Music

[semloh]

Latvian - thanks from 'the other Colin', too, for Harty's Mystic Trumpeter.   

I wish we heard more of Harty's music. Even his Handel arrangements seem to have fallen from favour, but (being perhaps un-PC) I enjoy them just as much as the originals....

[Dundonnell]

....and Many Thanks to Latvian for the Hamilton Harty from 'this Colin' too

'The Mystic Trumpeter' is a big Cantata and, as far as I know, the most substantial composition by Harty not to have been commercially recorded.

[Christopher]

I have put in the British Music folder a great fun piece by Sir Malcolm Williamson written for the 1971 Last Night of the Proms:

The Stone Wall - A Cassation for Audience and Orchestra

BBC Chorus, BBC Choral Society, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Colin Davis

(from a long-out-of-print BBC cassette)

He wrote some other Cassations (see http://www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_c/cassations.htm ) - does anyone know if any have ever been recorded?

(I then thought I should also put this into the Australian Music folder, just to cover my back!)

[Dundonnell]

Many thanks for the Malcolm Williamson piece

Great though it is to have it here one continues to regret the absence of so many others of Williamson's compositions

[Christopher]

No worries Colin - I am happy to be able to make a small contribution even though it pales beside those of others here! 

With regard to other Williamson works - there's a CD called "Colours" in which a number of composers were asked to write a piece after their favourite colour. Williamson wrote "Azure" and it's a great piece, I highly recommend.  I can't post it up here as it's commercially available.  Vic Lewis conducts The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

[fr8nks]

Many thanks for the Malcolm Williamson piece

Great though it is to have it here one continues to regret the absence of so many others of Williamson's compositions

Colin, I have a few works from LPs of Williamson's music that I will upload.

[albion]

I have added

Patric Standford - Stabat mater (1972)

which was broadcast yesterday afternoon on Radio 3. This gritty unaccompanied setting forms the conclusion to the first part of his massive Christus-Requiem.

[albion]

Many thanks to the members concerned for all the recent contributions.

Hamilton Harty's The Mystic Trumpeter is especially welcome, filling the last significant gap in his major works. There is a slight loop-back on the recording around 06:20, resulting in the loss of half-a-bar (2 before figure 7 - luckily it is just a static bar of C major): I have removed the redundant repetition and uploaded this version to the archive.

[albion]

I have recorded this afternoon's broadcast of

Thomas Wilson - Saint Kentigern Suite (1986) played by the strings of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra under Martyn Brabbins

and uploaded a copy to the archive.

[albion]

Two additions from shamokin88 -

John Gardner (1917-2011) - Cantiones Sacrae, Op.12 (1952); The Ballad of the White Horse, Op.40 (1959)

Regarding the latter -

First Performance: Dorset Guild of Singers, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Charles Groves, Winter Gardens, Bournemouth, 12th March 1959

1 The White Horse
2 The Northmen
3 The Vision of the King
4 The Gathering of the Chiefs
5 The Harp of Alfred
6 The Battle of Ethandune
7 The Baptism of Guthrum
8 The Scouring of the Horse

Chesterton wrote his Ballad in 1911. It is a long narrative poem of over five hundred verses and, in order to set it as a choral
cantata lasting about three-quarters of an hour, I have had to reduce these to less than a hundred. Not an easy task, and I would be
the first to admit that the selection might have been more aptly made.

My aim was neither to impair the story essentially nor to reduce the ubiquitous ethical slant of Chesterton to the status of a mere
occasional piece of colouring. He tells the story of King Alfred and the Danes against the background of the Uffington White Horse,
which he depicts as a kind of Dorian Gray portrait of England's morale, the weeds upon its white face being directly proportionate to
our misdeeds and misbeliefs as a nation.

Outstandingly typical of his attitude is his description of the Danes as wholesome pagans ('Great, beautiful half-witted men'),
infinitely preferable as invaders to the mean, snivelling verbose intellectuals who were to assail us in later centuries. Against these
the aged Alfred points a prophetic accusative finger: "They shall come mild as monkish clerks, With many a scroll and pen; And
backward shall ye turn and gaze, Desiring one of Alfred's days, When pagans still were men."

The poem is in the form of a Dedication and eight Books, of which I have used only five, divided into eight musical numbers,
structurally separate but sharing a certain amount of material.

The Dedication is omitted entirely, and Book Two (The Gathering of the Chiefs) reduced to a mere account of Alfred's setting out'
across the windy wastes' to round up his chiefs.

In Book Three (The Harp of Alfred) the lively exchange of minstrelsy between the incognito Alfred and the Danish chiefs has been
cut down to one heartfelt burst of song from Alfred, in which he assures the superior Guthrum that his end is near and that
Christianity will triumph.

Book Four, which tells of the Cakes episode and of the massing of the English armies against the Danes, is left out entirely, if
regretfully, and I have taken from the three books devoted by Chesterton to the Battle of Ethandune some verses from the end of the
third of these books only, which tell of the turning of the tide of battle beneath the vision of Mary' on dreadful cherubs borne " of the
surrender of Guthrum, and of his subsequent Conversion and Baptism.

Book Eight (The Scouring of the Horse) was my greatest problem. In a cantata of moderate length it would have been impossible to
include the further battles which led to Alfred's entry into London - Chesterton's final line. So I chose some verses in which the old
king enjoins Englishmen to keep the White Horse white, and warns us of our true enemies, the intellectuals who come armed with
pens rather than swords.

I decided to end the cantata on a note of pessimism, to which Chesterton himself might have taken exception, with the unforgettable
verse which describes the perpetual defacement of the White Horse by weeds. To do this seemed to me to strengthen the ethical in
pact of the poem, and it enabled me musically to link my end with my beginning. I am aware, however, that I may be accused of
taking a liberty in darkening the final effect of the Ballad.

The musical material of the work pretends to originality with one exception: the use I have made throughout of the Ave Maria canon
of Adam Gumpelzhaimer, itself based upon the plainsong hymn. It is fitting that this should occur in a work written by me for a
Dorset choir, for it was in that county that, twenty-five years ago, I first met and fell in love with the canons of this sixteenth-century
master. (John Gardner)

Two large choral works which will be completely unfamiliar to the vast majority of listeners.

Many thanks, Edward.

[Dundonnell]

Fantastic additions Two major pieces of British choral music by John Gardner

One again we are enormously in debt to shamokin (and to Albion) for his helpful notes)

[Dylan]

Thanks seconded for the Gardner pieces ! Be interesting to compare his setting of The White Horse with David Bedfords from 20+ years later; bet Gardners choir don't have to inhale helium?

Apropos nothing, have been listening lately to  Dunhills Elegiac Variations in Memory of Parry; a fine, trim tuneful piece which - if it doesn't match Parry's own Symphonic Variations (what does?) - would definitely merit a good modern recording.  It's surprising how many sets of British Edwardian orchestral variations have made it onto record at last -  Bantock, Holbrooke, Brian, Coleridge-Taylor and Hurlstone come to mind: but I wonder if there remain enough others to make up a couple more discs..?

[Dundonnell]

Oh......

I suspect that the performance of the Malcolm Williamson Piano Concerto No.3 played by the composer with the LPO under Leonard Dommett may well be the same one which Lyrita released on cd

[Mark Thomas]

Can that be confirmed, Colin?

[Dundonnell]

Can that be confirmed, Colin?

The Lyrita cd (SRCD 280) booklet notes say that the performance was recorded in February 1974 in Kingsway Hall, London. If, by some chance, the World Record Club LP version was recorded before that date then they are different performances. I have to say that I am dubious but would be delighted to be proved wrong