Spring (Repeat)
Intro: Blackbird song
Hullo,
this is Classical Break, on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s programme goes in Pursuit of Spring,
Let’s
hear Song of Spring from Troubadour Suite, an orchestral work by the
Worcestershire composer, Julius Harrison, (1885-1963), who studied at the
Birmingham and Midland Musical Institute and became an influential critic as
well as composer. Spring has none of the
opulence of Summer, but freshness; it has chill like Winter to remind us that Summer
is coming, and raw beauty gathered in with much of the security of Autumn
Harvest-home - this harvest is too green and sour to eat, but sustains the
spirit on sensing. Troubadour Suite was written during the Second World War and dedicated
to the composer’s friend, the poet Gordon Bottomley - a friend in turn of a
greater poet, Edward Thomas, one of whose books furnished us with the title of
our programme. The movements are based
on courtly songs by King Thibault the Fourth of Navarre, Song of Spring on a song about the re-greening of the wood: the opening, with its dusky, austere
coloration - of violas, blossoms into a beautifully tended song drawn-out in
graceful nods - and passing notes - from section of string orchestra to
section, and warmth enters sparingly on French horns: the harp is intended to portray the playing of
the troubadour himself; his voice is full of heart, his heart full of
song.
Track One: Song of Spring, Julius Harrison
Now,
a song from a cycle for voices and orchestra, Fantasticks, by the American composer, Bernard Herrmann - famous for
his scores for Hitchcock thrillers and other films such as The Day The Earth Stood Still. A song-cycle based on pithy prose-works descriptive
of the seasons, by the Elizabethan poet, Nicholas Breton, The Fantasticks is one of Hermann’s anglophile works; he felt a
real affinity with England and its literature.
In
March, his style is between the
Mahler of Das Lied Von Der Erde and
Holst: brusque woodwind opening, rasping brass - it is blustery, damp - celesta
or glockenspiel providing cold brightness - the phrases short and nervous
- intermittently giving fanfaring brass
its head, the climax more aggressive yet.
This is like the mood of the Housman poem On Wenlock Edge: The tree of
Man is never quiet. The baritone
voice rings out declaiming operatically the challenge to Winter’s spirit, the
coming of Spring.
Track Two: March from The Fantasticks, Hermann
This
is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s subject is a journey in pursuit of
Spring.
Track Three: Song of Nightingale
A
setting of a poem, Fruhlingsnacht, Spring
Night, by Eichendorff, next - a tiny nocturne so slight that it seems the
picture of an instant in time in a young man’s mind. Robert Schumann was an inspired song-writer
whose songs were mainly written in two creative bursts in his thirty-first year
and his forties. Both a poet and
composer, he himself had had no high opinion of songs right up until he read Schubert’s
unpublished manuscripts on a visit to Vienna.
Spring Night sings
of birds returning, spring scents returning soon, blossoms returning; with both
joy and tears the lover thinks absurdly that it could be a dream, but the old miracles
come back in the moonlight; the stars
and moon say, the woods whisper and the nightingale sings to the listener that
his beloved is his.
It
is certainly startling to hear Schumann’s casual yet urgent mastery of the
song-form, given the fewness of the songs that he had written before, but this
was to be the pattern in his every new venture in composition in years to
come. The song resounds long after its
duration of just over a minute - just as might Spring birdsong. Winter is over!
Track Four: Fruhlingsnacht, Liederkreis, Op 39, Schumann.
Another
take on Spring and Love, It Was A Lover. Cleo Laine sings a swung version of
Shakespeare’s song from As You Like It,
music by Arthur Young, accompaniment by Johnny Dankworth Quartet.
Track Five: It Was A Lover And His Lass, Young
Track Six, Song of Cuckoo
The
Norwegian, Edvard Grieg, 1843-1907, wrote perhaps his greatest piano pieces towards
the end of his life, in two sets of arrangements of folk-tunes, 19 Norske
Folkviser, Opus 66 and Slaater, Opus 72. Just four foot ten inches tall, a keen
hill-walker, with only one lung, he loved the mountains and valleys of the
Hardanger region and poor health did not prevent this last-gasp burst of
creativity in homage to Norway’s music and people, though it had certainly
prevented composition on a large scale throughout most of his life. Taking the
raw material from folk-collections or from folk-musicians, he sought to capture
the harmonic compexity implied in
even simple melodies. His friend, the
violinist and composer, Johan Halvorsen assisted with notation in the case of
the Slaater or dances. From the folksongs,
I have chosen Ola Dal, as it was used
by Delius in his orchestral piece, On Hearing
The First Cuckoo in Spring; the
Delius is beautiful, but, here,the vernal-sounding folksong is treated increasingly to some of Grieg’s richest and most
poignant chromatic harmonies over three verses.
The cuckoo is there to be heard in the stillness of a personal moment to
be looked back on and recaptured only in memory. He said himself that he was endlessly
fascinated by the magic of harmony and that he wanted to build a house in which
man could be happy and at home, and frequently he succeeds. Certainly, here, the transitoriness of Spring
comes to be banished, the life and freshness retained. Spring was a time of release for Grieg, whose
Winters were frequently spent like a migrant bird, anywhere but in the cold, foggy
North: Spring and Summer in Norway truly
revived him..
Track Seven: Ola Dal, from 19
Folksongs, Op 66, Grieg
Now,
a Chinese folksong arranged by the guitarist, Gerald Garcia and performed by
him and the Japanese violinist, Takako Nishizaki. About three-quarters of the way through, the
violin is given a short cadenza akin to sudden birdsong before this longing
piece ends as quietly and, at heart, peaceably as it began.
Track Eight: Spring
Breeze - Chinese Folksong arranged by Gerald Garcia
“Praise
to the eternal spring of life,
That
has created everything!
The
tiniest things have a beginning...”
The
Norweigian, Arne Eggen (1881-1955) sets these words in our next piece, the
song, Aere Det Evige Foraar I Livet
by the romantic poet and secularist, Bjoernsjerne Bjoernson, and is a glorious
response to the new season, seeing life in constant evolution and rebirth.
“The
tiniest insect
can
build a mountain.
A
speck of dust
Or
a grain of sand
May
have founded a kingdom!”
The
stirring tune expresses this feeling perfectly, and comes clothed in rich, Griegian
harmony and even richer orchestration. Here,
it is sung, chin-up, by the great Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad:
the
recording was made when she was in her sixties.
Track Nine: Praise To The Eternal Spring of Life, Eggen
To
The Ring of Kerry Suite by Peter Hope
born in 1930. This is a vividly
colourful orchestral portrayal of a famous road in County Kerry, South West
Eire. The first movement describes
travel by a jaunting-car, a horse-and-trap; the middle, slow movement views a
placid lake and the finale portrays a lively country fair, Killorglin Fair. Spring is a
time for fairs: all seasons of the year
have them, but this one is so cheerful that it would have to be celebrating
Spring.
One
thing is certain, it stays with one some way along the road.
A
busy jig displays the sections of the orchestra in turn and together; a lyrical
tune shows sentiment, oboe, warbling clarinet and flute evocative of fresh air
and bright, dark countryside as woodwind lead; the jig returns the stronger for
having been subdued for a space and above it, the brass and strings crown the
song-theme - it sounds like love - for the fair’s boistrous dealing and
side-shows to take over and bring the movement to a drily brusque close. The Ring Of Kerry Suite won the Ivor Novello
Award in 1969.
Track Ten: Killorglin Fair from Ring Of Kerry Suite, Hope
To
ancient Russia. Rimsky-Korsakov was the
star-operatic, symphonic and orchestral technician of the famous St Petersburg group,
Mogyucha Kuchka, The Mighty Handful or The Five. He was fascinated by fairy-tale, Russian
paganism and folk-music and found a congenial subject in Snegorochka, Snow Maiden, the tragedy of the daughter of Frost and
Spring, a cold being who longs to feel the warmth of love. This opera culminates in the death of herself
and her suitor and yet contains the essence of Rimsky’s superb orchestral and
choral technique, creating another world of myth and legend and the cruel
beauty of nature and its seasons, and ends in Russia’s continuance: the Tsar leading his people in a hymn to the
sun-god, Yarilo. Here is that hymn.
Track Eleven: Snegorochka, Hymn To The Sun-god Yarilo,
Rimsky Korsakov
The
Spring, for many religions, is a time of rebirth: pilgrimages are taken in a spirit of
purgation and renewal in life and soul, worked by rituals of fasting,
cleansing, praise and self-abnegation.
One seeks yet again harmony between oneself and the infinite that
supports one: in whose goodness one
wishes to confirm one’s faith. For
Christians, the sacrifice and continuing love of Christ bring hope of
forgiveness and the means to face the future in grace and gratitude, with
God. Here are two pieces that represent
Easter for me: the first is Angelus Ad
Virginem, a hymn popular with the Canterbury Pilgrims. The refrain is one of our
nation-memories. The beauty of Chaucer’s
floweres brightens it, the freshness of Aprile showeres is on it.
Track Twelve: Angelus
Ad Virginem
Edmund
Rubbra (1901-86) was probably Britain’s greatest symphonist of the generation that
followed Vaughan Williams, but he was also a fine setter of poetry in both
Latin and English. His influences were
mainly of the Mediaeval, Renaissance and Tudor periods in music, and Bach, with
something of
the
organic control of material of Sibelius.
His magnum opus is his Ninth Symphony, Sinfonia Sacra, The Resurrection’ This sombrely beautiful work
calls for solo voices, choir and orchestra: Bach’s Passions were a model for the form of the work, a wonderfully concentrated
form in Rubbra’s hands, of purely orchestral passages and sung chorales - Catholic
as well as Lutheran.
The
Prelude to the Symphony is a via dolorosa to the foot of the cross, and from
there, all flows. But let’s hear the last,
choral and orchestral section, where, after the ascension, the Catholic text Viri Galilaei is followed without pause by
Hasler’s Lutheran chorale Thy blessing be
upon us. Throughout the section, bell-like
peals and alleluyas are hinted at or sounded in the voices and matched by
orchestral accompaniment as sustained, and including tuned bells at one point -
a valedictory sweetness in the violins and woodwind in particular. Amens turn us to the stronger melodic outline
of the Hasler - it is a wonderful, oddly dreamlike jump-cut from one style to
another: the second of two tunes
sounding, like the first, as if in a dream-vision, a vision that many Catholics
and Protestants still find it hard to share, and ending in sublime affirmation,
unity and renewal, an Easter vision, in God.
Track Thirteen: Symphony No 9, The Resurrection, Rubbra
As
an undergraduate in the post-war period, the composer Kenneth Leighton, who was
born in 1929 and died recently, wrote an orchestral suite for oboe, cello and
orchestra, Veris Gratia, His inspiration came from mediaeval poems on
Spring and love. Let’s hear the last
movement, Epilogue, Sostenuto
ma con moto, sustainedly but
moving along. Here,
oboe and cello muse on the previous sections, the cello more passionately, the
oboe with a more feminine, questioning air.
From the opening, the melodic and harmonic influence of Vaughan Williams
(his Suite for Viola and Orchestra, Flos Campi) is clear, the strings
divided later in overlapping phrases, amens, perhaps... The oboe has the last floated word. The epigraph for this music is: “praise together this earth... And God have pity on the sadder folk...” words with real resonance at this
time.
Track Fourteen: Veris
Gratia, Epilogue, Leighton
Our
last piece is a song by Ivor Gurney, setting a lyric by Thomas Nashe, and one
of the five songs for baritone or contralto voice and piano that make up his
cycle, The Elizas, so-called from the
provenance of the poetry. The cycle was
completed in 1912, when its composer was still a student. Its jauntiness and imitations of birdsong,
particularly a droll cuckoo, appear both traditional and entirely
characteristic of this composer, who suffered greatly in his life but was
remembered affectionately for his high spirits and sense of humour as well as
genius by those who knew him, and
dailly
makes new friends through his music, poetry and published letters.
This
was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, hosted this time by Mike Burrows. I hope you have enjoyed our pursuit of
Spring, and will join me for another journey.
Track Fifteen: Spring From The Elizas, Gurney
