CB Spring 2 & 3 April 2016

Our friends, the early music specialist group Musicke

In The Ayre have performed three

times on Classical Break.  Here are

some details from their latest press-

-release, which may be of interest

to local listeners : 

“Happy hour concert series launched in

Bath.  The Countess of Huntingdon’s Chapel

on the Vineyards, above the Paragon,

houses the Museum of Bath Architecture,

run by Bath Preservation Trust. The

space has an acoustic ideal for

small-scale intimate classical concerts…  The

Musicke in the Ayre series kicks

off on April 8^th with “Grounds

for Delight” in which Din will

use three different period instruments (lute,

archlute and baroque guitar to accompany

soprano Jane Hunt in songs based

on popular “grounds” – standard musical patterns

well-known 400 years ago,

a musical practice which persists to

this day. Top composers such as

Monteverdi and Purcell were fond of

using grounds; they provide some of

the highlights of the programme. The

Museum is at The Vineyards, The

Paragon, Bath BA1 5-

-NA. Tickets £8 including

a glass of wine. Doors open

at 6.00pm, the concerts

are 6.30 – 7.30p-

-m.  For more details, check out

www.museumofbatharchitecture.org.uk/whats-on/events.”

Boasting a lovely venue, underlying patterns

and ingenious elaboration by music and

wine, this concert would seem to

represent grounds for delight indeed!

CB Spring (this programme is a 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 ofDas 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 OnWenlock 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 daily makes new friends through his music, poetry and published letters.

This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM.  I hope you have enjoyed our pursuit of Spring, and will join me for another journey.

Track Fifteen:  Spring From The Elizas, Gurney

Spring - 26 & 27 March 2016

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 ofDas 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 OnWenlock 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 daily makes new friends through his music, poetry and published letters.

This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM.  I hope you have enjoyed our pursuit of Spring, and will join me for another journey.

Track Fifteen:  Spring From The Elizas, Gurney

Alfred Hill 2 19 & 20 March 2015

CB Hill 2

This is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s Programme, researched and written by Mike Burrows, is another in a series based on the works of the Australian composer, doyen of both the Australian and New Zealand musical establishment of his day, Alfred Hill.

Intro Track:  Waiata Poi (orch version), Hill (3.30m)

Known to many by Waiata Poi, a popular song based on Maori poetry and music,  Born in 1869, Alfred Hill, the son of an English hatter,  failed gold-prospector and amateur musician, was trained as a violinist, orchestral player and composer at the prestigious Leipzig Conservatoire, where he took
a Helbig Prize and played underconductors of the rank of Brahms and Tchaikovsky…

He remained a Leipziger in compositional style, though not a pedantic one.  His music has many influences besides those of Mendelssohn, Bruch or Brahms.  One finds at different moments, Wagnerian harmony, Dvorakian directness, Tchaikovskian sensibility – but also Debussyan whole tones and Griegish freshness and terseness.  As Hill spent a good deal of his life conducting and playing, he had a very practical sense of what worked and what didn’t, and long experience of
writing opera and operetta taught him to aim for both lyricism and the bold gesture, apparent, easily-apprehended shapeliness and colourful orchestration.  What worked for soloists, a chorus and pit-band might be made to work for a full orchestra or chamber group.  The challenge spurred him to extraordinary lengths in self-discipline and aptness.  Another strength was a lifelong refusal
to regard himself as a genius or indulge in the artistic temperament.  There was little in the way
of ego or self-importance in Alfred Hill.

Here’s a short character-piece for orchestra, a song without words in but name, The Moon’s Golden Horn.

Here, the flute – always a magical presence in his music – the woodwind, upper strings (including harp) and horn are in exquisite mood.  The lower strings and brass are added, pedal notes sounded, to add gravitas to melody that is little more than a projection of harmonies that are smooth and yet a touch uncanny.  Brassy and bass-defined astringency makes itself felt at precisely the right moments, as does refulgency or a pathetic longing that reminds one of the film-music of Bernard Herrmann –
feeling for the moon’s serene shining is, after all, unrequitable.  That this work dates from 1937
does not devalue its distinction.  As Brahms might have said, “One cannot imagine it different.”  The Wagnerian close is no less beautiful than what has led up to it.

Track 1:  The Moon’s Golden Horn, Alfred Hill (5.25min)

A very different work, now.  Hill was an indefatigable writer of chamber music.  In two phases, his early and middle-period, he wrote of which he knew as a player.  There are 17 string quartets alone.
In 1912, he wrote a single piano quintet, entitling it simply, “Life”.

Three movements of this work are rooted in Schumann’s masterpiece, springily rhythmical, imaginative in harmony, making the most of motivic themes in ingenious transformations and
counterpoint.  The slow movement is a slow processional with contrasting section, though not a Schumannesque funeral march.  Another composer one may think of as one listens is Sibelius, whose early chamber music is marvellous for the ease shown in classico-romantic expression.

But then comes the finale.  And the finale is an adapted cantata – now setting the composer’s own poem, Life!

It is also related to a song inspired by Maori folksong, Tarakihi, that is, Cicada…

Eight voices are employed in this Paean For The Joy of Life – two each of sopranos, mezzo-sopranos,
tenors and basses – note the canny choice of registers. Every register remains distinct.

Beginning in a Gloria In Excelsis, this movement is a living reproach to shallow thinkers who upbraid Hill for his supposed conservatism.  Rising and falling in waves and asides, it may remind one of Schumann’s superb final chorus in Scenes From Faust, The Ever-womanly Leads Us On, but
tts matter relates logically to what has gone before and the ebb and flow of subjects and counterpoint is a perfect evocation of the words of the poem, a maritime piece.  Its benign and intelligent uproariousness would have gone down well with Percy Grainger, who was, in fact, to be counted among Hill’s many friends and admirers. It is big stuff.

Track 2:  Piano Quintet, Life, 4th Movt, Hill (13.41min)

 At Leipzig, Hill met many important musicians.  What he thought of Brahms, for example, was that he was a very large man, not at all like a German, who got very excited when he conducted, and shouted and stamped; if the string-sections, whose players included Hill - didn’t use uniform bowing, he stamped and swore; as to his observantness of the band, the great man – who in fact suffered from extreme short sight and peered through owlish lorgnettes - must have had eyes in the back of his head.  Tchaikovsky, on the other hand, was simply as nervous as a cat!

Hill himself was a small-built man, virile and peppery, singleminded and direct in manner.  He wasn’t excitable in Brahms’ manner, and he would have found Tchaikovsky’s “nerves” – as distinct from the man’s music – tiresome. Both the masters had been shy;  Hill wasn’t.  As private a man as Brahms
and as sensitive to feeling as Tchaikovsky, he created visions with both skill and self-criticism.  As an artist, he preserved himself in a state of absolute artistic integrity.

Grieg’s music struck a lasting chord at Leipzig.  Significantly, students regarded it highly for its unusual form.  In Hill’s eyes, such music perhaps an abiding example of a composer’s using form only as it served his expressive goals.  Then, Grieg’s fresh rhythms, themes and harmonies trumped
“form” as they do to this day.  And what are Hill’s scores notable for?  Trumped form, the hallmark
of a true master.  Like Grieg, Hill was an inspired miniaturist; again, like Grieg, his so-called miniatures wereof a significance not to be called little…

Hill’s Third Symphony has as its epigraph verses by George Essex Evans:
Her song is silence, unto her
Its mystery clings
     Silence is the interpreter
Of deeper things.

O for sonorous voice and strong
To change that silence into song!
        To give that melody release
         Which sleeps in the deep heart of peace
With folded wings.

Three of the movements of a String Quartet (Number 14 in B Minor), were scored for orchestra as
they stood.  Replacing a short “Menuet” intermezzo, a tone poem was recycled to form an effective scherzo – its origins were in music for a film about Aborigines of Arnheim Land.  This new work was done in 1951 and subtitled simply, Australia.

The composer gave us these clues to the poetic meaning of this music and also the piece’s key within a tonal plan.
1 Introduction – The lonely, silent land 
(home-tonality B minor-major)
Allegro (a) The Workers   (b)  The Thinkers
The heart of Australia is lonely and silent.  On the fringe of the great island continent, men crowd like ants into the cities they have made.  Some seek quieter places.

Hill’s orchestration adds to what was to be heard in his quartet.  Woodwind, brass, a full string section and colour and sweep to this movement.  The ritornello-theme is now  trumpet-capped, weak woodwind adding plangency.  The strings’ restatement of the introduction-theme is almost Tchaikovskian in its pathos.  All is yet economy and beauty of lively but fastidious blends of instrumentation.

Track 6 Symphony in B Minor, Australia, Movt 1 Adagio-Allegro Molto (9.08m)

The composer’s programme here is,
2 Australia, mysterious and beautiful (B minor-major)  Australia with its vast plains, forest ranges, and subterranean caves is an eerie place and very beautiful.

There’s no denying that again, here, the Adagio gains in breadth and blend of sound.  Hill is immune
to mawkishness, but the moments of passion and sadness are there, formal but somehow unstereotypical and unsanctimonious in effect.  This is one Leipzig-shaped movement that won’t cloy, that leaves the Max Bruchs of this world far behind.

Track 7  Symphony in B Minor, Australia, Movt 2, Adagio (5.56m)

We come to the movement that replaces the Fourteenth Quartet’s Menuet.  This is one of Alfred Hill’s most impressive inspirations, binding the Two Australias – colonial Australia and Aboriginal Australia – together.  One of the marvels of Hill was that he was able to create consistency within a work while using Leipzigerische idiom, Wagnerian, folk-song modal,  impressionist whole-tone and other stylistic elements.  Here, a bold repeated-note  horn theme is positively heroic in its bluff humour and defiance.  It is unique in symphonic literature – worse luck!  Percy Grainger’s ballet, The Warriors, is made to seem overwrought, overwritten and bombastic in comparison.  The material of the movement as a whole came from music for a film, Arnheim Land, and a tone-poem of that name.

Exotic percussion – woodblocks? - win a place in a mostly modestly-scored symphony.  The movement is an excellent one of plan and contrasting incidents.

3 The Aborigines (G major) In the deep recesses of the Australia they once owned, a few aboriginal tribes still go walk-about.  They have their food, sing their songs and dance their tribal rituals.

Track 8 Symphony in B Minor, Australia, Movt 3, Allegro (6.42m)

The finale is a summation of the symphony, but short and without any evident pictorial element. From the brass-led upward scale (going teasingly wrong), it moves through its moods of determination and ideals with occasional resemblances to Edward German – without the blandness or sententiousness – and to a young Sibelius in use of strings and warbling woodwind.  The coda is curt and without magniloquence, yet very satisfying.

4 The Challenge (B minor-major)

There is a challenge to Australians to build a world worthy of their race and country.

This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s programme on music by Alfred Hill was written and researched by Mike Burrows.  We hope you enjoyed it and will tune in again soon.  Goodbye!

Track 9  Symphony in B Minor, Australia, Movt 4, Maestoso-Allegro (5.26m)

Alfred Hill 12 & 13 March 2016

Alfred Hill

This is Classical Break and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s music is by the long-lived Australian composer Alfred Hill, who was born in Australia in 1869 and died there as recently as 1960.  Hill lived most of his life in New Zealand and Australia, at a great remove from the Eurocentric musical world and, in spite of having written at least 500 works in all Art-music genres, is perhaps known here only for his (very effective), popular song of Maori inspiration, Waiata Poi – once sung by many famous singers.

Born in Australia in 1869, the son of an English hatter turned gold-prospector and then useful musician, Alfred Hill began as a cornetist in a New Zealander military band.  Next, he learned the violin and viola, with a sequence of teachers and patrons.  His father formed a family ensemble.  In his late teens, Alfred’s prowess was well known, and he was sent to study at the Leipzig Conservatory – a tremendous distinction.

At the Con, as it was known to him and others - he learned well from fine teachers as a performer, an orchestral player and composer.  Significantly, when he wrote a violin sonata using Scottish inflections, he holidayed in Scotland in order to study its folk-music.  He graduated well enough to be one of 17 students of his year awarded the Helbig Prize, reserved for only the most distinguished members of an intake.

Here's Hill’s most popular piece, the Maori culture-inspired Waiata Poi, as recorded by Peter Dawson.

Track 1  Waiata Poi, Hill

The Lost Hunter is a tone-poem in sonata-form.  Opening in sounding and replying horn-signals and arpeggios, it tells the story of a man out hunting who is drawn away from his friends by the beauty of the forest and becomes lost, unable to make his way back to them owing to the tangle of growth about him.

He tires and falls asleep, but his dreams become menacing, the trees closing in on him.  He winds his horn and sees the wood as sunlit and beautiful as before.  Woodland creatures befriend him; he plays with them until twilight steals over everything as darkly as in his dream, and he is left alone.  He winds his horn – and his call is answered – his friends have found him, and the piece ends in happiness as it began.

This is the scenario, and like a formal analysis, it yields little, though the music inhabits its Romantic territory as happily as any.  Both based on sonata form and filled with beautiful incidentals of melody, harmony and scoring, The Lost Hunter contains features of many men’s music – Wagner, Franck, Delius, Debussy – controlled by a single mind of distinction.  Modalism, Chromaticism, whole-tone harmony are blended as necessary.  The orchestra gleams, shimmers and glows with youthful ardour; at moments of lostness, menace, twilight, the lower parts of the orchestra, muted brass and solid bass shape nodding, chant-like phrases reminding one somewhat perhaps of The Ring or the Curse-music in Franck’s Accursed Huntsman…

Debussy occurs in whole-tones, possibly to introduce a strange dreaming state.

One theme develops in the harmonically clinching manner of Franck, sensuous without self-indulgence, but over it all is a sense of charades that may actually cause one to take even its scenario seriously.  The horn of the huntsman seems as magical in pantheism as any composer’s, placed as it is in a work of sincere, Romantic longing, lostness and joy, all from the intelligent heart.
Sonata form and hackneyed scenario are both played for all they’re worth.

This piece was dated by its composer “Sydney, 7th January, 1945.”

Track 2: The Lost Hunter, Hill

Completed in the November of 1937, Alfred Hill’s String Quartet Number 14 in B Minor, minus its third movement, was later arranged for orchestra, to form his Third Symphony.  A tone poem was recycled to form the scherzo – its origins were in music for a film about Aborigines of Arnheim Land.  This new work was done in 1951 and subtitled simply, Australia.

It is a lovely work in both forms.  Not common in any idiom, this kind of music is not to be thought old-fashioned or superficial:  good music is above considerations of fashion and nothing so spellbinding can ever be seen as superficial.

What evolves out of the rapt opening is enchanting, effortlessly elevated and plangent and utilizes the Quartet’s harmonic and timbral qualities to the full.   Beginning in Borodin-like harmonics, a real adagio introduction, quickens to andante.

If the allegro that succeeds the andante marking is Mendelsohnian in harmony, shape and ornamentation, the melodic subject that counters it is superbly memorable.  It recurs with pathos intact throughout the movement, like a refrain or ritornello.  The writing for strings is better than assured, the music in no way merely pastiche, but timeless and utterly moving in every sense.  One is scarcely conscious of sonata form, only of a controlling intelligence that knows precisely how to pace and elaborate its matter.  The surprises are of a Sibelian order, perfectly fitting and evocative of personal, deep-feeling aspects of a controlling thought.  As a member of a String Quartet, Hill was in an unusual position among composers to devize effective music in this genre.

Track 3:  String Quartet in B Minor, No 14, Movt 1,  Adagio-Andante-Allegro, Hill 

The slow movement, Adagio, is as appealing – solemn melody and asides doing nothing surprising, but doing it well.  It is a serious music drawn in equal measure from study of Dvorak, everyday life and ordinary people – a song from a heart of humility and honesty.  It may be also music of the open air, being fresh in conception and execution.  A very beautiful time in its composer’s company, grown out of First Movement thematic and subsidiary material.

Track 4:  String Quartet No 14 in B Minor, Movt 2, Adagio, Hill 

The intermezzo-like Menuet of the String Quartet draws closer to folk music, being akin to a song of love or beauty sung by a countryman - would one find such music up-country?  Where the Adagio-andante of the First Movement began, perhaps?  Something of the invitation to that lovely ritornello-like phrase in the first movement begins to hover over the music.  I’ll tell you the secret of Hill’s works:  it is that within the idioms of many years ago, he wrote in utterly original forms, completely his own man, as were the composers whom he took as models.

Track 5:  String Quartet in B Minor, Movt 3, Menuet, Hill

The finale opens with an upward figure of determination repeated a step higher.  The music then moves into a quiet more enfolding tune and this in turn folds out into another still quicker – where a fugato might begin we are returned to the opening – a good subject for fugue, but no fugue appears at first, and the music subsides into a Schubertian dwindling into sadness.  Consolatory music begins fugally with absolute smoothness.  Back comes the faster theme, again with fugue – back comes the upward figure strongly, then wanly, then a quick coda rises out of a falling away.

Track 6:  String Quartet in B Minor, Movt 4 Finale 

An excellent String Quartet of any epoch.  Only the closed-minded modernist could scorn it or find it less than a fine work from the pen of a very gifted composer.  One finds with surprise that it is less than twenty-five minutes long in all.  Each little movement exists self-standing, and as a logically expounded extension of its predecessor – one doesn’t have to be a musicologist to feel this.

At the centre of Antipodean music for most of his life as a composer, conductor, performer in a string quartet, studier of folk-music, teacher, administrator, advocate of State-supported music – the list goes on -  Alfred Hill was strong-minded, virile, spry – seriously ill only once in his life, when he contracted empyema, fluid on the lungs, when he was about 40; incidentally, the illness prevented his travelling to Britain.   He was capable of demonstrating the haka to children at the age of over eighty-two.  His only biographer so far was shown similar displays of energy even later on, and was drawn into things sufficiently to take sometimes peppery harmony lessons from his quarry – as a lifetime in working with others showed, Hill had great powers of persuasion.  He believed in his own and in the Antipodean nations’ distinctness.

Why does his music inhabit the world of his Leipzig training and yet do so in a manner peculiarly original?  Because he was also a brilliant mind, modest, scrupulous, but also utterly determined to express life and write music in his own way.  One discovers a spirit in listening to his music that means that one can hear one string quartet or symphony after another, relishing the very sound of the music.  His themes are always personable, frequently deeply meaningful and their development is as neat and attractive as it is terse.  It is suspiciously like finding another Romantic genius of the high rank.  Everything is both feeling and perfectly judged, page after page unfolding with the same rightness whatever its mood; the affective qualities of the music, like the technical, are not shallow but very hardwonly articulate.

It is a sad thing to consider that Alfred Hill is thought to have written as many as 500 works and 2000 separate pieces during his long working life, and very few of the more ambitious pieces were given international currency by publication.

Here is another of his miniatures for orchestra, As The Night Falls.  Something of a mild Tristanesque hangs about this piece.  The pellucid skeins of strings and woodwind that are worked about one are  of the open air nevertheless.  The flute is perhaps the most personable creature in Hills’ orchestra, and here is supported by oboe and clarinet, discreet horns, et Cetera.  The melodic line is fragile but refuses as ever to turn into stereotypical light music of a certain age.  It is sensitively, not crassly and cloyingly, chromatic, and is devoid of the cringingly vulgar “sentiment” of Ketelby or Nevin.

This was Classical Break, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s programme on the music of Alfred Hill was researched and written by Mike Burrows.  We hope you enjoyed it and will tune in again soon.

Goodbye.

Track 7:  As The Night Falls, Hill