8th & 9th August 2015 - Benjamin Britten

 This programme was first broadcast on August 31st, 2013

Classical Break - Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten 1913-1976

Hunt the Squirrel – 1.20

Hello and welcome to Classical Break. I’m Rupert Kirkham.

Today’s programme features music  by one of England’s finest composers, Benjamin Britten.

November 2013 saw the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Britten, in Lowestoft, on the Suffolk coast, the coast where he lived and composed for much of his life, where he built an opera house and a festival, and where he died in December 1976.

The son of a dentist, he studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. He was a brilliant pianist and had a phenomenal understanding of the capabilities and limitations of all the instruments in the orchestra.

One of the last pieces of music Britten composed, he undertook in 4 weeks between October and November 1974 – two years before his death. This was the Suite on English Folk Tunes, opus 90, from which our opening piece today was taken. Subtitled, “A time there was,...” after a phrase in a poem by Thomas Hardy, the Suite draws from a number of English folk songs and tunes. We heard ‘Hunt the Squirrel’ – an appropriate little number I felt as we ponder the rights and wrongs of the badger-culling experiment in Somerset that has just begun. There’ll be more from Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes later in the programme.

But  let’s hear next, a piece of music originally written by the man to whom the Suite on English Folksongs was dedicated – a collector of folksongs himself, the Australian composer, Percy Grainger. Molly on the Shore.

Molly on the Shore - Percy Grainger – 3.49

Molly on the Shore, by Percy Grainger. That came from a collection of Grainger’s tunes re-set by Britten called ‘Salute to Percy Grainger’.

Britten, the conductor

Next, we have one of Britten’s most well-known works, from his Variations and Fugue on a theme of Purcell, also known as ‘The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra’, here’s the fugue.

Fugue from Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra – 2.40

Like most artists, Britten drew his inspiration from life. He lived, as I mentioned earlier, on the Suffolk coast – a wild and desolate place, so it’s not surprising that some of his music reflects the strength and beauty of the sea. In his opera, Peter Grimes,  Britten  chooses a story that is not only  set in a coastal fishing village, but also features a character with some of the problems faced by Britten as a homosexual in a country that for much of his life, could have incarcerated him.

He says of the Opera ‘(It is) a subject very close to my heart – the struggle of the individual against the masses. The more vicious the society, the more vicious the individual.'

Set in the early 1800’s Peter Grimes is a fisherman who is accused of killing not one, but two young boy apprentices. The action is broken up by 4 ‘Sea Interludes’ The climax of the action takes place during a huge storm.

Here’s the Storm interlude. 

Peter Grimes

Storm interlude from Peter Grimes – 4.13

The Storm from Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes.

You’re listening to Somer Valley community radio on 97.5 FM and online at somervalleyfm.co.uk. I’m Rupert Kirkham and this is Classical Break. If you want to hear this programme again, or get your friends to listen go to the website and click LISTEN AGAIN. It’s that simple.

Today in the 100^th anniversary year of his birth, we’re listening to music by Benjamin Britten.

Britten at home

Let’s head inland now for another number from Britten’s Suite on English Folk Tunes. Something  one assumes good country folk used to knock back whilst watching the morris dancers do their stuff outside the village pub in days of yore  – cakes and ale.

Cakes and Ale from English Folk Tunes – 2.24

When I was a lad, I was lucky enough to sing as a treble in the Choir at New College, Oxford. It was undoubtedly an incredible way to learn about music, and whenever we saw that we were to perform something  by Britten our spirits rose. There’s only so much Palestrina and Gibbons you can handle in a week of evensongs!

Our next pieces come from one of the magical experiences Britten gave me as a chorister – the singing of his Christmas collection, ‘A Ceremony of Carols.’

Here are three carols from the piece, Wolcum, There is no Rose and Deo Gracias.

A Ceremony of Carols

Ceremony of Carols: Wolcum, There is No Rose, Deo Gracias – 5.00

We’ll hear some more music for choirs later, but first I want to play you part of Britten’s song cycle, The Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings.

The libretto is a series of poems by British poets on the subject of night. It was written in 1943 when Britten and his partner, Peter Pears – had just returned from 2 years in America and Britten was preparing his first  large scale opera – Peter Grimes – which we heard about earlier. It’s scored for horn and small string ensemble and the piece has become a central work in both Tenor and Horn repertoire.

Peter Pears, Tenor

In three of the songs, Prologue, Pastoral and Hymn, Peter Pears is the Tenor, Barry Tuckwell plays the Horn and the band is the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by the composer, Benjamin Britten in a recording made in December 1963.

Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings – 7.00

Now we’re going back to the chapel to hear another of Britten’s choral works. It’s his Missa Brevis in D and he dedicated it to George Malcom and the boys of Westminster Cathedral Choir. It was first performed in 1959 on the occasion of Malcom’s retirement as organist and choirmaster.

Actually, this  performance is by the boys of King’s College Cambridge, with Ian Hare at the organ and Sir David Willcocks conducting.

Missa Brevis in D – 10.05

This is Somer Valley FM and I’m Rupert Kirkham. Today the programme features music by Benjamin Britten.

Britten and Pears

Now it’s back to the song cycles. Britten’s texts for his song cycles operas and other works came from various sources. The text for his song cycle, Les Illuminations – sung in French – probably came from the library of WH Auden, who was a friend of Britten’s with whom he collaborated on a number of projects.

Les Illuminations is based on a set of rather risqué poems by the French poet Rimbaud, written, some say, under the influence of mind-altering substances. They certainly are pretty wierd, but quite advanced for around 1873 when they were written.

Arthur Rimbaud was one of the most important precursors of modernism in poetry although his entire output was created in the space of 3 years and it was probably this that attracted Britten. Rimbaud was also ...er ‘connected’ to a fellow poet Paul Verlaine and following a series of rather public scandals involving Verlaine, Rimbaud put away his quill and set off for Asia and Africa as a travelling salesman, never to be heard of again. Britten would have liked that too!

Set for Tenor or Soprano and strings, we’re going to hear 3 ‘Illuminations’ – Fanfare, Ville, and Marine. There’s that sea again. The first and third are sung by a tenor, Peter Pears, in fact, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer and the second by the soprano, Felicity Lott on a 1989 Chandos CD with the Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson.

Les Illuminations: Fanfare - Ville - Marine  – 5.15

In 1940, just before they bombed Pearl Harbour, the Japanese government commissioned a series of works to mark the 2,600^th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire. The next piece was one of those commissions.

Sinfonia Da Requiem is a symphony written when Britten was 26. It’s in 3  movements, and is probably Britten’s largest orchestral work for the concert hall.

Anyway, the Japanese rejected it because he used Latin titles for the movements taken from the Catholic Requiem and because it was too sombre for them. To be fair, it’s not something you’d play at a children’s party. I remember when I was at school, I used it as interval music for our touring  production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. It was just about long enough for the interval and suitably demonic for the kind of capers to come in the second half of the play.

Some say that the tone of this piece was influenced by the recent deaths of his Mother and Father.

Here’s the second movement, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra under Richard Hickox.

Dies Irae.

Sinfonia da Requiem - Dies Irae – 5.27

I hope I’ve shown you some of the diversity of music produced by this outstanding English composer, Benjamin Britten. He was truly an icon in the musical 20^th century. His music is edgy, but accessible and it takes risks. Some of his music doesn’t get played much these days, which is a shame, but in this 100^th anniversary year, you are likely to find performances of all kinds from musicians at all levels around the country honouring his contribution to the English musical heritage.

In this programme we haven’t even touched on his contribution to the education of young schoolchildren through his school operas – Noye’s Flood, for example. I hope that in Classical Breaks to come this year we can play you some of this fine music which so many schoolchildren have experienced and which, one hopes, has inspired them to not only tolerate, but actually take an interest in ‘classical’ music amidst the cacophony of sounds and images that are thrown at them every second of the day.

Noyes Flood

Lecture over. We leave you with Jubilate Deo, a good example of Britten’s simpler writing. It’s a short anthem, written in 1961 at the request of the Duke of Edinburgh for St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. Goodbye.

Jubilate Deo – 2.21

CB Gurney/Milford 1 & 2 August 2015

CB Gurney And Milford

This is Classical Break on Somer Valley FM, and I'm Rupert Kirkham. We weren't sure whether to call this programmeTwo British Outsiders, or Two British Composers Who Regarded Themselves As Outsiders?

Ivor Gurney's Cello Sonata went unknown, unplayed, for over 90 years. It was written sometime after his return from war-service and a year before he was certified, perhaps in about 1921. It was just one of the many works that he composed at the time, stimulated by return to studies at the RCM, and latterly, by defiance when those studies lapsed. Its single movement-structure is unusual in the genre. Some hold that it was the first movement of a multi-movement piece left incomplete, others that it was intended to be self-standing in a tripartite, possibly part-dissolved sonata- or fantasia-form. As with Sibelius' later experiments in symphony, argument among commentators seems vain. Music was not made for form; form was made for music.

Hints of Gurney's own E flat Violin-Sonata first and third movement and setting of Housman's poem Into My Heart an Air That Kills haunt this piece. The outset is calm – the cello and piano exchanging opposing brief phrases that hold a wealth of shared trouble and stoicism, also, beauty - the folkish cello's question answered by quizzically ambling piano, whose part is deceptively casual in effect. Deceptive because continuation – continuous development - soon becomes impassioned, though not violent, in canon, block chords and filling-out from the piano. There are at least two climaxes between asides of brown study, in which the baleful implications of theme or harmony are revealed – in the second climax, one seems to arrive at the cold clay bleakness through bare harmonic instability of parts of Butterworth's Rhapsody: A Shropshire Lad, or Vaughan Williams' Pastoral Symphony, a collision between academic, diatonic or chromatic, and more down-to-earth modal, procedures. Consistent growth causes it to be most effective. Canon and imitations, though not fugue, suggest the influence of Brahms. The piece is very tightly argued throughout, the elliptical cello line abetted by insistent rhythm in the piano in which stress tends to be heavier on the second beat. The music tends to involve sequences of three steps answered by three steps. Much appears enigmatic even after the last climax. The close is sudden, with the sense of having come full-circle: as in the slow movement of the Sonata in E flat, this music seems to steal into the major only at the last moment.

It is as far into austere, interval-generated, organic development as one may ever have heard Gurney go. It sounds like a near-thirteen minute cipher, and fascinates by such means, rather than by the contrast between outer and “inner” dynamics found in the Violin Sonata in E flat, or any other piece from Ivor Gurney's lamplit room. There are very few high notes for the cello – it is abetted by the piano that rambles with two hands on either side of its line.

The restricted rhythm adds to the sense of intriguing mystery. One seeks and knows to go on seeking. One senses open air, whether or not one has one's thought amid the severe grandeur of Cotswold hills or their deep, stealthily aromatic woods. The moments of release are rare, and the eyes may see for miles but the mind dwells on the thoughts of one's setting out.

Track One: Cello Sonata, Gurney (12.50min)

That was Ivor Gurney's Cello Sonata, music of a lonely, powerfully thoughtful man. A close friend said of him, "Ivor could only ever do things in his own way..." - but that was his, not our, misfortune.

Throughout much of his life, Gurney was a lonely walker, often by choice. On Service in wartime, he loved nothing better than writing letters home – real free rambles of letters – or of seeking flowers, wildlife and ancient works in the French countryside behind the British lines, the Somme plain and hills standing in, one feels, for the loveliness to him of the Severn Plain and Cotswold steeps that rear up with suddenness, yet all on a smaller scale. It would have been his habit to go accompanied when in France, of course: and, surely, one could have had no better companion as talker, naturalist and poetic historian. Mostly, in peacetime, few were free to walk with him. In the asylum, he walked in imagination, save when taken out to see the sea, or a visitor (Helen, the widow of Edward, Thomas) brought him Ordnance Survey maps to look at... Another view may be that the music of works like the cello sonata has the regularity of detail of church architecture – narrow-spaced intervals opening out in sweeps of stone in three planes for those who choose.

Now, music by another lonely, thoughtful man, one perhaps less confidently powerful! Robin Milford was born 13 years after Ivor Gurney. Where Gurney had been the first son and second child of a tailor, Milford was born late to the affluent family of a founder of the Oxford University Press. Where Gurney's family had been nonplussed, even thunderstruck, to be the kin of a musical genius – or bloody resentful as they were scarcely fools themselves, but had never been afforded his advantages – Milford's kin were public-school- and Oxbridge-educated academics and top civil servants, high-achieving, well-known and well-regarded in their upland fields. Robin sang to himself in such an environment, where, whenever possible, Gurney had lit out, to use Huck Finn's expression, even when attending King's School, Gloucester and serving as an articled pupil of the organist of Gloucester Cathedral.

No, Milford was “sivillised” - to use Huck Finn's word of dread. All the same, he learned the flute and piano whilst at Rugby and studied with Holst and Vaughan Williams at the RCM – lucky not to be a pupil of Gurney's nemesis, the bluff, exacting and rancorous Professor Stanford - Gurney had written of this mighty establishment-figure as“That python!” After his studies, and having friends like Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gerald Finzi, to back him, he wrote first songs, then works of increasing length and ambition. He fairly quickly made his name when he turned to full-time composing; received regular commissions from local festivals, his works published and performed to acceptance as Gurney's had rarely been - yet continued to see himself as the family failure. Milford's music is a study in subtle tones, marrying modal folkishness and, through the example of Warlock and Grieg, if not Delius or Moeran, expressive chromatic harmony. There's use of certain courtly features of a baroque or earlier fantasia and arioso-style, though the counterpoint is less developed than that found in Finzi or Rubbra, less, therefore, of a principle that dictates form. Melodic transformation is underpinned by traditional working out of intervals within contrasting themes, exploring their kinship, working from contrast to unity. Milford's style is anything but obvious; often, its spell remains strong and pleasant after a hearing, but it's precise turns are hard for the unpractised musician to memorize. It is melodious, wistful, haunting, well-proportioned, occasionally attempting a darker effect, whereat its inhibitions are plain. Assuredly logical in working out, it is rarely emphatic, its courtesies extending to exquisite – but practical – scoring, the influence of Holst.

The themes of his Phantasy for Clarinet and String Quartet, Opus33, dating from the period of his maturity, in 1933, contrasts its first major theme for violin over other strings – the clarinet birdcall-like then in urging a moment of exquisite sadness - and the second for clarinet with strings-accompaniment from the beginning. The first is incisive, utilizing Scotch snaps (and, as polite as it is, oddly related to the brusque first subject of Sibelius' First Symphony), the second utterly original in its half-wistful, half-humorous jog-trot, whose overall effect is ingeniously innocent. There had been nothing quite like that second theme anywhere in chamber-music, in 1933! Its idiom recurred in the work of Bernard Herrmann. Improvisatory, related themes abound between the two, all with a sweetly reflective or active folkish air, one with an Appalachian flavour, another, more brief, with downright shades of Vaughan-Williams – and Milford proceeds to extract the most that he can out of them all in variation, segmenting, juxtaposition and ordering, in the shortest possible time. All ends very suddenly, hushedly, but not unhappily. A lovely work.

Track 2: Phantasy Quintet, Op 33, For Clarinet and String Quartet (11.29min)

A depressive, he was never confident or outgoing, and enlistment in the Army brought on a breakdown in

1940. After prompt discharge, he returned home, but the following year,lost his only son, Barnaby, to a car-crash. Somehow, with the help of his wife and friends, he lived for some years longer, but the deaths of Finzi, in 1956 and Vaughan-Williams, in1958, were great blows – Finzi was only two years older than he was, and his closest confidant. In 1959, life dealt him a last cruelty: his works were dropped from the

Oxford University Press catalogue. He committed suicide shortly afterwards.

The Welshman from Balham, Edward Thomas, was the poet closest to Ivor Gurney's vision. Gurney was a fine poet himself, but, in words, did not always have Thomas' ability to nail a profound philosophical idea with

the use of simple, universal images from nature and unpretentious diction whose natural observations and conversational cadences owed much to country life and the sayings of countrymen. Manner disguised the truth that Thomas was one of the more scholarly and widely-read poets – and literary critics - of his generation:the matter - and self-critical acuity behind its shaping – did not.

A lover of many forms of poetry, Gurney set the work of most of his contemporaries of note, outside the Imagist or Vorticist camp, creating lovely songs that demonstrated the strength of the English poetic tradition. He found a continuity between Elizabethans and Jacobeans and his as-beloved 20th Century Georgians and older, perhaps unwitting, associates of Georgians.

Thomas died before he could become a Georgian. As an ex-soldier, Gurney proceeded to set Second-LieutenantThomas's poetry with a will. Nevertheless, his cycle, Lights Out, for Baritone, Piano and String Quartet took seven years to gather, and was completed three years into his confinement at The Stone House, Dartford, Kent, far from the Gloucestershire that had been his only real home.

The cycle was once recorded in the 1960s, but among critics, there were felt to be too many places in which Gurney's mind failed to shed light on his or Thomas' purpose, or in which he failed to remember even the text of the poems – changing odd words as seems to have been his practice – he learned a phenomenal number of poems by heart and travelled light - the odd line was missed out altogether.

Here, the texts have been corrected, if you enjoy the pointillistic, yet continuous orchestration made by Jeremy Dibble, object-lesson of its kind though it is, you may wonder why the cycle was not given in its original dress in this new recording, in which the misrememberings and omissions perpetrated by the composer have been made good. As Schumann said of a Liszt transcription of a song by Schubert: “Wonderful! So wonderful, indeed, that one was left in no doubt of how good the original must have been.”

The first song of the cycle is The Penny Whistle, an evocation of a charcoal-burners'-encampment. Since the days of George Borrow, gipsies, vagabonds, charcoal-burners and other livers in the out-of-doors had exerted a powerful charm over writers horrifiedat the materialistic and worseningly illiberal development of urban, industrial Britain in the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries. In the pincers of “regular employment” and Workhouse, Self-Help and villa--vulgarity, this was understandable. Here is a symbolistic yet utterly down-to-earth picture of a girl and boy sitting by the charcoal-burners' caravan-hut in a forest-clearing, the boy playing the penny-whistle of the title, the girl reading a letter by the light of an ivory bugle-like crescent moon. They may be charcoal--burners, but the washing on the line and letter are white, the caravan-hut gleams like a kingfisher amid the darkness of Winter and charcoal-burning. Gurney's treatment of this beautiful poem is characteristically free, feeling and idealistic; the drone-effect under a trilling piccolo at the opening, and flecks and mixed-scoring swells of orchestral tone provided by Dibble may well be like the colourizing of a black and white photograph or etching. The free-wheeling, moment-by-moment setting is characteristic; it may be noted that it is also shapely and touching, its accompaniment harmonically complex, but pin-sharp.

Track 3: The Penny Whistle, Gurney (2.53min)

Thomas and Gurney loved the very idea of husbandry of garden or farm. Both used physical labour – or

long walks - to ward off, palliate or overcome attacks of depression and debility. In Scents – Thomas's own title for this poem of Autumn was Digging - the gardener-singer thinks only in scents, but a Thomas or Gurney recollecting without four of his five senses is unimaginable! This poignant piece hymns the attraction of soil, the lovely distinctness of living things that grow in it in season – and all that goes to the fire, come Autumn... The fullness of a life so simple and yet life- and earth-aware! In his work, Gurney's tenderness never failed.

Track 4: Scents, Gurney (2.27min)

Bright Clouds: Reflections in a pond on a bright Spring day – like a Chinese or Japanese poet, Thomas and Gurney, in verse and music, summoned up brilliant, deeply-felt lyrics in response to a little bright-clouded sunniness on water.

Track 5: Bright Clouds, Gurney (1.32min)

Lights Out. Poet and composer knew equally the pain of overwork, anxiety and longing for rest. Thomas wrote as a soldier of the Royal Artillery, hearing the last bugle-call of the day at Lydd, honestly tired, on the borders of sleep, sinking without choice into its shelf on shelf of forest – losing his way, and himself... As an ex-soldier, Gurney tried to go without sleep, perhaps owing to nightmares. In this metaphysical song, he finds a harmonic resource and drooping form of strophic song-speech that may anticipate the method of Benjamin Britten. The nobility of Thomas was honest, self-testingly backed-into – an attitude that Gurney understood well.

Track 6: Lights Out, Gurney (4.27min)

Will You Come, a teasing love-song is given dry but charming treatment by Gurney, the disappointed lover. Nothing involving the heart or mind was simple for the happily-unhappily-married Thomas, either, even for the sake of a folkish love-song! Gurney doesn't ignore the shrewd if not awkward clauses of this piece, but finds the ideal melodic touch.

Track 7: Will You Come, Gurney (1.42min)

If you noticed the ivory bugle in The Penny Whistle, so, no doubt, did Private Gurney. Thomas' poem on the subject of Reveille, The Trumpet, prompted not one but two settings by him, one for choir and instruments, and this one to conclude his Thomas-cycle. Edward Thomas found himself in the army, at the expense of his wife and children, all the doubts and physical suffering caused by discontented marriage, commissioned literary work and a pre-diabetic condition that caused blistered feet when forced to wear standard-issue boots, at last receding to his something-like-satisfaction. The purging of the aesthete and hack left the makings of a fine, highly professional officer of immaculate uniform, shaven head and clipped moustache, though he wrote verses in the mess (setting them out like prose on the page to conceal his eccentricity), and retained his habitual clay-pipe to the end.

Gurney found another self, the perfect blend of the subversive squaddie and capable fighter, smart, learned and readily excused by his Sergeant for his outrageous scarecrow-appearance at an inspection in the line: “He's a musician, sir.” On active service, and well-aware that they were not alone, neither Thomas nor Gurney showed fear when in danger. The Trumpet, the anticipation of danger as experienced in the old wars is a rousing poem. Gurney's late setting, wayward, veering and yet ultimately trenchant and thrilling, shows the old fire and defiance of terrors that had ruined his every hope of health or happiness.

Neither Gurney nor Milford would have wanted to be remembered for their tragic lives, and when you hear their music, you hear much that is strong, honest and transcendently beautiful – the music of two highly individual, brave and believing souls, to whom the acquisition and use of musical technique was worth giving up their lives to, come what might. This was Classical Break on Somer Valley FM; I'm Rupert Kirkham. Today's programme on music by Ivor Gurney and Robin Milford was researched and written by Mike Burrows. We hope you liked it and will join us again soon. Goodbye!

Track 8: The Trumpet, Gurney (2.02min)

July 25th & 26th - the Dulcimer Man

Classical Break - The Dulcimer Man (rpt from 2014)

This week, Classical Break goes on location all the way to Frome to meet one of the country's only makers of Hammered Dulcimers.

Tim Manning produces at least one instrument every week at his tiny workshop in The Hub at Frome's Welshmill, for individuals, teachers, retailers, record producers and even opera companies. 

In the programme, Tim explains what dulcimers are - the different types around the globe, their history and how he makes them. In addition, of course, there's music from some of the world's most renowned hammered dulcimer players, listed below, in order of performance. Tim also demonstrates the instrument and plays some music that he has written for this unique forerunner of the modern-day piano.

Thanks to Tim Manning for giving us his time. Click the link to go to his website.

We hope to run a series of programmes about local instrument makers and local instruments of note. In the works - a man who builds pianoforte instruments, the newly refurbished and repositioned organ at St John's Midsomer Norton, the Klais organ in Bath Abbey and the Rachmaninov piano at the Holburne Museum in Bath.  

Track one:  Theme from "The Ipcress File", John Barry, 1965
The distinctive theme is played on a Hungarian Concert Grand Cimbalom which is the Hungarian version of a Hammer Dulcimer. The instrument is bigger than a Hammered Dulcimer, the size of a small piano. Barry was very fond of the instrument and used it for a number of theme tunes.

Track two: Paul Haslem, The Fordwich Jig. trad
Track three: Ted Yoder, "Praise to the Lord" trad. hymn
Track four: Howie Mitchell, "Matty Groves" American trad.
Track five: Karen Ashbrook,"Prelude, Cello Suite #1" J.S.Bach

Track six: Jim Couza, "Los Ejes De Mi Carretta". 1983 by American born british resident Jim Couza from the album Music for Hammered Dulcimer. Probably the most well known Hammered Dulcimer player the UK has ever known.!

Other tracks by Tim Manning

Tim plays us out of the programme with a composition of his own.

If you know any instrument makers in the area, give us a call on 07913 742401 or email rupertkirkham@gmail.com and we'll try and include them.

18th & 19th July -Organ

Classical Break - Organ #1

Hello and welcome to Classical Break. You're listening to Somer Valley FM and I'm Rupert Kirkham.

John Philip Sousa

John Philip sousa - the liberty bell

I know! If you're old, you'll remember this as the theme tune to the Monty Python's Flying Circus tv show in the 70's - yes it was that long ago...; if not, thanks for listening and stay with us!

That performance of John Philip Sousa's The Liberty Bell, arranged for organ by Martin Setchell, was given by Christopher Cipkin, a senior librarian from the University of Birmingham, who is also a freelance organist playing the Christchurch organ in Frome. He was one of 3 organ rectalists at this year's Frome festival, the other two playing at St. John the Baptist in the centre of town.

Christopher Cipkin

 I managed to record two of these recitals in full - and we'll be hearing music from them both later on.

We'll also have more twentieth century organ and choral music from Oxford by Herbert Howells and there's news of a free organ recital in Bath Abbey next Wednesday.

First, let's kick off with a rousing performance of a piece by Marcel Dupre played by John Scott on the organ of St.Paul's Cathedral, London.

Interior of Marcel Dupre's house

 Dupre wrote this in 1914 during the first year of the first world war - another reason for playing it today.

It's one of his three Prelude and Fugues, which some say are Dupre's finest contributions to the organ repertory. It's written in B Major - a defiant, soul-stirring work, which would make anybody's neck-hairs stand on end - especially, I suspect, the organist's!

Dupre at the organ of St. Sulphice

Dupre - prelude and fugue in B major
06:54

Prelude and Fugue in B Major, by Marcel Dupre, played on the organ of St Pauls in London by John Scott.

Back to the recitals given at the Frome Festival. We heard one at the start of the programme recorded in Christchurch, well this next one was recorded at St John's church, in the centre of town.

It's a nice little organ, requiring some attention, apparently - sounded alright to me - so the recital was an opportunity to donate to the organ fund.

The organist, Brian Martin, has been involved in the restoration of instrument over the last few years; he lives near Westbury where he moved to from North London a few years ago.

Brian Martin

We're going to hear him play ELEGY, by George Thalben-Ball. Thalben-Ball was at one time assistamnt to Sir Walford Davies at London's Temple Church. Walford Davies reputedly once asked George, who was a bit of a wizz at extemporization, to play 'something nice' before evensong, as he was feeling rather tired.This is what he came up with...

George Thalben-Ball

Elegy - G.T. Thalben-ball
04:39

George Thalben-Ball's Elegy, played during the Frome festival at St John the Baptist church by Brian Martin. We'll hear more from this local organist later in the programme.

Next up, a piece by Herbert Howells. He once said "The most persistent, level, satisfying and effective things in the history of our music have often centred around our organ lofts and church musicians."

Herbert Howells

Howells wasn't a practising church or cathedral organist, but many of his contemporaries were - George Thalben-Ball, whose Elegy we just heard, were. He wrote a great deal of sacred music and his skill was not only in setting the same canticles in original ways, but his added dimension, was to compose music for places. He called it, translating the frozen poetry of architecture into the living sounds of voices in consort".

New College Chapel

A good example of this is his settings of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis - the Anglican evening service. We're going to hear his setting of the Magnificat, designed for the chapel of New College, Oxford, where, incidentally, I gained my appreciation of traditional music as a chorister - far too long ago to mention.

New College Chapel from the organ loft

I do remember, though, it was one of the pieces we loved to sing and when we put the service sheets out in the chapel at the start of every week, we would scan them to see what we were going to sing every day that week. If it was Palestrina or Tallis, (I hadn't realised at the age of 11 how marvellous these composers were) we were depressed - it was going to be a bad week. If there was some Benjamin Britten, Tippet, Stanford or Howells, it was going to be a good week! Everything's very simple at that age.

New College Chapel organ, Oxford

 So here's Howell's setting of the Magnificat from his 'New College' service.

Howells - new college, magnificat
06:21

The Choir of New College, Oxford, recorded back in 1987 under its director and organist, Dr Edward Higginbottom, singing the Magnificat from his 'New College' service.

From Oxford back down to Frome now, for the second piece of our Frome festival recital by Christopher Cipkin at Christchurch.

Charles Villiers Stanford

It's by Irish composer, Charles Villiers Stanford, a contemporary of Herbert Howells, Marcel Dupre, George Thalben-Ball and Edward Elgar - whose music we'll be hearing in a while.

The Eroica Sonata for organ was dedicated to another famous organist and composer, 'Charles Marie Widor - and the great country to which he belongs'. The piece (and I'm quoting from Christopher's programme notes here)'weaves fantasy and toccatta writing around his sonata-form development of the patriotic Marseillaise theme - the French National anthem and the battle song of the French Revolution.
Stanford-Verdun from eroica sonata
08:55
That was first performed under the baton of Stanford himself in a concert dedicated to his countrymen, the Irish Guards, in 1918. Christopher Cipkin on the organ of Christchurch, Frome during the 2015 Frome Festival.

You're listening to Somervalleyfm on 97.5FM and online at somervalleyfm.co.uk.

Next, Brian Martin plays the Triumphal March from Caractacus,by Edward Elgar, arranged for organ by Bryan Hesford. The theme is the heroic resistance to the Roman invasion of Britain by Caratacus and his subsequent arragnment in Rome.

Edward Elgar

It's all set round here in the cotswolds, the Malvern Hills and the banks of the River Severn - apart from the Rome bit of course - Worcester being Elgar's home town.

The Triumphal March from Caratacus, by Edward Elgar played by Brian Martin on the organ of St. John's Church, Frome.

Elgar - triumphal march of caractacus
09:39

The triumphal march of Caractacus , by Edward Elgar.

Next, from Christchurch again, Christopher Cipkin plays some Purcell - it's the only non-20th century music in this programme, but we mustn't lose sight of the fact that the organ has been around with us - and in particular in our religious and political lives for a very long time.

After the chaos and austerity that  followed the English Civil war, the monarchy was eventually restored and Henry Purcell was part of a new generation of composers who reflected the often flambouyant confidence of the new regime. In 1689, he succeeded John Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey and three years later, was appointed organist of the Chapel Royal as well.

Henry Purcell

The next piece is his 'Trumpet Tune' from a five act opera 'King Arthur' that he wrote with the then poet laureate, John Dryden.

Purcell - trumpet tune from king arthur
03:10

The Trumpet tune from Purcell's opera, King Arthur, played by Christopher Cipkin on the organ of Christchurch, Frome.

Thanks to Brian Martin and Christopher Cipkin for allowing me to record those recitals at the Frome festival and use them on this programme.

Coming up, news of an organ recital happening next week in Bath, but first, here's another piece by Herbert Howells, called Jacob's Brawl. It's a transcript by Edward Higginbottom from an original score for the Clavichord.

Jacob's brawl
02:22

Jacob's Brawl, by Herbert Howells.

Next Wednesday, July 22nd, there's another organ rectal, not in Frome this time but on the Klais organ at Bath Abbey.

Richard Dunster-Sigtermans

It's being given by Richard Dunster-Sigtermans, no stranger to Bath, as he told me when I spoke to him on the phone earlier this week
.
Richard Dunster-Sigtermans interview
05:04

Richard Dunster-Sigtermans who will be performing at Bath Abbey next Wednesday at 1.10 pm till 2 - a lunchtime concert and it's free, so if you're intown that day or you facny a trip over to Bath, it'll be well worth it. So that's Bath Abbey at ten past one, on Wednesday, July 22nd. Apologies if you're listening to a repeat of this programme and you've missed it!

Bah Abbey - Klais organ

We're going to leave you today with another piece by Herbert Howells from a transcription of his Howells Clavichord collection - dedicated pieces he wrote for all his friends and contemporaries he admired. This one, as the name suggests is dedicated to William Walton.
Walton's-toye.

I hope you enjoyed this week's organ special - Classical Break will be back next weekend. I'm Rupert Kirkham. Goobye.

Howells-Walton's toye
02:22   

Andalusia - July 11th & 12th

Classical Break:  Andalusia (repeat from August 2013)

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