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Friday 27th November, 7pm

ROADS TO SOLACE

More than Daffodils!

A celebration to mark ’s 250th anniversary, exploring his search for solace in the landscapes of his beloved Lake District, with readings from the journals and letters of .

Aoife Miskelly – soprano Catherine Hopper – soprano Nigel Foster – piano Clarinet - TBC Sarah Berger – speaker Programme devised by Nigel Foster

PART 1

Song 1 – Dominick Argento (1927-2019) and William Wordsworth – Prologue: Shadow and Substance from To be Sung upon the Water

As one who hangs down bending from the side Of a slow moving boat, upon the breast Of a still water, solacing himself With such discov’ries as his eye can make Beneath him in the bottom of the deep, Sees many beauteous sights, weeds, fishes, flowers, Grots, pebbles, roots of trees and fancies more, Yet often is perplexed and cannot part The shadow from the substance, rocks and sky, Mountains and clouds, reflected in the depth Of the clear flood, from things which there abide In their true dwelling; now is crossed by gleam Of his own image, by a sunbeam now, And wav’ring motions sent he knows not whence, Impediments that make his task more sweet; Such pleasant office have I long pursued Incumbent o’er the surface of past time.

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Song 2 – Ronald Corp (b. 1951) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850) – Dust as we are

Dust as we are, the immortal spirit grows like harmony in music. There is a dark Inscrutable workmanship that reconciles Discordant elements, makes them cling together In one society. How strange that all the terrors, pains, and early miseries, Regrets, vexations, lassitudes interfused Within my mind, should e’er have borne a part, And that a needful part, in making up the calm existence that is mine when I Am worthy of myself? Praise to the end! Thanks to the means which Nature deigned to employ.

Song 3 – John Woolrich (b. 1954) and Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) – I will walk abroad from Here is my Country

I will walk abroad, Old griefs shall be forgotten today, for the air is cool and still and the hills are high and stretch away to heaven and the churchyard is verdant as the forest lawns and the forest lawns are as quiet as the churchyard and with the dew I can wash the fever from my forehead and then I shall be unhappy no longer

Song 4 – Short (b. 1937) and William Wordsworth – November 1, 1815 from Of Time and Season

How clear, how keen, how marvellously bright The effluence from yon mountain’s distant head, Which, strewn with snow as smooth as heav’n can shed, Shines likes another sun, on mortal sight Uprisen, as if to check approaching night, And all her twinkling stars, who now would tread If so he might, yon mountain’s glittering head,

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Terrestrial, but a surface, by the flight Of sad mortality’s earth-sullying wing, Unswept, unstain’ed? Nor shall the aerial powers Dissolve that beauty, destined to endure, White, radiant, spotless. Exquisitely pure, Through all vicissitudes, till genial spring Has fill’d the laughing vales with welcome flowers.

Song 5 – Louise Héritte-Viardot (1841-1918) and William Wordsworth – To Daffodils

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high on vales and hills. When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils. Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never ending line Along the margin of a bay. Ten thousand saw I at a glance Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

And oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

Song 6 – Dominick Argento and William Wordsworth – The Lake at Evening from To be Sung upon the Water

Clouds, lingering yet, extend in solid bars Through the grey west; and lo! These waters, steeled By breezeless air to smoothest polish, yield A vivid repetition of the stars; Jove, Venus, and the ruddy crest of Mars Amid his fellows beauteously revealed At happy distance from earth’s groaning field, Where ruthless mortals wage incessant wars.

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Is it a mirror? Or the nether Sphere Opening to view the abyss in which she feeds Her own calm fires? But listen! A voice is near; Great Pan himself low-whispering through the reeds, ‘Be thankful thou; for, if unholy deeds Ravage the world, tranquillity is here!’

Song 7 – Muriel Herbert (1897-1984) and (1774-1843) – How Beautiful is the Night

How beautiful is night! A dewy freshness fills the silent air; No mist obscures, nor cloud, nor speck, nor stain, Breaks the serene of Heaven;

In full-orb’d glory yonder moon divine Rolls through the dark blue depths. Beneath her steady ray The desert circle spreads, Like the round ocean, girdled with the sky. How beautiful is night!

Song 8 - Dominick Argento and William Wordsworth – The lake at Night from To be Sung upon the Water

Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar, Heard by calm lakes, as peeps the folding star, Where the duck dabbles ‘mid the rustling sedge, And feeding pike starts from the water’s edge, Or the swan stirs the reeds, his neck and bill Wetting that drip upon the water still;

And now, on ev’ry side, the surface breaks Into blue spots, and slowly lengthening streaks; here, plots of sparkling water tremble bright With thousand thousand twinkling points of light; And now the whole wide lake in deep repose Is hushed, and like a burnished mirror glows.

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Song 9 – Michael Short and William Wordsworth – September 1815 from Of Time and Season

While not a leaf seems faded while the fields, With ripening harvests prodigally fair, In brightest sunshine bask, this nipping air Sent from some distant clime where Winter wields his icy scimitar, a foretaste yields Of bitter change and bids the flowers beware; And whispers to the silent birds, “Prepare against the threatening foe your trustiest shields.” For me, who, under kindlier laws, Belong to Nature’s tuneful quire, This rustling dry, Through the green leaves and yon crystalline sky, Announce a season potent to renew, ‘Mid frost and snow th’instinctive joys of song And nobler cares than listless summer knew.

Song 10 – Christopher Brown (b. 1943) and William Wordsworth - And in the Frosty Season from Wordsworth Songs

And in the frosty season, when the sun Was set, and visible for many a mile The cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom, I heeded not their summons; happy time It was indeed for all of us – for me It was a time of rapture! Clear and loud The village clock tolled six I wheeled about, Proud and exulting like an untired horse That cares not for his home. All shod with steel, We hissed along the polished ice in games Confederate, imitative of the chase And woodland pleasures – the resounding horn, The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare. So through the darkness and the cold we flew, And not a voice was idle; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud; The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron while far distant hills Into the tumult sent an alien sound Of melancholy not unnoticed, while the stars Eastward were sparkling clear, and in the west The orange sky of evening died away.

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Song 11 - Dominick Argento and William Wordsworth – Music on the Water from To be Sung upon the Water

Lutes and voices down th’enchanted woods Steal, and compose the oar-forgotten floods, While Evening’s solemn bird melodious weeps, Heard, by star-spotted bays, beneath the steeps; Slow glides the sail along th’illumined shore, And steals into the shade the lazy oar. Soft bosoms breathe around contagious sighs, And amorous music on the water dies.

PART 2

Song 12 – Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968) and William Wordsworth – That Mighty Heart

Earth has not anything to show more fair; Dull would he be of soul who could pass by A sight so touching in its majesty; This city now doth, like a garment, wear The beauty of the morning; silent, bare, Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie Open unto the fields, and to the sky; All bright the glittering in the smokeless air. Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendour, valley, rock or hill; Ne’er saw I, never felt, so calm, so deep! The river glideth at his own sweet will; Dear God! The very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying still!

Song 13 – William Walton (1902-1983) and William Wordsworth – Glide Gently from A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table

Glide gently, thus for ever glide, O Thames! That other bards may see As lovely visions by thy side As now, fair river, come to me. O glide, fair stream, for ever so, Thy quiet soul on all bestowing,

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Till all our minds for ever flow As thy deep waters now are flowing.

Song 14 - Christopher Brown and William Wordsworth – Oh there is blessing in the gentle breeze from Wordsworth Songs

Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze, A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky. What e’er its mission, the soft breeze can come To none more grateful than to me; escaped From the vast city, where I long had pined A discontented sojourner; now free, Free as a bird to settle where I will. What dwelling shall receive me? In what vale Shall be my harbour? Underneath what grove Shall I take up my home? And what clear stream Shall with its murmur lull me into rest? The earth is all before me. With a heart Joyous nor scared at its own liberty, I look about.

Song 15 – Ronald Corp and William Wordsworth –

Up! Up! My friend and quit your books; Or surely you’ll grow double; Up! Up! My friend And clear your looks; Why all this toil and trouble? The sun, above the mountain’s head, A freshening lustre mellow Through all the long green fields has spread, His first sweet evening yellow. Books! ‘tis a dull and endless strife; Come, hear the woodland linnet, How sweet his music!

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On my life, There’s more of wisdom in it.

Song 16 - Ronald Corp and William Wordsworth – To a Skylark

Ethereal minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky! Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound? Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will Those quivering wings composed, that music still!

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; A privacy of glorious light is thine; Whence thou dost pour upon the world a flood Of harmony, with instinct more divine; Type of the wise who soar but never roam. True to the kindred points of heaven and home!

Song 17- Frank Bridge (1879-1941) and Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) – Berceuse

The days are cold, the nights are long. The north wind sings a doleful song; Then hush again upon my breast, All merry things are now at rest, Save thee, my pretty love.

The kitten sleeps upon the hearth, The crickets long have ceased their mirth. There’s nothing stirring in the house Save one wee hungry nibbling mouse. Then why so busy thou?

Nay! Start not at that sparkling light, ‘Tis but the moon that shines so bright, On the window pane Be-dropped with rain. Then little darling, Sleep again And wake when it is day.

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Song 18 – Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) and (1772-1834) - Cradle Song

Sleep, sweet babe! My cares beguiling; Mother sits beside thee smiling; Sleep, my darling Tenderly. If thou sleep not, mother mourneth, Sitting as her wheel she turneth. Come soft slumber, balmily!

Song 19 – Eric Thiman (1900-1975) and William Wordsworth – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high on vales and hills. When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils. Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine And twinkle on the milky way, They stretched in never ending line Along the margin of a bay. Ten thousand saw I at a glance Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced but they Outdid the sparkling waves in glee, A poet could not but be gay In such a jocund company! I gazed and gazed, but little thought What wealth the show to me had brought.

For oft when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude. And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.

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PROGRAMME NOTES

Song 1 – Dominick Argento (1927-2019) and William Wordsworth (1770-1850) – Prologue: Shadow and Substance from To be Sung upon the Water Subtitled Barcarolles and Nocturnes, this cycle was composed in 1973. It was first performed by Clifton Ware (tenor), Joseph Longo (clarinets) and Paul Freed (piano) at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis on 20th October 1974. The cycle was written at the suggestion of the tenor Mallory Walker (to whom it is dedicated), who had just created the title role in Argento’s opera Colonel Jonathan the Saint. The title of the cycle is an allusion to the Schubert song Auf dem Wasser zu singen (Schubert is referenced in the 5th song of the cycle, not performed in this programme) and the use of the clarinet was suggested to the composer by Schubert’s The Shepherd on the Rock.

Dominick Argento studied at the Peabody Conservatoire and Eastman School of Music and then with Dallapiccola in Italy. His teaching jobs have included positions at Eastman School of Music and Minnesota University. Most of his work is vocal, either song or opera. His operas include The Boor (1957), Colonel Jonathan the Saint (1960), The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1967). Postcard from Morocco (1971), The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe (1976), Miss Havisham’s Wedding Night (1981), Casanova’s Homecoming (1984), The Aspern Papers (1988) and The Dream of Valentino (1995). His song-cycles include Letters from Composers (1968), To be Sung upon the Water (1973), From the Diary of Virginia Woolf (1975, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music) and Casa Guidi (1983).

Song 2 – Ronald Corp (b. 1951) and William Wordsworth – Dust as we are Ronald Corp writes: ‘I have always had a soft spot for the poetry of Wordsworth since studying parts one and two of at school. Settings of Wordsworth feature in my song cycle Flower of Cities, in a cycle of songs by Wordsworth for voice, clarinet and piano and in my cantata Laudamus. Dust as we are (with words from The Prelude) comes from Laudamus which is a setting of the Te Deum (in Latin) and poems by Wordsworth and .

Composer and conductor Ronald Corp is the founder and Artistic Director of the and the New London Children’s Choir and also Musical Director of the London Chorus and the Highgate Choral Society. With the New London Orchestra he has recorded a number of award winning CDs for Hyperion and also has recorded for Dutton and Stone Records. He has written an extensive body of works including the cantatas And all the trumpets sounded, Laudamus, Mary's Song, Adonai Echad, A New Song and The Hound of Heaven as well as works for unaccompanied choir (Dhammapada, Things I didn't say). His instrumental compositions include two symphonies, two piano concertos and concertos for cello and for flute, three string quartets (number one titled 'The Bustard') and a clarinet quintet ('Crawhall'). His work for children's voices include the opera The Ice Mountain. He has written over one hundred songs and recent cycles include Songs of the Elder Sisters, Fields of the fallen, Dawn on the Somme and Letters from Lony which has been performed in Britain and Germany. Many of his works are recorded on CD. His experience and expertise in choral directing are crystallised in the textbook, The Choral Singer's Companion. Ronald Corp was awarded an OBE in the New Year Honours List 2012.

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Song 3 – John Woolrich (b. 1954) and Thomas de Quincey (1785-1859) – I will walk abroad from Here is my Country Here is my Country was written in 1995 and dedicated to the composer Colin Matthews on his 50th birthday February 1996.

John Woolrich was BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week in March 2008. He has been commissioned by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the Northern Sinfonia and the London Sinfonietta and has at various times been Artistic Director of the Aldeburgh Festival, Dartington International Summer School and been composer-in-residence/in-association with the Orchestra of St John’s and the Britten Sinfonia. His Ghost in the Machine was premiered in Japan by Andrew Davies and the BBC Symphony Orchestra and a CD of his viola and oboe concertos was Record of the Week on BBC Radio 3. Thomas de Quincey was both intellectually brilliant and a very solitary character. He left his native Manchester at the age of 17 and ran away to Wales to live as traveller and then lived incognito in poverty in London, having been estranged from his family. He was discovered by a relative and brought back home, and entered Oxford University, where his addiction to opium began. De Quincey had admired the poetry of Wordsworth since reading the in 1799, and in 1809 he moved into , recently vacated by the Wordsworths. In 1818 De Quincey was appointed editor of The Westmorland Gazette newspaper, but he resigned the following year following complaints from the staff about his unreliability. In 1821 his Confessions of an English Opium Eater were published in the London Magazine. These caused a sensation and were quickly published in book form. The Confessions remains De Quincey’s best-known work. De Quincey spent the last 3 decades of his life in Scotland, writing for magazines including Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine and Tait’s Magazine. He is buried in Edinburgh.

Song 4 – Michael Short (b. 1937) and William Wordsworth – November 1, 1815 from Of Time and Season Michael Short was born in Bermuda and educated in at Gillingham Grammar School and Bristol University. He then studied music at Morley College and London University, and won a Mendelssohn Scholarship which enabled him to study composition in Italy with Goffredo Petrassi and in London with Sir Lennox Berkeley. His works include choral, orchestral, vocal and instrumental music, and he has also made a special study of the life and work of Gustav Holst. He is a Fellow in Composition of Trinity College, London. Of Time and Season, is a set of 4 settings of Wordsworth, and was written in 2008.

Song 5 – Louise Héritte-Viardot (1841-1918) and William Wordsworth – To Daffodils Louise Héritte-Viardot was born in Paris, the eldest child of Pauline Viardot, and niece of Maria Malibran, one of the greatest opera singers of the 19th century. Héritte-Viardot was a singer and pianist as well as a composer, but many of her works have been lost. She married Ernest Héritte, the French Consul in Berne, Switzerland in 1863 at the age of 22. Ill health ended her career as a performer, but Clara Schumann helped her to find a teaching position at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, where former students include such diverse names as Roger Quilter, Paul Hindemith, Percy Grainger and Richard Tauber.

Song 6 – Dominick Argento and William Wordsworth – The Lake at Evening from To be Sung upon the Water The Lake at Evening is the 2nd song of Argento’s cycle To be Sung upon the Water.

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Song 7 – Muriel Herbert (1897-1984) and Robert Southey (1774-1843) – How Beautiful is the Night Written December 1918. The text comes from Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer

Muriel Herbert was born in Sheffield and grew up in Liverpool. Her mother ran a church choir and encouraged her interest in music. She wrote he first song at the age of 5. Her childhood was unhappy; her father died when she was 11 and after that the family was mired in poverty. Her mother couldn’t cope, took to drink and attempted suicide. Encouraged by a family friend, Hugh Farrie, a journalist on the Liverpool Post, Herbert continued with her music and won a Liverpool Scholarship to study with Stanford at the Royal College of Music and afterwards taught at Wycombe Abbey School for Girls. She met and fell in love with Roger Quilter, not realising he was gay, her song Renouncement was written as a result of the inevitable failure of that match, but Quilter admired Herbert’s music and recommended them to his publisher Augener. In 1925 Muriel Herbert married Emile Delavenay, a French academic; their honeymoon was in Paris, during which Delavenay’s friend, the poet Tom McGreevey introduced Herbert to James Joyce. Joyce and Herbert became friends, she set several of his poems and he presented her with signed copies of several of his books of poetry. Mcgreevey also write to W B Yeats telling him that he must relax his general difficulties with regards to composers setting his poetry and allow Herbert to publish her setting of his The Lake Isle of Innisfree which he did. During the Second World War her husband left her, and after that she concentrated on teaching and wrote very little music. Robert Southey, one of the Lakeland Poets, was 4 years younger than Wordsworth. He was born in Bristol and studied at Westminster School (from which he was expelled for writing an article saying that flogging was a punishment invented by the devil) and Oxford (where he said he learned nothing except how to swim). In 1794 he collaborated with Coleridge (who 4 years later was to collaborate with Wordsworth in his first work, the Lyrical Ballads) on a play . The links between the 2 poets were further strengthened when Southey married Coleridge’s sister-in-law. They lived at Greta Hall in Keswick, later joined by Coleridge’s 3 children after he abandoned them. In 1808 Southey wrote Letters from England under the pseudonym of Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, a fictional Spanish character, who was very critical of the inequalities and injustices of English society. In 1796 he wrote his infamous anti-war poem After Blenheim. Despite his radical views, Southey was appointed Poet Laureate in 1813. A friendship with the engineer Thomas Telford led to a tour of his projects in Scotland, which was described in Southey’s Journal of a Tour in Scotland 1819. In 1838, following the death of his first wife, Southey married the poet Caroline Anne Bowles. His volume of short stories The Doctor (1837) contains The Story of the Three Bears, the earliest recorded written instance of the Goldilocks story. Southey is also credited with the first recorded use of the word ‘autobiography’ and, in his 1819 History of Brazil, the first recorded us of the word ‘zombie’.

Song 8 - Dominick Argento and William Wordsworth – The Lake at Night from To be Sung upon the Water The Lake at Night is the 7th of the 8 songs that make up Argento’s cycle of Wordsworth settings To be Sung upon the Water. In the palindromic structure of the cycle it forms the companion piece to the second song, The Lake at Evening, also heard in tonight’s concert.

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Song 9 – Michael Short and William Wordsworth – September 1815 from Of Time and Season Wordsworth’s poem September 1815 was written for his friend the painter Benjamin Robert Haydon. On 12th June 1815 Haydon had taken a plaster cast of Wordsworth’s face in order to make a life mask, possibly with the intention of later painting a portrait of the poet. Wordsworth promised to write a poem for him, and in December that year, sent him September 1815 with an apology for sending it so late: “I sit down to perform my promise of sending you the first little Poem I might compose on my arrival at home. I am grieved to think what a time has elapsed since I last paid my devoirs to the Muses, and not less so to know that now in the depth of Winter when I hoped to resume my Labours, I continue to be called from them by my unavoidable engagements.”

Song 10 – Christopher Brown (b. 1943) and William Wordsworth - And in the Frosty Season from Wordsworth Songs Christopher Brown’s Wordsworth Songs was commissioned for the Schubert Plus series of recitals in the Purcell Room, London and first performed on 17th April 1969 by Vivien Townley and Christine Reynolds. The words come from The Prelude.

Christopher Brown’s work is mainly in the field of choral music. He was a chorister at , and from there went on to King’s College Cambridge and the Royal Academy of Music where he studied with Lennox Berkeley. A string of awards followed; the inaugural Guinness Prize for Composition (for his first string quartet), the Prince Pierre of Monaco Prize (Soliloquy), and the Washington International Competition (second string quartet). He has written an organ concerto for the St Alban’s International Festival, and 2 children’s operas: The Ram King. The Two Lockets (1988) and Die Schwindlerin (1990). He is a professor of composition at the Royal Academy of Music.

Song 11 - Dominick Argento and William Wordsworth – Music on the Water from To be Sung upon the Water Music on the Water is the third song from this cycle.

Song 12 – Roxanna Panufnik (b. 1968) and William Wordsworth – That Mighty Heart The poem is titled Composed upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802 and is found in Wordsworth’s collection Poems in two Volumes (1807). It was written on 31st July 1802 as William and Dorothy were leaving London to go to Calais to visit William’s former girlfriend Annette Vallon and Caroline, his daughter by her who he had never seen.

The Polish-British composer Roxanna Panufnik is the daughter of the conductor Sir Andrzej Panufnik. She was born in London and went to Bedales School and the Royal Academy of Music. Some of her best-known works are the Westminster Mass, composed for Cardinal Hume’s 75th birthday in 1998 and her opera Silver Birch, commissioned by Garsington in 2017. Her violin concerto Abraham incorporates Islamic, Jewish and Christian chants in an effort to bridge the divides between these religions. Four World Seasons was commissioned by Tasmin Little as part of Radio 3’s Music Nation series celebrating the 2012 Olympics. The oratorio Dance of Life was commissioned by the Tallinn Philharmonic Orchestra and combines texts in Latin and Estonian. Roxanna Panufnik was the inaugural Associate Composer with the London Mozart Players from 2012 to 2015.

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Song 13 – William Walton (1902-1983) and William Wordsworth – Glide Gently from A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table was first performed at Goldsmiths’ Hall as part of the City of London Festival by Elisabeth Schwartzkopf and Gerald Moore on 18th July 1962. The poems were suggested by Christopher Hassall, most famous as Ivor Novello’s lyricist, and also the librettist for Walton’s opera Troilus and Cressida (1954). The poem of Glide Gently was written at Richmond in 1789 and forms the first part of a 3-verse poem titled Remembrance of Collins.

William Walton was born in Oldham, Lancashire. On leaving Oxford (where he was said to be the youngest undergraduate since the time of Henry VIII) he was taken under the wing of the Sitwell family. Through them he met Stravinsky and Gershwin and collaborated with Edith Sitwell to create Façade (1923), which became one of his most popular works. Other works written at this time include the overture Portsmouth Point, dedicated to Siegfried Sassoon who Walton had met at Oxford. The viola concerto (1929) was written at the suggestion of Sir Thomas Beecham and should have been premiered by Lionel Tertis, but he rejected the score as soon as he saw it, and instead Paul Hindemith gave the first performance. The oratorio Belshazzar’s Feast was first performed at the Leeds Festival in 1931. His first symphony was completed in 1935 and the march Crown Imperial was written for the coronation of George VI in 1937. During the Second World War Walton wrote propaganda film music including that for Laurence Olivier’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V. In 1948 Walton married the Argentinian Susana Gil Passo; they stayed part of each year on the Italian island of Ischia and lived there permanently from 1956. Walton was commissioned to write the march Orb and Sceptre for the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 and his opera Troilus and Cressida was premiered at Covent Garden in 1954. His one-act opera The Bear was premiered at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1966. Walton died in 1983, age 80, and his ashes are buried on Ischia.

Song 14 - Christopher Brown and William Wordsworth – Oh there is blessing in the gentle breeze from Wordsworth Songs The words of this song come from The Prelude

Song 15 – Ronald Corp and William Wordsworth – The Tables Turned and Song 16 - Ronald Corp and William Wordsworth – To a Skylark Ronald Corp writes: The tables turned and To a skylark come from a cycle of Wordsworth settings for voice and clarinet that was commissioned in 2006 by David Morris (a member of the London Chorus) who also commissioned Flower of Cities. David gave the first performance of both cycles in London and joined with a clarinet colleague for the two songs we hear tonight. All three songs have been re-worked for this recital. The songs reflect three different aspects of Wordsworth’s verse, philosophical, ecstatic and humorous.

Song 17- Frank Bridge (1879-1941) and Dorothy Wordsworth (1771-1855) – Berceuse Berceuse was written in 1901, originally for soprano and orchestra, and first performed at the Royal College of Music in 1902 with Bridge conducting and Delia Mason as soloist. The piano part is adapted from the original by Paul Hindmarsh

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William’s younger sister Dorothy was born on Christmas day 1771. When their father died in 1783 his children were farmed out to different relatives; Dorothy was sent to her aunt in Yorkshire. She was reunited with her brother in Dorset in 1795, and was inseparable from him after that, both before his marriage to Mary Hutchinson and afterwards, living with the family at Dove Cottage then at in the Lake District. Dorothy kept journals, both while living at Alfoxden (1798) and Grasmere (1800-1803) and also wrote an account of the tour of Scotland that she made with William in 1803. When these were published posthumously, it was seen that many of William’s most famous and most successful poems (including I wandered lonely as a cloud) were in fact largely cribbed from his sister’s words, a state of affairs that Dorothy it seems was not only fully aware of, but also fully acquiesced to. Her words (equally unattributed) were also shamelessly used by William in his very popular guidebook to the Lake District. In 1829 Dorothy became seriously ill and was an invalid for the rest of her life. She died age 83.

Frank Bridge was born in Brighton. He played the violin from an early age and gained valuable musical experience playing in the music-hall orchestras that his father conducted. He studied violin, piano and composition at the Royal College of Music, and after leaving the RCM worked as a freelance violinist and violist, playing in orchestras and string quartets, including the English Quartet. He was also a conductor, gaining a reputation as a very reliable last-minute ‘replacement’ conductor; in this way he worked at Covent Garden (to replace Beecham who was indisposed) and at the Proms (to replace Sir Henry Wood). It was a source of great frustration that he never obtained a permanent job with any institution or orchestra – this was put down to his often abrasive and unsympathetic way that he treated his musicians. He married his fellow RCM student Ethel Sinclair in 1908 and they set up home in Chiswick, moving to Kensington in 1914. Following the war years, Bridge’s music became less lyrical and more dissonant, this was a result of his reactions to the horrors of the Great War (he was a pacifist) and also to the increasing frustrations of his childless marriage. In 1920 he began to teach composition to the young Benjamin Britten; he was the only teacher that Britten respected and liked, and Bridge became his mentor as well as his teacher. In 1922 Bridge met the American millionaire and patron of the Arts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who invited him to perform in America and promoted his music there. In 1923 the Bridges moved to Friston, near Eastbourne in Sussex, where they and Marjorie Fass, an amateur artist and musician, bought some land and built cottages. It appears that Marjorie Fass was in love with Bridge, and the three of them may have had a ménage-a-trois arrangement. Britten was a frequent visitor. Bridge died in Friston eighteen years later, bringing his life round full circle to Sussex.

Song 18 – Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) and Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) - Cradle Song Vaughan Williams is seen as something of a father figure in early twentieth-century English music. He was strongly influenced by Tudor music (as evidenced by his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis of 1910, and by the English folk-song tradition. He spent many months in the first decade of the twentieth century travelling round the countryside writing down and transcribing folk songs that would otherwise have been lost, and he became President of the English Folk Dance and Song Society in 1932. Despite being an agnostic in his religious views, he made a huge contribution to the canon of English church music and was the editor of The English Hymnal, writing several well-known hymn tunes himself, most notably Down Ampney (Come down O love divine) and Sine Nomine (For all the saints). Vaughan Williams was born in Gloucestershire, to a well-to-do family; his father was a vicar, and his great-uncle was Charles Darwin. His father died when Ralph was 3 and his mother took him to live in her family home, Leith Hill Place in Surrey, where he spent a happy childhood. His studies were at Charterhouse, the Royal College of Music (as a student of Parry) and Cambridge University. After Cambridge he returned to the RCM, studying with Stanford, where he became friends with his fellow student Gustav Holst. After completing his studies, he

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settled in London, composing (his first published work was the song Linden Lea), doing odd jobs as church organist in Lambeth, writing articles for various journals and the Grove Dictionary of Music, and founding the Leith Hill Music Festival in 1905. He studied briefly with Ravel in Paris in 1907-8. High profile premieres at the Three Choirs Festival (Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis) and Leeds Festival (A Sea Symphony) cemented his reputation as a leading composer of his day. When war broke out in 1914 Vaughan Williams volunteered for military service, driving ambulances in France. Back in civilian life after the war he became Professor of composition at the Royal College of Music where his students included Elizabeth Maconchy. His operas Hugh the Drover (1924) and Sir John in Love (1928) were both successful. Vaughan Williams met the poet Ursula Wood in 1938; they became lovers though Vaughan Williams never ceased to care for Adeline his wife, who was by now very ill. Ursula helped him look after her and became his second wife following Adeline’s death aged 80 in 1951. During World War Two Vaughan Williams headed the Home Office Committee for the Release of Interned Alien Musicians, and worked tirelessly to keep the musical life of this country alive, organising the National Gallery concerts in London and serving on the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, the forerunner of the Arts Council. In 1954 Vaughan Williams endowed the RVW Trust to help young aspiring composers and became a leading figure the Society for the Promotion of New Music. He died in 1958 aged 85 and his ashes are buried in Westminster Abbey.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born in Devon, the son of the vicar of Ottery St Mary in Devon. He went to Christ’s Hospital School, where he befriended Charles Lamb, then Cambridge, where he befriended Robert Southey, both future fellow . He and Southey married two sisters in 1795, in Coleridge’s case this proved to be a very unhappy marriage. His first volume of poetry was published in 1796; this also contains work by Lamb and Southey. From 1797-98 Coleridge lived at Nether Stowey in , a close neighbour to the Wordsworths. At this time he wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, published as part of the Lyrical Ballads collaboration with Wordsworth and Kubla Khan, a poem about the Mogul Emperor and his legendary palace at Xanadu that Coleridge claimed to have written as a result of an opium dream. Coleridge also served as minister in Unitarian churches in Taunton and in Shropshire. In September 1798 Coleridge went with the Wordsworths on a trip to Germany but separated from them and enrolled at the University of Göttingen. Translations from German to English were a useful sideline for him after that. Back in England, he settled near Keswick to be near the Wordsworths. His dependence on opium grew to very problematic proportions. In the early 1800s Coleridge spent time in Sicily and Malta as a civil servant. He finally separated from his wife in 1808, and his drug problems caused a major rift with Wordsworth. A venture into the newspaper world with the journal The Friend came to nothing. Between 1810 and 1820 Coleridge gave lectures on Shakespeare and other subjects in London and Bristol. He lived in Highgate, London from 1816 and continued to write, despite his opium use, until his death in 1834.

Song 19 – Eric Thiman (1900-1975) and William Wordsworth – I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

The composer, organist and conductor Eric Thiman was born in Ashford in Kent. He was a professor of harmony at the Royal Academy of Music and Dean of the faculty of music at the University of London. He conducted the Purley Choral Society and Elysian Concert Society and was organist and choir master at City Temple in London. He was also an examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, the Royal College of Organists and the Australian Musical Examinations Board. He wrote many part songs, much choral music, and educational music for piano, and also some lighter music under the name Eric Harding (Harding was his middle name).

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William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

William Wordsworth was born in Cockermouth in Cumberland; his father was the legal representative of James Lowther, 1st Earl of Lonsdale. Wordsworth attended local schools in Cockermouth and Penrith. His mother died when he was seven, and his father split the family, sending William to a grammar school in neighbouring Lancashire and his sister Dorothy to live with relatives in Yorkshire. William’s first printed poem was published in The European Magazine when he was 17, the year he entered Cambridge.

At this time, he began going on walking tours, in different parts of Britain and also, when he was 20, in Europe, when he toured the Alps. This was the start of a lifelong enthusiasm for the countryside and for walking. After Cambridge, in 1791, Wordsworth visited France. The French Revolution was in full flight and Wordsworth was caught up in revolutionary zeal. He also fell in love with a French woman, Anette Vallon, who the following year gave birth to their daughter Caroline. However, the rise of the Reign of Terror changed Wordsworth’s views on the revolution, and the unrest forced him to return to Britain. He supported Annette and Caroline as best he could after that, but it was ten years before he saw Annette again and Caroline for the first time.

In 1793 Wordsworth published two collections of poetry: An Evening Walk and Descriptive Sketches. In 1795 Wordsworth met Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Somerset. The two poets formed a friendship that was to last for many decades. William, now reunited with his sister Dorothy lived at Racedown House in Dorset, then Alfoxton House in Somerset, close by Coleridge’s home at Nether Stowey. In 1798 Lyrical Ballads was published, a seminal work that set the tone of English poetry for decades to come. This was written jointly by Wordsworth and Coleridge, though neither poets’ name was mentioned in the first edition. The collection contains Wordsworth’s Tintern Abbey and Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In 1798 Wordsworth, Coleridge and Dorothy travelled to Germany; William and Dorothy set up home at Goslar, in Saxony, and Coleridge in nearby Göttingen. The trip was not entirely happy, though Wordsworth write his 5 Lucy Poems about unrequited love for a fictional girl called Lucy, and also began on his massive autobiographical poem that he intended to call The Recluse.

They returned to England the following year; Wordsworth and Dorothy settled at Dove Cottage at Grasmere in the Lake District, Coleridge and Robert Southey lived nearby, and the 3 of them became known as the “Lake Poets”, taking their inspiration from the mountains and lakes of the surrounding landscapes. In 1802 the signing of the Peace of Amiens meant that travel between Britain and France was again possible, and William and Dorothy went to visit Annette and their daughter Caroline (who he had never seen) in Calais. During this visit William told Annette that he was engaged to be married to his childhood friend Mary Hutchinson – this had been made possible by the Earl of Lonsdale’s heir finally settling the debts owed by his father to Wordsworth’s father for not having paid him for his legal representation.

William and Mary married that October, and Dorothy continued to live with them at Dove Cottage. William and Mary had 5 children, two of whom died in childhood. Another tragedy was the death of Dorothy and William’s brother John, who drowned when his ship, the Earl of Abergavenny was wrecked off the Dorset coast in 1805, and in 1810 Coleridge’s opium addiction caused a rift between him and William. These tragedies contributed to the difficulties William was experiencing completing The Recluse, a massive autobiographical poem setting out the story of his life and his philosophy that he had been working on sporadically since the 1790s. This was intended to be in 3 parts but only the second part, called , was completed; this was published in 1814. The very personal nature of this work made it hard

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for him to either complete or publish it. The Prelude, now seen as his greatest achievement, was published a few months after his death in 1850. In 1807, William published two volumes of poetry, which included his Ode on the Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood.

In 1813 William was appointed Distributor of Stamps for Westmorland, this job gave him the financial stability to be able him and his family, including Dorothy, to move to a bigger house, Rydal Mount, where he lived for the rest of his life. The rift between William and Coleridge was reconciled by 1828 and they went on a tour of Germany together. William was becoming more and more well known as a poet; he received honorary doctorates from Durham and Oxford universities, and in 1843 was appointed Poet Laureate. These successes though were tempered by the illness of Dorothy that resulted in her becoming an invalid from 1829 and the deaths of Coleridge in 1834 and William’s daughter Dora in 1847. William felt unable to write any more poetry; The Recluse was finally abandoned, and he is, to date, the only Poet Laureate not to have written any official verse while in office. William Wordsworth died of pleurisy at Rydal Mount on 23rd April 1850 aged 80.

Nigel Foster

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