Tag: Choral Music

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Manchester Collective x The Marian Consort: Wintering – Live Review

Thursday 27 November 2025

Stoller Hall, Manchester

****

Samantha Fernando’s new piece Wintering celebrates winter’s withdrawal from daily life

Wintering with Samantha Fernando © Mike Skelton

On an unseasonably warm winter’s night, Manchester Collective returned to their home city for the second leg of their Wintering tour. The ensemble’s co-artistic director, Jasmin Kent Rodgman, introduced the concert. She said that the Collective is a ‘shapeshifting ensemble’, tonight made up of a string quartet and a vocal quartet from the Marian Consort. This is what makes Manchester Collective unique: every concert features different and unusual music, there are varied and unusual ensembles, and the music-making is always of the highest quality. They have built up a level of trust with their audiences that means we will follow them, whatever they do.

‘Rather than resist fallow seasons of the year and our lives, we embrace them… we allow ourselves to rest and reflect.’

Jasmin Kent Rodgman

The title Wintering comes from the book by Katherine May, which inspired a new piece by Samantha Fernando. As Rodman said, ‘Rather than resist fallow seasons of the year and our lives, we embrace them… we allow ourselves to rest and reflect.’

Much of the music in the concert was notable for its reflective quality, and for the space between notes. (I like to scribble my thoughts during live performances for later use in writing these posts; I often had to stop writing last night during the intense silence of the pauses in the music). As Miles Davis said, the space between the notes is often as important as the notes themselves: ‘it’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.’

Manchester Collective and the Marian Consort. Image © Chris Payne

The concert began with excerpts from Prophetiae Sibyllarum by the sixteenth-century composer Orlande de Lassus. We heard more excerpts in the second half of the concert. The 12 motets set texts known as the Sibylline Oracles or Prophecies. The Sybils were pagan prophets or oracles who predicted the coming of Christ. Rory McCleery, founder and director of the Marian Consort, explained that, on the face of it, these pieces have little to do with winter, but that they are ‘seasonal prophecies’ that explore the coming of Jesus through his mother, Mary, and her state of mind.

McCleery also drew our attention to the ‘bold, pioneering, incredibly chromatic music’ of Lassus, and referenced the similarly chromatic music of other sixteenth-century composers like Cipriano de Rore and Vicente Lusitano, who has been described as the first published Black composer. The Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo also springs to mind.

The opening Prologue, the most chromatic section of all, was peppered with remarkable key changes. In 1574, Adrien le Roy, music publisher to King Charles IX of France, wrote to the composer to say that the King was ‘so ravished by it that I cannot describe it.’ This was our first chance to hear the four voices of the Consort singing a capella. Soprano Caroline Halls sang with a lovely, pure tone. Rory McCleery had a gorgeously fruity, powerful counter tenor voice. Will Wright sang with an ardent, lyrical tenor. Bass Jon Stainsby sang with a rich, warm tone. All four were excellent, both as solo singers and in ensemble. Their tuning was impeccable in the intricate Lassus pieces. The strings of the Collective played with minimal vibrato, suiting the Early Music style.

Rodgman introduced David Lang’s the national anthems as part of the concert’s self-reflective theme, describing not the pomp we might expect but pride in our community and also fear and uncertainty. Lang wrote that his original plan was to take ‘just one hopeful sentence’ from each of the world’s national anthems to create a larger text, but was shocked to find in almost every anthem there was,

‘A bloody, war-like, tragic core, in which we cover up our deep fears of losing our freedoms with waves of aggression and bravado’.

He wrote five pieces, which are a meditation on our insecurity about freedom. Last night we heard two of the pieces, our land our peace, which contains the deeply ironic line ‘we fight for our peace’, and later fame & glory, which contains the brutal line, ‘we will die before we are made slaves.’ In the first piece, the words, sung in unison at first, were split up with complete silence in the gaps. Jagged, impassioned harmonies were then offset against the solo bass. The strings were eerie and intense, at times icy, which suited the winter theme. The second piece featured a superb extended solo from Rory McCleery. The piece ended with anxious harmonics from the upper string and chattering viola.

Manchester Collective. Image © Chris Payne

The central point of the concert was Samantha Fernando’s Wintering, which was commissioned by Wigmore Hall in London and premiered there on 22 November. Fernando introduced her new work from the stage, saying that it felt unusual to be with people when she spent most of her time as a composer on her own. She chose chamber instrumentation as it felt intimate, but also to allow the singers’ words to cut through. At times, voices were treated as instruments or provided sound effects.

This remarkable piece began with eerie wind noises from the singers, and lovely, ambiguous wordless chords, discordant yet optimistic. Soprano Caroline Halls joined with a wordless, lamenting folk tune; other singers provided evocative vocal slides. Icy, spellbinding string chords described a bright but bitter winter landscape as the voices came into focus on the word ‘cold’. Fernando’s striking harmonies were full of deliciously painful false relations, a technique often heard in Renaissance polyphony, such as the Lassus pieces.

The most powerful and innovative of the six movements was the fourth, To Do: Do Less, which deservedly drew its own applause. The composer’s instructions in the score summed it up well,

This movement consists of a guided meditation (sung) and an internal monologue (spoken soprano)

Halls was perfect for the role of internal monologue, fretting about everyday concerns such as work meetings, a dental appointment, buying a birthday present, collecting a prescription, finding a babysitter and World Book Day costumes. There was a stunning moment in Fernando’s piece when the soprano suddenly joined the other singers on the words ‘back to the breath’; the meditation had briefly succeeded. Anyone who has tried to meditate will understand exactly the brutal battle to concentrate that Fernando describes here. Her tonal but often discordant language, evident throughout the work, perfectly expressed this inner conflict.

After the interval, there was a palette cleanser, a selection of movements from Jonathan Dove’s lively Out of Time for string quartet. This was a chance for the Manchester Collective quartet to shine, which they duly did. The Collective’s irrepressible co-founder, Rakhi Singh, was absent last night, but her colleagues performed with the brio, passion and precision that have become the Collective’s trademark. First violinist Sara Wolstenholme explained that this energetic and vibrant piece summed up the personality and the life-changing energy of the husband of the woman [Mrs Elizabeth Allsebrook], who commissioned it to celebrate the life of her late husband. Some moments recalled the music of John Adams, whose music was recently celebrated by The Collective in their Shaker Loops concert. The first movement was lively and spiky, the second was flowing and joyful, quietly ecstatic. The third began with a fizzing explosion and a bubbling theme as the music almost fell over itself with excitement.

The concert ended with a superb reworking of Andrzej Panufnik’s Song to the Virgin Mary, described by Rodgman at the start of the concert as expressing the composer’s ‘yearning for the religious folksong’ of his home in Poland. Panufnik wrote that he was inspired by memories of ‘the naive beauty of the religious folk art of Poland’, and by ‘the moving and powerful mediaeval Latin text of an anonymous Polish poet.’ The work takes a melodic theme, based on the pentatonic scale, which Panufnik described as ‘closely related to Polish folk music.’ The theme appears in all 12 keys as it passes through the voices.

Panufnik wrote two versions, the first for a cappella choir in 1964 and the second for string sextet (1987). The Collective drew on elements from both versions to create an extraordinary new hybrid that, in Wolstenholme’s words, was not how the composer envisaged it. In this context, the work felt like a continuation of the chromaticism and false relations we heard in the Lassus pieces earlier. Sometimes it was hard to tell which were voices and which were strings as they entwined each other. Beginning in near darkness with a solo soprano voice, the music gradually gained intensity, until by the end the performers were bathed in glowing light.

The Wintering Tour continues in Liverpool on 29 November, York on 3 December and Bristol on 5 December

Repertoire

Orlando di Lassus selections from Prophetiae Sibyllarum Motets
David Lang the national anthems, i. & iii
Samantha Fernando Wintering (new commission)
Jonathan Dove Out of Time, III–V.
Andrzej Panufnik Song to the Virgin Mary

Performers

MANCHESTER COLLECTIVE
Sara Wolstenholme Violin
Lily Whitehurst Violin
Alex Mitchell Viola
Peggy Nolan Cello

THE MARIAN CONSORT
Caroline Halls Soprano
Rory McCleery Alto
Will Wright Tenor
Jon Stainsby Bass

Read on…

Manchester Collective – Shaker Loops – Live Review
Manchester Classical 2025 Day Two – Live Review
Manchester Collective, Clark and Melanie Lane – REFRACTIONS – Live Review
Manchester Collective – Sirocco – Live Review
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A Visit to Thomas Kirche (St Thomas’s Church) in Leipzig, Home of the Music of JS Bach – Music Across the Generations and Across the Centuries

Saturday 17 May 2025

Thomas Kirche Leipzig
Thomas Kirche, Leipzig

In 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach left his job as Kapellmeister to Leopold, Prince of Anhalt-Köthen, and travelled with two carriages to Leipzig, where he was appointed Thomaskantor, director of church music.

On a Saturday afternoon, just over 300 years later, as a thunderstorm threatened, leading to a downpour of biblical proportions only a couple of hours later, musical and spiritual pilgrims queued to hear the music of JS Bach and others in a packed Thomas Kirche.

Part church service, part concert, this event included a short sermon, a congregational hymn, the Lord’s prayer, and prayers for those at war. The Thomanerchor (St. Thomas Choir of Leipzig), the world-famous boys’ choir, has been singing in Leipzig for over 800 years. They were joined by musicians from another world-famous cultural institution, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

Interior of Thomas Kirche

The church’s design means that the congregation or audience in the main body of the church can only hear the performers, not see them. The disembodied voices and instruments floated above us from behind.

“Halfway down the church, a woman held a baby, who looked up towards the musicians on the balcony, transfixed by the music. Near them stood an old man with a long white beard and flowing white hair, also looking up at the singers. He was as transfixed by the music as the baby, demonstrating music’s power across generations and centuries.“

This isn’t the place to review the event as it wasn’t a concert, more of an aesthetic and intellectual experience, and for some a spiritual one. It ended with a performance of the opening of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, one of the greatest works of Western civilisation.

One image that sticks in my mind is a human reaction to the Mass in B Minor. Halfway down the church, a woman held a baby, who looked up towards the musicians on the balcony, transfixed by the music. Near them stood an old man with a long white beard and flowing white hair, also looking up at the singers. He was as transfixed by the music as the baby, demonstrating music’s power across generations and centuries.

Statue of JS Bach, outside Thomas Kirche Leipzig

For a review of a performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass by Yale Schola Cantorum and Juilliard415 in Manchester, click here.

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The Bach Choir and the Philharmonia Orchestra -Britten’s War Requiem – Live Review

Wednesday 30 October 2024

Westminster Cathedral London

*****

A moving and passionate performance of Britten’s pacifist masterpiece

The Bach Choir perform Britten’s ‘War Requiem’ with The Philharmonia Orchestra at Westminster Cathedral, conducted by David Hill. Image © Andy Paradise

“My subject is War, and the pity of War.
The Poetry is in the pity…
All a poet can do today is warn.”

Preface to Wilfred Owen’ s Poems (1920), quoted by Britten on the title page of the score

Benjamin Britten’s classic recording of his War Requiem of 1962 was released by Decca in 1963 and has just been re-released in high definition/Dolby Atomos versions. The adult chorus on that version were the Bach Choir, who sang in last Wednesday evening’s superb concert at Westminster Cathedral in London.

In December 1963, Britten wrote in a letter to The Times that he had written the piece, ‘for a big reverberant acoustic, and that is where it sounds best.’ Westminster Cathedral was an appropriate setting; there was sufficient room for the performers to be separated according to Britten’s wishes. The small chamber orchestra that accompanied the two male soloists in settings of Wilfred Owen’s war poems were at the front, very near conductor David Hill. The soprano soloist, Elizabeth Watts was placed, symbolically, in the pulpit so that her liturgical incantations soared above the audience. The main orchestra and adult choir were in the middle, presenting excerpts from the Latin Mass in dramatic, often operatic style. Behind them, and completely hidden in the Apse (East End) of the Cathedral were the boys’ choirs and chamber organ, delivering plainsong-like excerpts from the Requiem Mass.

When the War Requiem was premiered, it was only 17 years from the end of World War II. And World War I, which took place over a century ago now, had ended just 44 years earlier. Britten wrote the solo parts for the German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, the English tenor Peter Pears and the Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya, to represent the reconciliation of nations that fought in WW II. According to the bitter sarcasm of Owen’s The Next War (used in the ‘Dies Irae’), ‘better men would come/ And greater wars’ would come after WWI, which was described at the time as the war to end all wars. In context, the ‘greater wars’ included WWII, but since that war ended there have been at least 25 conflicts according to the Imperial War Museum website, so the casting of soloists from three of the WWII countries has become less relevant with time. Last week, all the soloists were English – Elizabeth Watts (soprano), Andrew Staples (tenor) and Mark Stone (baritone). Ironically, Vishnevskaya wasn’t allowed by the Soviet authorities to perform at the premiere in 1962, although they did allow her to take part in his recording in January 1963. She was replaced by the British soprano Heather Harper.

Requiem Aeternam

The work began with the first statement of the Latin Requiem Mass, with bells that were so much like church bells that they could have been sounding the half hour in the cathedral itself. The precision and intensity of the adult choir was evident as they sang the opening ‘Requiem Aeternam’, marked pp (very soft) in the score. The Bach Choir’s attention to dynamics, under conductor David Hill, was stunning, rising to forte (loud) on the words ‘ex lux perpetua luceat eis’ (let everlasting light shine upon them] and down to pppp (incredibly soft) at the end of the movement.

This was the first opportunity to hear the boys’ choir, made up of the London Youth Junior Boys & Cambiata Boys Choirs, hidden from the audience until they appeared at the end of the concert for well-deserved applause, when it became apparent just how young some of them were. Their contribution throughout was robust and enthusiastic; they clearly relished Britten’s writing for children’s voices (see also the writing for the fairies in the recent Opera North production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

The movement also featured the first Owen poem, Anthem for Doomed Youth, sung by tenor Andrew Staples, who engaged the audience with his precise diction, sometimes sounding like the great Peter Pears, as in the moving final words, ‘And each slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.’ He was accompanied by a chamber orchestra of 12 players to the right of David Hill, who conducted the main orchestra and choir as well; in the premiere, Britten confined himself to conducting the chamber orchestra and the male soloists, leaving the rest to Meredith Davies.

Hill brought out the detail and intensity of the word-painting in the writing for chamber orchestra, with limpid textures, in what Katherine Richman in her programme note described as ‘a much more stark, often virtuoso, style’ than the deliberately more convention style of much of the writing for choir and main orchestra.

The movement ended with the choir singing the ‘Kyrie Eleison’ [lord have mercy upon us], using the ambiguous and unsettling tritone interval on the notes C and F#, with gorgeous waves of sound, perfectly balanced. The resolution from the anguished F# to the final, consonant chord of F major was spellbinding.

Dies Irae

The ‘Dies Irae’ was the longest movement at nearly half an hour. It began with an operatic chorus, Britten drawing on all his experience as a composer of ten operas by the time he wrote the War Requiem. There were strong parallels with Verdi’s Requiem, first performed in 1874, described by the German conductor Hans von Bülow as, ‘Verdi’s latest opera, in ecclesiastical dress.’ Mervyn Cooke wrote that Britten’s interest in the Requiem text,

“…sprang more from an awareness of its dramatic possibilities than from a keen interest in liturgical observance… [Britten’s] musical response to the Latin words bears all the hallmarks of the sophisticated musico-dramatic techniques he had developed as a composer of stage works.”

The opening featured superb articulation from the Bach Choir, rhythmic precision and intense concentration, evident on the singers’ faces. Joined by a rumbling bass drum, and splendid brass fanfares, the spatial effect in the Cathedral’s acoustic was formidable. Although there was bitter irony in the way Britten juxtaposed the Latin texts of organised religion with the English language texts, the effect of the music for the chorus was excitingly visceral, making the contrast even more bleak. Soprano Elizabeth Watts joined this movement, her voice soaring from the pulpit above the nave of the Cathedral. Her delivery was less histrionic than that of Vishnevskaya in Britten’s recording, but her voice was still declamatory and oracular, bringing out the full irony of the Latin text. Her majestic performance throughout the work was extraordinary.

Andrew Staples and Mark Stone
Andrew Staples and Mark Stone. Image © Andy Paradise

In contrast, baritone Mark Stone, heard here first in ‘Bugles sang‘, had a rich, warm, expressive voice, gentle, sparing in vibrato, with a bass timbre, sounding very human. There was perfect ensemble in his duet with tenor Andrew Staples on ‘Out there, we’ve walked quite friendly up to death’, stressing the camaraderie between soldiers from both sides in WWI. As the English poet and composer Ivor Gurney wrote,

“In the mind of all the English soldiers I have met there is absolutely no hate for the Germans, but a kind of brotherly though slightly contemptuous kindness – as to men who are going through a bad time as well as themselves.”

Letter from Ivor Gurney to Marion Scott 17 February 1917

The men of the choir were superbly drilled, singing as one voice in ‘Confutatis maledictis’ [when the damned are cast away], leading to the terrifying description of a ‘Great gun towering toward Heaven’, sung with superbly robust tone and diction by Mark Stone. A horrifyingly dramatic climactic return of the ‘Dies Irae’ theme led to a beautifully fragile rendition of Owen’s poem, Futility by Andrew Staples, and the choir’s intensely moving plea for eternal rest for the dead.

Offertorium

The ‘Offertorium’ is another deeply ironic juxtaposition of Latin text from the Requiem Mass with an Owen poem, The Parable of the Old Man and the Young. The Latin text promises that the Archangel Michael will bring the souls of the dead, ‘in lucem sanctam’ [into holy light], as God promised to ‘Abraham and his seed’. Owen’s poem is a shocking reversal of the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Rather than Abraham sacrificing a Ram as in the Biblical account, he instead sacrifices his son Isaac, and so slaughters half of the future generations, ‘half the seed of Europe, one by one.’

The boys’ choir began with a passionate prayer for delivery of the souls of the faithful ‘de poenis inferni’ [from the pains of hell]. Another Verdian sequence, operatically sung by the main choir led to a huge climax describing God’s promise to Abraham. The two male soloists took up Owen’s version of the story in a sweet-toned duet, with divine intervention brought by an angel calling Abraham from heaven to spare his son and sacrifice the ram instead. In Britten’s devastating coup de théâtre, the male soloists described the death of ‘half the seed of Europe’, whilst from afar the boys’ voices continued to offer ‘hostias et preces’ [sacrifices and prayers] to God in return for His promise to Abraham.

Wilfred Owen in uniform

Britten and Owen

Britten wrote the War Requiem to celebrate the re-consecration of Canterbury Cathedral in May 1962. The Cathedral had been bombed during WWII and, poignantly, the new Cathedral was built next to the ruins of the old.

Britten’s piece also combined old and new elements, the Latin text of the Roman Catholic Missa Pro Defunctis (Mass for the Dead) and poems from the WWI poet Wilfred Owen.

(Image: Wilfred Owen in uniform. Source: Wikimedia Commons)

Pacificism and Conscription

Britten was 25 and his partner Peter Pears was 29 when WWII broke out. All males between the ages of 18 and 41 were conscripted to fight in the war. Britten and Pears spent the early part of the war in North America, for several reasons including their conscientious objection to the war, but returned to England in 1942 to face tribunals exempting them from service. Pears was granted immediate exemption and Britten was successful on appeal.

It’s fascinating to compare Owen’s view of war. It’s easy to assume from his poetry that he must also have been a conscientious objector, but in fact he volunteered to fight and indeed was killed in the war. As Mervyn Cooke wrote in his book Britten War Requiem,

“Such is the emotive power of Owen’s anti-war poetry that it has become necessary to remind ourselves that he was not conscripted.”

Cooke illustrates in detail the progress of Owen’s battle with his conscience. In late 1914 he wrote The Ballad of Peace and War in which he said that ‘peace was passing sweet’, but ‘sweeter still and far more meet/To die in war for brothers’, a huge contrast to the later – and much more famous – poem Dulce et Decorum Est (written in 1917/18) which overturned the ‘old lie’ that it’s sweet and fitting to fight for one’s country. In late 1914 he wrote to his mother saying, ‘my life [as a poet] is worth more than my death to Englishmen’, ending with the anguished request, ‘Write immediately what I am to do.’ Six months later he wrote again saying, ‘I now do most intensely want to fight.’

Owen joined the Artists’ Rifles in October 1915 and the Manchester Regiment in June 1916, and in January 1917 he became a Second lieutenant in that regiment. He suffered concussion and ‘shell shock’, spending several months rehabilitating in Craiglockhart War Hospital, where he met another WWI poet, Siegfried Sassoon. He died in battle on 4 November 1918, only a week before the war ended.

Sanctus

There was more theatre, again superbly executed, in the ‘Sanctus’. Soprano Elizabeth Watts shone in the opening declamations, ‘Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus’ [Holy, holy, holy] and there was an astonishing moment when the choir built up to a remarkable climax, ‘freely chanting’ (as the score says) the words ‘Pleni sunt ceoli et terra gloria tua’ [Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.] This passage can be difficult to bring off, but the Bach handled it beautifully. Later in this section, Watts exhibited a warm, rich lower range, before soaring again to operatic high notes.

Mark Stone returned with a climax of a different kind, The End, Owen’s rumination on the horrors of WWI, which will never be assuaged. The formidable music for choir and orchestra was followed by the inward-looking intensity of the poetry, which Stone sang with a warm majesty, and the angular, modernist writing for chamber orchestra, as powerful in a different way as the drama of the ‘Sanctus’ section.

Agnus Dei

As Mervyn Cook points out, the short ‘Agnus Dei’ is the only movement in which, ‘the Owen poetry and liturgical texts are in complete accord’, the poetry describing, ‘the presence of Christ on the modern battlefield, sustaining bodily wounds to atone for the sins of mankind.’

The Rood Cross in Westminster Cathedral. Photograph: author’s own

The movement was made even more poignant by the presence of the Rood Cross in the Cathedral, a thirty foot high wooden image of Jesus, hanging above the choir. The text of the ‘Agnus Dei’ which described a Christ-like figure hanging above,

“One ever hangs where shelled roads part.
In this war He too lost a limb,
But His disciples hide apart;
And now the Soldiers bear with him.“

[Extract from ‘At a Calvary Near the Ancre’ by Wilfred Owen]

The ‘Agnus Dei’ expressed the central pacifist message of the work as a whole,

“But they who live the greater love
Lay down their life; they do not hate.”

[Ibid.]

The movement ended with the incredibly moving words, poignantly sung by Andrew Staples in a gorgeous head voice, ‘dona nobis pacem’, [grant us peace], the only time either of the male soloists sang in Latin. At Peter Pear’s suggestion, Britten replaced the original words of the Requiem Mass, ‘dona eis requiem’ [grant them rest], a significant change bearing in mind his pacifist views.

Libera Me

The closing ‘Libera Me’ reached another terrifying climax, beginning with ominous rumbling of thunderous drums, the choir singing the words, ‘Libera me, Domine, de morte aeterna’ [Deliver me, O Lord, from eternal death] with a doleful, mournful tone, beautifully controlled by conductor David Hill. The music reached a stunning climax, with superb orchestral playing. The sense of dread was heightened by Elizabeth Watts joining on the words, ‘Tremens factus sum ego’ [I am seized with fear], as if singing from the depths of hell. The ‘Dies Irae’ theme returned, and the choir’s plaintive plea for deliverance gradually died away.

A Strange Meeting underground

The final Owen poem set by Britten is Strange Meeting, describing the surreal underground meeting of an English soldier with a dead German soldier. Britten removed some important lines from Owen’s poem,

“And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground…“

By removing those lines, Britten removes the scene from Hell and specifically back into the trenches of WWI, taking us away from the intensely religious text of the Latin ‘Dies Irae’ and into the intensely personal. The English soldier is addressed by the dead German soldier in some of the most poignant and deeply ironic words ever written about war,

‘I am the enemy you killed, my friend.’

As Mervyn Cooke points out, Britten set the words ‘ strange friend’, sung by the English soldier, to the tritone interval, ‘which here suggests the paradox of companionship between hunter and hunted.’ When the German soldier replies, he sings with ‘perfect fourths [Cooke’s emphasis] which shape his melodic lines signifying his resignation to fate.’

The German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who fought in WWII and sang the part of the German soldier at the premiere, was moved to tears during the rehearsals. He wrote in his autobiography,

“…the first performance created an atmosphere of such intensity that by the end I was completely undone; I did not know where to hide my face. Dead friends and past suffering arose in my mind.”

The chamber orchestra played single held chords beneath the first part of the poem, creating a captivating atmosphere. Andrew Staples’ intensely rapt performance drew us in to the trench with him, but also into a world beyond time, beyond the specifics of that war and into the pity and futility of all wars, giving a warning to the future as the words in Owen’s Preface suggest.

Mark Stone’s warm-voiced, reassuring reply was profoundly moving and human. The key words, ‘I am the enemy you killed my friend’ (see above) were left unaccompanied, giving them greater resonance, as were the next few lines of poetry, punctuated by the precision-tooled anguish of the chords from the chamber orchestra.

David Hill. Image © Andy Paradise

The poem ended with a deep sense of resignation from the two male soloists, a very human yearning for sleep, ‘let us sleep now’ that contrasted with the more public, ceremonial expression of the Latin ‘in paradisum’, with the promise of eternal rest in Paradise, Elizabeth Watts soaring brilliantly above the massed forces. But again, as if from beyond the veil the ambiguous tritone-heavy music of the boys’ choir, the ‘Requiem aeternam’ with the bells of the opening section, reappeared.

In a very moving gesture, the Bach choir raised their scores to cover their faces at the end. Conductor David Hill kept silence for a short time to allow brief reflection on the moving and passionate performance of Britten’s pacifist masterpiece we had just heard, then smiled unassumingly as he turned to face the audience’s applause.

Performers

David Hill conductor
Elizabeth Watts soprano
Andrew Staples tenor
Mark Stone baritone
The Bach Choir
London Youth Junior Boys & Cambiata Boys Choir
Philharmonia Orchestra

Sources

Reed, Philip, Obituary: Meredith Davies: Conductor with a special passion for English music (The Guardian 30 March 2005)
Cooke, Mervyn, Britten War Requiem (Cambridge Music Handbooks 1996)
Programme note by Katherine Richman
Gurney, Ivor, War Letters (MidNAG Publications 1983)
Fischer-Dieskau, Dietrich, Echoes of a Lifetime (Macmillan, 1989)

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Southwell Music Festival 2024: Day Three: Tenth Anniversary Concert: Mozart Requiem and Cheryl Frances-Hoad world Premiere

Sunday 25 August 2024

7.30 pm The Nave Southwell Minster
Alison Rose (soprano), Susan Bickley (mezzo soprano), Mark Padmore (tenor), Frederick Long (bass-baritone), Festival Voices, Festival Sinfonia, Marcus Farnsworth (conductor)

This was a special concert, celebrating ten successful years of the Southwell Music Festival. Before the concert began in a packed Nave, the Dean of Southwell, Nicola Sullivan, said a prayer for the gift of music, highly appropriate as the meaning music was the subject of the first piece. The Festival commissioned a substantial work of around 20 minutes for soprano soloist, choir and orchestra, from the English composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad. Festival Director and conductor Marcus Farnsworth briefly interviewed the composer, who admitted that writing about what music means was ‘terrifying’. The new piece, With What Sudden Joy, is a setting of a text by the poet Kate Wakeling, collated entirely from the words of local people in Southwell in workshops about the power and effect of music. In her programme note, Wakeling said she found these conversations,

“terrifically rich and unexpectedly affecting. They were playful, moving, inventive and uplifting. [We] explored how music connects to ideas of memory and community, how music and silence interact, and how music can, by turns offer us solace and spark a sense of celebration.”

Frances-Hoad revealed that the words were so moving she sometimes found herself ‘weeping at the piano.’ In her programme note she said the words were, ‘specifically tied to Southwell, and yet so universal.’

The soprano solo part, superbly performed here by Alison Rose, was often florid and complex, whereas the choral parts were much simpler, making the work suitable for a choral society to perform with a professional soloist. In his programme note Farnsworth said he has performed in many premieres that have never seen the light of day since, ‘for no good reason.’ His aim here was to commission a new work that, ‘had the potential to become part of the repertoire’, and Frances-Hoad’s has written a piece which deserves to achieve that; accessible, attractive and profound. Eavesdropping amongst the audience at the interval, the consensus was that it was highly successful.

The first movement, aptly named ‘In the Beginning’, began with a sense of expectation from the strings. Rose sang intricate lines at first but also duetted with the choir as they described powerfully resonant shared memories, including the poignant recollection of a grandmother with dementia who could, ‘still remember every note’ of shared songs,

“Everything else had gone
but we sat and sang together

I thought:
this is what music is

These are sounds that travel us back”

Composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad
Composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad

The second movement, ‘A Bright Connection’, began with hymn-like chords from the Festival Voices as Rose’s lyrical, golden soprano voice soared above. In a moment of magic at the end, there was a series of invigorating key changes demonstrating the power of music. The central movement, ‘I drove to my Father’s House’ was profoundly moving, about a woman who very suddenly lost her father and was unable to grieve until she went to his house and played his records for, ‘perhaps three solid days…I cried without stopping.’ The fourth movement, ‘Also Silence’ was a chance for individual soloists from the choir to shine, with reassuring chords at the start and gorgeous chromatic harmonies at the end, a statement of the importance of silence in music but also a practical demonstration of how music can move us. The final movement, ‘With What Sudden Joy’ had a title that sounded like a poem by a Romantic poet like Wordsworth or Coleridge. It expressed the sheer, visceral joy of music-making, with dancing, syncopated rhythms and a soprano part that floated stratospherically above. As the closing words stated, ‘a celebration must have music’, and Frances-Hoad’s new work perfectly suited the celebration of 10 years of the Festival.

From a brand new piece to a choral classic written over two hundred years ago, Mozart’s Requiem, which remained unfinished at the composer’s death in 1791. As Libby Burgess said in her programme note, when he died Mozart had written the opening ‘Requiem Aeternam’ and had sketched out choral parts, bass lines and some orchestral parts for the next six movements from the ‘Kyrie’ to ‘Confutatis’. It’s tempting to view the rest of the piece, completed by Franz Süssmayr as a bit of a disappointment, but as Burgess says,

“…history owes Süssmayr a debt of gratitude for completing the work at all. Incomplete, it would probably not have seen the light of day – and we would never have had the experience of knowing it.”

Conductor and Festival Director Marcus Farnsworth
Conductor and Festival Director Marcus Farnsworth. Image © Joe Briggs-Price

Whatever your views are on Süssmayr’s completion of the work, Farnsworth and his festival forces didn’t allow the energy to drop at any point, even when Süssmayr took over from Mozart. This was a lively, energetic performance informed by the best period instrument practices, fast but always precise even in passages which lesser choirs find hard to negotiate such as the ‘Osanna in Excelsis.’ Farnsworth often brought out instrumental details that are obscured in other performances, and beautifully controlled the dynamics of the richly operatic voices of the choir. There was a fine quartet of soloists with Alison Rose who we heard in the first half, the distinguished mezzo soprano Susan Bickley, the Festival’s Artist in Residence the tenor Mark Padmore, and the young bass-baritone Frederick Long. There were some lovely individual moments from the soloists, and some excellent duets and quartets. The concert ended with the ‘Lux Aeterna’, featuring a fantastic fugue on the words ‘cum sanctis tuis’. There was a huge cheer from the audience, a fitting celebration of ten years of music making in Southwell, with hopefully many more years to come.

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Southwell Music Festival 2024 Day One: Martin Bussey & Anthony Pinching on ‘A Brother Abroad’; Medieval Masters; Strings in the Nave; Cathedrals of Sound

Southwell Minster

Friday 23 August 2024

Martin Bussey & Anthony Pinching on ‘A Brother Abroad’

Martin Bussey (composer) and Anthony Pinching (librettist)
3.00 pm The Marquee, Palace Gardens

Martin Bussey
Composer and conductor Martin Bussey

Prof Anthony Pinching is the Director of Pinner Music Festival and a former clinical immunologist and academic. He wrote the libretto for A Brother Abroad for the composer and conductor Martin Bussey. The piece was commissioned for the 700th anniversary of the consecration of Pinner Parish Church in Middlesex. It was premiered at Pinner Music Festival in 2021 and performed at Ludlow English Song Weekend in 2022.

In a very interesting discussion, Pinching introduced Bussey as a son of Pinner. He said he commissioned him to write a piece about Peter of Bologna, Bishop of Corbavia (Krbava) in Croatia, a 14th century Franciscan Bishop whose colourful life led him across Europe. He settled in England as a Suffragan Bishop for five dioceses from 1318 to his death in 1332, and consecrated Pinner Parish Church in 1321, near the Archbishop of Canterbury’s hunting grounds.

Pinching’s libretto recounts Peter’s journey from his ‘simple room’ at Greyfriars to Pinner (then known as Pynnore), where he was greeted by bells and cheering crowds. As he travels, Peter recalls his journey to the ‘far North’ where he was part of a failed papal mission to broker peace between King Edward I and Robert the Bruce, and being attacked by a band of ‘shavaldours’ (brigands) on the way. Despite the violence he suffered, and his nostalgia for his home in ‘La Rossa’ (Bologna), he settled in England. He describes his deep devotion for ‘Brother Francis’, and the rites and rituals that inspire him, contrasting with the distracted figure of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was more interested in royal politics than ‘the way of Christ.’

Bussey explained that A Brother Abroad is part of a triptych of recent music theatre pieces, along with Mary’s Hand (2018) and Timeless Figure (2020), each written for a different combination of solo voice and three instrumentalists – in this case baritone, flute/piccolo, French horn and percussion. He was given free rein by Pincher to do what he wanted with the text, but the two worked closely together and he described Pincher as, ‘a sensitive librettist.’ Bussey felt that the spiritual aspect of the libretto was crucial, but he decided not to write the solo baritone part in plainsong, an interesting contrast with two recent works by the composer Tim Benjamin The Seafarer and The Wanderer, settings of early English poems. He admitted that it was ‘an enormous task’ for the soloist to sing such a long libretto, but fortunately the Festival’s Director and main baritone soloist Marcus Farnsworth, a ‘musical dynamo’, was up to the task. He fondly recalled first meeting Marcus, when the latter was 16, while he was teaching at Chetham’s School in Manchester. Bussey concluded by explaining that (like any sensible composer) he had recycled some of his material for use in works we were about to hear, using some of the themes from A Brother Abroad. La Rossa for solo flute evokes Peter’s memories of his native Bologna, and The Rites Observed for solo horn describes ‘the noble side of Peter.’

Medieval Masters

Emma Halnan (flute), George Strivens (French horn), Stephen Burke (percussion), Marcus Farnsworth (baritone), Martin Bussey (conductor), Festival Voices
4.00 pm The Crossing, Southwell Minster

Southwell Minster Crossing (detail)
Southwell Minster Crossing. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Marcus Farnsworth, Festival Director and baritone soloist, introduced this concert as being, ‘from very early music to very new music’ – from 14th century French composer Guillaume de Machaut, and 12th century German composer Hildegard von Bingen to new music by Martin Bussey.

The concert began with the secular polyphony of Machaut’s Dame, de qui toute ma joie vient (Lady, source of all my joy) a chanson for four voices. A small group from the Festival Voices, singing without a conductor, gave a performance that was a little tentative but lively and spirited. Bussey’s two solo instrumental pieces then formed a triptych with Hildegard von Bingen’s O Ignis Spiritus (O Fire of the Spirit) for female voices. The Rites Observed for solo horn was superbly played by George Strivens as his mellow tone resonated around the Minster. A declamatory theme, taken from opening of A Brother Abroad, representing the start of Peter’s journey, was followed by faster, more discursive returns to the same theme. The musical language was austere and modernist, but also timeless. Somehow the act of removing and replacing the French horn’s mute became part of the ritual that the music describes. There was a coup de théâtre when, without a break, an offstage female choir sang the Hildegard piece. The evocate single vocal line, sung with excellent ensemble, was joined by the sound of wind from outside the Minster, and trees swaying through the stained glass window; the centuries rolled back, creating a spiritual experience for some audience members who sat with eyes closed. The Hildegard piece dovetailed beautifully into Bussey’s La Rossa for solo flute, written sometimes with a questing feel, sometimes florid, sometimes flowing and almost Debussy-esque. Emma Halnan shaped the melodic lines beautifully. There was another, serendipitous, moment of theatre when the sun shone through the Minster windows, apt as the piece describes Peter’s memories of sunnier climes in Bologna.

The main piece, A Brother Abroad featured Farnsworth as baritone soloist with the three other musicians. There was no libretto in the Festival programme book, but Farnsworth’s diction was so clear that it was easy to follow the story, particularly after the illuminating pre-concert talk. As Bussey said, this is essentially a piece of music theatre – although without the melodrama of pieces like Peter Maxwell Davies’ wonderfully dramatic Eight Songs for a Mad King. Farnsworth was suitably theatrical in his delivery, drawing on his operatic experience, a majestic and compelling presence as Bishop Peter whose arrival in 14th century ‘Pynnore’ was an important public event. The piece began with an offstage horn, declaiming the start of Peter’s journey. As Peter described the ‘tasks to be done’ heavy drums, dramatic horn lines and intricate flute parts evoked the enormity of his task. The ‘rites to be observed’ were reflected by tubular bells, played by Stephen Burke. Farnworth inhabited his role with dignity and a sense of devotion in the climactic passage describing his religious work, and was suitably animated in his disgust at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Machiavellian machinations. The excitement of Peter’s entry into Pynnore was onomatopoeically illustrated by ornate piccolo lines representing the crowd, intense runs from the horn representing the post horn announcing his arrival, and tubular bells representing the church bells ringing. But there was simpler music at the end, as Peter described a ‘procession around the church’, the blessing and the final the prayer for peace, a contemplative conclusion to a highly effective work.

Strings in the Nave

7.00 pm The Nave, Southwell Minster
Mark Padmore (tenor), Festival Sinfonia Strings, Jamie Campbell (director), Marcus Farnsworth (conductor)

Festival Sinfonia. Image © Joe Briggs-Price
Festival Sinfonia Strings. Image © Joe Briggs-Price

Festival Director Marcus Farnsworth began this concert amusingly by showing the audience, airline style, where the emergency exits were, before introducing the Festival’s Artist in Residence, tenor Mark Padmore and the Festival Sinfonia Strings, several of whom had just taken part in the Aurora Orchestra’s Prom in which they played Beethoven’s ninth symphony from memory. The Sinfonia Strings demonstrated their virtuosity, playing without a conductor for most of the concert, instead being directed from the violin by Jamie Campbell, who also led the Festival Chamber Soloists in more Beethoven on Saturday evening.

The evening began with Farnsworth conducting Dies Natalis by British composer Gerald Finzi, with words by the 17th century English poet, cleric and theologian Thomas Traherne. The opening instrumental movement was a superb illustration of the joys to come. The upper strings were sweet toned with a beautifully mellow sound, with rich lower strings that were powerfully resonant in the generous acoustic of the Minster Nave. Tenor Mark Padmore joined in the second movement, acting out the words in a gorgeously plangent tone. There was a moment of sublime beauty in the passage beginning, ‘The corn was orient…’; a thrilling climax at ‘…almost mad with ecstasy’; and a moving sotto voce passage at the end when, ‘Everything was at rest.’ In the third movement, ‘The Rapture’, Padmore was immersed in the music, bringing out joy and passion, while the strings were beautifully controlled, dancing and elegant. Padmore’s voice was delightfully burnished in the fourth movement ‘Wonder’, with gently contemplative singing on the line, ‘O how divine, how soft, how sweet, how fair!’ His final contribution to the concert was in the fourth movement, ‘The Salutation’, engaging the audience with the angular beauty of the vocal line.

Jamie Campbell, director
Jamie Campbell, director
Mark Padmore 2018 Photo: Marco Borggreve
Mark Padmore, tenor. Image © Marco Borggreve

A series of companion pieces followed, firstly Two Canons by the 17th century English composer Matthew Locke, originally written for viol consort. Reduced forces played the first canon with little vibrato, bringing out the clarity of the lines. In the second canon, they drew austere beauty from the music with mournful clarity, with a spellbinding mini-fugue, and an enchanting moment of near-silence. This was followed by Hymn (after Byrd), by the contemporary British composer Edmund Finnis, an arrangement for string ensemble of the fourth movement of his First String Quartet, which was inspired by William Byrd’s setting of the 5th century hymn Christe, qui lux es et dies (Christ, who art light and day). Finnis describes the hymn as an, ‘ancient melody…a prayer for Light within the darkness of the night.’ His piece began with hymn-like chords, like Byrd’s 16th century piece but with subtle dissonances, as if the music were seen, ‘through a glass darkly.’ There were moments of delicate wonder and beauty, played with lovely ensemble. In one moving passage, the music came out of silence, and at the end the piece was reduced to a single note. A stunning performance.

The final work was Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, written by Benjamin Britten when he was still in his early twenties, and directed here by Jamie Campbell. In his programme note, Campbell described the work as,

‘….an epic, virtuoso work…I find [it] both thrilling and profound.. [it] demonstrates the dazzling compositional skill the young Britten already had.

Campbell and his players -some not much older than Britten when he wrote the work – embraced the works’ virtuosity, with precision of ensemble throughout in an invigorating, gripping performance, bringing out the diverse nature of each of the variations. There was growling darkness in the ‘Adagio’, jolly, shimmering strings in the ‘March’, and soaring strings in ‘Romance’. The ‘Aria’ brought out the exaggerated melodrama and operatic feel of the piece, raising laughter in the audience. The ‘Bourrée classique’ brought out the four-square dance rhythms, with a virtuosic solo from Campbell, and there was a fiercely intense ‘Weiner Waltzer’, revealing the sarcastic humour of the variation. A dizzyingly exciting ‘Moto Perpetuo’ led to the ‘Funeral March’, and between the movements the Minster bell rang, propitiously in the right key. The ‘Funeral March’ was intensely moving, and there was a moment of profound stasis in ‘Chant’. The concert ended superbly with the joyful intensity of the final fugue, with a subdued, magical ending followed by a final swell of strings.

Cathedrals of Sound

Festival Voices, Marcus Farnsworth (conductor)
9.15 pm The Nave, Southwell Minster

Conductor and Festival Director Marcus Farnsworth introduced this late-night concert by saying, ‘what a great privilege it is to stand before singers of this calibre.’ He was right. Throughout this excellent concert, the young singers of the Festival Voices excelled, with beautifully balanced dynamics, a warm sound with rich vibrato, and visceral power when necessary, with great control under Farnsworth’s precise conducting.

Festival Voices Image © Joe Briggs-Price
Festival Voices. Image © Joe Briggs-Price

One of the joys of the Festival programming was the pairing of old and new music, as in Medieval Masters (see above), and the Tenth Anniversary concert (day three) when a new work by Cheryl Frances-Hoad was paired with Mozart’s Requiem. Cathedrals of Sound celebrated the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner, who was born 200 years ago. The concert’s title was taken from a description of Bruckner’s symphonies as ‘cathedrals of sound’, but the concert was based around five of his motets. Farnsworth explained that the motets showed Bruckner looking backwards and forwards at the same time in his musical style, and the programme reflected this, casting his works in a new light, looking back to the style of Bach and Byrd, and forward to the work of contemporary composers.

The concert began with a sequence of five different reflections on the Ave Maria theme, written in praise of the Virgin Mary. Bruckner’s Ave Maria, with its complex block harmonies, contrasted with the contrapuntal glories of Byrd’s polyphony in Alleluia, Ave Maria, both works juxtaposed with the surprising simplicity of Stravinsky’s Ave Maria. There was a gorgeous flowering of words ‘Virga Jesse’ in the Bruckner motet of the same name. Finally, there was another Ave Maria, by the composer Sarah Cattley, a commentary on Bruckner’s style with dense harmonies that sometimes sounded like Bruckner but with added harmonic clashes, and at other times more modern, with clouds of sound surrounding the words ‘Nunc et in Ora.’

The second sequence sandwiched Bruckner’s Christus Factus Est between two remarkable pieces by composer Gemma Bass, who is also a violinist with several performing groups in Manchester, and who performed in Surround Sounds No.3 (day four). Farnsworth confessed this was the first time the Choir had tackled improvised music, and it worked extremely well here. Bass has written a suite of five compositions, including Missing Pieces – Two, Three which leaves gaps for improvisation. The Choir inserted parts of Christus Factus Est into the gaps, based on instructions Bass provided. Pairs of singers decided their own timing from pre-determined notes while the rest of the choir contributed harmonies from Bruckner, a ‘sonic exploration’, effectively a joint creation between Bass and the Choir. More and more pairs of voices joined in at different speeds, an invigorating babel of sounds, reminiscent of the free-form ‘pleni sunt caeli’ section in the ‘Sanctus’ from Britten’s War Requiem. There were some terrifying dissonances as a cry of anguish led to the complex harmonies of the Bruckner motet, which describes Christ’s death on the cross. Gemma Bass’ piece returned with another heart-rending wail of anguish that illuminated the pain of the Bruckner piece. A stunning sequence of music.

After the relative simplicity of Bruckner’s miniature choral gem, Locus Iste, there was yet more inspired intervention from a contemporary composer, Roderick Williams’ take on Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus. After the original, we heard Williams’ Ave Verum Corpus Re-imagined, with great slabs of music frozen in time, as if the Byrd piece had been beamed to other galaxies and back again in fragments and clusters. There were snatches of Bruckner-style chords and a plangent tenor solo. There were hints of Messiaen’s early choral piece O sacrum convivium! and Williams’ highly imaginative work ended with a lovely, dissonant ‘Amen’. But the last word was left to the mighty Bruckner – as Farnsworth said, he had ‘left the best to last’ with Os Justi. Farnsworth said he intended to give us, ‘something to think about’, and in this compelling programme he certainly did so.

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Southwell Music Festival 2024: Overview of the Tenth Anniversary Festival

Southwell Minster
Southwell Minster
Southwell Minster, where most of the events take place

Southwell is a market town in the heart of Nottinghamshire, with a grade I listed cathedral, Southwell Minster. For the last ten years, the town has been the home of Southwell Music Festival, founded by the Artistic Director, Marcus Farnsworth.

Marcus Farnsworth. Image © Andy Staples

Farnsworth was born and raised in Southwell and was a chorister at the Minster. He went to Chetham’s School of Music in Manchester and sang in the cathedral choir there. He studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Academy of Music. He is now Head of Vocal and Choral Studies at Chetham’s, an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, and Musical Director of Southwell Choral Society. He has performed regularly in recital, as a principal artist with opera companies across Europe and North America, and with major orchestras and early music ensembles in the UK.

The Music Festival draws young professional musicians from major UK and European orchestras and ensembles, and singers who perform with professional choirs and as soloists. Many of them return to the Festival every year, and new ones come each year as well. Farnsworth conducts some of the concerts, and is sometimes a baritone soloist. The Festival Sinfonia Strings are led and directed by the violinist Jamie Campbell, Principal 2nd violin with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and the Aurora Orchestra. This year’s Artist in Residence was the distinguished tenor Mark Padmore. The Festival also featured new and specially commissioned music from, amongst others, Martin Bussey, Edmund Finnis, Sarah Cattley, Gemma Bass, Roderick Williams, Sally Beamish and Cheryl Frances-Hoad.

Follow the links below for day by day reviews of a selection of events from the Festival:

Day One: Martin Bussey & Anthony Pinching on ‘A Brother Abroad’; Medieval Masters; Strings in the Nave; Cathedrals of Sound

Day Two: English Song Recital with Mark Padmore; Beethoven Live and Late

Day Three: Tenth Anniversary Concert: Mozart Requiem and Cheryl Frances-Hoad World Premiere

Day Four: Surround Sounds No. 3: Turned in the Light

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Off the Beaten Track #11: The Wanderer by Tim Benjamin

An Exile in Ninth Century England. Image generated by AI

From the album Paths of Exile by Kantos Chamber Choir, conducted by Ellie Slorach

An Exile in Ninth Century England. Image generated by AI.
An Exile in 9th Century England.

The Wanderer is an anonymous Old English poem, written in Anglo Saxon, which is preserved in The Exeter Book, a collection of manuscripts which probably dates back to the late tenth century, along with other poems including The Seafarer. Both poems have been arranged for men’s voices by Tim Benjamin, and recorded by Kantos Chamber Choir conducted by Ellie Slorach on their new album Paths of Exile. A review of The Seafarer can be found in the previous edition of the Off the Beaten Track series. The author and date of the poem are unknown, although it is thought that it dates back to the late ninth or early tenth century.

Facsimile of the first page of the Exeter Book from Bernard Muir's 2006 edition of The Exeter Anthology of Old English Poems
Facsimile of The Wanderer from the Exeter Book. Source: Wikimedia

 

The poem in The Exeter Book has no title; just as Schubert’s Schwanengesang song cycle wasn’t named by the composer himself, The Wanderer wasn’t named until (long) after the poet’s death. It wasn’t given that name until centuries later, in 1842 when Benjamin Thorpe took the word ‘eardstepa’ (literally ‘earth-stepper’ or ‘wanderer’) from the body of the poem. Other scholars, such as J.R.R. Tolkien, who was Professor of Anglo Saxon at Oxford University as well as being a novelist, have suggested that it should have been given a different title. He argued that An Exile, Alone the Banished Man or The Exile’s Lament would be more appropriate, but the old title has stuck.

The poem recounts, in the first person, the story of an exiled warrior who wanders the earth and the sea, having lost his comrades, his family and his lord in battle. He recalls the gifts he received from his master and the feast they enjoyed. The hardships he describes are at times very similar to those experienced by the seafarer in the poem of that name, which feels like a companion work to The Wanderer. These words from the latter poem feel as if they could have come from The Seafarer,

‘Then he awakens, a friendless man,
Seas before him, the barren waves,
Sea-birds bathing, preening their feathers,
In rime, in snow-fall, and hail there mingling.‘

Both poems have a surprisingly contemporary resonance; as Benjamin says of The Wanderer,

I found that – despite the ten or more centuries dividing us! – I could somehow strongly relate to the anonymous writer. I feel that there is something distinctively “male” about his approach to his grief and loss that I find in myself and in other men (“a man his thoughts fast bind, hiding his mind-hoard…”)

As with his setting of The Seafarer, Benjamin has adapted a modern English translation of The Wanderer by A.S. Kline, changing some of the words to make the text easier to sing and more intelligible for listeners. Benjamin uses Kline’s abridged version which removes the short introduction and conclusion of the poem, which according to Kline is for reasons of ‘artistic coherence.’  The missing passages describe the wanderer in the third person, and make it clear that his experiences are recalled in later contemplation. By removing these sections, the poetry becomes more immediate as we are immediately plunged into the wanderer’s predicament, and in the present tense, ‘Oft I alone must utter my sadness each day before dawn.’ Perhaps more importantly, the removed sections are much more explicitly Christian than the rest of the poem, just as the final section of The Seafarer is, which has also been removed in the Kline translation (and in many others) that Benjamin uses. The Seafarer poem uses a lot of alliteration, and that applies also to The Wanderer. As Benjamin said in a recent email to Nick Holmes Music,  

I wanted to try and preserve as much as possible of the alliteration that the original had…as this is a kind of “rhythm” that you can work with as a composer. Actually much more favourable to the composer than rhyming. (I think of alliteration as a sort of “rhyming” with the front of words rather than the ends of words and I greatly prefer to work with it as a composer!)

Tim Benjamin. Photo Credit Nic Chapman
Composer Tim Benjamin. Image Credit Nic Chapman.

The Wanderer also shares with The Seafarer what Benjamin describes as a ‘melancholic nostalgia.’ In the latter poem it manifests itself more in the sense that all human power and endeavour is ultimately pointless because everything fades, but the sentiment is very similar. Benjamin describes it very eloquently – and passionately,

‘[The Wanderer] relates his sense of loss to the world at large, that the world itself is fleeting, and for me I found myself melancholic or nostalgic for the world as it was in my younger days – and then extending to an imagined or collective kind of melancholic nostalgia for the world as it was in earlier decades or centuries, which I feel is a reaction to a world that seems today to change or spin out of control and become less and less familiar the more one sees of it. It’s a strange sensation and one that I feel The Wanderer captures in an extraordinary way.’

Nostalgia for past glories is a literary trope known as the Ubi Sunt (Latin for ‘where are they.’). It appears in these lines from the poem,

Where is the horse now?
Where is the rider?
Where is the gold-giver?
Where is the seat at the gathering?
Where now are the songs in the halls?

Benjamin says that this passage, ‘forms the peak of the dramatic arc in my setting of The Wanderer.’ Readers of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings may be familiar with  these words as they are adapted by Tolkien to form the Lament for the Rohirrim, a poem chanted by Aragorn in chapter six of The Two Towers.

As with the recording of The Seafarer, Benjamin adds evocative soundscaping. The wind noises that appear throughout may remind some listeners of the ominous sound effects at the opening of the brutal Pink Floyd instrumental ‘One of These Days’ from their 1971 album Meddle. And the thunder effect about half way through the piece recalls a similar effect at the start of the track ‘Black Sabbath’ from Black Sabbath’s eponymously named 1970 album. The military drums evoke the warriors that the wanderer has left behind. The gritty scenario of the poem is similar to that described in Robert Eggers’ 2002 film The Northman which is set at the very end of the ninth century, almost exactly the time when The Wanderer is thought to have been written. There are also seabirds, as there are in the soundscape for The Seafarer.

A Ninth Century Viking Helmet. Image generated by AI.
A ninth century Viking helmet

The musical language Benjamin uses is the same as in The Seafarer, the plainsong-like tone again based on the tonus peregrinus . This is particularly appropriate for The Wanderer as it’s associated with the theme of exile of the Hebrews in Psalm 114 (or 113). Benjamin notes on his website that, ‘the reciting tone also “wanders”, such that the tone does not fit any of the standard eight church modes.’

The solo voice is recorded here mostly with less echo than the voice on The Seafarer, giving it a more intimate feel so that we share the wanderer’s journey, although more echo is added later. Sometimes there are gentle vocal harmonies around the voice, and some subtle electronics. The main soloist, baritone Jonny Hill, is excellent throughout, often robust but sometimes singing with a fragile, delicate tone when the text demands it. The overall effect of the recording is one of passionate melancholy, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. It makes a fine companion to The Seafarer both musically and thematically, and the recording as a whole is highly recommended.

Performers

Kantos Chamber Choir: Jonny Hill (main soloist on The Wanderer), James Connolly (main soloist on The Seafarer), Henry Saywell, Edmund Phillips; conductor Ellie Slorach.

The Cover of Paths of Exile

Paths of Exile is out now. Tim Benjamin’s setting of The Seafarer is discussed here.

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Off the Beaten Track #10: The Seafarer by Tim Benjamin

The Cover of Paths of Exile

From the album Paths of Exile by Kantos Chamber Choir, conducted by Ellie Slorach

The Cover of Paths of Exile
The cover of Paths of Exile

The Seafarer is an Old English poem, written in Anglo Saxon, which is preserved in The Exeter Book, a collection of manuscripts which probably dates back to the late tenth century. The Exeter Book was donated to Exeter Cathedral by Leofric, the first Bishop of Exeter in 1072, and is of such importance to our understanding of Anglo Saxon poetry that in 2016 it was listed by UNESCO as one of ‘the world’s principal cultural artefacts’, due to its status as the ‘foundation volume of English literature.’

The opening of The Seafarer in the original Anglo Saxon

Since it was first translated into modern English in 1842, there have been over 60 different translations of The Seafarer in eight different languages, probably the most notable of which is by American poet Ezra Pound, published in 1911, an interpretation rather than a literal translation. The poem has inspired various classical composers, including Sally Beamish who has written three pieces based on the text – for string trio and narrator; solo violin; and a concerto for viola and orchestra. The composer, director and writer Tim Benjamin has written a new setting of the poem for male voices with an ‘immersive audio soundtrack’, which has been recorded by Kantos Chamber Choir, conducted by Ellie Slorach on their new release Paths of Exile. The Choir’s most recent concert was themed around the sea, and music from the new recording was played in the foyer of Manchester’s Stoller Hall beforehand. Paths of Exile also features a setting of The Wanderer, another poem from The Exeter Book, which will be reviewed in the Off the Beaten Track series at a later date.

Tim Benjamin
Composer Tim Benjamin

There has been a great deal of scholarly debate as to: whether The Seafarer is a secular or religious poem; whether there are two voices in dialogue or a single voice expressing mixed emotions; whether it was written by one poet or is the work of two poets, the second of whom is more overtly religious than the first. Some versions delete the final section of the poem which ends with an ‘Amen’ like a prayer, so that the poem becomes largely about human struggle and the ambiguous relationship the seafarer has with the sea, rather than a religious homily. The American poet Ezra Pound uses the shortened version, as does the English translator A.S. Kline who ends at line 99 (out of 125), ‘for artistic coherence, and from lack of sympathy for the undistinguished ending of the manuscript.’ Benjamin adapts Kline’s translation by translating words such as ‘mew’ into the modern English ‘gull’, and more generally to clarify the meaning for the contemporary listener, also changing some words to make them sing better. Perhaps more significantly, ‘Lord’ becomes ‘lord’, suggesting a secular power rather than a religious one. Benjamin elegantly and succinctly summarises The Seafarer as a poem that,

“… captures a sense of melancholic and spiritual connection to the Earth, and is told from the perspective of a seafarer, reminiscing and evaluating his life. His hardships – physical and mental – on the sea are described in vivid detail, and drawn in contrast to the lives of men on land who he imagines surrounded by friends, free from danger, and with ready access to food and wine.” 

A stormy sea. Photo by Ray Bilcliff on Pexels.com

Benjamin uses an austere musical language, partly to illustrate the hardships that the seafarer suffers, but also to create musical lines that match the ruggedness of the original poetry, and to reflect the musical idiom from over a thousand years ago when the poem was written by an anonymous poet. The text is delivered mostly by a single male voice, accompanied by low-voiced drones and chords. In the score, Benjamin stresses that the words should always be sung, ‘in speech rhythm, like plainsong, without a strict beat.’ In emails to Nick Holmes Music, Benjamin clarified that the note lengths – minims and crotchets – simply indicate that some notes are slightly longer than others, and that the bar lines mark breaks between phrases rather than rhythm divisions,

‘it’s important to note that the score is, like for example much ancient music, quite a small component of the final rendition. Contrast with much other music, where the score is king!’

The opening bars of Tim Benjamin’s score for The Wanderer

It’s interesting to note that there are some religious overtones in this recording. The use of plainsong is associated with Christian church music until the ninth century and beyond, before the advent of polyphony. The long echo on the main solo voice suggests that it was recorded in a large acoustic like a church or a cathedral. The use of the Gregorian psalm tone known as the tonus peregrinus links back to Psalm 114 (or 113) with which it is often associated. And the use of low male-voice drones evokes the religious music of Sir John Tavener, who died in 2013.

The secular aspects of Benjamin’s setting include a recorded soundscape of the sea in which the poem is bathed and which is integral to the work and the recording. We also hear the voices of the seabirds that accompany the seafarer’s solitary journey, and the cuckoo heard from nearby land singing, ‘with melancholy voice/Summer’s watchman.’ Without the final more didactic ending of the original poem there is a sense of the passage of time marking the ephemeral nature of human life. The setting passes from the ‘cold clasp’ and ‘snow from the north’ of Winter, through to Spring when ‘the world quickens,’ to Summer when ‘fields grow fair.’ Summer brings the hope of eternity, when man’s fame will ‘ever live with the angels,’ but at the end we return to the melancholy of the opening, albeit in a very different context; the struggle of one individual is replaced by more universal sorrow for the vanity of humanity, a common literary trope expressed for instance in the early nineteenth century poem, Ozymandias by the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley; compare Shelley’s words,

‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains…’

with these words from The Seafarer,

‘The days are gone,
All the glory of earthly riches;
Now are no kings
Nor Caesars,
Nor gold-givers
As once there were’

If Benjamin concentrates on the poem’s humanity, rather than seeing it as a metaphorical journey into the Afterlife, this superb recording equals his ambition. There is heightened emotion in the anguished word-painting of passages like, ‘Ever the eagle screamed/Sea foam-feathered/No bright companion there to comfort the careworn soul’ in Part 2. In Part 5, there’s an explosion of passion in the agonised cry, ‘Wretched outcasts/Widest must wander.’ Although Benjamin makes no explicit link with the current displacement of peoples across the world, he does have compassion for his subject, stating that, ‘the poem is a powerful meditation on loneliness and ‘outsiderness’’

Kantos Chamber Choir
Kantos Chamber Choir

This recording by Kantos Chamber Choir draws out both the humanity of the music and its asceticism, the sense that the seafarer is a secular martyr to his fate on the cruel sea, preferring it to the more comfortable joys on land.

Performers

Kantos Chamber Choir: Jonny Hill (main soloist on The Wanderer), James Connolly (main soloist on The Seafarer), Henry Saywell, Edmund Phillips; conductor Ellie Slorach.

Paths of Exile is out now. Tim Benjamin’s setting of The Wanderer is discussed here.