British Choral Music

[edashtav]

SNAP!

GBS was an entertaining writer on Music, but not as consistently reliable: he didn't like Brahms, either, the twonk!

But this Hyperion CD was reviewed by the Gramophone and its writer started:
Sad to say, Shaw appears to have been right. One may wonder, by way of mitigation, whether the ‘language’ existed in music to make an adequate treatment possible in 1892; but the creator of Amfortas might have created a Job, and the composer of Act 2 of Fidelio might have coped with the progression from sickness-unto-death to happy-ever-after. The fact is that Parry’s Job is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of work, and it shouldn’t be.

However, I once heard Adrian Boult conduct the work and his performance impressed me. There's more work to be done to rescue Job from the naysayers, I fear.

[EdgeleyRob]

But this Hyperion CD was reviewed by the Gramophone and its writer started:
Sad to say, Shaw appears to have been right. One may wonder, by way of mitigation, whether the ‘language’ existed in music to make an adequate treatment possible in 1892; but the creator of Amfortas might have created a Job, and the composer of Act 2 of Fidelio might have coped with the progression from sickness-unto-death to happy-ever-after. The fact is that Parry’s Job is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of work, and it shouldn’t be.

However, I once heard Adrian Boult conduct the work and his performance impressed me. There's more work to be done to rescue Job from the naysayers, I fear.

Probably no one willing to do the rescuing ed.

[BBMmk2]

Probably no one willing to do the rescuing ed.

Chandos or Naxos maybe?

[EdgeleyRob]

Chandos or Naxos maybe?

I'm happy with the Hyperion recording BBM,but I'm not a naysayer.

[Pabmusic]

While we're on Parry, Elgar was impressed by the 1907 Symphonic Poem A Vision of Life for soprano, bass, chorus & orchestra (I say! That "vision" of Parry's is fine stuff and the poem is literature: you must hear it some day!). It's Parry's own words, very much a humanist work (as a counter to Elgar's enthusiasm, perhaps, Bernard Benoliel writes that the libretto "reads like rejected lines from Goethe's Faust, Nietsche's Zarathustra and Hardy's The Dynasts").

It's the last of his 'Ethical Canatas' (War & Peace, Voces Clamatium, The Love That Casteth Out All Fear, and The Soul's Ransom being the others). The Soul's Ransom has been recorded: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Parry-Invoca...ouls%27+ransom).

[Pabmusic]

Also, the completist in me has to mention three pieces by George Butterworth that have not been recorded. Two are straightforward unaccompanied folk-song settings, comparable to many by RVW: On Christmas Night (an attractive variant of 'On Christmas Night All Christians Sing') and We Get Up In The Morn (male voices - a harvest song).

The third is a little more substantial: In The Highlands, a setting of R L Stevenson for female voices & piano. It is original music, lasting about 4' 30", and it begins with a truly uncanny pre-echo of Rod Stewart's Sailing.

[BBMmk2]

Thanks for that Pabs! The other composer I was thinking of is Bantock. I am sure there are some gems in his oeuvre, that are begging to be aired?

[edashtav]

Granville Bantock - the British Composer with the Largest Mortar and Pestle?

Thanks for that Pabs! The other composer I was thinking of is Bantock. I am sure there are some gems in his oeuvre, that are begging to be aired?

Granville Bantock was prolific and uncritical. I spent three years whilst at the University of Birmingham studying a mass of his scores in the vaults of the old Central Birmingham Library.

His music contains everything he had heard as well as everything that he imagined. Bleeding chunks of incompatible composers are forced into unnatural intimacy and their lack of chemistry is there for all to hear. The sublime and the ridiculous collide. I except certain short pieces written in white-hot haste - such as "Sea Reivers"; they rush by before the arrival of incompatible elements. So many of Bantock's Choral works e.g. Omar Khayyam are gargantuan, a quality that showcases their incongruities. As long as his scores remain unplayed, Bantock will remain a white-hot hope for For3 boarders. Of course, they'll be forever a delight to the well-versed who love to play "spot the influence" as their CDs spin.

[mercia]

on my granny's old upright piano in the front parlour, with its foldaway candle-holders (!), sat the Novello vocal scores to Messiah, The Crucifixion, Elijah and Olivet To Calvary. Is that Maunder still performed ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

on my granny's old upright piano in the front parlour, with its foldaway candle-holders (!), sat the Novello vocal scores to Messiah, The Crucifixion, Elijah and Olivet To Calvary.

Not all at the same time, I presume, mercs? In the lovely sepia and brown "Novello's Original Octavo Edition"? I still have some of those - and (posh!) an Elijah in the burgandy cloth cover.

Is that Maunder still performed ?

Very rarely - not as much as The Crucifixion, in my experience - I occasionally see adverts for a performance somewhere. Never heard it, myself - and only became aware of its existence in the first place because of seeing that Novello vs so many times in second-hand bookshops.

There used also to be a piano with candle holders in one of the practice rooms in the old Music Department (on Cromer Terrace) of the University of Leeds. Made very good ashtrays!

[mercia]

In the lovely sepia and brown "Novello's Original Octavo Edition"?

yes, they're the ones. And were they all edited by a Mr Pratt ? perhaps I'm making that up.

[Suffolkcoastal]

One of the local organists/choir masters in Lowestoft used to alternate the Stainer and Maunder at each Eastertime, but not sure if this has been done since the 1990s. The Maunder is rather inferior to the Stainer and also rather too sentimental in places.

[Suffolkcoastal]

yes, they're the ones. And were they all edited by a Mr Pratt ? perhaps I'm making that up.

You mean Ebenezer Prout mercia I think. He was a composer in his own right, I have a Symphony by him somewhere and I think its on youtube still.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You mean Ebenezer Prout mercia I think. He was a composer in his own right, I have a Symphony by him somewhere and I think its on youtube still.

Yes - he certainly edited the Handel scores - often "correcting" the composer's "faulty diction" in English: evidently never having heard any Northerners who pronounce "surely" as three syllables as a matter of course!

Wonderful name, isn't it: Ebeneezer Prout. Makes you realise that Dickens didn't exaggerate too much when inventing his characters' names!

[mercia]

Ebenezer Prout mercia I think.

oh yes. "O Ebenezer Prout, you're looking very stout" sung to the fugue theme of BWV 542