December 27th and 28th 2014

CB Christmas 2014

Due to popular demand, the fact that Christmas this year falls midweek and we all need a holiday from time to time, we have left the Christmas show in the system for this weekend.
Do let us know what you think of it....

Track One:  Sayings & The Holly And The Ivy

This is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.

You have just heard an extract from a collection of traditional Somerset lore,  Calendar Of Somerset Customs and Superstitions , written by WG Willis Watson in 1920, and traditional carol, The Holly and The Ivy.  The melding of Christianity and pagan narratives and rites has been strong for hundreds of years in Britain and the rest of the world. 

This is our Christmas Edition, and, presented to us as a message in a bottle from Mike Burrows, would you believe it, it comes from the manorhouse of Numbleigh-On-The-Hill, the charming, decluttered home, for the past four years, of the Nabital-Crashe family.  Numbleigh, you may remember, is one of the more haunted houses in the West Country, with a knack for being A place of tragedy, treachery and inexpiable sin.   

Here, for centuries, the seasonal sounds of sweet-voiced carol-singers taking to their heels in terror amid a hail of seigneurial shot or rock-salt have told the village that Christmas has come and is best observed in famine and despair on the one hand, and interminable feasting and debauchery on the other.

Let’s hear a traditional song, the Stocklinch Wassail.  Wassailing – calling in on neighbours’ homes to celebrate the fertility of orchards and also Christmas in music, and requesting company, food and drink as an observance of gratitude to nature or to God  - was invariably regarded by Numbleigh’s magistrates either as a form of beggary or civil disorder tantamount to revolt, depending on the political situation, and on whether the offenders called in at the big house.   The composer of the Numbleigh Wassail went into hiding and For some centuries, the hiding-place of his masterwork has defied the efforts of folklorists and even cryptologists to discover.

Track Two:  Stocklinch Wassail, Trad.

For some, Christmas is a feast against Winter.  Once, many landowners and other employers gave generously in kind – in food and drink and a place to enjoy them together - to their employees. 

Mrs Nabital-Crashe has left us now, to return to the kitchen; she has to order Christmas from various suppliers, most of them in London and Paris.  The servant-problem is vexing as ever.  She tells us that the housekeeper, two maids and cook have all gone down with scurvy, leaving the butler and strange girl with piercings to cope as they can with a mountain of meat-produce from the GM-fed home-farm .  They’re having difficulty telling which end of the lamb, pork and beef carcases is which, where the animals in question developed two heads.  The potatoes scorn those who try to peel them, and brussels sprouts have united in bringing a class-action against their landowner.  Onions, damsons, apples and medlars play I Spy.  The apple brandy ginger-snap (a liqueur), glows uncannily on being poured, and asks if its glass suits it (the trick is to drink from a schooner, should you dare drink at all).  

You may think that all this trouble is owing to managerial inefficiencies, even ineffectivenesses, at the hall, but in fact the finances of the household at Numbleigh have never been in such health, at any rate, not  since Sir Morton de Hoote agreed to pay his grateful servants and labourers a starvation-wage in 1640, the first de Hoote to pay his serfs any wage whatever.  Now that the workforce are on zero-hours contracts, have to reapply for their positions every year, face eviction if sacked - and agreed to a 20% pay-cut at the outset of Austerity – overheads are startlingly low.  

Undoubtedly, giving over three fields and a wood to affordable housing in 2013 helped.  Sadly, the wind-turbine erected on the hill-top in 2012 blew up, owing to demand from the electrical systems in the Nabital-Crashe children’s bedrooms. 

As we sip our Kenco Really Rich and dunk Asda Jammie Dodgers before an empty hearth,  enjoying the seasonable chill that radiates from a large, empty, limestone fireplace, and the Green Man andirons glare with a hint of old brass because someone polished them, we can feel exactly what Christmas, the Season of Goodwill has ever meant in this ancient house. Here is a German carol, O Du Frohliche, O, You Happy.  The performance gets in as it is from a live occasion.

Track Three:  O Du Frohliche 

A carol whose tune and words were originally written by Martin Luther in the 1530s, now.  It is generally known as Vom Himmel Hoch – from heaven above.   Here, as a traditional carol from Finland, it is called Enkeli Taivaan, An Angel From On High.  The message is the same:  the announcement of the birth of the Christ-child, sung to the shepherds on Christmas Night, when, to quote another carol, glory shone around.

Track Four:  Enkeli Taivaa, Luther 

Another Christmas song now, Gesu Bambino, Jesus, Boy-child, written in 1917 by Pietro Yon.  Born in Italy, Yon emigrated to the US in 1907 and, from then until his death in 1943, held the post of organist at New York’s Cathedral of St Patrick. This indelible piece, with its gentle, quietly fervent melody and adroit inworked reference to Adeste Fidelis, has been sung by many great soloists, singers and choirs, often accompanied by large orchestras.  

It has to be said that it been performed with as much effectiveness as a purely instrumental piece, or by a solo singer with piano-accompaniment.  

When we hear opulent arrangements of Christmas music, we should bear in mind that, at its most heartfelt, it  can – and does - come all too often from a mouth-organ played on a street-corner where no-one else hears - let alone listens - and the performer plays against cold, desolation and despair.  Christmas tells us that a loving Christ is present to listen – as should be any true Christian who can be.

Track Five:  Gesu Bambino, Yon

Down In Yon Forest is a symbolical, traditional carol noted down by Vaughan Williams.  It has possible connection with Arthurianism, the spring and hawthorn at Glastonbury.  Here it is, performed with deep expressiveness by folk-musicians, Magpie Lane.

Track Six:  Down in Yon Forest, Trad

Four pieces bringing before us stages in the Christmas story, now.  The Annunciation to Mary, a Magnificat – Mary’s song of gratitude; news of The Birth in a cradle-song, and a Bell-carol of praise, including shepherds and wise-men!

Here is a contemplative setting of the Ave Maria from the England of the 15^th Century, obviously written with a large stone-bounded acoustic in mind.  The counterpoint and harmonies are sparse.

Track Seven:  Ave Maria, Anon 

Now, a setting of the Magnificat made by a shortlived, highly-gifted composer who entered the service of three monarchs in the space of a few years of almost unimaginably contortionist yet brutal change within the church in England:  John Sheppard, circa 1515-1558.  Edward The Sixth and  Mary The First made use of his talents – he served both dutifully.  He was awarded livery by Elizabeth The First in her ignorance of his death.  This ornate, beautifully spacious work in English comes from his First Service (c1549).  It is of a style that would inspire much imitation in the 20^th Century.

Track Eight:  Magnificat, Sheppard  

A beautiful carol by the New Englander, Charles Ives, setting his own words.  An intimate nocturnal picture of the nativity, beginning with the star that stood above Bethlehem, it ends with the angels who sing, “Venit adoremus Dominum.” that is,  – “He comes that we may adore God.”  A Christmas Carol, by Charles Ives.

Track Nine:  A Christmas Carol, Ives

A lively Bell-carol, of rejoicing and praise, now, words and music again by its composer, in this case, the Welshman, William Mathias.  This piece for choir, organ and percussion was commissioned by the Bach Choir to celebrate conductor Sir David Willcocks’ 70^th birthday, and first heard at the Royal Albert Hall in December 1989.

Track Ten:  The Bell Carol, Mathias

So, to Christmas parties, which carry on riotous in spite of Oliver Cromwell and Queen Victoria.  Here is a thumbnail sketch of the generous celebrations afforded by some squires in the country, from an 18^th century Spectator article by the essayist and politician, Joseph Addison – Sir Roger de Coverley’s Christmas.  Tory sentiment is not what it was, even on paper. 

Track Eleven:  Sir Roger de Coverley’s Christmas, Addison

An Overture on French Carols by Philip Lane, next.  The carols are, Il est Ne le Divin Enfant, Pat-a-pan, Noel Nouvelet Quele est Cette Odeur Agreable, Masters In This Hall and Quittez,Pasteurs.  The work arose from the effect of shopping in France to the accompaniment of various stores’ public-address-systems…   

The treatment of appealing tunes is brisk and light as in most modern, picturesque, pleasant and development-light overtures, and the feel of its colourful harmonies and scoring is tres agreeable!

Track Twelve:  Overture on French Carols, Philip Lane  

By Dulcie M Ashdown’s  anthology, Christmas Past, a description of a Christmas game rarely now played.  It was popular at Numbleigh as, down the years, no fewer than 3 lords and ladies of the manor died in separate flash-fire accidents involving flaming brandy.  

 

Track Thirteen:  Snapdragon

(Music under following passage from Ivor Gurney’s Gloucestershire Rhapsody). 

There’s a good reason why Christmas is for children.  They still believe in people.  They want something for nothing, and so should we all.  To be without something for nothing throughout life is actually a form of hell.  If we do not receive, the last thing that we want to do is give.  We’re trapped in feeling niggardly; in feeling put-upon by the less-fortunate, ungrateful for any blessing that we receive because we think that we were put through some kind of mill for it.  Why should we be the ones to fall for hard luck stories?   All morning, in the distance, we’ve heard Mrs Nabital-Crashe’s impromptu disquisitions on the subject.  

When those who could give but don’t are the ones who divert blame for poverty from themselves  by speaking bitterly of the chance that someone else somewhere gets something without contributing, how may anyone else do as he wishes?  It enforces mean survival , greedy self-seeking – or giving as one can.  What can we afford, when earth stands hard as iron, water like a stone, and Christmas is consumerist or neo-liberal?  Our hearts?  Not likely! 

Ex Nihilo, out of nothing, still comes…Christmas.  The season of sharing, of gratitude, of goodwill and good company, of faith, hope and love; it remains true that it is arranging one’s life about anything other than commonwealth that is silly.  In fact, if Christmas can survive long enough to bring its usual blessings to most this year, it is all that it is cracked up to be.A short song for baritone, setting Thomas Hardy, by the young Gerald Finzi:  The Oxen.  The words are perfectly straightforward and touching, the poem of an atheist trembling momentarily on the brink of agnosticism, imagining the sight of oxen on their knees by the stall in which Mary laid her baby...  The style that Finzi adopts  is akin to something of the 16^th or 17^th Century with imitational accompaniment from a string quartet that seems to impersonate music for a consort of viols.  The result is, itself, infinitely touching.    

Track Fourteen:  The Oxen, Finzi

So, here we are outside the gates of picturesque Numbleigh Manor, three miles from the nearest bus-stop (which is at Vobster), as Mrs Nabital-Crashe had forgotten that she was entertaining a few City-chums today.  We wish you all a very happy Christmas.  Wassailing around here is out of the question, but we’ll get home somehow.  Join us again, soon.  Goodbye!

Credits: Track 1 (Sayings), taken from FSW/Halsgrove  1 CD

Tracks 11 and 13 taken from The Christmas Collection, Naxos Audiobooks, 214912

20th and 21st December 2014

CB Christmas 2014

 

Track One:  Sayings & The Holly And The Ivy

This is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.

You have just heard an extract from a collection of traditional Somerset lore,  Calendar Of Somerset Customs and Superstitions , written by WG Willis Watson in 1920, and traditional carol, The Holly and The Ivy.  The melding of Christianity and pagan narratives and rites has been strong for hundreds of years in Britain and the rest of the world.

This is our Christmas Edition, and, presented to us as a message in a bottle from Mike Burrows, would you believe it, it comes from the manorhouse of Numbleigh-On-The-Hill, the charming, decluttered home, for the past four years, of the Nabital-Crashe family.  Numbleigh, you may remember, is one of the more haunted houses in the West Country, with a knack for being A place of tragedy, treachery and inexpiable sin.   

Here, for centuries, the seasonal sounds of sweet-voiced carol-singers taking to their heels in terror amid a hail of seigneurial shot or rock-salt have told the village that Christmas has come and is best observed in famine and despair on the one hand, and interminable feasting and debauchery on the other.

Let’s hear a traditional song, the Stocklinch Wassail.  Wassailing – calling in on neighbours’ homes to celebrate the fertility of orchards and also Christmas in music, and requesting company, food and drink as an observance of gratitude to nature or to God  - was invariably regarded by Numbleigh’s magistrates either as a form of beggary or civil disorder tantamount to revolt, depending on the political situation, and on whether the offenders called in at the big house.   The composer of the Numbleigh Wassail went into hiding and For some centuries, the hiding-place of his masterwork has defied the efforts of folklorists and even cryptologists to discover.

Track Two:  Stocklinch Wassail, Trad.

For some, Christmas is a feast against Winter.  Once, many landowners and other employers gave generously in kind – in food and drink and a place to enjoy them together - to their employees.

Mrs Nabital-Crashe has left us now, to return to the kitchen; she has to order Christmas from various suppliers, most of them in London and Paris.  The servant-problem is vexing as ever.  She tells us that the housekeeper, two maids and cook have all gone down with scurvy, leaving the butler and strange girl with piercings to cope as they can with a mountain of meat-produce from the GM-fed home-farm .  They’re having difficulty telling which end of the lamb, pork and beef carcases is which, where the animals in question developed two heads.  The potatoes scorn those who try to peel them, and brussels sprouts have united in bringing a class-action against their landowner.  Onions, damsons, apples and medlars play I Spy.  The apple brandy ginger-snap (a liqueur), glows uncannily on being poured, and asks if its glass suits it (the trick is to drink from a schooner, should you dare drink at all). 

You may think that all this trouble is owing to managerial inefficiencies, even ineffectivenesses, at the hall, but in fact the finances of the household at Numbleigh have never been in such health, at any rate, not  since Sir Morton de Hoote agreed to pay his grateful servants and labourers a starvation-wage in 1640, the first de Hoote to pay his serfs any wage whatever.  Now that the workforce are on zero-hours contracts, have to reapply for their positions every year, face eviction if sacked - and agreed to a 20% pay-cut at the outset of Austerity – overheads are startlingly low. 

Undoubtedly, giving over three fields and a wood to affordable housing in 2013 helped.  Sadly, the wind-turbine erected on the hill-top in 2012 blew up, owing to demand from the electrical systems in the Nabital-Crashe children’s bedrooms.

As we sip our Kenco Really Rich and dunk Asda Jammie Dodgers before an empty hearth,  enjoying the seasonable chill that radiates from a large, empty, limestone fireplace, and the Green Man andirons glare with a hint of old brass because someone polished them, we can feel exactly what Christmas, the Season of Goodwill has ever meant in this ancient house. Here is a German carol, O Du Frohliche, O, You Happy.  The performance gets in as it is from a live occasion.

Track Three:  O Du Frohliche

A carol whose tune and words were originally written by Martin Luther in the 1530s, now.  It is generally known as Vom Himmel Hoch – from heaven above.   Here, as a traditional carol from Finland, it is called Enkeli Taivaan, An Angel From On High.  The message is the same:  the announcement of the birth of the Christ-child, sung to the shepherds on Christmas Night, when, to quote another carol, glory shone around.

Track Four:  Enkeli Taivaa, Luther

Another Christmas song now, Gesu Bambino, Jesus, Boy-child, written in 1917 by Pietro Yon.  Born in Italy, Yon emigrated to the US in 1907 and, from then until his death in 1943, held the post of organist at New York’s Cathedral of St Patrick. This indelible piece, with its gentle, quietly fervent melody and adroit inworked reference to Adeste Fidelis, has been sung by many great soloists, singers and choirs, often accompanied by large orchestras. 

It has to be said that it been performed with as much effectiveness as a purely instrumental piece, or by a solo singer with piano-accompaniment. 

When we hear opulent arrangements of Christmas music, we should bear in mind that, at its most heartfelt, it  can – and does - come all too often from a mouth-organ played on a street-corner where no-one else hears - let alone listens - and the performer plays against cold, desolation and despair.  Christmas tells us that a loving Christ is present to listen – as should be any true Christian who can be.

Track Five:  Gesu Bambino, Yon

Down In Yon Forest is a symbolical, traditional carol noted down by Vaughan Williams.  It has possible connection with Arthurianism, the spring and hawthorn at Glastonbury.  Here it is, performed with deep expressiveness by folk-musicians, Magpie Lane.

Track Six:  Down in Yon Forest, Trad

Four pieces bringing before us stages in the Christmas story, now.  The Annunciation to Mary, a Magnificat – Mary’s song of gratitude; news of The Birth in a cradle-song, and a Bell-carol of praise, including shepherds and wise-men!

Here is a contemplative setting of the Ave Maria from the England of the 15^th Century, obviously written with a large stone-bounded acoustic in mind.  The counterpoint and harmonies are sparse.

Track Seven:  Ave Maria, Anon

Now, a setting of the Magnificat made by a shortlived, highly-gifted composer who entered the service of three monarchs in the space of a few years of almost unimaginably contortionist yet brutal change within the church in England:  John Sheppard, circa 1515-1558.  Edward The Sixth and  Mary The First made use of his talents – he served both dutifully.  He was awarded livery by Elizabeth The First in her ignorance of his death.  This ornate, beautifully spacious work in English comes from his First Service (c1549).  It is of a style that would inspire much imitation in the 20^th Century.

Track Eight:  Magnificat, Sheppard 

A beautiful carol by the New Englander, Charles Ives, setting his own words.  An intimate nocturnal picture of the nativity, beginning with the star that stood above Bethlehem, it ends with the angels who sing, “Venit adoremus Dominum.” that is,  – “He comes that we may adore God.”  A Christmas Carol, by Charles Ives.

Track Nine:  A Christmas Carol, Ives

A lively Bell-carol, of rejoicing and praise, now, words and music again by its composer, in this case, the Welshman, William Mathias.  This piece for choir, organ and percussion was commissioned by the Bach Choir to celebrate conductor Sir David Willcocks’ 70^th birthday, and first heard at the Royal Albert Hall in December 1989.

Track Ten:  The Bell Carol, Mathias

So, to Christmas parties, which carry on riotous in spite of Oliver Cromwell and Queen Victoria.  Here is a thumbnail sketch of the generous celebrations afforded by some squires in the country, from an 18^th century Spectator article by the essayist and politician, Joseph Addison – Sir Roger de Coverley’s Christmas.  Tory sentiment is not what it was, even on paper.

Track Eleven:  Sir Roger de Coverley’s Christmas, Addison

An Overture on French Carols by Philip Lane, next.  The carols are, Il est Ne le Divin Enfant, Pat-a-pan, Noel Nouvelet Quele est Cette Odeur Agreable, Masters In This Hall and Quittez,Pasteurs.  The work arose from the effect of shopping in France to the accompaniment of various stores’ public-address-systems…   

The treatment of appealing tunes is brisk and light as in most modern, picturesque, pleasant and development-light overtures, and the feel of its colourful harmonies and scoring is tres agreeable!

Track Twelve:  Overture on French Carols, Philip Lane  

By Dulcie M Ashdown’s  anthology, Christmas Past, a description of a Christmas game rarely now played.  It was popular at Numbleigh as, down the years, no fewer than 3 lords and ladies of the manor died in separate flash-fire accidents involving flaming brandy.  

 

Track Thirteen:  Snapdragon

(Music under following passage from Ivor Gurney’s Gloucestershire Rhapsody).

There’s a good reason why Christmas is for children.  They still believe in people.  They want something for nothing, and so should we all.  To be without something for nothing throughout life is actually a form of hell.  If we do not receive, the last thing that we want to do is give.  We’re trapped in feeling niggardly; in feeling put-upon by the less-fortunate, ungrateful for any blessing that we receive because we think that we were put through some kind of mill for it.  Why should we be the ones to fall for hard luck stories?   All morning, in the distance, we’ve heard Mrs Nabital-Crashe’s impromptu disquisitions on the subject. 

When those who could give but don’t are the ones who divert blame for poverty from themselves  by speaking bitterly of the chance that someone else somewhere gets something without contributing, how may anyone else do as he wishes?  It enforces mean survival , greedy self-seeking – or giving as one can.  What can we afford, when earth stands hard as iron, water like a stone, and Christmas is consumerist or neo-liberal?  Our hearts?  Not likely!

Ex Nihilo, out of nothing, still comes…Christmas.  The season of sharing, of gratitude, of goodwill and good company, of faith, hope and love; it remains true that it is arranging one’s life about anything other than commonwealth that is silly.  In fact, if Christmas can survive long enough to bring its usual blessings to most this year, it is all that it is cracked up to be.A short song for baritone, setting Thomas Hardy, by the young Gerald Finzi:  The Oxen.  The words are perfectly straightforward and touching, the poem of an atheist trembling momentarily on the brink of agnosticism, imagining the sight of oxen on their knees by the stall in which Mary laid her baby...  The style that Finzi adopts  is akin to something of the 16^th or 17^th Century with imitational accompaniment from a string quartet that seems to impersonate music for a consort of viols.  The result is, itself, infinitely touching.    

Track Fourteen:  The Oxen, Finzi

So, here we are outside the gates of picturesque Numbleigh Manor, three miles from the nearest bus-stop (which is at Vobster), as Mrs Nabital-Crashe had forgotten that she was entertaining a few City-chums today.  We wish you all a very happy Christmas.  Wassailing around here is out of the question, but we’ll get home somehow.  Join us again, soon.  Goodbye!

Credits: Track 1 (Sayings), taken from FSW/Halsgrove  1 CD

Tracks 11 and 13 taken from The Christmas Collection, Naxos Audiobooks, 214912

13 & 14 December 2014

Classical Break:  Andalusia (repeat from August 2013)
To warm you up on this cold winter weekend, here's a burst of Spanish sun.

Track One:  Los Pacos Els Pacos, Vincente Perez LLedo

This is Classical Break, on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s music is from Spanish composers attracted to the theme of Granada and the region of Andalusia.  You have just heard Los Pacos Els Pacos, a festive ‘Moorish’ March associated with Christian Spain’s age-old driving out of its borders of the Arabian and Moroccan invader.  The composer was Vincente Perez Lledo.  The performers are the Sociedad Musica “La Alianza” de Muchamel (a town near Alicante).  The  timbre of the trumpets possesses the almost explosively effortful vibrato common to much of Spain.

They came to Andalusia, the Southern Kingdom of Spain, in force,  in  811AD:  the Moors of North Africa.  Their influence did not end with the Catholic reconquest of the Kingdom in 1492, when joint rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella passed laws requiring Muslims to convert to Christianity or leave.  Andalusia had been occupied for over 6 centuries, and had been a place of trade with the whole of the Mediterranean for far longer than that.  The influence of North Africa and the Middle East was strong (incidentally, Sephardism was almost as important as Islam, before the Inquisition closed in), and Andalusians have been suspected of divided loyalties as well as a people of great cultural fascination for poets, musicians, artists of all kinds, proud and distinct. 

Spanish music has often been aped by Germans, Russians, Frenchmen,  Englishmen; it was á la mode throughout the 19^th Century, and - via South America to some extent - added to the melting-pot of popular music in the 20^th.  Frequently, just as Hungarian and zigeuner sounds have been confused, so Andalusian music  has coloured our idea of Spanish music plus non ultra standing for music of the other just as distinct regions.  Many of the catchy rhythmical patterns of what we take to be Spanish music originated in Moorish and Gypsified Andalusia.  Zapateados, Sevillanas, Alegrias, Bulerias, Tarantas, Malaguenas, Polos – many, flamenco steps - belong to the Andalusians, to a limestone-rocky, mountainous country of tropical vegetation that is lush near water, dusty and barren elsewhere, a land of cities such as Granada, Malaga, Alicante, Seville, and of villages perched on vertiginous slopes connected by high bridges or steep, dusty tracks, where water must be carried from a spring-head.  A land of religious processions, ferias, corrida, municipal bands, and folk-musicians. 

Here is a typical example of ‘Moorish’ Romantic-Nationalist music, a dance written by Enrique Granados (1867-1916), one of his Danzas Espagnolas.  It contrasts dusky, almost stealthy measures and a simple lilting and extremely touching song-theme developed from them.  The dance was composed for piano-solo.  Here, Edouado Fernandez plays his arrangement of it for guitar.      

Track Two:  Andaluza, No 5, from Danzas Espagnolas, Granados

 Above Granada stands a monastery.  By an irony that suits the occasion, the water of the fountains, waterfalls and pools of the celebrated and most lavish Moorish palace in Spain, the Alhambra, is ducted from its spring.  Let’s hear some characteristic Gregorian chant from the Mass.  Gloria.

Track Three:  Gloria

The Andalusian School of music of the Moors was just one loss to Spain brought about by the reconquest of Andalusia.  Arabian music derives much of its hypnotic quality from short, self-repeating phrases and a firm, regular beat emphasized by percussion.  The vocalist or pipe-soloist is encouraged to perform straight or embellish a simple line above a bare instrumental background of sparse harmony.  The Sufic style that originally inspired Dervishes to entranced worship remained to colour Christian Andalusian hymns, secular songs and dances, and performance practices.  For ourselves, here in the 21^st Century, we may feel ourselves to be in realms of psychedelia – though not those of the contemporary Costa Del Sol.  Here’s the anonymous hymn to Allah, Jalla Man.   

Track Four:  Jalla Man, the traditional Andalusian School

Flamenco-toque is a busy style of guitar-playing associated with Andalusia.  Its origins are said to be in Moorish and gipsy wedding-dances.  The costumes are bright and fussy, the dance-steps complex, the intensity of displays is known throughout the world, but, even in Andalusia, not always as is claimed to be authentic!  Fandango, for instance, a form imposing accelerando and crescendo, may be a South American import.   A famous gipsy family perform flamenco at inhabited caves not far from the famous Moorish Alhambra and Generaliffe palaces of Granada.  Of the Alhambra, more anon!  Flamenco takes many forms, some sung; in the case of the Tangos, which is emphatically not to be associated with the Argentinian dance, it is traditionally built on its own Phrygian modal scale.  Here is a Tangos by the great Spanish guitarist, Juan Martin – entitled simply Malaga.     

Track Five:  Malaga (Tangos),  Martin

Tomas Breton was born in the city of Salamanca in the Western region of Spain, Castile y Leon.  He wrote fluently in many forms, in particular, in opera, zarzuela – a Spanish folk-form of the genre – and chamber and pictorial orchestral music.  His Andalusian Scenes are justly famous, a suite of four numbers, including a Bolero and Zapateado, and Polo.  Polo is an accompanied and sung form of flamenco.  Here’s Breton’s Polo, a beautiful example of scoring in which the sounds of string-pizzicato (ending on the cellos) seem to resonate as solo or tiered woodwind and even brass.  The sinuous phrases found in scalic figures, narrow melodic intervals and arabesques may be heard as Moorish – not far-removed from the Granados Andalucia we heard earlier.

Track Six: Polo, Breton

(FX Collage:  Evening frogs, nightingale, Jalla Man – fades out before:)

The Alhambra was first built as a fortress, the Alcazaba, overlooking Granada.  Sultan Yusuf 1^st chose it for his home in 899.  Over hundreds of years, additions were made until it became an unrivalled example of the superb palatial residences of Sultans and Governors in Moorish Spain.  After the expulsion of the Moors, it was added to largely by Christian royalty in the 16^th Century – a whole new palace built within the gounds.  In reality, it is like a small town unto itself, with a huge pleasure-garden.  In buildings, the dominant colours are red, blue and yellow.   Art consists of non-representational geometrical patterns.  Filled with plainly adorned rooms and courts, fountains, cascades, its features also include tiled walls, colonnades, myrtle-, orange-trees, vines, roses...  In the park, there stands a copse of elms,  dating back to 1812, and gifted by the Duke of Wellington after the Peninsular War.  It is a place for tourists, dancers and musicians, a place of solemn contemplation of time and the greatness that lives on after its sponsors.

Andres Gaos-Berea

Andres Gaos-Berea, born in A Coruna, Galicia in North-West Spain, was a protégé of Pablo Sarasate,  a violinist of high reputation in South America - in especial, Argentina, where he lived for most of his life.  Our last work for today is his orchestral tone-poem of 1916, Granada – An Evening In The Alhambra.  It is scored for double woodwind, plus cor anglais and piccolo, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, full strings, and percussion that includes the dry festivity of castanets and tambourines.  The piece attracted accolades in Buenos Aires, A Corunna, Vigo and even Paris – there, in 1937, the famous Lamoureux Orchestra were conducted to great effect by the composer, himself, at the Salle Gaveau, and his masterwork of Alhambrismo was given once more the following year. 

Gaos’ piece begins in Debussyan whole-tone harmonics and level woodwind depth of twilight, a viola-shaded arabesque that fixes one’s attention, a tritone hinted-at in the relationship between arabesque and accompaniment; the cor anglais, accompanied by imitational alto and bass strings, sings a highly elegant and yet plangent song – piccolo and lower woodwind  suddenly providing brief bird-calls over this appealing sound.  The Alhambra is famed for its nightingales as well as walkers in the mild Summer twilight.  The tone lightens and builds bewitchingly in bassoon, brass and strings – castanets – and with clever play of rapidity over slowness – a Sibelian or Schubertian trick that precludes the audible ‘gear-change’ that disrupts impressions of expressive unity, we have a beautifully scored flamenco of syncopated beat, with tambourines and much exhilarating high woodwind detail, a variation deservedly repeated!  There is something autobiographical in the form of this dance.  It begins as Farruca. 

Farruca is a kind of danced flamenco thought to have come from Galicia – As a rule, it is characterized by minor key tonality rather than by a modal scale; the dancer comes in on a strong first beat, and syncopation - reinforced by clapping -gives rise to quick, unexpected twists and turns amid a complex step-pattern.  Significantly, it is associated with Galician travellers who feel far from home.

Farruca is a ‘male’ dance.  The ‘feminine’ reply that ensues is modal, regular, skippingly light in comparison, responsible for much of the exhilarating woodwind detail!  The birds comment on this dance almost in parenthesis.  A new theme on cellos adds its own commentary, about it, the bird-song plays.  It is the big, romantic tune in the piece, developed from the cor anglais tune of the introduction. The lead is turned over to violins for their higher-pitched fervour, and a quiescent, modal  chant follows its subsidence, wound about by flute and piccolo.  A guitar-like, deep pizzicato leads to a new, Moorish development on clarinet, the strings providing a bolero-like tread, and viola-shading.  It returns, and the modal chant  frames this austere, narrowly lyrical episode.  Abruptly, the flamenco is on us again, as high-spirited as before.  Instead of a two-fold repetition, Gaos plays what is surely his masterstroke in continuity – as the secondary crescendo launches straight into his passionate  big tune, full-throated in its fervour.  This seems the heart of Spain herself singing.  Extended, it is as though lifted higher by its  own afflatus, ending in the modal chant.  This muses lullingly, with great pathos and brings us back to the music of the rapt introduction, minus the opening tritonal passage – the strings draw out this lovely melody with Griegian harmonies which suggest that Gaos is more than loath to leave his dreamworld.  The birdcalls and dusky strings muse on this sublime, humane song of regret until it finds something of its own consolation, after which the birds sing more freely again.  The harmonics return, the ghostlier for what we have heard.  Flute and muted horn sound stealthily, almost mockingly, before the neither loud nor quiet last, repeated and extended chords of cadence on lower strings.

The success of this piece in Paris came as Spain endured the bloodiest Civil War in European history, the invader from North Africa and Canary Islands, this time, being the Spanish Army under the Fascistic, avowedly Christian General Franco.

This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I’m Rupert Kirkham.  Today’s programme was researched and written by Mike Burrows.  We hope that you enjoyed our musical tour of Southern Spain, and will join us again soon.  Adios!

 Granada, Un Creposculo En La Alhambra, by Andres Gaos-Berea.          

Track Seven:  An Evening In The Alhambra, Gaos-Berea