Ralph Vaughan Williams Ten Blake Songs / On Wenlock Edge Jonathan Dove Peter Warlock The End T h e C u r l e w ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Mark Padmore tenor Cover: Photo by Doug Chinnery / Flickr / Getty Images All texts and translations C harmonia mundi usa Nicholas Daniel oboe P C 2012 harmonia mundi usa 1117 Chestnut Street, Burbank, California 91506 Britten Sinfonia Recorded in May, 2012 at Air Studios, Lyndhurst Hall, London. Recording Engineers: Brad Michel, Chris Barrett Editor: Brad Michel Producer: Robina G. Young 1 WILLIAMS / DOVE / WARLOCK Mark Padmore / Britten Sinfonia HMU 807566 © harmonia mundi Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) Songs of Innocence and Experience On Wenlock Edge (1907) © Boosey & Hawkes Ltd [21’17] How does a nation define its musical identity? And what, if Text: A. E. Housman (1859-1936) anything, is distinctive about the British tradition? These 1 On Wenlock Edge 3’42 questions were central to the nationalist movement that took 2 From far, from eve and morning 2’17 shape in the first half of the twentieth century, as British 3 Is my team ploughing? 3’38 composers sought to define themselves in the wake of the 4 Oh, when I was in love with you 0’53 nineteenth century’s Austro-Germanic dominance. At the heart of this movement, song found a new voice – and a whole 5 Bredon Hill 7’24 host of British composers found inspiration in the poetry and 6 Clun 3’21 indigenous folksong of the British Isles. Writing about the need for a national identity in 1934, Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams (1878-1958) remarked: ‘The business Ten Blake Songs (1957) © Oxford University Press [18’42] of finding a nation’s soul is a long and slow one at best and a Text: William Blake (1757-1827) great many prophets must be slain in the course of it. Perhaps when we have slain enough prophets future generations will 7 Infant Joy 1’30 begin to build their tombs.’ Vaughan Williams saw hope for 8 A Poison Tree 2’24 English music in the revival of its own unique heritage: the 9 The Piper 1’57 folksong. Having come across a number of folk melodies 10 London 1’44 during 1904, he was dismayed to find that the folksong was 11 The Lamb 2’40 beginning to die out, having been passed on by word of mouth and not recorded in print. He set about collecting as many of 12 The Shepherd 0’57 the country’s native folksongs as he could find, transcribing 13 Ah, Sun-flower 1’34 and preserving them as part of what became an extensive 14 Cruelty has a human heart 1’52 personal collection. Over time, these songs came to permeate 15 The Divine Image 2’25 his own music and made him popular both with English 16 Eternity 1’39 audiences and with composers looking for fresh inspiration in their own work. Throughout a career spanning more than fifty Jonathan Dove (b. 1959) years, he remained steadfast to this tradition, his distinctive musical style transcending the tumultuous changes in the 17 The End (2012) © Hinrichsen Edition / Peters Edition Ltd 8’53 music around him. Text: Mark Strand (b. 1934) Mark Padmore tenor Just a year before he died, Vaughan Williams was asked to write ten settings of Blake’s poetry for the film The Vision of members of (1-6, 17-22) Peter Warlock (1894-1930) Britten Sinfonia William Blake. Although only eight of the songs were eventually Jacqueline Shave director The Curlew (1920-22) © Stainer & Bell Ltd [23’20] used for the purposes of the film, the Ten Blake Songs (1957) Text: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) Jacqueline Shave, Miranda Dale violins found a place in the chamber music repertoire, singled out by their unusual scoring for oboe and tenor. The songs are a 18 The Curlew 7’18 Clare Finnimore viola Caroline Dearnley cello testament to Vaughan Williams’ devotion to the English folk 19 Pale brows, still hands 1’40 tradition, where understatement and direct expression take Emer McDonough flute (17–22) 20 I cried when the moon 9’15 precedence over complex musical exploration. His natural gift 21 Interlude 3’01 Nicholas Daniel oboe (7–16) English horn (17–22) for lyrical melody and timeless harmonic palette are a fine 22 I wander by the edge 2’07 Huw Watkins piano (1–6) match for Blake’s poetry. Taken from the Songs of Innocence and Experience, the poems capture the blissful innocence of youth, and the loss of this state through fear, inhibition and the trappings of experience: Infant Joy, A Poison Tree, The Piper, London, The Lamb, The Shepherd, Ah! Sunflower, Cruelty has a Human Heart, The Divine Image, Eternity. Vaughan Williams’ music is a lesson in clarity and economy, alive to every nuance of Blake’s poetry, whether it be alluding to the strophic nature of the hymn in The Divine Image, capturing the simplicity of childhood in Infant Joy, or using the oboe to illustrative effect 2 VAUGHAN WILLIAMS / DOVE / WARLOCK Mark Padmore / Britten Sinfonia HMU 807566 © harmonia mundi in The Piper. While three of the songs dispense with the oboe he would pursue a career in the Civil Service, Warlock’s British composer Jonathan Dove (b. 1959) made the following altogether, elsewhere the two soloists weave subtly in and out head was turned and with Delius as his mentor, he began to remarks on the genesis of his new work, The End (2012), of one another to mesmeric effect, in what amounts to a fitting pursue a life in music. Unlike Vaughan Williams, however, co-commissioned by Britten Sinfonia and Wigmore Hall with celebration of Vaughan Williams’ life and works. Warlock was largely unaffected by the resurgence in British support from the Tenner for a Tenor campaign and recorded Although he is widely regarded as one of the twentieth folksong, and instead championed British music through his here for the first time. century’s great symphonists, it is song that defines Vaughan settings of British poetry and his resurrection of Baroque ‘When I heard Mark Strand read his poem ‘The End’ to a Williams’ compositional career. At the age of 30, his setting practices. His distinctive musical style is as much influenced small gathering of artists in Italy a few years ago, I was moved – of William Barnes’ poem Linden Lea (1901) became his first by the lyrical melodies of his first musical love, Delius, as it and also felt immediately that it was a poem that could be sung. published work and just a few years later, he completed his first is by Renaissance modality and twentieth-century rhythmic I hoped that one day I might have the chance to set it to music. song cycle: a setting of six sonnets by the English poet Dante complexity. While Vaughan Williams’ ‘Englishness’ is rooted I did not know exactly what the music would sound like, but I Gabriel Rossetti. But it was his song cycle On Wenlock Edge in an informal musical tradition, passed on through the imagined a solo voice with several instruments. (1907) for tenor, piano and string quartet that first brought him centuries without being written down, Warlock learned much Britten Sinfonia gave me the opportunity to make this wish to widespread public attention and signalled his arrival on the of his own nationalist style by transcribing and editing lute come true, by inviting me to write something for Mark Padmore British musical scene. The cycle takes six poems from Alfred songs by composers of the Jacobean and Elizabethan eras, to sing, with instrumentation to match Warlock’s The Curlew. Housman’s collection A Shropshire Lad, a nostalgic depiction while keeping abreast of the diverse new developments of the String quartet with two solo wind instruments seemed the of rural life that explores issues of love, decay and lost youth early twentieth century. perfect combination to suggest the gentle rocking motion of the through a series of 63 rather melancholic poems. Vaughan In his short lifetime, Warlock composed almost exclusively ship slipping into darkness, and perhaps hear birds suspended Williams was not the first – nor the last – composer to be for voice and piano, and he is best renowned for his song cycle in flight.’ attracted to the musical potential of Housman’s writing, nor was The Curlew (1920, rev. 1922) on poems by W.B. Yeats. Scored Housman said to be fond of Vaughan Williams’ own particular uniquely for tenor, cor anglais, flute and string quartet, the – Jonathan Dove rendering of his work, but Vaughan Williams’ cycle struck a cycle was begun in 1915 with the composition of He reproves chord with audiences as the First World War drew near. the curlew, and over the following five years Warlock completed While some have criticised Vaughan Williams’ music a further four songs: The lover mourns for the loss of his love, for failing to capture the bleakness and despair that inhabits The cloths of heaven, Wine comes in at the mouth and He Hausman’s poetry, the symphonic sweep of the cycle conveys hears the cry of the sedge. After its first performance in 1920, a distinct narrative that connects the individual works. The Warlock revised the cycle by adding a new song, The withering opening song, On Wenlock Edge, sets the pastoral scene, of the boughs, and removing ‘The cloths of heaven’ and ‘Wine but this is not a calm contemplative landscape. Instead the comes in at the mouth’. Thus, the final five-movement work gales that blow through the woods signal that ‘the tree of man comprises four songs, with an instrumental interlude before was never quiet’ and that trouble is on the horizon.