THE SOLDIER from SEVERN to SOMME O When I Was One and Twenty, No
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THE SOLDIER FROM SEVERN TO SOMME o When I Was One and Twenty, No. 2 from A Shropshire Lad George Butterworth [1.23] p The Lads in Their Hundreds, No. 5 from A Shropshire Lad George Butterworth [2.28] Home a Is My Team Ploughing?, No. 6 from A Shropshire Lad George Butterworth [3.43] 1 Loveliest of Trees, No. 1 from A Shropshire Lad George Butterworth [2.35] s Lune d’Avril, No.7 from La Courte Paille, FP. 178 Francis Pouelnc [2.30] 2 Black Stitchel Ivor Gurney [2.19] Encore 3 On the Idle Hill of Summer, No. 6 from A Shropshire Lad, IAS 20 Arthur Somervell [2.28] d In Boyhood, No. 2 from We’ll To The Woods No More John Ireland [2.16] 4 Look Not Into My Eyes, No. 3 from A Shropshire Lad George Butterworth [2.06] 5 Wo die Schoenen Trompeten Blasen, from Des Knaben Wunderhorn Gustav Mahler [6.42] Total timings: [73.54] Journey 6 Les Berceaux, Op. 32 No. 1 Gabriel Fauré [2.24] CHRISTOPHER MALTMAN Baritone JOSEPH MIDDLETON PIANO 7 He is There!, No. 2 from Three Songs of War Charles Ives [3.46] 8 White in the Moon, No. 7 from A Shropshire Lad, IAS 20 Arthur Somervell [2.56] www.signumrecords.com 9 Severn Meadows Ivor Gurney [1.59] 0 , from Des Knaben Wunderhorn Gustav Mahler [7.06] Revelge INTRODUCTION at all, suggested a group of songs by Ivor Gurney including three settings of Gurney’s own poetry Battle The programme recorded here had its birth in written while a soldier in World War I, and also q The Field-Marshall, No. 4 from Songs and Dances of Death Modest Mussorgsky [5.35] my student days at the Royal Academy of proposed the title From Severn to Somme; a w In Flanders Ivor Gurney [2.50] Music and evolved over the following twenty- play on the poet’s own title for one of his e Think no More, Lad, No. 8 from A Shropshire Lad, IAS 20 Arthur Somervell [1.39] or-so years, coloured and contoured by both my anthologies. Gurney’s output struck a deep r Die beiden Grenadiere, Op. 49 No. 1 Robert Schumann [3.32] own changing sensibilities and rich input from chord with me and reverberated throughout my t Der Tambour, No. 5 from Mörike-Lieder Hugo Wolf [2.33] many musical relationships. recital programming for years to come until y Der Soldat, Op. 40 No. 3 Robert Schumann [2.51] another dear colleague, Malcolm Martineau, I was to take part in the Song Prize of the hatched the bright idea of expanding that group Epitaph Association of English Singers and Speakers. into a more eclectic collection of soldier u Channel Firing, No. 5 from Before and After Summer, Op. 16 Gerald Finzi [6.18] My singing teacher at that time, Mark Wildman, inspired songs for my New York recital debut i Into my Heart an air that kills, No. 9 from A Shropshire Lad, IAS 20 Arthur Somervell [1.55] who was instrumental in my ever being a singer in 2000. - 3 - To Gurney we added Mahler, Schumann, France, Russia, Germany, the Austro-Hungarian THE SOLDIER have a favourite among my poems. Thomas Mussorgsky and Malcolm’s own genius touch Empire and the USA. FROM SEVERN TO SOMME Hardy’s was no. XXVII in A Shropshire Lad, of ending with Poulenc’s Lune d’Avril. A twenty- and I think it may be the best, though it is not minute competition programme became enough I sought to use these stunning compositions George Butterworth was a casualty of the First the most perfect.’ to fill a whole half, and was more generally to form a coherent but temporally flexible World War: in September 1915 he went into renamed, The Soldier. Satisfying as the conceit narrative that specifically wraps its arms around the trenches and was killed, aged 31, in the Arthur Somervell was the first English composer of this ‘Jedersoldat’ proved to be, it wasn’t those wounded and lost in multitudes of ways Battle of the Somme on 5 August 1916. He to develop the song-cycle. A Shropshire Lad, until early 2013 that its true calling became during World War I, but also to commemorate was awarded the MC posthumously for his published in 1904, was first performed by clear. With the centenary of the outbreak of all those men, women and children whose defence of a trench, which became officially Harry Plunket Greene at the Aeolian Hall on the First World War only a year away Gurney’s lives have been lost or torn apart, combatant known as the Butterworth Trench. The theme 3 February 1905 – we hear four of the ten journey from his home by the tranquil river or not, by the grief and horror of wars past, of transience, beautifully depicted in Loveliest songs on this CD. On the idle hill of summer Severn to the horrors of the Somme burned in present and future. I can think of no more fitting of trees, the first of Butterworth’s six Housman juxtaposes the beauty of an English summer my mind, and seemed the perfect narrative words to end with than those of Housman settings from A Shropshire Lad, pervades the landscape with the imminent fate of young from which to grow a more meaningful himself: They braced their belts about them, they whole cycle. Look not into my eyes concerns men marching to war: ‘food for powder’, as incarnation of the two sister programmes that crossed in ships the sea, they sought and found the Ancient Greek myth of Narcissus, the Falstaff describes the ‘pitiful rascals’ about blazed the trail. Gurney, wounded and gassed six feet of ground, and there they died, for me. ‘Grecian lad’ punished for rejecting lovers by to fight at the Battle of Shrewsbury in in 1917, was joined by George Butterworth, being made to fall in love with his own image. Shakespeare’s Henry IV. The final line, ‘Woman tragically killed at the Somme in 1916, and © Christopher Maltman, 2019 Narcissus saw his image reflected in a pool, bore me, I will rise’, refers tellingly to the the poems of A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire fell in love with it, tried in vain to approach it, Book of Job, xiv.: ‘Man that is born of a woman Lad, whose themes of youth, love, death and grew desperate and finally killed himself; is of few days, and full of trouble’: the young lost innocence became a totem for the When I was one-and-twenty illustrates the folly man of the poem will enlist and die young. young soldiers of the Great War. Further of committing yourself emotionally as a young White in the moon the long road lies describes Housman settings by Arthur Somervell and man; The lads in their hundreds ponders the a man leaving his love for an unknown Gerald Finzi’s epic illumination of Thomas fate of young men who will die as cannon destination, presumably the battlefield;Think Hardy’s masterpiece, Channel Firing, would fodder in battle; Is my team ploughing? – a no more, lad deals with the need to be carefree become the bones of each section; Home, heartrending dialogue between a fallen soldier and irresponsible in life – a common reaction to Journey, Battle and Epitaph. I fleshed out this and his still living friend – was Hardy’s favourite impending war; Into my heart an air that kills skeleton with works representing many of the Housman poem, as the latter explains in a is a poignant and wistful poem in which major belligerent powers involved; Great Britain, letter to Houston Martin: ‘I could not say that I Housman describes his longing for the innocent - 4 - - 5 - land of childhood and the countryside west of stanzas mentions a different wind: South at sea, God’s railing against man’s brutality, motifs, sforzando chords and march-like rhythm Bromsgrove where he would roam happily as a wind for happiness, West wind for love, North which softens exquisitely in the sixth stanza that cry out to be played by horns and trumpets. young boy – the land of lost content. wind for wrath, East wind for pity. The pastoral at ‘for you are men’, and the skeletons rattling Mussorgsky intended to write an orchestral version mood of the first two stanzas turns dark in in their coffins. John Ireland’sIn boyhood is of the song but never carried out his resolve. Ivor Gurney fought at the Front in 1916, was the third by means of restless, più animato one of three pieces called We’ll to the Woods wounded on Good Friday 1917, and after a harmonies, and the music of the final no More, dedicated to his friend Arthur George Gabriel Fauré’s Les berceaux is one of his spell at Rouen Hospital was gassed at lines is perhaps the most plaintive in all Miller. Ireland wrote ‘In memory of the darkest most sombre songs, and has a vocal range Passchendaele. He was sent to a number of Gurney. Frederick William Harvey, the poet of days’ on the manuscript, and Housman in this of a 13th (from low A-flat to high F) that is war hospitals where, deprived of the friendship Gurney’s In Flanders, fought during the First poem from Last Poems mourns the friends greater than that of any other Fauré mélodie. of his fellow soldiers, he suffered increasing World War in the trenches, where he wrote he lost during the First World War.