SUPER AUDIO CD MORNING HEROES BLISS Hymn to Apollo (original version) Samuel West orator BBC Symphony Chorus BBC Symphony Orchestra SIR ANDREW DaVIS Arthur Bliss,1923 Arthur Photograph by Herbert Lambert (1881 – 1936) / Mary Evans Picture Library Sir Arthur Bliss (1891 – 1975) Morning Heroes, F 32 (1930)* 55:33 A Symphony for Orator, Chorus, and Orchestra To the memory of my brother FRANCIS KENNARD BLISS and all other comrades killed in battle 1 I Hector’s Farewell to Andromache. Maestoso – L’istesso tempo – L’istesso tempo – 13:00 2 II The City Arming. Allegro alla marcia (with great spirit and elation) – Poco meno – Più mosso – Meno mosso (Moderato) – Alla marcia – Più mosso – Pochissimo meno – Andante moderato 11:14 3 III Vigil. Andante sostenuto – L’istesso tempo (Tranquillo) – Agitato – Tempo I – 7:53 4 The Bivouac’s Flame. Adagio maestoso – Più mosso – A tempo maestoso – Tempo I – Largamente 4:26 5 IV Achilles Goes Forth to Battle. Allegro con fuoco – Tranquillo – 6:45 6 The Heroes. Allegro con fuoco – Molto animato 1:38 V Now, Trumpeter, for thy Close 7 Spring Offensive. Andante maestoso – Più animato – Andante molto tranquillo – 5:32 8 Dawn on the Somme. Grave (quasi chorale) – Andante tranquillo – Pochissimo più mosso – Più mosso – Maestoso – Molto tranquillo 5:02 3 premiere recording 9 Hymn to Apollo, F 116 (1926) 9:26 for Orchestra Original version Moderato maestoso – Più mosso (assai allegro) – A tempo I (moderato) – Più mosso – Tranquillo, ma non meno mosso – A tempo I meno mosso TT 65:12 Samuel West orator* BBC Symphony Chorus* Stephen Jackson chorus master BBC Symphony Orchestra Laura Samuel leader Sir Andrew Davis 4 Sir Andrew Davis Andrew Sir © Dario Acosta Photography Bliss: Morning Heroes / Hymn to Apollo Morning Heroes by machine gun fire near barrier... experience In a lecture, ‘Aspects of Contemporary Music’, our first bombardment, shelling for 2 hrs. – delivered to the Royal Institution in 1934, terrible experience. Arthur Bliss summed up his experience of While fighting for his country with valour the daily prospect of dying, whilst a soldier and distinction, Bliss was wounded in the in World War I: Battle of the Somme, gassed at Cambrai, One cannot for long as a young man face the and mentioned in despatches. His brother, immediacy of death without becoming filled Kennard, however, was among the fallen, with excitement for the values of life. The killed at Thiepval on 28 September 1916; he smallest evidences of a positive vitality as was twenty-four. In his autobiography, As I opposed to a destructive force became of Remember (London, 1970), Bliss wrote: immense significance. A butterfly in a trench, As the years passed I came to realise more the swoop and note of a bird, a line of poetry, and more what a poignant loss to the family the shape of Orion became as it were more Kennard’s death had been. Poet, painter, vividly perceived and actually felt than ever musician, he was the most gifted of us all. before imagined possible. They were clung The war letters of Kennard indicate his to desperately, as it were, because of the broad artistic sensibilities and are peppered intimate contact with the saving power of with references to music, literature, and, beauty. One developed a sense of awareness particularly, the visual arts. He is revealed, more acute than at any other time in one’s too, as a compassionate leader, thinking of his life – one saw objects for the first time, simply men before himself; for instance, he arranged because, I imagine, it might also conceivably for gifts to be sent to wounded men from his have been for the last. brigade and, in an attempt to brighten their His comments are reflected, too, in his diary, for lives, provided a gramophone for them. Writing example the entry for 10 to 17 December 1915: to his other brother, Howard, in January 1916, Rain and cold weather everyday – so much so he comments that whenever he puts on the that 1 / 2 company holds firing line only, while songs Watch your step and They’ll never the others get into shelters... Anthony killed believe me, 6 tears roll down the Tommies’ cheeks and now available as MP3). The following year regardless of the swarm of ticks and lice and Bliss composed Hymn to Apollo, a work that bugs they hide their faces in the straw. on the face of it is not linked to Kennard but, His sympathy with the appalling lot of the as discussed later in these notes, at a deeper ordinary soldier made Kennard frequently level undoubtedly is. contemptuous of the military hierarchy, as his From the Armistice onwards Bliss was observation, once more in a letter to Howard, haunted by traumatic memories of the of April 1916, reveals: trenches, as he recalled in As I Remember: The one thing that makes [the war] intolerable Although the war had been over for more than are [sic] one’s senior officers from the Major ten years, I was still troubled by frequent up to the Divisional General, whose orders, if nightmares; they all took the same form. I obeyed, would almost lose us the war. was still in the trenches with a few men; we After his death, the condolence letters to his knew the armistice had been signed, but we family stress his efficiency, generosity, and had been forgotten; so had a section of the comradeship. Germans opposite. It was as though we were It seems likely that Bliss gave his grief both doomed to fight on till extinction. I used its first musical expression before the end to wake with horror. of 1916, in the short Pastoral; tellingly, it was Perhaps Bliss realised that the adequate written for Kennard’s instrument, the clarinet, artistic expression of the experiences that accompanied by piano. Thereafter, he worked caused such dreams, and of his reaction to intermittently on a piece, described as ‘Battle his brother’s death, demanded both words Variations’, springing from his war experiences, and music. An opportunity arose when he but which would also serve as a tribute to was commissioned to write a choral work for Kennard. However, he abandoned it; instead his the 1930 Norfolk and Norwich Festival; the first overt memorial to his brother was the slow outcome, Morning Heroes, a symphony for movement of his Suite for Piano of 1925. Titled orator, chorus, and orchestra, was indeed his ‘Elegy’, and subtitled ‘F.K.B. Thiepval, 1916’, it is requiem, dedicated the most ambitious movement of the work, in To the memory of my brother FRANCIS which solace is sought through a combination of KENNARD BLISS and all other comrades poignant melodies, chorale-like sections in free killed in battle. tempo, and passages evoking the clangour of It proved a cathartic work, too, for the bells (recorded by Philip Fowke on CHAN 8979, composer; the ghosts of the horrors which 7 he had witnessed were exorcised, his to achieve a greater dramatic intensity than nightmares ceased. The first performance seemed possible through any other medium. took place in Norwich on 22 October 1930, with The words, for instance, I have chosen for him Basil Maine, orator, the Festival Chorus, and the are not suitable for singing but are eminently Queen’s Hall Orchestra, conducted by Bliss. adapted to the dramatic declamation that Morning Heroes comprises settings of an I require of the orator, who must use every anthology of poems in which experiences variety of colour and pitch. germane to war – ‘common’ (wrote Bliss) ‘to all The first movement’s text, from The Iliad, is ages and all times’ – are explored. Through a declaimed by the orator to music characterised meticulously chosen succession of texts Bliss by a tender, lilting theme. From childhood Bliss created a formal design of architectural unity had been familiar with the story of the Trojan and achieved as well an emotional momentum. War, and ‘Hector’s Farewell to Andromache’ The work’s five sections form a symmetrical represented for him the parting of every sequence, the first and fifth movements acting ‘husband and wife separated by war’. In as a prologue and epilogue, with fast second ‘The City Arming’, taken from Walt Whitman’s and fourth movements framing a slow third. ‘Drum-Taps’, the perspective moves from the Two further notable aspects of the texts are personal to the collective view; Bliss chose the shifting emphasis from the personal to the this text as the closest he could find to convey collective experience of war, and their relevance the atmosphere of summer 1914, in which to Bliss himself. ‘The First Hundred Thousand’ volunteered. But Complementing the textual structure, the even within its context of mass activity, the music achieves a correspondingly logical poem focuses briefly on the personal as the sequence of moods, the dramatic impetus of mother bids farewell to her son, a parallel to the which is heightened by cross-references among situation described in the previous movement movements. The orchestra, too, contributes at the words ‘The tearful parting’. significantly to the symphony’s dynamic In the central movement, the emphasis progress by supplying extended introductions shifts to the individual and thoughts of loved to the first, third, and fourth movements, then ones far distant. Firstly sopranos and altos reworking their music in the course of the evoke the feminine experience in Li Tai Po’s settings. The decision to use an orator to deliver ‘Vigil’, as the wife of a warrior waits at home, two of the texts was a calculated move on the embroidering a white rose on a cushion of silk.