|
|
 |
|
 |
||
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
Contents:
DDD Total time = 72.10 - Recorded in July 1998 at Exeter College Chapel, Oxford "Give Peace in our Time, O Lord" 'The arts of war and peace' have always been among the great themes of literature. From the Old Testament and the epics of Homer and Virgil down to the writings of many nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors, these subjects emerge as leading pre-occupations of mankind. Emphasis varies from the drama of building and breaking nations to the individual heroism and suffering that inevitably accompanies war. Behind all of it lies the paradox of man's seemingly unstoppable propensity for war at variance with the deep human yearning for peace. Music does not preach or narrate so much as express emotion whose expression is beyond the power of words. At its most instinctively basic, this may be the 'trumpet's loud clangour' of Dryden, exciting us to arms more effectively than the cries of any recruiting sergeant. At its most personal, it may be the anguished music of Britten's War Requiem, which devastatingly confronts us with paradox by setting Wilfred Owen's individualistic poetry for two singers and chamber orchestra in the context of the universal Requiem Mass for large chorus and symphony orchestra. In earlier periods, musicians were often required to produce music for occasions of national thanksgiving following victory in war. The settings of Te Deum Laudamus by Handel, Haydn and Berlioz are all examples of this. None of these works, however, makes any statement about war as such; likewise Berlioz's Grande Messe des Morts, which was also written in response to a state commission. Writing at the time of the European battles of the late eighteenth century, Haydn added disturbing touches for trumpet and drums in two of his late settings of the Mass. These, however, cannot in either case be described as central to those compositions. It is really only in the twentieth century that composers, under the shadows of two global wars and many lesser conflicts, have matched writers in their treatment of war and peace. These subjects are avowed in works by composers as different as Schoenberg, Shostakovich and Messiaen. They are implicit, and sometimes understated, in works by many others, including Elgar and Vaughan Williams. The programme in this recording comprises items of church music composed between 1915 and 1998. Framing the anthems are the bugle calls for morning and evening: Last Post and Reveille. Their most famous use is throughout the British Isles on Armistice Day, 11th November, the annual commemoration of the end of the First World War. All the anthems recorded here are suitable for performance by a relatively small choir, with or without organ accompaniment. However, they differ greatly, not only in musical style but also in the literary texts which they employ. In so doing, they explore many facets of the main themes. Laurence Binyon's words are the most familiar of the texts represented here, uttered as they are at every formal Remembrance Sunday service or similar occasion. Douglas Guest's setting, composed in 1971 for Westminster Abbey, quite properly allows them to speak simply and clearly. Howells' Epiphany carol, composed during the last year of the Great War, has a poem by Frances Chesterton, which sees another aspect to the gifts of the Three Kings, terrible and sweet. Written at about the same time, Stanford's For lo, I raise up sets a text taken from the Book of Habakkuk: the prophet makes specific reference to the aggressor nation, 'whose might is his God', but contrasts this with the promise that 'the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the lord', a contrast vividly created in Stanford's colourful music. From a different sound world altogether comes the knife-edge minimalism of Arvo Pärt's setting of The Beatitudes, composed in 1990 and revised a year later. In the next piece, Psalm 90 sets man's transient concerns against the fact of his mortality and the enduring goodness of God. In his characteristic setting of these words, composed in 1921, Vaughan Williams places the words of the psalm, sung by a semi-chorus, against the familiar metrical version, 'O God, our help in ages past'. The St.Anne melody is then woven by the trumpet into the rich texture of the final section. Joubert's motet Libera Plebem is the first of three in the Pro Pace cycle, designed to be sung as a suite. Powerful chromatic counterpoint in the middle section contrasts with the bare fourths of the opening and of later cadential points. This medieval prayer for deliverance from plague is used as a parable for deliverance from universal destruction, a prospect that many saw as imminent after the explosion of the world's first atom bomb when the super-powers increasingly based their defence strategies on possession of the nuclear bomb. The poignancy of Kodály's Agnus Dei from his Missa Brevis arises from the juxtaposition of the semitonal movement with wider-ranging lines. The deeply pleading music for the sopranos at 'Dona nobis pacem' is musically linked to the 'Kyrie eleison' in the complete Mass. The Mass was first performed in 1945 in the basement of the Budapest Opera House, where Kodály and his wife had taken refuge for the last months of the War. Parry's motet My soul, there is a country was placed as the first of the six in his Songs of Farewell, written during the Great War and near the end of the composer's life; Henry Vaughan's poem is entitled Peace. The far country on Parry's horizon is brought closer in the Russian Kontakion of the Dead, sung here to a Kiev melody. This austere piece was published in The English Hymnal with a translation of the words by W.J. Birkbeck. These preserve the ancient Orthodox tradition of including Alleluias within a penitential text. At the Funeral Service of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey, 11th November 1920, exactly two years after the signing of the Armistice, this setting of the Kontakion was sung immediately after the Two Minutes' Silence at 11.00am. Philip Wilby's A Peace Prayer is a setting of the Italian version of Admonition XXVIII by St. Francis of Assisi. Francis' twenty-eight Admonitions are preserved in all the 13th century manuscripts of his writings; Thomas of Celano records that Francis wanted them written down and kept exactly as he had dictated them. They have been described as a Franciscan Sermon on the Mount, of which the climax is Dove è Amore. Wilby's setting was commissioned by Old Members of Lincoln College, Oxford, for the College's Chapel Choir. Scored for double choir with divisi, it is a most beautiful treatment, exploring the gentler edges of modern harmony, of this prayer of peace within ourselves. Similarly, in his Three Antiphons, John Tavener sets words from the Psalms and Isaiah to music that manages at once to be strikingly individual and yet of some immemorial tradition. These short movements were first sung by the Choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, London, at a service in 1995 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of war in Europe. Vaughan Williams turned to John Bunyan, a lifelong absorption, for the text of his opera The Pilgrim's Progress and of this motet, composed in 1941. The trumpets that sound for Mr. Valiant-for-Truth as he passes over to the other side are followed on this recording by the lone trumpet sounding the Reveille. The frame introduced by the Last Post at this recital's start is at last complete. The programme is further enriched by the inclusion of two organ pieces by Jean Langlais from Neuf Pièces. Chant Héroique was dedicated to the memory of Jehan Alain, a brilliant young composer who had been killed when defending Saumur in June 1940. Dr. Michael Nicholas Page revised 26.06.03 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sound Clip