SRCD.365 STEREO/UHJ DDD The songs of Cyril Scott (1879 - 1970) 1 Pierrot and the Moon Maiden (1912) Dowson 3.01 2 Daffodils Op. 68 No. 1 (1909) Erskine 1.57 3 Spring Song (1913) C Scott 2.33 The songs of 4 Don't Come in Sir, Please! Op. 43 No. 2 (1905) trans. Giles 2.15 5 Willows Op. 24 No. 2 (1903) C Scott 2.21 Cyril Scott 6 In a Fairy Boat Op. 61 No. 2 (1908) Weller 2.05 7 Lovely Kind & Kindly Loving Op. 55 No. 1(1907) Breton 2.23 8 Scotch Lullabye Op. 57 No. 3 (1908) W Scott 3.37 9 The Watchman (1920) Hildyard 3.15 10 Water-Lilies (1920) O’Reilly 2.06 11 Voices of Vision Op. 24 No. 1 (1903) C Scott 4.42 12 Sundown (1919) Grenside 2.55 Charlotte de Rothschild 13 Autumn’s Lute (1914) R.M Watson 2.05 14 A Valediction Op. 36 No. 1 (1904) Dowson 2.21 Adrian Farmer 15 Lullaby Op. 57 No. 2 (1908) C Rossetti 2.25 Charlotte de Rothschild, soprano Adrian Farmer, piano c & © 2018 Lyrita Recorded Edition, England. Lyrita is a registered trade mark. Made in the UK LYRITA RECORDED EDITION. Produced under an exclusive licence from Lyrita by Wyastone Estate Ltd, PO Box 87, Monmouth, NP25 3WX, UK SRCD 365 16 SRCD 365 1 The Songs of Cyril Scott Cyril Scott(1879- 1970) A composer who writes songs arguably allows us into a very personal side of his or her character. An instrumental composition gives us access to a composer’s imagination 16 The Unforeseen Op. 74 No. 3 (1911) R.M Watson 2.53 and invention as far as the composer chooses to let us see, but a song shows a composer’s highly personal response to a text – we hear how the composer reacts to 17 A Lost Love Op. 62 No. 1 (1908) trans. Giles 1.46 another facet of creativity. We are not confined to the composer’s own thoughts, and 18 Night Song (1915) R.M Watson 2.43 the best songs take us into a composer’s creative mind. 19 Sorrow Op. 36 No. 2 (1904) Dowson 2.14 But sometimes practicalities get in the way. Cyril Scott’s songs tend to fall into one of 20 Love's Aftermath (1911) Dowson 3.02 two camps – those he had to write, and those he chose to write. Elkin, the publisher, 21 Looking Back (1917) C Rossetti 2.35 took him on, but Scott wrote, in his second autobiography, Bone of Contention, that Elkin ‘stipulated that I should write a certain number of piano-pieces and songs every 22 Meditation (1915) Dowson 2.55 year, with the result that I composed far too many, and seeing that they deflected 23 An Old Song Ended (1911) D.G Rossetti 2.33 attention from my more serious works, I have little doubt that contributed to my 24 The Valley of Silence Op. 72 No. 4 (1911) Dowson 3.58 undoing.’ Some of these various short, light pieces, do show signs of being churned out, and Scott’s reputation has suffered as a result, but he was being hard on himself: on the Total playing time one hand, they enabled him to live; on the other, they gave him an opportunity to develop his harmonic language and, at least in part, to learn his trade. Cyril Meir Scott was born on the 27 September 1879 in Cheshire, in the north-west of Also available by England, in the quiet, affluent village of Oxton, the other side of the river Mersey from Charlotte de Rothschild & Adrian Farmer Liverpool. His father, present yet absent, by day worked in Liverpool in the shipping business, but morning and evening studied biblical Greek. His mother was deeply religious, but did not care for high church ceremony and ritual. Scott’s view of his The Songs of mother affected his largely deprecatory view of all women, the Church and religion, but Norman Peterkin he was also greatly influenced in his views by various older men – Hans Lüthy in (1886-1982) England, Thomas Holland-Smith and later Stefan George in Germany, amongst others – who subsequently became dedicatees of some of his songs. He was a highly-strung and SRCD.362 very sensitive child and developed wide-ranging interests, including writing poetry, and writing on health and alternative medicine, theosophy and the occult. These were not www.wyastone.co.uk for full track list the contrasts they might seem, but were unified by his belief in considering the whole SRCD 365 2 SRCD 365 15 The Valley of Silence person, and also in living the life of an artist as he perceived it: his motto ‘Unity in Ernest Dowson Diversity’ is carved on his tombstone. What land of Silence, The world forsaken, Where pale stars shine And out of mind It seems extraordinary, though far-sighted, for his parents to have packed him off to the On apple-blossom Honour and labour, Hoch Conservatory, Frankfurt, for eighteen months, when he was only twelve, sending And dew-drenched vine We shall not find, him into what was must surely have been largely the unknown; even though his mother Is yours and mine? The stars unkind. went with him (taking his sister too, who was to study in a nearby town), she stayed only until they were settled. There, Scott studied piano with Lazzaro Uzielli, and had a few The silent valley And men shall travail, unsatisfactory composition lessons with Engelbert Humperdinck. Back in England, he That we will find,- And laugh and weep; found Oxton generally rather parochial, and when he was sixteen, he returned to Where all the voices But we have vistas Frankfurt, having decided by now that he wanted to be a composer rather than a Of human kind Of gods asleep, Are left behind. With dreams as deep. pianist; this time he studied with Ivan Knorr, who took care that his students should retain their originality and not model themselves on his own style. Scott met other There all forgetting, A land of Silence, English-speaking students at Frankfurt, among them Percy Grainger, Roger Quilter, Forgotten quite, Where pale stars shine Balfour Gardiner and Norman O’Neill, the five collectively known as the Frankfurt We will repose us, On apple-blossoms group, though they were not all at Frankfurt at the same time. He retained his With our delight And dew-drenched vine, friendships with all of them, especially that with Grainger. These formative years and Hid out of sight. Be yours and mine! experiences developed his concepts of how an artist should behave and above all, how an artist should feel. He carried through his style even into how he decorated the places where he lived: windows, for example, would be covered or altered so as to look like arched church windows, these being more aesthetically pleasing than ordinary windows. Recorded at the Concert Hall of the Nimbus Foundation His compositional style reflected the colour and richness of his ideas. The songs on this Wyastone Leys, Monmouth, UK 2-3 November 2017 CD cover a period from his early 20s to when he was about 40, though he probably wrote songs into his fifties; there are also songs he wrote in his teens, but these remain Engineering and production by Adrian Farmer and Simon Wallfisch in manuscript. He had favourite poets – Dowson’s fin-de-siècle worldweariness appealed greatly, and Scott set his poetry more often than that of any other poet – but Cover Image, Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) Design for ‘Pierrot’s Library’ series (1896) he took texts from many. Some were distinctly banal, but they nevertheless allowed him c 2018 The copyright in these sound recordings is owned by Lyrita Recorded Edition, England freedom to set the sense and meaning behind the texts, so that the words became a © 2018 Lyrita Recorded Edition. Lyrita is a registered trade mark, England. trigger and thereafter served their purpose. The overall sound is rich and highly LYRITA RECORDED EDITION. Produced under an exclusive licence from Lyrita chromatic. by Wyastone Estate Ltd, PO Box 87, Monmouth, NP25 3WX, UK SRCD 365 14 SRCD 365 3 The six Dowson songs included here (two of them framing the programme) show Scott The twilight of poor love: we can but part, An old song ended in many moods, from the perhaps predictable A Valediction and the simple, almost Dumbly and sadly, reaping as we sow, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882) Quilterian Sorrow, the nostalgic and dreamy Valley of Silence, the richly chromatic, Love's aftermath. "How should I your true love know magnificent and mature Love’s Aftermath showing Scott’s distinctive voice at its best, From another one?" to the plangent chords of Pierrot and the Moon Maiden (note the delicate Looking Back Christina Rossetti "By his cockle-hat and staff, decorations in the piano part, and the swaying 5/8 rhythms) and the magical, hazy, Looking back along life's trodden way And his sandal shoon." Gleams and greenness linger on the track, piano interludes of Meditation, whose words were set by many others too. Scott was Distance melts and mellows all to-day, "And what signs have told you now plagued by the label ‘the English Debussy’, and was judged thus rather than on his own Looking back. That he hastens home?" terms – but in fine songs such as this, the comparison is easy to understand. The song "Lo the Spring is nearly gone, is marked ‘Andante semplice’ – in a simple style – but it is by no means a simple song.