|
Orchestral Rhapsody: "A Shropshire
Lad"
George Butterworth (1885-1916)
George Butterworth was one of the most promising English composers of his
generation. He grew up in comfortable circumstances, studied at Eton and
Oxford then began to teach and compose and collect folk music. At the outbreak
of the First World War he immediately volunteered and was sent to the front
where he showed exceptional valor. In 1916 he was awarded the Military Cross,
and only a month later, after being recommended for a second M.C., was killed
leading a raid during the Battle of the Somme.
The Orchestral Rhapsody, a setting of poems by A.E. Housman, is a small-scale
masterpiece. Based primarily on one poem - "Loveliest of trees, the cherry
now/ Is hung with bloom along the bow...." - it captures the pastoral environment
and regretful sadness of Housmanšs words. The
understated orchestration begins with only hints at the main subject suggested
by the violas and clarinets. As the music develops, exchanges
between woodwinds and strings alternate with carefully fashioned climaxes until
the music returns to the tranquil landscape from which it grew. A solo violin
ascends above whispering strings; and the flute adds a gentle farewell.
Clarinet Concerto
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
British composer Gerald Finzi was born into an Italian family of Sephardic
Jews who settled in England in the 18th century. The branch that remained in
Italy ended the ancestral line in the Nazi death camps. Their plight was the
subject of the Victorio De Sica film "The Garden of the Finzi-Contini."
Finzi was reclusive and sensitive as a young man. In the early 1930's ,
with a strong interest in poetry, he wrote a number of songs that became
his most famous works set to texts by Thomas Hardy . When war broke out in
1939, though he was a pacifist and unsuited for combat duty, he worked in the
Ministry of War Transport for the duration. After the war he returned to
composing, and expanded from art song to orchestral and choral writing .
The Clarinet Concerto was composed in 1949. Finzišs style was unashamedly
tonal at a time when serialism and atonality were the standard. But this was
typical of a Britain that found musical sources in its own folk music.
Sea Pictures (Op. 37)
Edward Elgar (1857-1934)
Though Elgar had only small success with his early oratorios, the Enigma
Variations, premiered in the summer of 1899, brought him prominence; the
world was ready to hear more Elgar. He soon produced Sea Pictures with
for the five songs chosen from the works of five different poets.
The first sound in the "Sea Slumber Song" is a rise and fall in the
strings, a wave which recurs in later songs. These words are spoken by the sea,
lulling her "child' to sleep. In "Haven", set to a poem written by the
composeršs wife, sings of the transcendence of love over blind elemental
forces. In "Sabbath Morning at Sea", the song cycle's center, the text
by Elizabeth Barrett Browning carries the human heart far from harbor aboard a
lonely vessel. The voice contemplates first the contrast of untroubled sky and
turbulent sea, then God, who created both Sea and Man. "Where Corals Lie"
lures the singer away from mortal love to the sea beneath the waves as the
orchestra reflects undercurrents of emotion.
"The Swimmer" is a lurid picture of the damage done by the savage sea,
juxtaposed with a recalled past when the sea was a friendlier companion.
The text presents the singer with some cumbersome syllables, but Elgar himself
said that "It is better to set the best second-rate verse to music, for the most
immortal verse is music already." The poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, who in fact
took his own life, urges the swimmer to turn his back on the shore and swim into
a stormy sea. Elgar sends him out to embrace the "brave white horses" with a
noble Elgarian melody.
"La Calinda"
from "Koanga"
Frederick Delius (1862-1934)
Frederick Delius was born in Bradford, England. His father sent him as a
young man to be an orange grower in Florida. Though he derived great cultural
enrichment from his stay in the American South--his horizons broadened by
exposure to the sultry, sensuous and sometimes seamy environs of the
tropics--his agricultural endeavors failed. He later studied
composition at the Leipzig Conservatory, then persuaded his father to support
him in Paris. After sowing his wild oats, he met and married Jelka Rosen, an
artist who--happily for Delius--had a modest fortune, as his father stopped
supporting him. His work is marked by quiet reflection and a sense of the tragic
brevity of life and the elusiveness of its pleasures.
He has been called the last great apostle of romantic beauty in music.
Koanga, first performed in 1904, was a 3-act opera with a libretto based on a
tragic episode in George Washington Cable's The Grandissimes in which an
African prince is sold into slavery and transported to the American South.
La Calinda from Act II of the opera, is a dance thought to have originated
with natives of the Guinea Coast before the 13th century. It entered North
America from Africa, and indirectly from the West Indies with some accompanying
Spanish influence. It was a favorite of slaves who danced in Congo Square in
New Orleans and remained popular with their descendants after the Civil War.
La Calinda continues to enjoy popularity as a concert piece. The score was
arranged by Eric Fenby, who was Delius' amanuensis, as he was paralyzed, blind
and nearly helpless in the last years of his life.
Notes by Ginger Kuper
|