Emerald Ensemble September 2017 the Two Elizabeths Program Notes

Home , Nicholas Maw, William Mundy (composer)

Emerald Ensemble September 2017

The Two Elizabeths

Program Notes with Texts and Translations

Dance, clarion air (1952) Michael Tippett (1905–1998)

O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit (after 1566) Thomas Tallis (c.1505–1585) Weep, O mine eyes (1599) John Bennet (c.1575–after 1614)

Mitte manum tuam (2006) James MacMillan (b.1959)

Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone (1599) John Farmer (c.1570–c.1605) O Lord, the maker of all thing William Mundy (c.1528–1591) O Care, thou wilt despatch me (1600) Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623)

The Song Sung True (2013) Judith Weir (b.1954) 1. Sing — 2. Song — 3. Orpheus — 4. Folk Music

intermission

Lullabye for Lucy (1981) Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016)

Come, blessed bird (1601) Edward Johnson (fl.1572–1601) O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth (c.1570) William Byrd (c.1540–1623) Arise, awake (1601) Thomas Morley (1557/8–1602)

Choral Dances, from Gloriana (1953) Benjamin Britten (1913–1976) 1. Time — 2. Concord — 3. Time and Concord — 4. Country Girls — 5. Rustics and Fishermen — 6. Final Dance of Homage

The Hills (1953) John Ireland (1879–1962) Andrew Turner, from Five Epigrams (1960) Nicholas Maw (1935–2009)

White-flowering days (1953) Gerald Finzi (1901–1956)

Dance, clarion air (1952) Michael Tippett (1905–1998)

So often we hear stories of wunderkind composers who wrote masterpieces in their teens and twenties—folks like Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Prokofiev, Walton, Britten—that we forget about the slew of brilliant composers who were relatively late bloomers, among them Haydn, Bruckner, Mahler, Elgar, Janáček, Vaughan Williams, Pärt, and the present example, Michael Tippett. Some in that latter category needed extra training or world experience, some underwent major stylistic awakenings, and some required a special external motivation to spark their genius. Tippett belongs in all of those camps. May he be an exemplar for all those still struggling to achieve their dreams, whatever their age.

He certainly had no lack of training, studying piano in his youth and deciding early to become a composer. He attended the Royal College of Music in London. In his twenties he led amateur music- making in the Surrey town where he lived, and he taught at London’s Morley College, whose student body consisted (and still does) of working-class adults. And indeed, for a professionally trained musician there is nothing better for world experience than to teach music in a practical setting to volunteers. He grew dissatisfied with his own compositions, and thus returned to the RCM for supplemental training. His external motivation sparked in the late 1930s and ‘40s, as the preface to war and then the Second World War itself sparked his pacifism and deep sense of social justice; he even served three months in prison as a conscientious objector. His wartime oratorio A Child of Our Time (1941) was the first work that coalesced the experience, the training, and the inspiration into a major masterpiece. Tippett had arrived. Soon more works of genius followed, notably the First Symphony (1945), the Third String Quartet (1946), the Suite in D (1948) written for the birth of Prince Charles, and the song-cycle The Heart’s Assurance (1951) for Peter Pears.

Upon the imminent coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, ten composers were asked to write a modern madrigal for a choral volume entitled A Garland for the Queen. Tippett had worked extensively with Renaissance English madrigals in Surrey, and had composed four fine madrigalian works in the mid- ’40s, so he was a logical if not intuitive choice. The composers were equally divided between the post- Romantic folks whose styles became formalized before the War (Vaughan Williams, Ireland, Bax, Howells, Finzi), and edgier composers who were, as the critics believed, moving British music forward (Bliss, Berkeley, Rawsthorne, Rubbra, and Tippett). Two contributions have really become standard repertoire—those of Finzi and Tippett (Finzi’s and Ireland’s works are also heard in this concert, and discussed below). All ten were first performed by the Cambridge University Madrigal Society at London’s Royal Festival Hall on June 1, 1953, the night before the coronation.

Tippett set Dance, clarion air for five voices, a configuration much beloved of madrigalists of yore. He begins with striking fanfares and occasional introspective echoes from a semi-chorus of soloists. Subtle text-painting comes here and there, such as the gentle rocking of “stones on the shore, swept … by the ocean”, the grand chord for the “crown”, and the gradual expanding of “morning light” into a glorious “morning throne”. The airy, bubbly sound-world of Dance, clarion air is comparable to that of his recently completed opera The Midsummer Marriage (1952). When that work was premiered three years

later, it marked the moment when Tippett solidified his reputation as second only to Britten among English composers. Not bad for a late bloomer.

Dance, clarion air, Shine, stones on the shore, Swept in music by the ocean, Shine, till all this island [is] a crown, This island and [these] realms and territories, Rememb’ring all than human is, Sound with love and honour for a Queen. O morning light, enfold a morning throne.

— Christopher Fry (1907–2005)

O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit (after 1566) Thomas Tallis (c.1505–1585)

Few church musicians have endured such a tumultuous series of strictures as did Thomas Tallis, the supreme English composer of the mid-sixteenth century. When Tallis began his career at the Benedictine priory in Dover in 1530/1, King Henry VIII was in the process of severing the Catholic Church in England from its connections to the pope in Rome. Even after the formal dissolution in 1534, English worship followed standard Catholic norms: texts were frequently in Latin, and compositional styles continued essentially unchanged. After brief periods at St. Mary-at-Hill in London, Waltham Abbey in Essex, and Canterbury Cathedral, Tallis gained a post at the Chapel Royal in 1544. This was the king’s personal chapel, the most prestigious group of musicians in England. Tallis thus found himself at the musical center of decades of religious controversy.

After Henry’s nine-year-old son, Edward VI, became king in 1547, Protestantism gained a firmer hold. Liturgical worship was performed in English and church music became simpler in construction. Edward became fatally ill in 1553, and his eldest sister, Queen Mary I, assumed the throne. She vigorously attempted to restore England to Catholic worship, going so far as to marry the Catholic King Felipe II of Spain and to order the deaths of prominent dissenters. “Bloody” Mary died in 1558, the crown falling to her half-sister, Elizabeth I, who slowly and steadily established England as a Protestant state. Amid all of these changes, Tallis adapted his compositional style to suit the dictates of each monarch, excelling at every step. He deftly rose in prominence at the Chapel Royal, gaining the illustrious post of Organist in 1570. Scholars now believe that Tallis was at heart a recusant Catholic, thouhg this assertion is based on mostly circumstantial evidence. In any case, his personal beliefs never obstructed his always professional music-making.

If it weren’t for the publication date of its text (1566), O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit could date from Tallis’s Edwardian period. Like his most famous anthem, If ye love me, it is cast in ABB form—the second main section is repeated—which was prominent during Edward’s reign. Gentle imitations, or re-statements of

the musical material, ensure that the words are heard clearly, as does the syllabic setting, with almost always just one note per syllable.

O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit into our hearts, and lighten our understanding, that we may dwell in the fear of thy name all the days of our life: that we may know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.

— from Lidley’s Prayers, 1566

Weep, O mine eyes (1599) John Bennet (c.1575–after 1614)

Virtually nothing is known of the life of John Bennet. He may have been from the northwest of England. His volume of madrigals, published in 1599, describes him as “a young wit”, but how young is pure conjecture. After his contributions to Thomas Ravenscroft’s A Brief Discourse in 1614, absolutely nothing at all is known. More’s the pity, because his surviving music shows an innately musical mind at work. Weep, O mine eyes is perhaps his most famous madrigal. It establishes the opening sonority—a simple A-minor triad—delicately, one pitch at a time. The gently falling line that follows serves two purposes: more generally, it depicts the text’s weeping tears, but specifically it quotes John Dowland’s then hugely popular lute-song, Flow my tears, which first appeared in print three years earlier. There are smooth lines and delicate suspensions, when one pitch hangs on from a previous chord, creating a brief dissonance. Text-painting is nuanced and rare (note the rising lines for “swell so high”). The falling Dowland motive returns at the final line (“O when”).

Weep, O mine eyes, and cease not. Alas, these your spring-tides methinks increase not. O when begin you to swell so high that I may drown me in you.

Mitte manum tuam (2006) James MacMillan (born 1959)

James MacMillan can be described quite simply: he is Scottish, he is Catholic, and he is pacifist. Nearly every work he has composed incorporates at least two of those characteristics. In this case, we hear the first two. His Scottishness is clearly audible in the frequent “Scotch snap” ornaments, or grace notes that sound on the beat rather than before it. The most obvious aspect of his Catholic faith is that he chose to set this text in Latin. It is one of a series of “Strathclyde motets” (more Scottishness!) composed to be suitable for volunteer cathedral or community choirs. Though his symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and operas are presented by the world’s leading artists, MacMillan also directs the music at St.

Columba’s Church at Maryhill in Glasgow. His own choir premiered this motet during communion on the second Sunday of Easter in 2006.

MacMillan’s devotion is clear in more than just the text and the occasion. The text is spoken by Jesus as an encouragement to Thomas, who doubts the Resurrection. The choral basses take the part of Jesus, with his gentle command. Ornaments abound, and not just Scotch snaps. The description of “loca clavorum” (“the place of nails,” i.e., the palms of his hands, bearing the wounds of the crucifixion) is especially delicate. The other voices function as background until the final “Alleluia,” a brief four-part canon that the basses leave before everyone else, just as Jesus would eventually leave the apostles. But that story belongs in another motet.

Mitte manum tuam, Stretch out your hand, et cognosce loca clavorum, alleluia: and know the place of the nails, alleluia: et noli esse incredulus sed fidelis, alleluia. and be not unbelieving, but be faithful, alleluia.

— John 20:27

Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone (1599) John Farmer (c.1570–c.1605)

Not too many years ago, there were a few Renaissance madrigals that even schoolchildren might have encountered. They were mostly by Thomas Morley (My bonnie lass she smileth, April is in my mistress’ face, Now is the month of maying, Sing we and chant it), but perhaps the best known of all was John Farmer’s Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone. Little is known of Farmer: his early publications imply that he lived near London; his patron was Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford; he was Organist at Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin for four years; in 1599 he was again living in London; he contributed one madrigal to the celebrated volume The Triumphs of Oriana in honor of Queen Elizabeth; and after that… we know nothing. But he remains alive today in Fair Phyllis, the quintessential English madrigal. The text tells an amorous episode in the life of a shepherd in ancient Greece. There are many episodes of text-painting. For example, Phyllis’s flock are all together as the voices sing in homophony. Amyntas, the hero of the story, is named strongly with all voices together. Imitative entrances reinforce the vigor of Amyntas’s search. Naturally, each statement of “up and down” begins on a high note, then falls down.

Fair Phyllis I saw sitting all alone, feeding her flock near to the mountainside. The shepherds knew not whither she was gone, but after her lover Amyntas hied. Up and down he wandered, whilst she was missing. When he found her, O then they fell a-kissing.

O Lord, the maker of all thing William Mundy (c.1528–1591)

One of a musicologist’s primary duties is to generate modern musical scores from old sources. The further back in time you go, the greater the scholarly challenges become. Particularly troublesome questions arise when the earliest surviving source for a work dates from decades after the composer’s death. How much does that source really reflect the composer’s wishes? How did the performance practice of that piece evolve in those decades, and are such changes reflected in the source? How scrupulously did the scribe (or publisher) adhere to his own source text? How scrupulous should we be in kind? If we observe something that seems incongruous to the composer’s style, should we ignore the source and adjust accordingly? For that matter, are we even sure who the composer is? Was the name added to the piece in order to generate sales? What if only a last name is given, but there are multiple composers in the family? The core question is, simply, how can we ensure the music is heard at its best?

The anthem O Lord, the maker of all thing [sic], by William Mundy, is a case in point. The eight earliest sources of this work date from around 1625 to the year of its first publication, 1641, or thirty to fifty years after Mundy’s death. This work, like the Tallis anthem above, is always performed in ABB form, but the repetition is not marked in the two earliest sources. Was the repeat observed in Mundy’s day, but ignored later, or was it the other way around, or were there different performing traditions at different locations? Near the end, the four voices splits into five, but the new part is not integral to the harmony of the work and does not appear in all sources. Was the new line added later, or was it removed by churches with fewer resources? One source has several unique differences of pitches. Normally we could safely ignore that source as an outlier, but since it is one of the earliest sources, perhaps it is the one that is correct, and the others were merely copied from another, single, inaccurate source? The first published version is the only one that briefly divides the choir into decani and cantoris, i.e., the deacon’s side and the cantor’s side (usually south and north, respectively). Were these designations observed by Mundy, or are they simply an early-seventeenth-century copyist’s way of overlaying the contemporary vogue for double-choir texture? With limited and sometimes conflicting information, decisions must still be made. We have opted to include the repeat, the additional fifth part, and the division into decani and cantoris. Did Mundy expect his work to sound like this? We’ll never really know.

At least in this case we do know that William Mundy is the composer, and not his son, John (though one later source attributes the anthem to Henry VIII!). William was a boy chorister at Westminster Abbey. He spent ten years as parish clerk at St. Mary-at-Hill in London (where Tallis had once worked), then became a choral vicar at St. Paul’s Cathedral. In 1564, he joined the Chapel Royal, the queen’s private church musicians and thus the most prestigious choir in the country. Like Tallis’s O Lord, give thy Holy Spirit discussed above, Mundy’s O Lord, the maker of all thing is syllabic, with clear imitative entrances. This hymn for the Anglican rite of Evensong appears in so many sources that we can assume it was one of the most popular Elizabethan anthems, and it remains so today.

O Lord, the maker of all thing, we pray thee now in this evening us to defend through thy mercy from all deceit of our enemy.

Let neither us deluded be, Good Lord, with dream or fantasy, our hearts waking in thee thou keep, that we in sin fall not on sleep.

O Father, through thy blessed Son grant us this our petition, to whom with the Holy Ghost always in heaven and earth be laud and praise.

O Care, thou wilt despatch me (1600) Thomas Weelkes (1576–1623)

Thomas Weelkes, son of a Surrey clergyman, became organist at Winchester College in his early twenties, and his three contemporaneous books of madrigals gained him quick popularity. In all, he produced four volumes of madrigals between 1597 and 1608. By 1602 Weelkes joined the staff at Chichester Cathedral, where he focused his attentions on sacred music: anthems, service music, and sacred madrigals such as Hosanna to the Son of David and When David heard. He remained at Chichester for the rest of his life, but this cathedral choirmaster was no exemplar of piety. Weelkes developed an over-fondness of drink, which even led to his temporary dismissal from the cathedral in 1617.

Weelkes’s legacy now rests mostly on his early madrigals, including Thule, the period of cosmography; As Vesta was from Latmos hill descending (written for the volume The Triumphs of Oriana, of which see below); and the present O Care, thou wilt despatch me. Here the poet alternates between addressing two personifications: those of Care and of Music. Care cruelly stings, almost to the death of the speaker, who claims that only mirthful Music can restore him. Weelkes shifts so suddenly from addressing one to the other that the speaker comes off as a bit manic-depressive. The “Fa la la…” episodes reinforce the split. Each mention of Care brings increased chromaticism, as Weelkes explores pitches outside of the key. By the beginning of the second section (“Hence, Care, thou art too cruel”), the harmony is among the most adventuresome you’ll find in England at the time, rivalling that of Gesualdo in Italy. The final “Fa la la…” ends with a major chord, though we have been in a minor key. Has the speaker finally found lasting hope, or is he just kidding himself? It’s up to you to decide.

O Care, thou wilt despatch me, if Music do not match thee. So deadly dost thou sting me, mirth only help can bring me.

Hence, Care, thou art too cruel. Come, Music, sick man’s jewel: his force had well nigh slain me, but thou must now sustain me.

The Song Sung True (2013) Judith Weir (born 1954)

I would wager that no city has more choirs than London. There is even—I’m not kidding here—a London Lawyers’ Chorus. One of their singers was the solicitor Helen M. Sibthorp, whose will left a sum for the choir to commission a new work. The chorus chose to engage Judith Weir, who had become one of Britain’s leading composers thanks partly to her choral music. Weir indicates that Sibthorp, whom she had never met, was described to her “as a forthright and lively person who would have wished any memorial to herself to be spirited and unusual.” Hence The Song Sung True, a cycle of what Weir calls “four songs about singing.”

The first two numbers are to texts by the Scottish writer Alan Spence. The first is subtitled “homage to Gertrude Stein”, whose stylistic fingerprints are present, particularly repetitions of phrases, words, or syllables. Weir emphasizes the syllable “sing”, initially in a duet between lower and upper voices, i.e., altos and basses sing the same music an octave apart, as do the sopranos and tenors. This number never strays from C major, though it never seems quite traditionally tonal. The second movement, titled “Song”, gives prominence to the altos, but occasionally all four parts sound simultaneously. The poet tells of hearing a bird that “sang all for me”. Its song “set me free” and “made me whole”. Weir repeats the final line, “its song was me”, as a simple yet profound revelation.

“Orpheus”, the third movement, recalls the mythical figure whose music caused trees and mountains to bend in homage. At times, Weir opts for the nearly pointillistic: different voices interrupt and overlap with brief snippets. She shifts away from strict tonality toward quartal harmonies, based on fourths rather than traditional thirds. Weir has written that the last poem, a nineteenth-century limerick by humorist Edward Lear, “gave me the opportunity to attempt some of my own ‘puirt-à-beul’ (Gaelic ‘mouth music’)”, specifically, the sound of an “old man of the Isles” singing “High dum diddle”. It is a pleasant romp that ends abruptly, as if whisked away in a Scottish mist.

Scottishness is indeed quite relevant here, as both of Weir’s parents were Scottish. She studied with John Tavener in her youth, and played oboe in the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain. She later studied at King’s College, Cambridge, and quickly earned fellowships at Glasgow University and Trinity College, Cambridge. Visiting professorships and various prestigious awards followed. She has forged her

own stylistic path that sounds modern without being avant-garde; witness the quartal harmonies and folksong-inspired elements in The Song Sung True. Her emphasis on melody and narrative flow persists even in her purely instrumental music. She became perhaps best known for her operas, especially A Night at the Chinese Opera (1987). She has written surprisingly little for orchestra, preferring chamber music, often with solo voices. Since 2014, she has served as Master of the Queen’s Music, a ceremonial post for which she composes music for official royal events.

1. Sing 2. Song every single thing sings the littlest bird everything sings sang all for me is singular its song was love sings it set me free in singularity sings and rings sang at my birth tell the bell sang at my death the song sung true it sang its song sing everything with my last breath is a thing is a thing the littlest bird is a thing is a thing sang in my soul is a thing is a thing its song was joy sing it made me whole it made me whole — Alan Spence (born 1947), it set me free Glasgow Zen from (2002) it sang its song its song was me — Alan Spence, from Glasgow Zen

3. Orpheus 4. Folk Music

Orpheus with his lute made trees, There was an old man of the Isles, and the mountain tops that freeze, Whose face was pervaded with smiles; bow themselves when he did sing. He sang “High dum diddle”, To his music, plants and flowers And played on the fiddle, ever sprung: as sun and showers, That amiable man of the Isles. there had made a lasting spring. Every thing that heard him play, — Edward Lear (1812–1888), from A Book of Nonsense (1846) even the billows of the sea, hung their heads, and then lay by. In sweet music is such art, killing care, and grief of heart, fall asleep, or hearing die.

— from Henry VIII (1613), attributed as a partnership between William Shakespeare (1564–1616) and John Fletcher (1579–1625)

Lullabye for Lucy (1981) Peter Maxwell Davies (1934–2016)

The north of Scotland is a rather barren place, too cold and windy for much plant life. Further north are the even more barren, cold, and windy Orkney Islands. One of the most sparsely populated of the lot is Hoy. And nestled in a northern valley of Hoy is the hamlet of Rackwick, population: five. Every once in a while, such apparently disappearing communities have brilliant rays of hope. Rackwick had its shining moment in 1980 at the birth of Lucy Rendall, the first child born there in thirty-two years. Two notable Orkney residents joined forces to create a monument to the occasion: the composer Peter Maxwell Davies, who lived on a hill overlooking Rackwick, and the poet and novelist George Mackay Brown.

The poem is an acrostic: the first letter of each line spells out the name of the newborn dedicatee. Maxwell Davies responded with a gentle lullaby. The women sing the text above the men’s gentle rollicking of “Lulla, lullay”. All join together from the central “A pledge and a promise”. The composer assigned himself the conceit of using only the white keys of the piano, yielding music with a gentle and mostly consonant harmonic palette. Lullabye for Lucy was premiered at the 1981 St. Magnus Festival in Kirkwall, the principal town of the Orkneys, where Lucy herself later worked as a nurse. It was again sung in Kirkwall at her wedding in 2010.

A few words about the composer are also in order. In the 1950s, Maxwell Davies gained notoriety as part of the avant-garde group of musicians centered on the northern English city of Manchester. Despite these modernist tendencies, he was also active as a grammar school teacher, in which capacity he greatly influenced British music education through his insistence that children of all ages and aptitudes

should and could make music successfully. By the late 1960s, Maxwell Davies had solidified his reputation as an enfant terrible, but over time the establishment caught up with him: in 2004 he was named Master of the Queen’s Music, the highest official musical post in Britain.

Let all plants and creatures of the valley now Unite, Calling a new Young one to join the celebration.

Rowan and lamb and waters salt and sweet Entreat the New child to the brimming Dance of the valley, A pledge and a promise. Lonely they were long, the creatures of Rackwick, till Lucy came among them, all brightness and light.

— George Mackay Brown (1921–1996)

Come, blessed bird (1601) Edward Johnson (flourished 1572–1601)

The earliest record of Edward Johnson’s existence marks his employment by a noble family in Suffolk in 1572. His patron died in 1601. We know nothing of his activities before or after that period. We cannot even speculate as to his heritage, birth, training, or death. Yet in the thirty years during which he flourished, he made quite an impression. For example, in 1591, he composed songs as part of a private entertainment for the queen; Elizabeth herself so liked one song, Eliza is the fayrest queen, that she demanded it be sung twice more. Johnson was ranked by some as one of England’s leading composers, and his music appears in such historically significant collections as The Triumphs of Oriana and the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, but only twelve of his works survive.

The Triumphs of Oriana was a special volume indeed. The famed composer Thomas Morley arranged for twenty-three English composers to write a new madrigal in honor of Queen Elizabeth. Each work was to end with the same couplet: “Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana: / Long live fair Oriana.” This pair of lines first appeared in Hard by a crystal fountain, an English translation of Ove tra l’herbe e i fiori by Giovanni Croce, which first appeared in 1597. Triumphs of Oriana may have been written for a specific occasion, such as a famed masque in the queen’s honor in the summer of 1601 at Highgate House in north London, or it may merely have been a commercial venture, capitalizing on the madrigal vogue and devotion to the queen.

The text of Come, blessed bird, is problematic. The central figure is Bonny-boots, which was the nickname for one of Queen Elizabeth’s favorite courtiers, referred to in several madrigal texts of the

time. He was young and adept at dancing and singing; he may in fact have been a boy treble. As best we can tell, Bonny-boots died in 1597 or shortly earlier. Then there are apparent veiled references to other individuals. In the original publication, “Bird” is capitalized. This may be a reference to William Byrd, who surprisingly did not contribute to Oriana. One modern scholar, Peter Tranchell, has convincingly suggested that “Elpin” and “Dorus” may be puns, in Greek or Latin, on any of several other musicians, including Morley or even the late Thomas Tallis. So, a rough paraphrase of Johnson’s poem might be this: “Hey, Byrd, please join our choir, since the high-singing Bonny-boots is dead. Meanwhile, I and two other musicians will join you, and we will all praise the queen.”

Come, blessed bird,* and with thy sugared relish help our declining choir now to embellish, for Bonny-boots,* that so aloft would fetch it, O, he is dead, and none of us can reach it. Then tune to us, sweet bird, thy shrill recorder. Elpin and I and Dorus,* For fault of better, will serve in the chorus. Begin, and we will follow thee in order. Then sang the woodborn minstrel of Diana:* “Long live fair Oriana.”*

* Bird = possible reference to William Byrd // Bonny-boots = nickname of a young and beloved courtier of Queen Elizabeth I, talented at singing and dancing, though his identity is now unknown // Elpin and Dorus = possible reference to other composers or courtiers, though identification is speculative // Diana = Roman goddess of nature // Oriana = a truncation of “Gloriana”, a common nickname for Elizabeth I

O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth (c.1570) William Byrd (c.1540–1623)

No composer was more central to Elizabethan life than William Byrd. As a boy, London-born Byrd was a chorister at the Chapel Royal during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary Tudor, and therefore had a central view of the seventeenth century’s religious controversies. In 1563, he became organist and choirmaster at the somewhat Puritan cathedral in Lincoln. Byrd returned to the Chapel Royal in 1572, as co-organist with his former mentor, the aging Thomas Tallis. Scholars believe that O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth may have been composed either as part of his application for the Chapel Royal or as an expression of gratitude for the appointment.

It is scored for six voices, though they are cramped in the middle. The two alto and two tenors lines occupy roughly the same area, so their counterpoint is often aurally crowded. These four voices have only the briefest moments of pause. Meanwhile, the sopranos and basses occupy their own worlds, resting frequently and without competition in their respective ranges. In Renaissance polyphony, we often see examples of so-called points of imitation: each voice begins the melody independently, but then soon wanders into different music, such that what the ear picks out are a series of overlapping

entrances. Here Byrd sometimes has two different melodies simultaneously. For example, you’ll hear rising points of imitation for “giver her her heart’s desire” and falling gestures for “and deny not the request of her lips” tossed back and forth among all six parts. Later, the angular “and give her a long life” is juxtaposed with the smooth fall of “e’en for ever and ever”. It may be a mere miniature, but O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth is a compositional tour de force.

After his return to the Chapel Royal, Byrd quickly gained prominence among the English aristocracy. His influence extended even to the queen herself, who in 1575 granted to him and Tallis a monopoly on music printing. Byrd was devoutly Catholic, even as Elizabeth’s initially tolerant reign increased persecutions in order to establish Anglican prominence. Byrd supplied music for secret Catholic worship services, and may even have repeatedly harbored Jesuit priests from the law. However, his important patrons ensured that he was harassed only minimally. It was fortunate that the queen enjoyed Latin services at her private Chapel Royal, thereby giving Byrd opportunities to compose in historically Catholic forms, such as the motet, without recrimination. Perhaps he was granted special allowances in part because of the brilliant music he wrote specifically for the Anglican service, such as his masterpiece, the Great Service.

In 1593, Byrd and his family moved to Essex, joining a group of recusant Catholics that centered on the household of Sir John Petre. The countryside gave Byrd a certain security, whereby he began to focus his compositional efforts on Catholic liturgical music, including three Masses. As London moved on to new compositional trends—such as madrigals, lute music, and verse anthems—Byrd instead consolidated his achievements in a growing number of published volumes during the first decades of the 1600s. These collections embraced not only sacred works, but Byrd’s large corpus of music for keyboard or instrumental consort. Byrd was a moderately wealthy man who died in comfort at his Essex estate.

O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth our queen to rejoice in thy strength; give her her heart’s desire, and deny not the request of her lips; but prevent* her with thine everlasting blessing, and give her a long life, e’en for ever and ever. Amen.

— after Psalm 21

* prevent = protect

Arise, awake (1601) Thomas Morley (1557/8—1602)

The reign of Queen Elizabeth I was characterized by an increasingly global outlook, including cultural exchanges with continental Europe. One of the most influential was a volume of Italian madrigals called Musica transalpina, published in England in 1588. Suddenly English composers began to write in the newly popular Italian style. Sales were good, and musical fortunes—or the closest thing to them—were there to be made.

Thomas Morley took note. He had probably sung at the cathedral in Norwich as a boy, and was later at St. Paul’s in London, when he apparently studied under William Byrd. Though he had returned to Norwish, by 1589 he had become Organist, or head of the music program, at St. Paul’s. In 1592 he joined the monarch’s private choir, the Chapel Royal. His first volume of Italianate madrigals appeared the following year, and centuries of fame followed: My bonnie lass she smileth, April is in my mistress’ face, Now is the month of maying, Sing we and chant it. He also secured a royal monopoly on music-printing in 1598 (a similar monopoly held by Byrd had expired two years prior), devoting his energies to printing lucrative psalm books. Morley’s comprehensive treatise, A Plaine and Easie Introduction to Practicall Musicke, emerged in 1597. Thus Morley had his fingers in madrigals, sacred music, printing, and pedagogy.

One of the most prominent—and best-selling—volumes to emerge from his publishing monopoly was The Triumphs of Oriana in 1601. (For more information, see the Edward Johnson note above.) This compilation of twenty-five madrigals includes two by Morley. Neither is among his best work, and one in particular should raise eyebrows. Awake, arise was a contrafactum of his earlier madrigal, Adieu, you kind and cruel (1597). This means that he took the old music, and simply overlaid a new text. It hardly seems possible, since the words fit so well. Note, for example, the striking octave leap for “Arise” and the busy scurrying of “awake”. One unusual moment of text is when “Lo, where” and “she comes” overlap and get tossed about. The opening music repeats to the second stanza. Awake, arise has some delightful counterpoint for the final “Long live fair Oriana”, with clear imitative entries sometimes displaced by just two beats.

Arise, awake, you silly shepherds sleeping; devise some honour for her sake, by mirth to banish weeping. Lo, where she comes in gaudy green arraying, a prince of beauty rich and rare for her delighting pretends to go a-maying. You stately nymphs, draw near, and strew your paths with roses; In you her trust reposes. Then sang the shepherds and nymphs of Diana: “Long live fair Oriana.”

Choral Dances, from Gloriana, opus 53 (1953) Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)

On the evening of June 7, 1945, Benjamin Britten instantly became The Greatest English Composer Since Purcell. Yes, after 250 years, here was finally a composer worthy to be king of the hill, top of the heap, A–Number One. Thus decreed all of London’s critics, nearly in unison. The occasion had been the premiere of Britten’s first grand opera, Peter Grimes, a tragic, sincere tale about a gruff, rude, flawed,

misunderstood, isolated fisherman. This was an optimistic time for Britain, as the Second World War was nearing its conclusion.

But the aftermath of the war was difficult for Britain: the empire splintered, re-building slowed, rationing persisted, morale dropped. The death of the wartime monarch, King George VI, in February 1952 could have added to the doldrums, but instead Britain again turned optimistic. For behold, the new queen was to be a new Elizabeth, who would doubtlessly initiate a Second Elizabethan Era marked by economic might, political power abroad, and artistic excellence.

Planning began immediately for the coronation, due on June 2, 1953. London had never seen such a party as this. Composers were involved deeply, with, most prominently, a new grand opera from Britten: Gloriana. Unfortunately, the opera’s premiere—six days after the coronation, with the new monarch in attendance—was an utter and complete flop. Critics panned it as unworthy of both Britten and Britain. It was Britten’s cursed opera, performed only twice more during his lifetime, and not recorded until 1992.

Some blame the failure on the difficulties inherent in the challenge. After all, it is no small task to create an opera from scratch in one year. A subject must be chosen and sketched. A libretto must be written. The music must be composed. The production must be cast, designed, built, staged, and rehearsed. But an equally strong contributing factor was the opera itself. The principal character is Queen Elizabeth I herself, the “Gloriana” of yore. But while the audience wanted a depiction of a perfect heroine, Britten gave them a tragic, sincere tale about a gruff, rude flawed, misunderstood, isolated monarch. The supporting characters are caught in conflict, rivalling for her attentions. In other words, Britten’s Elizabeth is an interesting, conflicted character, and Gloriana is an excellent opera.

One section from Gloriana did, however, survive uncursed. Act Two begins as Elizabeth and her entourage pay a state visit to the provincial town of Norwich. The townsfolk present her with a masque, a group of musical vignettes in which gifts are bestowed as personifications of Time and Concord dance and hail the queen. Due to a conflict with the Royal Ballet—who wanted a much more extensive pageant, to function as their part in the coronation—this scene was the last one composed. The six unaccompanied Choral Dances were excerpted and published the year after the premiere, and they have remained beloved standard repertoire for English choruses ever since.

A dancer representing Time enters amid a juxtaposition of Renaissance madrigal and Baroque dotted rhythms. Britten creates a musical pun by assigning the dance of Concord only consonant, or concordant, intervals. When Time and Concord dance their duet, the women and men sing in canon. In the fourth dance, women present garlands of flowers, pairs of vocal lines functioning like pairs of flowers. Rustic men bring forward their gifts of fish, blankets, trinkets, and other handiwork in a quicksilver scherzo. The final dance sounds simple enough, but it is the most complex in construction. Sopranos and tenors sing in canon, while altos and basses sing in almost exact inversion (i.e., one part moves in the opposite direction as the other, aat the same interval). Later the canon embraces all parts, to a gentle close.

1. Time

Yes he is Time, At she whose presence Lusty and blithe! Is our pleasance, Time is at his apogee! Gloriana, Gloriana Although you thought to see Hath all our love! A bearded ancient with a scythe. 4. Country Girls No reaper he That cries “Take heed!” Sweet flag and cuckoo-flower, Time is at his apogee! Cowslip and columbine, Kingcups and sops-in-wine, Young and strong in his prime! Behold the sower of the seed! Flowers-de-luce and calaminth, Harebell and hyacinth, 2. Concord Myrtle and bay, With rosemary between, Concord is here, Norfolk’s own garlands for her Queen. Our days to bless And this our land to endue 5. Rustics and Fishermen With plenty, peace and happiness. From fen and meadow Concord and Time In rushy baskets Each needeth each: They bring ensamples of all they grow. The ripest fruit hangs where In earthen dishes Not one, but only two can reach. Their deep-sea fishes; Yearly fleeces, 3. Concord and Time Woven blankets; From springs of bounty, New cream and junkets, Through this county, And rustic trinkets Streams abundant On wicker flaskets, Of thanks shall flow. Their country largess, The best they know. Where life was scanty, Fruits of plenty 6. Final Dance of Homage Swell resplendent These tokens of our love receiving, From earth below! O take them, Princess great and dear, No Greek nor Roman From Norwich city you are leaving, Queenly woman That you afar may feel us near. Knew such favour — William Plomer (1903–1973) From Heav’n above.

The Hills (1953) John Ireland (1879–1962)

At the end of the nineteenth century, Charles Villiers Stanford was the primary composition instructor at the Royal College of Music in London. He was also rude, cruel, and irascible: what the Victorians would have called a typical Irishman. One of his students was the mild-mannered, easily intimated, introspective, insecure, orphaned—and very English—John Ireland. It was a horrible match. But Ireland did learn much from Stanford’s absolute insistent on solid craft. And so Ireland left the RCM to become organist and choirmaster at St. Luke’s Church in London’s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood. Steadily his reputation as a composer grew, led by the choral anthem Greater love hath no man (1911), the song Sea-Fever (1913), and The Holy Boy (1913), a piano work that came to be arranged for various forces, including as a hymn. Around 1920 he began to teach at the RCM and entered a more prominent role in British musical society. He even finally tackled one of the larger forms: his Piano Concerto (1930) is among the best ever written by an Englishman. Ireland stopped teaching in 1939, and largely stopped composing in the mid-1940s, while in his sixties. But he finally found a degree of inner peace.

One occasion for which he came out of retirement was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. He was one of ten composers commissioned to contribute a madrigal to A Garland for the Queen. (For more on that volume, see the Michael Tippett note above.) The poem by James Kirkup could hardly have better suited Ireland’s personality. Much of England is noted for its gentle hills, which here are hailed as “altars of the sun” and, most appropriately for a coronation text, “the earth’s enduring thrones.” Amid bouts of silence, Ireland depicts various aspects of nature. The “profounder rivers run” with steadily moving lines. A smooth unison descent prepares the hills’ “strong humility”, a phrase which indeed could describe John Ireland himself.

How calm, how constant are the hills! How green and white and golden in the summer light! Their lakes, their leaping wells are bright With flower, leaf, and rain, And their profounder rivers run From rocks that are the altars of the sun.

How calm, how constant are the hills! Our time’s dark gale of ice and fire Thunders around them, but removes them never. No tempest overthrows their strong humility. They are both god and temple, And their stones are holy, the earth’s enduring thrones.

How calm, how constant are the hills!

— James Kirkup (1918–2009)

Andrew Turner, from Five Epigrams (1960) Nicholas Maw (1935–2009)

Nicholas Maw studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Lennox Berkeley, then with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. Immediately upon finishing his studies, the practical-minded Maw decided to write something for Britain’s many amateur choral societies in order to help establish his name. He was drawn to a series of epitaphs by Robert Burns because, as the composer put it, they “provided somewhat different kind of texts than usual in choral music”. Besides, choruses are more likely to perform something by an unknown composer if it is short! Hence the Five Epigrams, of which we will perform the last. One wonders what Andrew Turner did to deserve Burns’s scorn. Maw’s music focuses on melodic fragments, often treated imitatively, and with accompaniment akin to a snare drum’s patter.

Maw didn’t need to be patient for long. Scenes and Arias (1962), scored for women’s trio and orchestra, put him on the map. He has especially flourished when writing for orchestra, as in the behemoth Odyssey (1972–87) and the Violin Concerto (1993) for Joshua Bell. Among his last works was an accomplished opera Sophie’s Choice (2002) for Covent Garde. From 1984 until his death, Maw lived in Washington, DC, teaching for ten years at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. Throughout all of his music, his style is approachable and not self-consciously Modernist, though he does not shy away from recent trends. This is certainly true about the choral music that is sprinkled throughout his output, of which he said, “My aim has usually been the entertainment of performers and audience alike.”

In seventeen hunder’ and forty-nine, Satan took stuff to mak’ a swine And cuist* it in a corner. But wilily he changed his plan And shaped it something like a man And ca’d it Andrew Turner.

— Robert Burns (1759–1796)

* cuist = cast // ca’d = called

White-flowering days (1953) Gerald Finzi (1901–1956)

Gerald Finzi was beset by tragedy early in life. Thanks largely to the First World War, he lost his father, three brothers, and beloved teacher, Ernest Farrar, before he turned eighteen. He studied with Edward Bairstow in York for a few years, then went to Gloucestershire, a man in his twenties of independent wealth trying to find himself in the idyllic hills of the West Country. He did eventually move to London, where he taught at the Royal Academy of Music, attended vast numbers of concerts, and hobnobbed with England’s musical elite. But his heart was in the countryside, and so in 1937 he and his wife built a

house in rural Hampshire. It became a haven for musicians and composers, prominent among then Ralph Vaughan Williams. There Finzi composed.

Though respected among his colleagues, Finzi had, by the outbreak of the Second World War, gained hardly a jot of public recognition. He was known for a few songs on Thomas Hardy, such as the cycle A Young Man’s Exhortation (1926–9), but nothing else. This assuredly had much to do with the many non- compositional projects he undertook. He worked hard to ensure the preservation and publication of the poems and songs of Ivor Gurney. He curated the manuscripts of Hubert Parry for the Bodleian Library at Oxford. He collected music manuscripts and published scores from England in the period of roughly 1740 to 1780. He passionately read and collected poetry and many other volumes. He devoted much of his sixteen acres to an apple orchard, saving dozens of varieties from extinction. He founded in 1940 the Newport String Players, an amateur orchestra with which he performed standard string repertoire, unknown works by his beloved eighteenth-century English composers, and periodically works by young, as yet undiscovered composers. His own compositions progressed, bit by bit, steadily and slowly.

After the Second World War, his cycle for tenor and orchestra, Dies natalis (1925–39), quickly gained attention. Additional large-scale works followed, prominently the extended choral anthem Lo, the full, final sacrifice (1946), the Clarinet Concerto (1949), and his largest work, the choral Intimations of Immortality (1936–50) on Wordsworth. We must remember that this was the same era when Britten and Tippett leapt to the forefront of English classical music. Their coldness, their harmonic adventures, their dark subjects, their overt modernisms, all stood in opposition to Finzi’s natural warmth of character and of sound, tonal harmonies, light and happy matters, and overall conservatism. Yet Finzi gained fame nevertheless.

One sign of this attention was Finzi’s being invited by the Arts Council of Great Britain to contribute to A Garland for the Queen in 1952. (For more on that volume, see the Michael Tippett note above.) Finzi always sets text so organically—organic, yes; simple, no. The meter shifts periodically. The key quickly moves at first lower from C minor into the realm of more flats, but later up to D major and its sharps. Melodic phrases, as at the beginning, often leap difficultly. Dynamic markings are precise, abundant, and absolutely necessary for ensuring the work’s logical low. Yet nary a listener would imagine such challenges, just as one who lazes at the lakeside never wonders of the duck’s scurrying feet under the surface.

By this time Finzi had already been diagnosed with the Hodgkin’s disease that would eventually lead to his death. That he continued to compose and to maintain his other activities while receiving incredibly painful and debilitating treatment is testament to his spirit. Finzi still had two more masterpieces in him: the choral Christmas scena In terra pax (1951–4) and the Cello Concerto (1955). Yet only two works of his—Dies natalis and White-flowering days—were commercially recorded during his lifetime.

Now the white-flowering days, The long days of blue and golden light, Wake nature’s music round the land; now plays The fountain of all sweetness; all our ways Are touched with wonder, swift and bright.

This is the star, the bell While fields of emerald rise, and orchards flower Brown nooks with white and red, this is the spell Of timeless dream; Avilion,* happy dell! The legendary, lovely bower.

Now the bold children run By wild brooks and woods where year on year Tall trembling bluebells take their stand; now none Is bloomless, none quite songless; such a sun Renews our journey far or near.

Old England of the shires, Meadowy land of heath and forest ground And lawny knoll, land of gray towers and spires, Fairly thy season sings our hearts’ desires Fulfilled in queenly beauty youngly crowned.

— Edmund Blunden (1896–1974)

* Avilion = Avalon, a fertile island valley in Arthurian legend. It is worth noting, in the context of Finzi’s hobbies, that “Avilion” can also mean “Isle of Apples”.