British Music

[Dundonnell]

Speaking for myself, all I can say, apart from very many thanks for the warmth of your sentiment, is that it would have been tragic if these works(many of them of superb quality) had been lost for ever.

Very sadly it may be that some of them, perhaps even many of them, will not be heard again on disc or in live performance in the lifetime of some of us.

To be able to give this music the opportunity to be heard again and to be able to share it with others is both a pleasure and an honour to the life and achievement of so many great British composers.

[mikehopf]

John ( Albion), I'm still not 100% au fait with the Mediafire process... so, could I prevail upon you to tidy up my contributions and add them to your own file? Alternatively, I could send them directly to your file.

Thanks in advance

Mike

[mikehopf]

Just uploaded Elegy by Brent-Smith.

Here is an interesting review of the work:

Alexander Brent Smith's »Elegy«



Selected and annotated by Malcolm MacDonald


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It has been said that the Three Choirs Festival has not the same hold on the country folk as it had in the late 'eighties: this I cannot confirm but, for my part, as a musician I have an undiminished interest in the new works to be performed in September at Hereford, — Alexander Brent Smith's Elegy, for soprano and bass soli, chorus and orchestra (Novello, 2s [10p]), and George Dyson's Quo Vadis, for soprano, contralto, tenor and bass soli, chorus and orchestra (Novello, 4s [20p]).

The Elegy is a deeply felt exhibition of refined, sensitive writing. Whether the means adopted in this miniature oratorio are capable of making a collective impression can only be proved in performance. The atmosphere of a cathedral is ideal for contemplation. The words are drawn from the Psalms, the Epistle to the Corinthians, the Beatitudes, and the Revelation. If the style lacks cohesion or continuity, it is by the composer's habit of obtaining contrast by frequent antiphonal use of voices and orchestra.

Actually the music is continuous and contains many impressive pages. Apart from the gradual approach to the right mood of the finale ('For the lamb shall lead them') in the key of D major, a psychological situation suggestive of the finale of Gerontius in the same key, we are not conscious of Elgar's influence. Occasionally, as in the 'Daily terrors now assail me', we do feel the influence of the 'Manzoni' Requiem. Original nuances are 'Behold, I am Alpha and Omega', marked pianissimo at Section 31, and 'He cometh like a flower' fortissimo, 'and is cut down' pianissimo, at Section 13. The outstanding quality of the Elegy is its sincerity and sensitivity for verbal values and musical expression. It is dedicated to the memory of Elgar [1].

'On the other hand' by La main gauche, Musical opinion, June 1939, p.777.

(1) The remainder of this item, dealing with Dyson's Quo Vadis will be found in Havergal Brian on music, Vol 1. See bibliography.

[Mark Thomas]

I just want to underscore everyone else's thanks to Dundonnell and Albion for their huge contribution. Wonderful.

[albion]

John ( Albion), I'm still not 100% au fait with the Mediafire process... so, could I prevail upon you to tidy up my contributions and add them to your own file? Alternatively, I could send them directly to your file.

Thanks in advance

Mike

Mike, many thanks for the four files you uploaded this morning - I'll get them sorted and into the archive later today.

To avoid duplication between the broadcast thread and the archive you can always send me the mediafire links in a PM.

[mikehopf]

John, just uploaded the brilliant Harrison Mass in C . It seemed to load O.K.

What's a PM? Personal Message? How do I do that?

BTW, can I now delete those folders & files from Mediafire that you have inserted into your British Music Folder?


More goodies tomorrow... dormez bien!

[albion]

Thanks to mikehopf, the following important recordings are in the archive -

Granville Bantock (1868-1946) - The Time Spirit (1904)
Alexander Brent-Smith (1889-1950) - Elegy, In Memory of Edward Elgar (1939)
Hubert Parry (1848-1918) - Eton, An Ode (1891)

This is a live recording (1984) of one of the many enterprising programmes given by The Broadheath Singers (sadly no longer operating) under the direction of Robert Tucker which took place from 1971 onwards.

Mike, I attended a wonderful concert by the group down in Slough in 2002, when they programmed Cowen's The Dream of Edymion, Bliss' A Song of Welcome, Dyson's Four Songs for Sailors and Stanford's Merlin and the Gleam - more precise details of the concert are:

Cheryl Enever, soprano; Colin Campbell, baritone/ The Broadheath Singers/ The Windsor Sinfonia/ Garry Humphreys
St Mary's Church, Slough, 28th September 2002

If anybody is aware of a recording of this event, please could they get in touch!


Also new from Mike is -

Paul Corder (1879-1942) - Nine Preludes (1904), played by David Owen Norris

Many thanks.

[albion]

John, just uploaded the brilliant Harrison Mass in C . It seemed to load O.K.

What's a PM? Personal Message? How do I do that?

BTW, can I now delete those folders & files from Mediafire that you have inserted into your British Music Folder?


More goodies tomorrow... dormez bien!

Thanks Mike, really looking forward to the Harrison.

To send me a Personal Message, after you've logged on just click the little speech bubble (or square) under my name next to any of my posts.

Yes, once I've put them in the archive it's safe to delete the original files from your own list

[Dundonnell]

Astonishing

One lives one's life with certain favourite composers and certain favourite works in recordings that are familiar, cherished and acclaimed............and then

I have just discovered-from an impeccable source(someone who knew Robert Simpson personally and very well)-that Simpson was extremely disappointed with some of the famous Vernon Handley readings of his symphonies as recorded for Hyperion: Nos. 1, 3, 5 and 8 in particular. They were under-rehearsed and, therefore, tentative

Simpson, apparently, had a far greater opinion of the readings of his symphonies as conducted by Andrew Davis.

Now, there's a turn-up for the books

Anyway...if you want to compare and contrast, I shall, within the next 24 hours, upload four BBC broadcasts of Simpson symphonies: the 2nd conducted by the Braga Santos expert Alvaro Cassuto, the 4th in the first performance of the revised version, conducted by Davis, the 5th in its "blistering, white-hot premiere" conducted by Davis(1973), and the 6th in its premiere conducted by Charles Groves(1980).

Now these recordings are from mono tapes so the sound cannot compare with Hyperion stereo but, if you are more interested in performance than sound quality..............

[BFerrell]

I found Somervell's Christmas Cantata quite marvelous. I hope someone will be able to credit the performers. Is it the performance by the East Surrey Choral Society?

[albion]

Fascinating about the Simpson symphonies, Colin - many of us are looking forward to hearing alternative interpretations.



Some members may be struggling to discern the words sung by the Broadheath Singers in the recent uploads of their 1984 concert. I don't have the Brent-Smith, but I do have vocal scores of the Bantock and Parry.

Neither score is in IMSLP so I'm happy to type and post these texts as the music will obviously make more sense if members can follow the words. I'll start with the Bantock - give me about 10 minutes.

[albion]

Helen F. Bantock - The Time Spirit


Hark! the storm blast roars through the forest
And the trees are sobbing and straining
In their anguish, in their terror.
But the great wind ruthlessly onward
Rushes, and bends in its tumult
All the woodland monarchs before it.
By the black-robed sides of the mountains
It passes, rending their garments
With the keen teeth of its anger,
Rending the sentinel pine trees.

The flying clouds are its pennons,
Ragged and red with warning,
They trail on the track of the tempest,
While the rain, like a weeping woman
Bends 'neath the wrath of the strong one.

Ah! ye in the world's pleasant places
Do ye not see the symbol,
By your warm fires sitting and sleeping
While the Time-wind rushes around you?
Hear you not, in ruthless anger
Its mighty voice of warning?
Can you sit there, lie there, hearing?

Hark! the spirits of mighty men
Of the bygone ages,
To your spirits calling and crying
"Up and out in the darkness"
Fearlessly fly and follow.

Loose your curled life like a standard
Clear on the wind of battle,
Wield the sword of the spirit.
Better the flash of the sword-blade
Than its blinded sleep in the scabbard.

Oh! thou soul-guided wanderer
Fear not the flail of the Time-wind,
Like wheat it shall winnow and clean thee;
But never was good grain garnered
That bent not 'neath rain and tempest
As well as waved in the sunshine;
So, never soul was found worthy
Of the highest heaven's crowning,
That bore not the stress and striving
Of that wind of life that bloweth
From beyond the bourne of our knowledge,
To a bourne that no man knoweth.

[albion]

Algernon Charles Swinburne - Eton, An Ode

set to music for the four hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the college


Four hundred summers and fifty have shone on the meadows of Thames, and died,
Since Eton arose, in an age that was darkness, and shone at his radiant side,
As a star that the spell of a wise man's word bade live and ascend and abide.
And ever as time's flow brightened, a river more dark that the storm clothed sea,
And age upon age rose fairer,
And larger in promise of hope set free,
With England Eton her child kept pace as a fostress of men to be.
And ever as earth waxed wiser, and softer the beating of time's wide wings,
Since fate fell dark on her father,
Most hapless and gentlest of star-crossed kings,
Her praise has increased as the chant of the dawn
That the choir of the noon outsings.

Storm and cloud in the skies were loud
And lightning mocked at the blind sun's light,
War and woe on the land below
Shed heavier shadow than falls from night.
Dark was earth at her dawn of birth,
As here her record of praise is bright.
Clear and fair through her morning air
The light first laugh of the sunlit stage
Rose and rang, as a fountain that sprang from depths yet dark with a spent storm's rage.
Loud and glad as a boy's and bade the sunrise open on Shakespeare's age.

Lords of state and of war,
Whom fate found strong in battle, in counsel strong,
There, ere fate had approved them great,
Abode their season, and thought not long:
There too, first was the lark's note nursed
That filled and flooded the skies with song.

Shelley, lyric lord of England's lordliest singers, here, first heard
Ring from lips of poets crowned and dead
The Promethean word whence his soul took fire,
And power to out-soar the sun-ward soaring bird.

Still the reaches of the river,
Still the light on field and hill,
Still the memories held aloft as lamps for hope's young fire to fill,
Thine, and while the light of England lives, shall shine for England still.

When four hundred more and fifty years have risen and shone and set,
Bright with names that men remember,
Loud with names that men forget,
Haply here shall Eton's record be what England finds it yet.

[albion]

Keen-eared listeners will note that at the words Loose you curled life like a standard (VS p.33, figure 15) in The Time Spirit, Bantock employs the same descending chromatic arpeggio figure which figures so prominently in the storm section of his later Hebridean Symphony (1916).

This is a work, together with Sea-Wanderers, which is fully worthy of a modern recording.

[Dundonnell]

There are two pages about the piece in H. Orsmond Anderton's "Granville Bantock"

He describes it as "a mighty wind that sweeps through the forest of humanity, bending the great trees before it"