O Waly, Waly

[Alison]

I've always loved this folksong. Very english ?

Do you find the Britten arrangement slightly disappointing ?

After all these years I think I do now .....

[Uncle Monty]

I have always found Britten's folksong arrangements rather embarrassing, to be honest. I feel he simply doesn't understand the genre he's drawing on. Of course he was at liberty to make use of folk songs and turn them into art-songs, but I would like to have some sense of the real life behind these songs, coming as they largely did from the oral tradition, and I don't really get that.

Contrast that with the composers, especially Vaughan Williams, Grainger, Butterworth, and Holst, who literally got on their bikes (to coin a phrase) and got in among the old rustic singers with moleskin waistcoats and trousers stiff with cow-poo. It really shows in their arrangements. I wonder what was the closest Britten ever got to running a real song, or its singer, to earth?

For example, RVW's "The Lover's Ghost", which I saw one reputable commentator describe as "the finest English song of the last 400 years", is as gloriously artful and arty as could be, but still has all the cadences, the rhythms and the modal melodies of real folk song.

Sorry, what was the question?

[Vile Consort]

I don't think there was much folk singing left by the time Britten was (say) in his twenties. Sharp, Vaughan Williams et. al. set about collecting English folk song because it was on the verge of extinction, even before the First World War. The voices we hear in those scratchy old recordings are those of old men; I think we can take it that young men were not recorded singing this repertoire because they didn't know it, or didn't want to admit to knowing it. So it is hardly fair to criticise Britten for failing to seek out something that had well nigh vanished by the time he was grown up.

When a cook turns an egg into an omelette, and it is irrelevant to to complain that you can't identify the yolk. One may not like omelettes, but one has to judge it as an omelette, not as an egg or, say, a meringue.

I do not know who wrote the sleeve notes to the 1990 Decca CD of Britten and Pears performing some of the songs, but it is worth quoting what he has to say about one of them:

"There will always be some fierce local patriot who will object to what a Britten will do, say, to a song like The Ash Grove. And, indeed, the second verse of his own setting is enough to make anyone pause on first hearing: but when you look at the words, what seems sheer wilfulness, or perhaps tongue-in-cheek, soon appears as permissible poetic licence and, if the listener is not insensitive, the patriot gives way to the music lover and has to admit that Britten has seen more in the song that we have. He has taken it, looked at it afresh and recreated it."

To return to the question - no, I do not find Britten's setting of O Waly Waly at all disappointing. I dug it out and listened to it just now. The piano part is no mere accompaniment to the song: it is also a commentary, and a very telling one. The rocking motion is redolent of oars and the lapping of water, whilst the harmonies reflect the emptiness and bitter disappointment conveyed by the words, as well as providing an ebb and flow of tension to give extra shape to the piece.

P.S. I am not accusing anyone of being an insensitive listener or a fierce local patriot!

[Richard Tarleton]

I've always loved this folksong. Very english ?

Do you find the Britten arrangement slightly disappointing ?

After all these years I think I do now .....

Really interesting question Alison - I recall a radio programme quite a few years ago in which the Britten version sung I think by Anthony Rolfe Johnson was played next to a version by a traditional English folk singer - two entirely different experiences, folk song and art song. Actually I like this Britten arrangement, compared to some of the others, the harmonies build up quite powerfully. The Ash Grove is another case in point - a simple song becomes something much more complicated, with the harmonies fragmenting as the blackbird becomes more out of tune.

My least favourite Britten arrangement is that of the Last Rose of Summer, the spirit of which I think he missed by miles. Not a folk song of course but an Irish air by John Moore, but Britten's turning a simple strophic song into something more complicated misses the point, IMV.

[rauschwerk]

In a 1966 broadcast, Britten said that, as far as the setting of folksong was concerned, he regarded Garinger as his master in everyting he did. His admiration for Grainger dated from hearing a broadcast in the 1930s in which arrangements by Grainger "knocked everything by Vaughan Williams and R O Morris into a cocked hat."

If Britten could hardly have become a song collector himself, then he did the next best thing in allowing himself to be influenced by Grainger. I agree with everything that Vile Consort has to say.

[gradus]

Was the question posed after hearing the Elizabeth Watts performance yesterday lunchtime on R3? I thought it a bit of a curate's egg of a recital with some of the Purcell proving pretty tricky to sing, but I enjoyed her Waly Waly and Britten's spare arrangement - not I think Wally Wally, Katie.

[Simon]

The Britten arrangement is disappointing - but that's hardly Benji's fault: I don't know why he bothered setting it. I've always found this "song" the most ridiculous, naff, boring, monotonous and moronic that I've ever heard - not least because I was forced to sing it as a treble at some school concert when big rival got to sing How Beautiful are the Plates. Needless to say he got all the plaudits... and deservedly so.

[Mary Chambers]

Jealousy will get you nowhere, Simon :) - but maybe not the most appropriate song for a treble. I think it's ravishing myself, especially those subtle, haunting shifts in the last verse (on the words 'new' and 'cold'). It needs to be sung very simply, but point those up a little. I didn't feel Elizabeth Watts, whom I usually admire very much, quite managed that, though I've just listened to her again on iPlayer and it seems less disappointing than it did yesterday. (I must go to the Pronunciatio therad and apologise to Louise Fryer - it was Katie Derham who came up with the bizarre ' Wally' -to rhyme with 'rally' - pronunciation.)

It's necessary to remember what these arrangements were intended for - to provide a way of ending a voice/piano recital with something fairly easy and familiar to the audience. When Britten and Pears performed them, in England at any rate, most of the audience would have sung these songs (usually in uninspired arrangements) at school. I certainly did. I knew almost all the songs before I heard the Britten versions, and was enchanted by the sudden illumination of the words he provided in so many cases. I would agree that 'The Last Rose of Summer' is a bit over the top - he got rather carried away with that one! - but most work well. I love 'Early one Morning' and 'The Ash Grove'. 'The Miller of Dee' stresses the surly aspect - 'I care for nobody, no, not I, and nobody cares for me'. Someone once said to Britten, "But Ben, it says 'There was a jolly miller once', to which Britten replied, " 'Jolly' - old Suffolk word meaning 'miserable' ".

We did not, of course, sing 'The Foggy, Foggy Dew' at school. It was considered somewhat scandalous, and indeed one of Pears's uncles wrote to him in horrified tones, asking him to destroy the recording before it reached the ears of too many innocent youngsters!

[LeMartinPecheur]

I don't think there was much folk singing left by the time Britten was (say) in his twenties. Sharp, Vaughan Williams et. al. set about collecting English folk song because it was on the verge of extinction, even before the First World War. The voices we hear in those scratchy old recordings are those of old men; I think we can take it that young men were not recorded singing this repertoire because they didn't know it, or didn't want to admit to knowing it. So it is hardly fair to criticise Britten for failing to seek out something that had well nigh vanished by the time he was grown up.

Ummm. so how was it that Brian George of the BBC was recording loads of folksongs (unaccompanied) from around the UK in the summer of 1954? I have some of these tapings from Hampshire - my former home - and Sussex on a Topic LP. Yes, most of the singers were elderly in 1954 but they'd have been a lot younger when Britten was writing his early arrangements

In short, the demise of the folksong was surely reported far too early, though this isn't to decry the efforts of VW, Holst, Sharp, Grainger etc: I don't doubt they saved a lot of music that would otherwise have vanished.

[Alison]

ITo return to the question - no, I do not find Britten's setting of O Waly Waly at all disappointing. I dug it out and listened to it just now. The piano part is no mere accompaniment to the song: it is also a commentary, and a very telling one. The rocking motion is redolent of oars and the lapping of water, whilst the harmonies reflect the emptiness and bitter disappointment conveyed by the words, as well as providing an ebb and flow of tension to give extra shape to the piece.

Some excellent answers here, thank you. A fine description of the piano part of BB's Waly from VC,
sufficient for me to take stock of its virtues once more.

Yes, my reaction did follow a late night listen to Monday's lunchtime concert. As with Mary, I find the performance
better on returning to it.

I certainly dont agree with Simon that the song is 'ridiculous, naff, boring, monotonous, moronic' etc. On the contrary, I find it
stirring, deep, unfathomable, almost hypnotic; the one I always look forward to when a batch of the folksongs
is being performed.