5 & 6 April Musicke In The Ayre 2

CB Musicke In The Ayre 2

CB Musicke In The Ayre 2

This is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  This week, our programme is built around a concert given at St Stephen’s Church, Bristol on the 17^th of March by the Early Music Group, Musicke In The Ayre, entitled, Songs From The Shows. 

First, a word about the performers and the organization to which they belong.  Paula Downes is a Trinity College-trained soprano, who has sung with The Sixteen and Philharmonia Voices, and is also a soloist with several choral societies.  Din Ghani is a lutenist and violist who became prominent on the Tyneside Early Music-scene during the 1980s.  On moving to Wiltshire, he began to make his own instruments, and in 2011, founded Musicke In The Ayre.  This ‘evolving’ group of singers and instrumentalists has given many concerts in England, France and Spain, and is active also in the educational sphere.  It specializes in music of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries, and its flexible ensemble means that it can perform a wide range of genres of music of the period, from lute-solos through consort dance and choral works secular and profane, to court masque and opera. 

Packed into an hour – how easy it is for an hour around about lunchtime to seem immortal! – one hears insightful commentary amid structured programmes epitomizing, so far as is possible, the music of an epoch very different from our own in its culture, if not in the fundamentals of human nature and worldly fortunes.  Din and his group are capable of recapturing an essence of the alchemy in musical expression of those times.  They are trained in such contemporary techniques of singing and of instrumental playing as have come down to us. 

In these extracts of the concert, we have four introductions spoken by Din and songs from the shows of the day, performed by Paula Downes and him.  It Was a Lover and His Lass, by Thomas Morley (1557—1602), The Willow Song, Anon, Have You Seen But a White Lily, by Robert Johnson (1560-1610),  Nel Pur Ardor, by Jacopo Peri (1561-1633), and The Plaint, O Let Me Weep, by Henry Purcell.  The music employed by dramatists of the 16^th and 17^th Centuries was, like that found in our own ‘shows’ – musicals, plays and films of all kinds – a mixture of popular songs – in this case, from the street or chamber  - and specially-written numbers whose composers were very mindful of international developments in Art-music.  Something of the range of styles to be found during  the period is captured in this sequence of pieces.

Over to Musicke in The Ayre. 

Track 1:  It Was A Lover And His Lass, Morley

Track 2:  Intro, Din Ghani

Track 3:  The Willow Song, Anon

Track 4:  Intro, Din Ghani (0.36min)

Track 5:  Have you seen but a white lily Robert Johnson

Track 6: Intro, Din Ghani

Track 7: Nel Pur Ardor, Peri

Track 8:  Intro, Din Ghani

Track 9:  The Plaint, O Let me Weep, Purcell 

That was a series of extracts from Musicke In The Ayre’s concert, Songs From The Shows, given at St Stephen’s Church, Bristol, on the 17^th of March.  The singer was the soprano, Paula Downes and the  lutenist, Din Ghani.  Our thanks for the recording and our best wishes go to them both!

And now for something completely different, as they say.  We present a set of improvisations for piano by our contributor, Mike Burrows.  Some allowances have to be made for recording-quality, as these tracks were laid down on a Dictaphone eleven years ago. 

Mike has taught himself to play by ear.  He makes his music up as he goes along, and the results may go to prove that there is ‘music in the air’ for all to find.  The present pieces were addressed to his – at the time unborn – daughter, Miss Suvi Burrows, who is now 10, and as bonny and serious-minded a lass as you are likely to meet. The overall title is Letters To Suvi.

Track 10:  letters To Suvi, Four Improvizations, Burrows

 

This was Classical Break, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  The first half of today’s programme was formed from Early Music performances by Paula Downes and Din Ghani of Musicke In The Ayre, and the second, of improvisations for piano by Mike Burrows.  Join us again, next week.  Goodbye!  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

29 & 30 March 2014

The Agony and The Ecstasy  (Repeat)

Signature Tune:  The Path of The Beloved from the Suite Rakastava (Op14), Sibelius

This is Classical Break, on Somer Valley FM. Today’s programme consists of music from the 1965 feature film, The Agony and The Ecstasy. This Hollywood epic, Directed by Carol Reed and starring Charlton Heston, and Rex Harrison, Diane Cilento and Aldofo Celi, may seem an odd place in which to find music for a classical music-slot, but in fact the score of the main part of the picture, by Alex North and Alexander Courage, is a fascinating attempt to meld music of the renaissance with a Respighi-like pictorialism that suits fully a cinemascope keeping, the vivid colours and vibrant imagery of a film from the mid-‘60s. 

Alex North was the second most nominated film composer In Hollywood and received an honorary award In recognition of his brilliant artistry.  He provided music for films As various as Spartacus, Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, A Streetcar Named Desire, Dragonslayer and Good Morning Vietnam. 

He was nominated for an Oscar for The Agony and The Ecstasy in 1966.  In this film, location-work and studio-shot scenes are beautifully lit, a world of rich vestures and palaces, glinting armour and weaponry, bright banners and desolate, smoking scenes of military defeat, all captured in their gentility and horror. In dark interior scenes of chapel and tavern or in front of the vibrant, living frescoes of art and theocratic politics, there glowers the gaunt, paint-spattered figure of Michelangelo Buonarotti – the driven artist forced by Papal commission to break the habit of a lifetime and paint a ceiling with ‘appropriate designs’. The warrior-Pope, Julius the 2nd suffers, too: “Michelangelo, when will you make an end!” - “When I am finished!” and there is a danger that between showing that the Pope is driven also, in his case, to hold together the Catholic Church in a country of duchies and Europe beyond, and that Michelangelo has to suffer and be impossible with authority to paint like one inspired, the film earns another title, “The Mahogany and The Hickory - Or How The Sistine Chapel Gained A Ceiling (In The End)”.

Nevertheless, there is the score, in whose brilliance and half-tones the story of transcendent Art is most truly told through the use of Romantic organ and bells, brash handling of brass and side-drums, bucolic, courtly and agonized use of woodwind in weak register, moments of veil-like expectancy or surge at height and plod de profundis of strings. Snatches from mediaeval pipe-music, a martial galliard here, pastiche of consort- or choral music there, a Shostakovich-like angularity and lacerating implacability of line, chantlike melody and chromaticism that both hark back to Cesar Franck through the Gregorian Respighi; leading motives to represent characters or states of mind are also heard, a common thing in film-scores: with an incredibly wide range of musical influences, Alex North and his assistant, Alexander Courage, wrote a masterpiece expressive of the suffering and isolation of the true artist.  Here is the first cue: a scene in a precipitous marble quarry, The Mountains of Carrara.

Track One: The Mountains of Carrara

The second cue accompanies pastoral scenes (two piping oboes – oboes d’amour – and cor anglais in imitational piffero style) suddenly broken in on by skirmish:  relentlessly rhythmical cavalry pursue infantry into a maize-crop – slaughter ensues; by far the most of the music occurs to denote victory - the leader of the cavalry is soon revealed to be Julius the 2nd as he takes off his helmet and assumes his calot and white mantle.  Here occurs the in fact anachronistic reference to a galliard, ‘La Bataille’, from the Danserye of Tielman Susato.

The Warrior-Pope.

Track Two: The Warrior Pope

The Florentine family, the Medici, have been Buonarotti’s longest-serving patrons. Cardinal Giovanni de Medici and the Contessina De Medici, his sister, have won Buonarotti a commission to build Julius’s tomb; now, the Pope wishes the artist to paint images of the twelve apostles on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Buonarotti is a sculptor, and has scruples... So the adventure begins. The Medicis – a pastiche consort flute-and-strings number written by Alexander Courage - the flute closely attended by imitational figures.

Track Three: The Medici

In deep, brooding music, combining the Gregorian influence with that of what sounds like the Fifth Symphony slow movement of Shostakovich, work begins on scaffolding high in the vaults of the roof of the decayed chapel:  The Sketch of The Apostles.  New plaster is smoothed on. Outlines are laid.  Paint is applied...

Track Four: The Sketch of The Apostles

The Artist is dissatisfied with his commission. The faces of ordinary persons make the best faces for Apostles; nothing formal will do. Sketch Destroyed accompanies strokes of an adze and a flung bucket of red paint...

Track Five: Sketch Destroyed

Having fled and been pursued into the mountains of Carrara, Buonarotti has a vision of God and Adam in the clouds at dawn... There is a growling sonority to the quiet grandeur that, mollified, becomes alternately ethereal and more full-throated and ends terse, staggering, brazen and percussive...

Genesis!

Track Six: Genesis

Having successfully presented plans to the literally embattled pope... there follows The Return to The Sistine Chapel. Now, more than 300 figures must be painted, including seven OT prophets, five sybils, nine stories from Genesis, portraits of the great figures in Christ’s lineage and four scenes from the OT.

Track Seven: The Sistine Chapel

All begins with the quietly anxious cue, Painting!

Track Eight: Painting

Hours of working to all hours with toxic paint inches from his face, lack of rest and forgetting meals, and the necessity of shouting or sighing, “When I am finished,” or disputing  aesthetics and morals with cardinals brought in to witness progress, lead to The Agony, as Buonarotti working on alone at night by the light of a candle-stub suffers loss of sight, attempts to move down the scaffolding, falls clutching onto a rope and is swiftly let down onto the floor of the chapel, unconscious and in a fever. The music follows this quickly growing disaster with highly effective use of instrumentation, the growling bassoon particularly sinister.

Track Nine: The Agony

Michelangelo recovers in the care of the Contessina de Medici. This is another of Alexander Courage’s contribution, another consort-piece, like a pavane. Michelangelo’s Recovery.

Track Ten: Michelangelo’s Recovery

Again, haunted by the Susato Galliard, the Pope returns to Rome in brassy triumph. Festivity In St Peter’s Square.

Track Eleven: Festivity In St Peter’s Square

In the evening, Julius visits the recuperating Michelangelo to release him from his contract... Raphael may complete the ceiling...

Julius In The Garden.

Track Twelve: Julius In The Garden

Back at work... This time, progress is suddenly suspended as Michelangelo arrives in the chapel to discover workmen are dismantling the scaffolding...

Track Thirteen: Back To St Peter’s

The Pope and Michelangelo have come to a parting of the ways over the Pope’s desire to show the ceiling half-finished. Julius must go to war again – his enemies in Italy regrouping and victorious – without knowing if he will live to return or be able to see the ceiling completed. Brazenness is moderate in the music, the imploring strings bringing a feeling of pathos above side-drums and intermittent low brass.

Woodwind and low brass prefigure the next cue.

The War.

Track Fourteen: The War

Michelangelo seeks reconciliation with Julius on the battlefield... Julius’ military defeat inspires some of the best moments of the entire score – jagged, hollow horn, trombone and muted trumpet fanfares of desolation; the imploring tone returns in strings, answered by the implacability of deep-toned brass and woodwind.

Track Fifteen: The Battlefield

To brief, bright fanfares, the grievously-wounded Julius creates a new cardinal for a fee sufficient to permit Michelangelo to complete the ceiling... Michelangelo returns to work, and the tattered remnants of the pontiff’s army are portrayed on their blood and dust-stained horse and cart-borne journey to Rome. New Cardinal.

Track Sixteen: New Cardinal

Back in Rome, Julius, though reacquainted with the wonderful ceiling, soon lies close to death: only to be angered into rising from his bed by Michelangelo, who proposes to return to Florence with the ceiling incomplete! 

The Pope’s allies in Europe have gathered and defeated his enemies. The official soundtrack CD takes up the story with a mass celebrating victory and the completion of the ceiling... The finish has been hard-earned.

Track Seventeen: Michelangelo’s Magnificent Achievement – and Finale

In an affecting final scene, after the congregation and church staff have left, Julius tells Michelangelo what the ceiling means to him.  Commissioning it may be what he is remembered for; before the Seat of Judgement, he will present it as something to be placed in the balance; it may shorten his time in Purgatory.  Asked what he has learned, the artist says, “That I am not alone.” He refuses a further commission for an altar-piece fresco of The Judgement:  he was promised that he could go back to his interrupted work on the tomb; Julius admits that there is need of the tomb.  They part: Michelangelo is left to watch the Pope’s faltering progress from the body of the chapel. To Work My Son.

This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today’s programme was written by Mike Burrows. We hope you enjoyed it and that you will join us again soon. Goodbye!

Track Eighteen: To Work, My Son

22 & 23 March 2014

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

CB America V: 28 & 29 March 2015

CB America V

Track 1:  Fanfare For The New Atlantis, Hovhaness

This is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s programme of music from  the United States was researched and written by Michael Burrows.  We’ve just heard Fanfare For The New Atlantis by Alan Hovhaness.  Atlantis, a city fabled retrospectively for its advanced civilization, science and philosophy, is said to have disappeared beneath stormy waves of the Mediterranean, to be Invoked by ancient scholars and neo-Platonists of the 17^th Century alike, a kind of missing link in the chain of human culture, a void on which any imagination could work wonders of Utopia and hopeful searching for solutions to earthly and heavenly mysteries, its true geographical and historical position or circumstances of loss being not the least of those mysteries.

Hovhaness’ music calls forth this State of story in effortless grandeur of broad paragraphs, fluid but unobscure harmony and rich but clear-lined, trumpet--led orchestration, timeless, sombre, pure, with ancient gravity wrought out of chant and responses of deliberate weight, melody forming the rhythmical patterns, adorned by brass tuckets on one note and, latterly, thrilling scalic rushes in the string-section.  Some long-lost marvel rises up before our eyes.  An extraordinary vision, this, from 1975.

The United States has developed an enviable variety in self-expression in All genres of Art-music:   symphonists of the calibre of Hovhaness, Ives, Copland, Schuman, Sowerby,  Harris... and purveyors of morelight-weight music whose productions, though popular, are also to be discussed as an artistic achievement.   In light music, Jazz, though in itself an inexhaustibly creative tradition, surely doesn’t have things all its own way.  What are we to make, for example, of this spry and sage song written in evident heartfeltness by the  immensely vigorous and prolific March-king, John Philip Sousa?

Track 2:  You’ll Miss Lots of Fun When You’re Married, Sousa

You’ll Miss Lots of Fun When You’re Married, by Sousa.

Trained at Reed College and the Eastman School of Music, Jacob Avshalamov was born in China in 1919.  His Siberian father, Aaron, was his first teacher, a composer in his own right and collector of Chinese folk music, which influenced his and, later, certain of his son’s works; Jacob’s other tutors included Ernst Toch and Aaron Copland.   His works include large-scale cantatas and symphonic movements as well as numerous small-scale instrumental pieces and songs.  Let’s hear his song for soprano, accompanied by flute, viola and piano, Taking Leave of A Friend, one of 3 settings of poems by the T’ang poet, Li Po.  Wholetone, euphonious and gentle, there is a Ravellian sensibility in this music, the accompaniment seemingly incised in its sparseness, the line improvisatory-sounding in its imitative entries.  After a long introduction, the voice comes in on its deeply nostalgic atmosphere.  This song was Avshalamov’s first chamber-piece, composed when he was 20, but revised many years later.    

Track 3:  Taking Leave of A Friend, Avshalamov

One name in our list of great symphonists of the United States may not be well-known to even many Americans.  Leo Sowerby, known largely for his church-music and songs, wrote 5 symphonies for orchestra, one for solo-singers, choir and orchestra  and two for organ-solo.  The Second orchestral Symphony was written in 1927-8, when Sowerby was 32 years old, his career as composer and choir--master and teacher well into its stride, with frequent large-scale commissions from  the then conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Frederick Stock to live up to.  In three movements, the Symphony in B Minor is a compact, well-argued piece, elliptical and introspective, in which power is derived from limitation of means.  The first movement, Sonatina, is formed from two subjects with a bridge-passage between them.  The first subject is chant-like, with some jazzy irregularity of rhythm and teasing turns of harmony.  The bridge passage brings one to a less busy but somehow restless, questioning lyricism.  Development follows, with percussively underlined fragments of the chant in canon and imitation, combined with the second  subject, which is as summarily dealt-with.  The First Subject and bridge-passage only are recapitulated, the bridge-passage elaborated and, after further squalls, the close gives almost the last word to the bridge-passage, as fresh in high woodwind as at first, but the dying fall belongs to the first subject, smoothed, but defiantly in the minor.  This is fascinating, teasing music, recognizably of its time and nation, every bit as effective as the symphonies of Copland, and of similar sources in Americana – perhaps of urban jazz and New England, with a soupcon of the Mid-West.

Track 4:  2^nd Symphony in B Minor, Movt 1:  Sonatina, Sowerby

The film-music of Elmer Bernstein increased the stature of movies of all kinds.  Westerns, war-films, thrillers, fantasy-pictures for children.  The BridgeAt Remagen was no masterpiece as either history  or convincing drama unless Bernstein shaped one’s reaction to what one saw or heard.  In the brazen fanfare and loping, syncopated titles-theme – note the violins in unison here   - one crosses the Rhine, whatever the cost.  If you ignore the syncopation you may think that the tune resembles either liturgical chant or a Lutheran hymn; it is certainly an impressively broad and valiant melody.  Syncopation cuts across its accents, and  the harmonies refuse it easy passage.  War’s toll on young lives is hinted-at by a contrasting, slow-swinging, waltz--like theme heard after the repeat:  a tune of pathos and near-musical-box sonority, sweet violins singing in a nursery of the vanity of human wishes and of just war, given tension by regular phrasing, passing-notes and appoggiaturas.  This apparition ripples over one’s ears before one is returned to the theme of duty and endeavour and fanfare to close.  One may wonder if in this piece, one has the opening of a monumental symphonic movement.  How often this is true of music written for films.

Track 5:  The Bridge At Remagen, Bernstein

 

Carl Ruggles, born a year after Charles Ives, died in 1971, having outlived all the great early experimenters of the early 20^th Century United States.  A comrade-in-arms of the immensely prolific Ives and Henry Cowell, he also enjoyed a long retirement, leaving a small corpus of work.  An individualist of dogmatic, arrogant manner, he wasted few words on detractors or supporters.  Such works as Suntreader,an orchestral piece based on Apache ritual, are proof that he had no time for conventional tastes or consonance; to him, discord pursued to the conclusion one wished was the be all and end all of real, individualistic music – of real American music.  On the other hand, one can adduce the day Ives caught him sounding the same simple chord over and over on the piano – Ruggles said that he was giving the chord ‘the test of time’!   Here, in contrast to his friend Cowell’s Grinnell Fanfare, is his piece for muted brass ensemble – four trumpets and two trombones -  Angels.

It should be noted that to score a piece for brass wholly con sordino is a fine way to create almost the dullest sound imaginable; only a real or exceptionally self--important composer would set himself such a challenge.  Then again, mutes ensure that the clashes in the parts are set up without unintentional resonance.   Angels is, as perhaps it should be, a remote, hieratic experience for the listener, immediate and becomingly terse. Angels are not necessarily beings of heat.

 Track 6:  Angels, Ruggles

Aaron Copland was not only one of America’s great modernist composers and teachers, but also a committee-man who represented the interests of composers in a nation of individualists that was and is curiously addicted to  committee-work.  Driving him thoughout his long career was a determination to create a democratic form of art--music that would break the hold of internationalist elitism on the world of American music, and represent more truly and inspire the best aspects of the peculiar nature of the American people.  Personally left-wing and liberal -as such allegiances are understood in the United States – he was inspired by American national symbolism in which a folk-hero – be he Billy The Kid or Abraham Lincoln – expressed something Of hope in the national character.  One of his most famous populist Works is, of course, Lincoln Portrait, an orchestra-accompanied  monologue  based on extracts from Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress of December 1862, a political debate held before Lincoln became President,  a letter and the famous Gettysburg Address, possibly the greatest, most powerful – and unifying - speech heard during the Civil War.  Interleaved are framing interjections including a physical description of him during his presidency.  The work, written with obvious moral effect in mind, was premiered within a year of the United States’ entry into the Second World War.  It is formed in three parts beginning with an introduction to evoke what Copland called ‘the mysterious sense of fatality that surrounds Lincoln’s character.  Also,...something of his  gentleness and simplicity of spirit.’  A hymn, is quoted, Springfield Mountain, the tune given to clarinet over simple chords for strings.

A livelier, percussive, section treats Lincoln’s wilder days of youth – Copland utilizing his own gift for ‘American’ Tunes and sonorities - and adding Campdown  Races for good measure.  At the close of this scherzando section, the music broadens as destiny – or mysterious fatality – takes over.

The third section brings the piece to its climax – the spoken word and – at last, the Gettysburg Address capped with Springfield Mountain, most poignantly given to a Taps - or Last Post-like trumpet.  The piece ends in an abiding expression of wonder, love and inspiration.  Is this President Lincoln or another New Atlantis that we hear rise before us?  The symbol is perhaps greater than any man, but a hint of the ideals that we should serve as citizens as well as individuals.  Certainly, no modern politician in his or her right mind should set him- or herself up as speaker in this piece; to do so insults the historic symbol and is bound to let down listeners in their actual hopes; no real politician can be a Lincoln, and no-one should ever clothe him- or herself in words that will certainly dwarf him or her – as kingly robes dwarf Macbeth.  Those politicians who try  (and some have unaccountably done so), sound absurd or flatly disingenuous.

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

Goodbye!

Track 7:  Lincoln Portrait, Copland