Classical Collection programme notes
by Rick Birley
Classical collection – from 2pm in the County Museum, Dorchester
Five concerts starting on the hour, every hour
At 2pm:
Spanish folksongs
Jenny Curiel (violin solo) with the Great Western Ensemble
This full-length work was composed recently by Rick Birley especially for this festival, and for Jenny Curiel. It is cast in a large single movement form rather like a violin concerto with a virtuoso part for the soloist, and is based on a number of Spanish folk songs as well as some pastiche folk song-like themes. It is not simply a group of tunes following each other like a medley, but a sequence cemented together with substantial portions of free composition based upon the melodies. At the end there is a long coda [when the lower brass instruments are heard for the first time] drawing upon and combining themes heard much earlier.
Dorset Rhapsody
Julie Trevett (soloist) with the Great Western Ensemble
Composed originally by Rick Birley in February of the year 2000 to celebrate the millennium to give a Weymouth College ensemble the chance to accompany Julie Trevett in a new saxophone Rhapsody. She doubles on soprano and alto saxophones. The work is in one movement divided into sections: a lengthy slow introduction leads to the first of two fast sections in between which is a gentle slow section whose theme is based on a Welsh folk tune “Titroom, tatroom” -- not Dorset at all despite the name of the Rhapsody! In the middle of the final fast section there is a short reminder of the opening slow introduction before the brilliant ending. The original concert in 2000 was a celebration not just of the millennium, but of the centenaries of Gershwin and Duke Ellington (near enough anyway!), and perhaps with prescience it was one of the last big concerts at Weymouth College before the breakup of the music department as Rick had set up in 1985.
Four Piece Suite – divertimento for two pianos
Richard Rodney Bennett
Two pianos: Richard Hall and Heather Reed
This work was first performed by the composer and Susan Bradshaw in a BBC Broadcast, and in public in Sydney, Australia, in 1975. It was later used for a ballet [1976]. It is dedicated to André Previn, no mean jazz pianist himself….
1. Samba triste
2. Country blues
3. Ragtime waltz
4. Finale
Spoon River
Percy Grainger
Two pianos: Richard Hall and Heather Reed
Richard Hall will introduce this music
At 3pm:
St Osmunds Singers & Harmony Club
Directed by Ray Pontin and Lemon Otter
Programme to be announced on the day
Slow movement from Sonata [Nocturne]
Constant Lambert
Solo piano: Duncan Honeybourne
Duncan will introduce this music himself
From the Gershwin songbook: 'Liza' – 'Who Cares?' – 'I Got Rhythm'
Solo piano: Duncan Honeybourne
Astonishingly, Gershwin actually wrote down only a fairly small amount of what you could call proper piano music – three Preludes, half a dozen miscellaneous pieces, and in 1932 Simon & Schuster published the handsome songbook from which these three pieces come. He was an astonishingly gifted pianist, and his powers of improvisation meant that he never played his songs the same way twice. He delighted in paying his songs at parties, composing numerous variations upon them, and indulging “the desire for complication and variety that every composer feels when he manipulates the same material over and over again” as the composer himself put it. The songbook collection only features the choruses, and never the verses. The writing is very carefully considered, a distillation by Gershwin of his improvising techniques honed over many years. As a set these pieces can be compared to, for example, the Chopin Preludes, and we can only speculate what music he might have written if he had not died of a brain tumour in 1937 aged only 38.
At 4pm:
Funked-up Bach - first movement of the D minor Clavier Concerto re-composed
Two pianos: Kirsty Barry andDuncan Honeybourne
Double bass: Flora Lucas
Brushes: Matt Thurtell
Ever since I studied this work at university I have been struck by its singularity and intrigued at its metamorphosis from an anonymous baroque concerto, probably for violin, into an incredibly dynamic keyboard concerto wrought with such skill by the great master himself, J.S.Bach. Given the borrowing [a.k.a. plagiarising] that was rampant in his day, composers using each other's and their own work in a commendably recycling fashion, even transforming a light and frivolous piece of secular music into something religious, deep and serious, I have not felt in the slightest bit awkward about rewriting it yet again. In the tradition, but certainly not the style, of Jaques Loussier, I have transformed Bach's music into a jazz idiom. I like to think that the old boy himself, grumpy though he was, might have afforded himself a wry smile if he had been able to hear what I have done. Today we hear just the first movement in its first performance, but both the other movements are almost finished. It has been suggested that Vivaldi might have written the original work, but unless Bach has utterly recomposed the music, it is far too harmonically adventurous for that composer. But never mind its authorship, because Bach made the work utterly his own. I hope that I have held true to his original composition whilst offering a twenty-first century metamorphosis.
Madrigal Suite
Great Western Ensemble
There is nobody I know who is not bewitched by the magic of the Renaissance Madrigal. In the hands of a skilled composer in Elizabethan England the frivolous manages to attain an enormous range of expression, and in England at this time in particular there was a glut of wonderful exponents of this contrapuntal art. I chose five varied madrigals to orchestrate, three from England, one from France and one from Italy. The contrasting moods of each offer in this unique arrangement a wonderful narrative of madrigal writing technique. The first is a very popular piece with choirs, Sweet Suffolk Owl by Thomas Vautor, with its musical play on the words and its tricks of timing and subtle changes of metre. There follows an extraordinary piece by Monteverdi, originally a dramatic lament, the only surviving fragment of his opera Arianna. Arianna, having helped Theseus escape from the Labyrinth is abandoned on a Greek island (Naxos). This lament is her piteous song, reworked in five voices as a polyphonic madrigal. The central piece is a delightful little madrigal by Thomas Weelkes, not a very well known one (“on the plains fairy trains….”), but one which transcribes particularly well into instrumental music. In the world of music there are many composers known as ‘one-work composers’ even if they were actually quite prolific writers, and the next madrigal is a prime example: Il Est Bel Et Bon was written by the French composer Pierre Passereau, about whom very little is known. He was known to have been a church singer, but there is, sadly, only one motet surviving. Only some chansons survive of which this onomatopoeic example is the most popular. The writing is very light and trippy, in the style of a patter song, with sudden dynamic contrasts. To complete the set there is a gloriously rich madrigal by perhaps the greatest composer of his age, Orlando Gibbons: ‘Oh That The Learned Poets’. The words of this madrigal chide poets for writing endlessly about lovesick themes when it would be possible to express higher thoughts: “for if their music please in earthly things, how would it sound if strung with heavenly strings?” The powerful climax expressing this high aspiration culminates in a fantastic cadence, the powerful counterpoint and the dissonant suspensions coming triumphantly to rest on the final chord.
The Flying Squad
Directed by Rick Birley
The origins of this barbershop quartet go back to Weymouth College days with the formation of the group, now somewhat older, that you see before you reunited. In addition are many members of the Occasional Singers – all keen to join in this individual and eclectic musical genre, including undisguised ladies into this erstwhile exclusively male musical preserve. The name Flying Squad derives from cockney rhyme, 'Sweeney Todd' (the Demon Barber). In particular we worked at some of the classics found in the Yale song book, a fabulous collection of spirituals, nonsense songs, love songs, folk songs, shanties and many more. What we are singing today will be announced on the day.
The Occasional Singers
Directed by Richard Hall/Rick Birley
Most of the time this choir sings serious music, so an occasion like today is a welcome departure into lighter moods. The choir was formed in the early 1990s expressly to perform music composed by Rick Birley, but as well as premiering many of his works the choir has performed a vast number of other music, sacred and secular, large and small scale. As well as the mainstream classics, the repertoire has included many less well-known works. Later this year, on March 20, the choir will sing for the fourth time the Rachmaninov Vespers, which along with the Mass of St John Chrysostom [another mighty Russian liturgical masterpieces by Rachmaninov], was introduced into this town for the first time by the Occasional Singers. There is little in the world of music to match the magic of people coming together to make music with their voices. It is all about creating a single instrument out of many individuals, a homogenous sound, and this collective magic is here once more, today in relaxed mood.
Three Hungarian Folksongs
Matyas Seiber
Directed by Rick Birley
'The Handsome Butcher'
'Apple, Apple'
[reprise of 'The Handsome Butcher']
'The Old Woman'
Kings of Swing
Arr. Alan Simmons
Directed by Richard Hall
Piano: Heather Reed
from Five West Country Folk Songs
Arr. Nicholas Marshall
Directed by Richard Hall
'The Forsaken Maiden'
'The Owl'
'The Saucy Sailor'
Two part-songs by Vaughan Williams
Directed by Richard Hall
The Turtle Dove
Solo tenor: Gareth Jones
Linden Lea
At 5pm:
Chansons de France
Matthew Ward (solo violin) with the Great Western Ensemble
This is a collection of wonderful little French folksongs strung together in a single movement and receiving its first performance today (writes Rick Birley). Actually each individual folksong was arranged for piano duet several years ago, but in the creation of the work being performed today there is much new composition. Weymouth is twinned with Louviers [just as Dorchester is with Bayeux] and back in the mid 1980s I took the first group of Weymouth College students -- all music students -- in a battered Ford transit van for the first of many cultural exchanges with the students of the Lycée in Louviers. We had quite an adventure, including breaking down on the outskirts of Paris, and many lifelong friendships were formed from this time. I was given hospitality by the English teacher, Ghislaine Lecavelier, who lived in Rouen which was a good 40 minutes away even at the speed she drove each evening after school. She still lives in this magnificent city and we still visit her. It was in 1990 that I bought for my daughter a little hardback book of French folksongs. Ghislaine, the English teacher, was learning the piano as was one of her friends from school, which prompted me to set these folksongs for piano duet to give to her.
Although cast in one movement, these are the folksongs I have set:
1. V’là l’bon vent
2. Il était un petit navire
3. La Yoyette
4. La légende de St Nicholas
5. La rose au boué
6. Colchiques
7. Gentil coqu’licot
8. Sur la route de Louviers
I have often asked people I meet in France if they know the songs and nearly everybody knows all of them! They are as iconic as our well-known folksongs and nursery rhymes are for us. And I still haven’t given back the little book I bought my daughter Sam…
English Folk Song Suite
Great Western Ensemble
This is a group of English folk songs put together as a suite, the sources being by and large from the Dorset Book of Folk Songs, edited by Joan Brocklebank and Biddie Kindersley in 1948. The first movement however, “I'm Seventeen Come Sunday”, was drawn from the collection made by Cecil Sharp. It is instantly recognisable and is English in its character to the core. It has been set by many composers and I did not want to be left out.... Just as Grainger made numerous versions of his arrangements for any number of instruments, so I have set this and many other English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish folksongs in a variety of instrumentations -- piano solo, duet, two pianos, voices, guitar duo, orchestral. The opportunity afforded by the formation of the Great Western Ensemble today was too good to miss, so these are yet more first performances in this form.
The slow second movement “I will Give my Love an Apple” is a beautiful plaintive lovesong with a characterful rising motif (a minor 7th) at the end of each phrase.
In the third movement, the Ploughboy, I incorporated all three songs to do with ploughing from the Dorset Book of Folk Songs: The Ploughboy, The Bonny Labouring Boy, & Cupid the Ploughboy. This composition began as a doodle in an idle moment but quickly became quite a substantial piece as the possibilities of juxtaposing these three wonderful melodies became apparent. It is a very vivacious movement, representing the physical nature of the hard work involved in turning the soil, and at the end a breathlessly fast coda as a labourer heads for home and family, followed by a night out with his friends. The chief theme, ‘The Ploughboy’, I have radically re-shaped whilst just maintaining its identity. The theme has a new rhythm and the original minor tonality is replaced by the major, with raised fourths [a Lydian feel] as well as the original flattened seventh.
Needless to say, my version is very hard to play.… Later the theme appears in something closer to its original form, over a softer introduction of the second theme ‘The Bonny Labouring Boy’ [clarinet].
And towards the end of the piece the third theme ‘Cupid the Ploughboy’ is heard first as a fragment by the horn, then fully on the trumpet. This leads directly to the furious coda.
The fourth song, 'Dance to your Daddy', is usually associated with the north-east, and the fishing industry. Rather mischievously, there being no written sources in the oral tradition of folk song, I could argue equally persuasively that this tune might have been sung at Lyme Regis by returning fishermen to their little children! English folk songs only tend to be placed definitively where they happen to have been discovered first. There is no way of knowing from where many of them originated. So, our ploughboy, having touched base briefly to see his family, heads for the local hostelry, to partake of the 'Barley Mow' (the fifth movement). This is a drinking song: “here’s a good health to the Barley Mow….” with a repeated cumulative refrain asking how big a receptacle you can drink from. What starts as a quarter pint grows to a half pint, a pint, a quart, a gallon, a flagon, a firkin, a barrel, a hogshead, a butt and finally a tun…. and presumably the assembled company become steadily more inebriated. At this point I have included a magnificent love song 'My Rose in June', played regally by the brass, as our now nearly legless ploughboy has shed his inhibitions and imbibed enough dutch courage to declare his love for one of the lasses.
If there was a sixth folksong it would have to express his morning-after hangover!
Seven folksong ballads
Rhona McGregor (soprano) with the Great Western Ensemble
This set of original compositions was composed in May 1995 for Soprano & String Quartet. For this music festival I re-scored the accompaniment for the Great Western Ensemble. These are extracts from the original programme notes:
The Seven Folksong Ballads owe their existence to a casual, a verbal promise to “write something” for a charity concert. I thought no more of it, until I saw a bill advertising the forthcoming concert, with my name amongst the composers! I had always wanted to set some folksongs for string quartet and voice, and here was my opportunity. But in fact, except for no.1 and the lament at the end of no.4, all the music is newly composed:
The Old Man from Lee - this freely arranged melody was originally sung by an unnamed singer from Coggeshall (Essex) in this version. The theme is a very common one in folklore, and widespread…..
I Wish, I Wish - this is a set song about betrayal of love; the singer has been loved and left for a younger woman. There is the common “apron-low”, “apron-high” motif - the maid’s slim belly and the mother-to-be’s rounded form.
The Loyal Lover - this is a song of love and devotion for a lover who is away at sea. While the cello’s ostinato represents some (imaginary) mundane task being undertaken, the rich imagery of the poem is reflected in the first violin’s music.
Bonnie George Campbell rides out on his mount, but only his “guid horse” comes home. The Scottish dialect is mostly understandable, but here are some translations for some of the harder phrases: “out came his mother dear greeting fu’ sair” (crying sorely); “And out cam his bonnie bride riving her hair” (tearing her hair); ” But toom (empty) cam his saddle to see”. At the end I have set a magnificent Scottish lament - Lady MacRobert’s Lament, sometimes known as The Flight of the Eaglets.
Rare Willie Drowned into Yarrow - verses alternate between a suspension of belief, and hard realisation of Rare Willie’s tragic fate.
The Unquiet Grave is a ghost story in verse/song. I have changed the words slightly to have the woman sitting on her lover's grave, rather than vice versa. She sits there for so long – twelve months and a day - that “the dead began to speak”…..
The Miller's Daughter is a saucy tale was a quite unexpected conclusion!
At 6pm:
Rhapsody in Blue
George Gershwin
Fiona Dalzell (piano solo) with the Great Western Ensemble
The genesis of this work was an item in New York Tribune on January 4, 1924, which read: “Among the members of the committee of judges who will pass on ‘ What is American Music?’ at the Paul Whiteman concert to be given at Aeolian Hall, Tuesday afternoon, February 12, will be Sergei Rachmaninov, Jascha Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist and Alma Gluck... This question of just what is American music has aroused a tremendous interest in music circles and Mr. Whiteman is receiving every phase of manuscript, from blues to symphonies. George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto...” Now Gershwin dimly remembered having discussed jazz composition in general and the possibility of a jazz concert sometime in the future with Whiteman, but here suddenly he found himself billed as a composer of a jazz concerto for a concert a mere five weeks away! Gershwin quickly got in touch and agreed to prepare a piano score only, with the orchestration being done by Whiteman's arranger, the experienced Ferde Grofé. And it was, famously, on a train to Boston that Gershwin, inspired by the steely rhythms of the carriage, and its ‘rattlety-bang’, “so often stimulating to a composer”, conceived the complete construction of the Rhapsody from beginning to end. Gershwin heard it “as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America -- of our vast melting pot, of our incomparable national pep, our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston, I had the definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.” The Rhapsody in Blue was the penultimate piece of the concert, and Gershwin had not yet written out in full the piano part, and improvised many sections. Whiteman had to wait for cues from Gershwin to bring the orchestra back in after solo passages. Aged just 25, George Gershwin became a national figure overnight.
An American in Paris
George Gershwin [arr. Rick Birley]
Great Western Ensemble
Gershwin completed the score of an American in Paris in 1928 whilst living in the city (the Hotel Majestic) and it was premiered in the Carnegie Hall. He intended it to be what he described as a rhapsodic ballet, attempting “to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris, as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street prices, and absorbs the French atmosphere.” “The Rhapsody is programmatic only in a general impressionistic way”. Amongst those who were privileged to see the score at this time was a young visitor called William Walton. One wonders how much of an influence this meeting with Gershwin was on his later compositional styles.
In rewriting this to make it possible to play with the Weymouth college orchestra back in the year 2000 I condensed the score into about half the length of the original, whilst making sure that all the best tunes were kept in. The overall form of the original has often been perceived as a little weak, but the sheer melodic vitality and rhythmic verve transcend any formal deficiencies. I hope my truncated version in turn does not creak at its formal seams, as the tremendous tunes set your feet tapping!
Michael Finnissy plays a selection of his Gershwin arrangements
Five concerts starting on the hour, every hour
At 2pm:
Spanish folksongs
Jenny Curiel (violin solo) with the Great Western Ensemble
This full-length work was composed recently by Rick Birley especially for this festival, and for Jenny Curiel. It is cast in a large single movement form rather like a violin concerto with a virtuoso part for the soloist, and is based on a number of Spanish folk songs as well as some pastiche folk song-like themes. It is not simply a group of tunes following each other like a medley, but a sequence cemented together with substantial portions of free composition based upon the melodies. At the end there is a long coda [when the lower brass instruments are heard for the first time] drawing upon and combining themes heard much earlier.
Dorset Rhapsody
Julie Trevett (soloist) with the Great Western Ensemble
Composed originally by Rick Birley in February of the year 2000 to celebrate the millennium to give a Weymouth College ensemble the chance to accompany Julie Trevett in a new saxophone Rhapsody. She doubles on soprano and alto saxophones. The work is in one movement divided into sections: a lengthy slow introduction leads to the first of two fast sections in between which is a gentle slow section whose theme is based on a Welsh folk tune “Titroom, tatroom” -- not Dorset at all despite the name of the Rhapsody! In the middle of the final fast section there is a short reminder of the opening slow introduction before the brilliant ending. The original concert in 2000 was a celebration not just of the millennium, but of the centenaries of Gershwin and Duke Ellington (near enough anyway!), and perhaps with prescience it was one of the last big concerts at Weymouth College before the breakup of the music department as Rick had set up in 1985.
Four Piece Suite – divertimento for two pianos
Richard Rodney Bennett
Two pianos: Richard Hall and Heather Reed
This work was first performed by the composer and Susan Bradshaw in a BBC Broadcast, and in public in Sydney, Australia, in 1975. It was later used for a ballet [1976]. It is dedicated to André Previn, no mean jazz pianist himself….
1. Samba triste
2. Country blues
3. Ragtime waltz
4. Finale
Spoon River
Percy Grainger
Two pianos: Richard Hall and Heather Reed
Richard Hall will introduce this music
At 3pm:
St Osmunds Singers & Harmony Club
Directed by Ray Pontin and Lemon Otter
Programme to be announced on the day
Slow movement from Sonata [Nocturne]
Constant Lambert
Solo piano: Duncan Honeybourne
Duncan will introduce this music himself
From the Gershwin songbook: 'Liza' – 'Who Cares?' – 'I Got Rhythm'
Solo piano: Duncan Honeybourne
Astonishingly, Gershwin actually wrote down only a fairly small amount of what you could call proper piano music – three Preludes, half a dozen miscellaneous pieces, and in 1932 Simon & Schuster published the handsome songbook from which these three pieces come. He was an astonishingly gifted pianist, and his powers of improvisation meant that he never played his songs the same way twice. He delighted in paying his songs at parties, composing numerous variations upon them, and indulging “the desire for complication and variety that every composer feels when he manipulates the same material over and over again” as the composer himself put it. The songbook collection only features the choruses, and never the verses. The writing is very carefully considered, a distillation by Gershwin of his improvising techniques honed over many years. As a set these pieces can be compared to, for example, the Chopin Preludes, and we can only speculate what music he might have written if he had not died of a brain tumour in 1937 aged only 38.
At 4pm:
Funked-up Bach - first movement of the D minor Clavier Concerto re-composed
Two pianos: Kirsty Barry andDuncan Honeybourne
Double bass: Flora Lucas
Brushes: Matt Thurtell
Ever since I studied this work at university I have been struck by its singularity and intrigued at its metamorphosis from an anonymous baroque concerto, probably for violin, into an incredibly dynamic keyboard concerto wrought with such skill by the great master himself, J.S.Bach. Given the borrowing [a.k.a. plagiarising] that was rampant in his day, composers using each other's and their own work in a commendably recycling fashion, even transforming a light and frivolous piece of secular music into something religious, deep and serious, I have not felt in the slightest bit awkward about rewriting it yet again. In the tradition, but certainly not the style, of Jaques Loussier, I have transformed Bach's music into a jazz idiom. I like to think that the old boy himself, grumpy though he was, might have afforded himself a wry smile if he had been able to hear what I have done. Today we hear just the first movement in its first performance, but both the other movements are almost finished. It has been suggested that Vivaldi might have written the original work, but unless Bach has utterly recomposed the music, it is far too harmonically adventurous for that composer. But never mind its authorship, because Bach made the work utterly his own. I hope that I have held true to his original composition whilst offering a twenty-first century metamorphosis.
Madrigal Suite
Great Western Ensemble
There is nobody I know who is not bewitched by the magic of the Renaissance Madrigal. In the hands of a skilled composer in Elizabethan England the frivolous manages to attain an enormous range of expression, and in England at this time in particular there was a glut of wonderful exponents of this contrapuntal art. I chose five varied madrigals to orchestrate, three from England, one from France and one from Italy. The contrasting moods of each offer in this unique arrangement a wonderful narrative of madrigal writing technique. The first is a very popular piece with choirs, Sweet Suffolk Owl by Thomas Vautor, with its musical play on the words and its tricks of timing and subtle changes of metre. There follows an extraordinary piece by Monteverdi, originally a dramatic lament, the only surviving fragment of his opera Arianna. Arianna, having helped Theseus escape from the Labyrinth is abandoned on a Greek island (Naxos). This lament is her piteous song, reworked in five voices as a polyphonic madrigal. The central piece is a delightful little madrigal by Thomas Weelkes, not a very well known one (“on the plains fairy trains….”), but one which transcribes particularly well into instrumental music. In the world of music there are many composers known as ‘one-work composers’ even if they were actually quite prolific writers, and the next madrigal is a prime example: Il Est Bel Et Bon was written by the French composer Pierre Passereau, about whom very little is known. He was known to have been a church singer, but there is, sadly, only one motet surviving. Only some chansons survive of which this onomatopoeic example is the most popular. The writing is very light and trippy, in the style of a patter song, with sudden dynamic contrasts. To complete the set there is a gloriously rich madrigal by perhaps the greatest composer of his age, Orlando Gibbons: ‘Oh That The Learned Poets’. The words of this madrigal chide poets for writing endlessly about lovesick themes when it would be possible to express higher thoughts: “for if their music please in earthly things, how would it sound if strung with heavenly strings?” The powerful climax expressing this high aspiration culminates in a fantastic cadence, the powerful counterpoint and the dissonant suspensions coming triumphantly to rest on the final chord.
The Flying Squad
Directed by Rick Birley
The origins of this barbershop quartet go back to Weymouth College days with the formation of the group, now somewhat older, that you see before you reunited. In addition are many members of the Occasional Singers – all keen to join in this individual and eclectic musical genre, including undisguised ladies into this erstwhile exclusively male musical preserve. The name Flying Squad derives from cockney rhyme, 'Sweeney Todd' (the Demon Barber). In particular we worked at some of the classics found in the Yale song book, a fabulous collection of spirituals, nonsense songs, love songs, folk songs, shanties and many more. What we are singing today will be announced on the day.
The Occasional Singers
Directed by Richard Hall/Rick Birley
Most of the time this choir sings serious music, so an occasion like today is a welcome departure into lighter moods. The choir was formed in the early 1990s expressly to perform music composed by Rick Birley, but as well as premiering many of his works the choir has performed a vast number of other music, sacred and secular, large and small scale. As well as the mainstream classics, the repertoire has included many less well-known works. Later this year, on March 20, the choir will sing for the fourth time the Rachmaninov Vespers, which along with the Mass of St John Chrysostom [another mighty Russian liturgical masterpieces by Rachmaninov], was introduced into this town for the first time by the Occasional Singers. There is little in the world of music to match the magic of people coming together to make music with their voices. It is all about creating a single instrument out of many individuals, a homogenous sound, and this collective magic is here once more, today in relaxed mood.
Three Hungarian Folksongs
Matyas Seiber
Directed by Rick Birley
'The Handsome Butcher'
'Apple, Apple'
[reprise of 'The Handsome Butcher']
'The Old Woman'
Kings of Swing
Arr. Alan Simmons
Directed by Richard Hall
Piano: Heather Reed
from Five West Country Folk Songs
Arr. Nicholas Marshall
Directed by Richard Hall
'The Forsaken Maiden'
'The Owl'
'The Saucy Sailor'
Two part-songs by Vaughan Williams
Directed by Richard Hall
The Turtle Dove
Solo tenor: Gareth Jones
Linden Lea
At 5pm:
Chansons de France
Matthew Ward (solo violin) with the Great Western Ensemble
This is a collection of wonderful little French folksongs strung together in a single movement and receiving its first performance today (writes Rick Birley). Actually each individual folksong was arranged for piano duet several years ago, but in the creation of the work being performed today there is much new composition. Weymouth is twinned with Louviers [just as Dorchester is with Bayeux] and back in the mid 1980s I took the first group of Weymouth College students -- all music students -- in a battered Ford transit van for the first of many cultural exchanges with the students of the Lycée in Louviers. We had quite an adventure, including breaking down on the outskirts of Paris, and many lifelong friendships were formed from this time. I was given hospitality by the English teacher, Ghislaine Lecavelier, who lived in Rouen which was a good 40 minutes away even at the speed she drove each evening after school. She still lives in this magnificent city and we still visit her. It was in 1990 that I bought for my daughter a little hardback book of French folksongs. Ghislaine, the English teacher, was learning the piano as was one of her friends from school, which prompted me to set these folksongs for piano duet to give to her.
Although cast in one movement, these are the folksongs I have set:
1. V’là l’bon vent
2. Il était un petit navire
3. La Yoyette
4. La légende de St Nicholas
5. La rose au boué
6. Colchiques
7. Gentil coqu’licot
8. Sur la route de Louviers
I have often asked people I meet in France if they know the songs and nearly everybody knows all of them! They are as iconic as our well-known folksongs and nursery rhymes are for us. And I still haven’t given back the little book I bought my daughter Sam…
English Folk Song Suite
Great Western Ensemble
This is a group of English folk songs put together as a suite, the sources being by and large from the Dorset Book of Folk Songs, edited by Joan Brocklebank and Biddie Kindersley in 1948. The first movement however, “I'm Seventeen Come Sunday”, was drawn from the collection made by Cecil Sharp. It is instantly recognisable and is English in its character to the core. It has been set by many composers and I did not want to be left out.... Just as Grainger made numerous versions of his arrangements for any number of instruments, so I have set this and many other English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish folksongs in a variety of instrumentations -- piano solo, duet, two pianos, voices, guitar duo, orchestral. The opportunity afforded by the formation of the Great Western Ensemble today was too good to miss, so these are yet more first performances in this form.
The slow second movement “I will Give my Love an Apple” is a beautiful plaintive lovesong with a characterful rising motif (a minor 7th) at the end of each phrase.
In the third movement, the Ploughboy, I incorporated all three songs to do with ploughing from the Dorset Book of Folk Songs: The Ploughboy, The Bonny Labouring Boy, & Cupid the Ploughboy. This composition began as a doodle in an idle moment but quickly became quite a substantial piece as the possibilities of juxtaposing these three wonderful melodies became apparent. It is a very vivacious movement, representing the physical nature of the hard work involved in turning the soil, and at the end a breathlessly fast coda as a labourer heads for home and family, followed by a night out with his friends. The chief theme, ‘The Ploughboy’, I have radically re-shaped whilst just maintaining its identity. The theme has a new rhythm and the original minor tonality is replaced by the major, with raised fourths [a Lydian feel] as well as the original flattened seventh.
Needless to say, my version is very hard to play.… Later the theme appears in something closer to its original form, over a softer introduction of the second theme ‘The Bonny Labouring Boy’ [clarinet].
And towards the end of the piece the third theme ‘Cupid the Ploughboy’ is heard first as a fragment by the horn, then fully on the trumpet. This leads directly to the furious coda.
The fourth song, 'Dance to your Daddy', is usually associated with the north-east, and the fishing industry. Rather mischievously, there being no written sources in the oral tradition of folk song, I could argue equally persuasively that this tune might have been sung at Lyme Regis by returning fishermen to their little children! English folk songs only tend to be placed definitively where they happen to have been discovered first. There is no way of knowing from where many of them originated. So, our ploughboy, having touched base briefly to see his family, heads for the local hostelry, to partake of the 'Barley Mow' (the fifth movement). This is a drinking song: “here’s a good health to the Barley Mow….” with a repeated cumulative refrain asking how big a receptacle you can drink from. What starts as a quarter pint grows to a half pint, a pint, a quart, a gallon, a flagon, a firkin, a barrel, a hogshead, a butt and finally a tun…. and presumably the assembled company become steadily more inebriated. At this point I have included a magnificent love song 'My Rose in June', played regally by the brass, as our now nearly legless ploughboy has shed his inhibitions and imbibed enough dutch courage to declare his love for one of the lasses.
If there was a sixth folksong it would have to express his morning-after hangover!
Seven folksong ballads
Rhona McGregor (soprano) with the Great Western Ensemble
This set of original compositions was composed in May 1995 for Soprano & String Quartet. For this music festival I re-scored the accompaniment for the Great Western Ensemble. These are extracts from the original programme notes:
The Seven Folksong Ballads owe their existence to a casual, a verbal promise to “write something” for a charity concert. I thought no more of it, until I saw a bill advertising the forthcoming concert, with my name amongst the composers! I had always wanted to set some folksongs for string quartet and voice, and here was my opportunity. But in fact, except for no.1 and the lament at the end of no.4, all the music is newly composed:
The Old Man from Lee - this freely arranged melody was originally sung by an unnamed singer from Coggeshall (Essex) in this version. The theme is a very common one in folklore, and widespread…..
I Wish, I Wish - this is a set song about betrayal of love; the singer has been loved and left for a younger woman. There is the common “apron-low”, “apron-high” motif - the maid’s slim belly and the mother-to-be’s rounded form.
The Loyal Lover - this is a song of love and devotion for a lover who is away at sea. While the cello’s ostinato represents some (imaginary) mundane task being undertaken, the rich imagery of the poem is reflected in the first violin’s music.
Bonnie George Campbell rides out on his mount, but only his “guid horse” comes home. The Scottish dialect is mostly understandable, but here are some translations for some of the harder phrases: “out came his mother dear greeting fu’ sair” (crying sorely); “And out cam his bonnie bride riving her hair” (tearing her hair); ” But toom (empty) cam his saddle to see”. At the end I have set a magnificent Scottish lament - Lady MacRobert’s Lament, sometimes known as The Flight of the Eaglets.
Rare Willie Drowned into Yarrow - verses alternate between a suspension of belief, and hard realisation of Rare Willie’s tragic fate.
The Unquiet Grave is a ghost story in verse/song. I have changed the words slightly to have the woman sitting on her lover's grave, rather than vice versa. She sits there for so long – twelve months and a day - that “the dead began to speak”…..
The Miller's Daughter is a saucy tale was a quite unexpected conclusion!
At 6pm:
Rhapsody in Blue
George Gershwin
Fiona Dalzell (piano solo) with the Great Western Ensemble
The genesis of this work was an item in New York Tribune on January 4, 1924, which read: “Among the members of the committee of judges who will pass on ‘ What is American Music?’ at the Paul Whiteman concert to be given at Aeolian Hall, Tuesday afternoon, February 12, will be Sergei Rachmaninov, Jascha Heifetz, Efrem Zimbalist and Alma Gluck... This question of just what is American music has aroused a tremendous interest in music circles and Mr. Whiteman is receiving every phase of manuscript, from blues to symphonies. George Gershwin is at work on a jazz concerto...” Now Gershwin dimly remembered having discussed jazz composition in general and the possibility of a jazz concert sometime in the future with Whiteman, but here suddenly he found himself billed as a composer of a jazz concerto for a concert a mere five weeks away! Gershwin quickly got in touch and agreed to prepare a piano score only, with the orchestration being done by Whiteman's arranger, the experienced Ferde Grofé. And it was, famously, on a train to Boston that Gershwin, inspired by the steely rhythms of the carriage, and its ‘rattlety-bang’, “so often stimulating to a composer”, conceived the complete construction of the Rhapsody from beginning to end. Gershwin heard it “as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America -- of our vast melting pot, of our incomparable national pep, our blues, our metropolitan madness. By the time I reached Boston, I had the definite plot of the piece, as distinguished from its actual substance.” The Rhapsody in Blue was the penultimate piece of the concert, and Gershwin had not yet written out in full the piano part, and improvised many sections. Whiteman had to wait for cues from Gershwin to bring the orchestra back in after solo passages. Aged just 25, George Gershwin became a national figure overnight.
An American in Paris
George Gershwin [arr. Rick Birley]
Great Western Ensemble
Gershwin completed the score of an American in Paris in 1928 whilst living in the city (the Hotel Majestic) and it was premiered in the Carnegie Hall. He intended it to be what he described as a rhapsodic ballet, attempting “to portray the impression of an American visitor in Paris, as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street prices, and absorbs the French atmosphere.” “The Rhapsody is programmatic only in a general impressionistic way”. Amongst those who were privileged to see the score at this time was a young visitor called William Walton. One wonders how much of an influence this meeting with Gershwin was on his later compositional styles.
In rewriting this to make it possible to play with the Weymouth college orchestra back in the year 2000 I condensed the score into about half the length of the original, whilst making sure that all the best tunes were kept in. The overall form of the original has often been perceived as a little weak, but the sheer melodic vitality and rhythmic verve transcend any formal deficiencies. I hope my truncated version in turn does not creak at its formal seams, as the tremendous tunes set your feet tapping!
Michael Finnissy plays a selection of his Gershwin arrangements