Williams, Grace (1906-1977)

[Lat-Literal]

Underrated - even though she is considered "one of the first professional Welsh composers of the twentieth-century to attain significant national recognition, and many of her remarkably distinctive pieces are directly inspired by Wales and its culture". The excellent "Penillion" would be the obvious selection but almost everything I have heard by her on the Lyrita CD and elsewhere combines the unusual and the accessible. Consequently, it has a modern freshness - http://discoverwelshmusic.com/composers/grace-williams/

The Dancers - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mELm5IgLx4w

[EdgeleyRob]

Oh yes Lat.
Pupil of uncle Ralph.
What a marvellous piece the big 2nd Symphony is,music somewhat at odds with the cover cd image of the composer I think.

http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2002/Jun02/Grace_Williams.htm

[Lat-Literal]

Oh yes Lat.
Pupil of uncle Ralph.
What a marvellous piece the big 2nd Symphony is,music somewhat at odds with the cover cd image of the composer I think.

http://www.musicweb-international.co...e_Williams.htm

That symphony was revised at the end of her life, two decades after it was composed. Consequently it could be considered to be one of her final works. Its origins are in the period when she had settled back in Barry, having found London not to her taste. Actually it had made her ill - and that move was wholly for the good artistically because it was then that she found her distinctive voice. It would be too easy to place her in the category of late romantic just because she had the backing of RVW. As the music-web article implies, he had supported Williams and Maconchy - his favourites - in their decision to form a core group with Dorothy Gow and Imogen Holst . It was Williams's "Fantasia on Welsh Nursery Tunes" in 1941 that had been popular with the public. While brilliant in its way, it was slight in terms of what was to come. There was an appreciation of Mahler although she didn't like him at first and a part of him was in her compositions. But she also had an ear for Bartok and Shostakovich, among others, and in the 1960s was even investigating electronic music.

I hear the sea in almost all of her music. Occasionally it is calm. Rarely is it turbulent but you wouldn't want to sail a boat on most of it. Its colours are often more a deep dark green and violet than a cliched light blue. Some talk about her "blend". I know what they mean in how she could be instinctively if tunefully slightly discordant. It was Imogen Holst who said something along the lines that she stood out as being seriously single-minded and seeming to live and breathe music rather than simply as some others did work on it. It was as if music was in her. But I feel that in the longer pieces the external influences tend to be separate. That is true of how the composers who can be perceived are in different parts of the second symphony and of the manner in which folk song can appear as well as being weaved. It is also true of the magnus opus "Missa Cambrensis", another very late work. That opus, which is really wonderful, was performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales in March 2016 - https://www.theguardian.com/music/20...illiams-bbcnow.

The review mentions "the Welsh element" and clearly that is always a key part of it too. That there is a "Carillon" - which I love - and penillions alongside "Sea Sketches" etc underpin it and it is also, I think, in the first symphony, another of my favourite pieces by her. I think she is as much Welsh as she is British if not more so. Maconchy was on similar lines for Ireland. Whether that counted against her I can't say. Until recently, she was not served well by the record industry, nor was she successful with the Proms. In fact, here is a quiz question. Which British woman composer has had the most Prom performances? The answer is the English Teresa Clotilde del Riego, albeit of Spanish origins. Would it have been different had Williams composed until 90 rather than dying as she did as 70? Critics vary in opinion - I have seen one grumpy 2 out of 5 stars given to her music but I have also seen several references to her being the great unsung 20th Century British female composer. Of one thing I am certain. The combination of the revised second symphony, "Missa Cambrensis" and "Fairest of Stars" written in 1973 is a significant statement that she peaked in that decade with the possibility that the ascendancy could have continued.

[ardcarp]

Violinist Madeleine Mitchell featured on Woman's Hour this week, playing (a tiny bit) and talking about (mainly...it is Radio 4) Grace Williams. She has made an 'album' of some of Grace Williams' hitherto unpublished work.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002r5z

...about 24 mins from start.

Great that WH included this feature, especially as I suspect it wasn't in the presenter's sphere of interest.

PS I guess this is the CD https://www.prestomusic.com/classica...-chamber-music