CHAN 10436X Booklet.Indd

William Classics Waltonmusic from the Olivier fi lms Hamlet As You Like It Sir John Gielgud speaker Catherine Bott soprano Academy of St Martin in the Fields CHAN 10436 X Sir Neville Marriner 45 CCHANHAN 110436X0436X BBooklet.inddooklet.indd 444-454-45 226/6/076/6/07 114:08:194:08:19 Sir William Walton (1902 –1983) Hamlet: A Shakespeare Scenario* 39:12 Arranged by Christopher Palmer 1 I Prelude 3:15 2 II i. Fanfare – 0:56 3 ii. Soliloquy 2:35 © Lebrecht Music & Arts Photo Library 4 III The Ghost 3:16 5 IV Hamlet and Ophelia 7:55 6 V The Question – 2:20 7 ‘To be or not to be’ 3:08 VI The Mousetrap 8 i. The Players – 0:46 9 ii. Entry of the Court – 0:49 10 iii. The Play 3:56 11 VII Ophelia’s Death 2:42 12 VIII i. Retribution – 1:58 13 ii. Threnody 2:13 14 IX Finale (Funeral March) 3:13 William Walton, c. 1934 3 CCHANHAN 110436X0436X BBooklet.inddooklet.indd 22-3-3 226/6/076/6/07 114:08:004:08:00 Walton: Hamlet/As You Like It Hamlet: A Shakespeare Scenario as Ophelia, Basil Sydney as Claudius and The success of Laurence Olivier’s Henry V in Stanley Holloway as the Gravedigger) turned 1944 led in 1948 to Hamlet. Again, Olivier out to be one of Olivier’s greatest fi lms and † 12:34 As You Like It both directed and played the leading role. brought Shakespeare to life for millions A Poem for Orchestra after Shakespeare Walton started on the music in the autumn of ordinary people. Walton acclaimed the Arranged by Christopher Palmer of 1947 and recordings took place with collaboration, saying that Olivier had given 15 I Prelude – 2:52 the Philharmonia Orchestra intermittently him every means in his power to do his job between November and the following properly. That the recording dates were 16 II Moonlight – 2:39 January. (Muir Mathieson was Musical spread over a month and more enabled 17 III ‘Under the Greenwood Tree’ – 1:56 Director, but contemporary photos of some revisions to be made where necessary, and 18 IV The Fountain – 3:11 of the sessions show him with his arm in a the manuscript of the score bears witness to sling and John Hollingsworth conducting.) two substantial ones. The fi rst comes in ‘The 19 V Wedding Procession 1:55 This was one of the most wretched times in Question’ at the moment where the camera TT 51:58 Walton’s life, as Lady Alice Wimborne, with charges up to the top of the battlements. whom Walton had shared his life for some The wonderful effect of spinning, swirling Sir John Gielgud speaker* twelve years and who had inspired some of and spiralling – one of the strongest Catherine Bott soprano† his greatest music (the Finale of the First musical statements in the fi lm – was a mere Symphony and the Violin Concerto), was suggestion originally; and Hamlet originally Academy of St Martin in the Fields terminally ill with cancer of the bronchus. stabbed Claudius to death to the sound of Kenneth Sillito leader She died in April 1948, and it is impossible solo double-bass strokes marked by Walton Sir Neville Marriner not to feel that in Hamlet – in the Ophelia ‘alla Salomé’ (an allusion to a similar effect music, the soliloquys, the funeral march, in Strauss’s opera). In both cases Walton’s most of all in the magnifi cent threnody second thoughts represent a dramatic which follows the multiple deaths in the amplifi cation and intensifi cation of his fi rst. duel scene – Shakespeare’s bleak vision is In preparing the complete Hamlet compounded by Walton’s own. score for an independent life outside the Hamlet (with a cast that included Felix fi lm soundtrack I discarded only short or Aylmer as Polonius, the young Jean Simmons fragmentary sections which made little 4 5 CCHANHAN 110436X0436X BBooklet.inddooklet.indd 44-5-5 226/6/076/6/07 114:08:034:08:03 musical sense on their own. Others, originally The form of plausive manners, that these Hans Keller (a pioneer of fi lm music criticism) instinctively employ it to depict states of separate but related, I joined together to men, greatly admired this scene, describing the indecision or disorientation, as in Hamlet’s form a continuous movement (e.g. ‘The Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect, slow fugal introduction and background to the fugal ‘introspection’ theme with which this Ghost’ and ‘Hamlet and Ophelia’). Interior Their virtues else, be they as pure as grace, speech as ‘a model of melodramatic texture. movement begins. The contrast with Ophelia’s cuts and alterations to the musical text I was Shall in the general censure take corruption Not only is the speech entry felt to be a logical oboe theme – sweet, sad and simple – is able to avoid almost completely – a tribute, From that particular fault. element in the unfolding of the texture’ – i.e. marked, and meaningful. Then comes the of course, to Walton’s professionalism as a The march has great warmth and intensity Walton scores for the speaking voice as if for scene in which Ophelia tells her father, composer. He seemed to have no diffi culty of emotion as well as grandeur and dignity. In a musical instrument – ‘but the foreground Polonius, about Hamlet’s irrational behaviour: in supplying the needs of the fi lm, and of all his Shakespeare fi lms the music of Walton section preceding this entry makes it possible My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, musical logic and integrity, at one and the is basically romantic in character; in Hamlet for the listener to take in the succeeding Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced; same time. its main function is to humanise, to mitigate background music in spite of the speech, since Pale as his shirt; I. Prelude. The castle of Elsinore in its the bareness and darkness. None of his other the musical entries offer him known quantities’. And with a look so piteous in purport elemental setting of choppy sea and clouds. fi lm scores, perhaps, conforms so well to III. The Ghost. A percussion effect As if he had been loosed out of hell Four soldiers are bearing Hamlet’s funeral Bernard Herrmann’s defi nition of fi lm music suggesting a heartbeat announces the To speak of horrors, – he comes before me. bier on its way up to the heights. They vanish: as ‘the communicating link between screen approach of the Ghost to an incredulous He took me by the wrist and held me hard; it is, of course, a fl ash-forward to the Finale. and audience, reaching out and enveloping Hamlet. Olivier was much infl uenced by German Then goes he to the length of all his arm; Walton enhances the framework musically in all in one single experience’. expressionistic techniques in shooting this And, with his other hand thus o’er his brow, playing here an impassioned version of the II. Fanfare and Soliloquy. The court scene: all is swirling fog and eerie darkness He falls to such perusal of my face Funeral March which returns in its complete assembles in a Room of State in the castle; and the Ghost looms in and out of focus. As he would draw it. Long stay’d he so; form, monumentally decked out with heavy musicians blow a fanfare from a balcony. Walton models his music not on Schoenberg At last, a little shaking of mine arm brass and drums, in the Finale. A legend Hamlet sits apart, black-robed and taciturn. and Berg (the accredited representatives of And thrice his head thus waving up and appears on the screen and is spoken by The contrast between the bright, brash blare musical expressionism) but on Wagner: the down, Olivier at the same time; it expresses what, of the brass and the dark dourness of the lowering chords for six-part trombones, and He raised a sigh so piteous and profound in his view, is the dominant theme of the double-basses – which emerge from the the fogbound chromatic fi gures which envelop As it did seem to shatter all his bulk tragedy, namely Hamlet’s inability to make up shadows, as if out of the B-fl at reverberations them, have many prototypes in Der Ring des And end his being: that done, he lets me go: his mind: of the fanfare – could not be more violent: it Nibelungen. The Ghost tells Hamlet of his And, with his head over his shoulder turn’d, So, oft it chances in particular men, sets Hamlet in his dogged introspection apart murder at the hands of his brother, who has He seem’d to fi nd his way without his eyes; That for some vicious mole of nature in them, from everyone else, and embodies musically now married his wife, Gertrude, Hamlet’s For out o’ doors he went without their help, By the o’ergrowth of some complexion, the very theme of the great soliloquy which mother; this music will recur in almost identical And, to the last, bended their light on me. Oft breaking down the pales and forts of follows: form in the ‘Mousetrap’ scene. As Ophelia describes the incident we reason, How weary, stale, fl at and unprofi table IV. Hamlet and Ophelia. Because chromatic see it enacted in dumb-show, and the Or by some habit that too much o’erleavens Seem to me all the uses of this world! melody is bereft of tonal stability, composers music is all-important in supplying the 6 7 CCHANHAN 110436X0436X BBooklet.inddooklet.indd 66-7-7 226/6/076/6/07 114:08:044:08:04 emotional charge.

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