GUILDFORD
CORPORATION
CONCERTS
DIRECTOR OF MUSIC
VERNON HANDLEY
GUILDFORD PHILHARMONIG ORGHESTRA
Leader: WILLIAM ARMON
FESTIVAL GHOIR
NORMAN TATTERSALL .
VERNON HANDLEY
.
Baritone
Conductor
The ELEVENTH CONCERT in
THE
ENTERPRISING
SERIES
SATURDAY,
29th APRIL . . . ., 1967
CIVIC HALL
Programme . . . . .
I/-
NORMAN TATTERSALL is well known in London and the Provinces, and has
established his reputation in Recital, Concert, Oratorio and Broadcasting.
After serving as a Captain in the Royal Engineers he studied singing at the
Royal Academy of Music, winning many prizes. On leaving the Academy, he
studied in Germany and Italy.
He has appeared with many important Societies, including the Royal Liver-
pool Philharmonic Society, the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, and
the Scottish National Orchestra. He has also appeared several times at the
Leith Hill Festival, and in 1957 sang in their performance of Bach’s St. Matthew
Passion conducted by Dr. Vaughan Williams.
His appearances abroad include a highly successful Recital Tour of Western
Germany, presenting programmes of English and German music in many of
the leading cities.
FESTIVAL CHOIR
The Festival Choir is the larger of the two choirs under the conductorship of
It meets on Monday evenings at 7.15 p.m. in the
the Musical Director.
Methodist Hall, and is mainly concerned with the performance of large choral
works with orchestra. There are a few vacancies in the tenor and bass sections
of the choir, and anyone interested should apply to the Director of Music, 155,
High Street, Guildford. Mr. Handley wishes to acknowledge with thanks the
help he has received in training the Festival Choir from the assistant conductor,
Mr. Kenneth Lank, and accompanists Miss Mary Rivers and Miss Maureen Hall,
and from Mrs. D. W. Wren and Miss G. Hall, who have given much time to a
seating plan to accommodate the Choir.
PROGRAMME
CONCERTO GROSSO
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Malcolm Williamson
Born 1931
Between the autumn of 1964 and the summer of 1965 I wrote three orchestral
works of which this is the second. The first was a Sinfonietta; and the third,
my largest orchestral essay, Symphonic Variations. All three have elements
of the concerto style of the eighteenth-century composers, and the Concerto
grosso is laid out to exhibit in turn the strings, brass, percussion, and woodwind of a large orchestra. There are two movements with a small linking
section. The first is scored for a string quartet, harp, and string orchestra.
The linking section is like a recitative introducing the brass and percussion.
The second movement is for a full orchestra giving the woodwind a chance
to show off.
Analytically there is little to say.
when it does not seem to be.
The work is in G minor/major even
The same thematic material is used throughout
the .w'ork even when it is not aurally evident. The formal scheme is that of
traditional sonata form except insofar as the tonal relationships are concerned;
and bald juxtaposition of blocks replaces bridge passages.
Programme note by the Composer.
Sea Drift
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S
S
ERR g
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Delius
Sea Drift, completed in 1904, is a setting for baritone solo, chorus and orchestra of the first of the Walt Whitman poems, which are published under that
title in*‘Leaves of Grass’’. The words have been selected from the poem “Out
of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking”.
It was first performed, like several of
Delius’s works, in Germany in 1906, and the first British performance took
place at Sheffield in 1908 under Sir Henry Wood. The story the poem relates
is an intensely moving and tragic one. The words quite clearly give us pictures of the two birds nesting by the sea shore, their happiness in sharing this
season, and the tragic blow that comes when the hen is killed. The accuracy
of Whitman’s observation conveys the feeling of bafflement that the remaining
he-bird experiences, and poetically interprets the bird’s actions as conveying
anguish. The agony, anguish, love, hope, and finally a firm unsentimental
acceptance of the heart-rending situation are conveyed in strong and passionate
music by Delius.
Unfortunately, like so much of this composer’s music, this work has been
given many performances where only the most obvious emotions have been
exaggerated, and where every striking harmony or beautiful phrase has been
lingered on without any reference to the context. The most extraordinary
characteristic of Delius’'s music is the one which many critics hold he does not
possess at all: that is to say, his wonderful formal control of a style that seems
superficially to be rhapsodic. Sea Drift seems to the listener to flow from
beginning to end, but this is only achieved by the most careful organisation
of sections, and even individual phrase lengths. It is not coincidence that the
first bars of the piece are reiterated bass intervals with descending scales on
the woodwind instruments above, and that in the middle of the work these
bass intervals and their attendant chords return to form the basis of some of
the baritone's narrative, and that the last main section of the work begins with
falling scales on the strings and woodwind, which lead in turn to the reiteration
of the bass intervals. Nor is it coincidence that the first two of the three
sections mentioned above precede sections of lilting triplets or sections in
six-four time. Although critics never mention the fact, can it be coincidence
that the first animato section, the ecstatic ‘‘Shine! Shine! Shine!” of the
chorus begins with the same interval followed by the same shaped phrase as
the agonised ecstasy of the slow unaccompanied “'O rising stars’?
The narrative is shared by the chorus and the baritone, and at times the
two overlap. In the text printed below, words that are sung by the baritone
and chorus simultaneously are bracketed.
Once Paumanok,
CHORUS:
When the lilac-scent was in the air and Fifth-month grass was growing.
Up this seashore in some briers,
Two feathered guests from Alabama, two together,
And their nest, and four light-green eggs spotted with brown.
BARITONE:
And every day the he-bird to and fro near at hand
:
And every day the she-bird crouch’d on her nest, silent, with bright eyes,
And every day I, a curious boy, never too close, never disturbing them,
Cautiously peering, absorbing, translating.
CHORUS:
Shine! Shine! Shine!
Pour down your warmth, great sun!
While we bask, we two together,
Two together!
Winds blow south, or winds blow north,
Day come white, or night come black
Home, or rivers and mountains from home,
Singing all time, minding no time,
While we two keep together.
BARITONE:
Till of a sudden,
May-be killed, unknown to her mate,
One forenoon the she-bird crouched not on the nest,
Nor returned that afternoon, nor the next,
Nor ever appeared again,
And thenceforward all summer in the sound of the sea,
And at night under the full of the moon in calmer weather,
Over the hoarse surging of the sea,
Or flitting from brier to brier by day,
I saw, | heard at intervals the remaining one, the he-bird,
The solitary guest from Alabama.
CHORUS:
Blow!
Blow!
Blow!
Blow up sea-winds along Paumanok’s shore;
I wait and I wait till you blow my mate to me.
BARITONE:
Yes, when the stars glistened,
All night long on the prong of a moss-scalloped stake,
Down almost amid the slapping waves,
Sat the lone singer, wonderful, causing tears.
He called on his mate,
He poured forth the meanings which I of all men know.
Yes, my brother, 1 know,
The rest might not, but | have treasured every note,
For more than once dimly down to the beach gliding,
Silent, avoiding the moonbeams, blending myself with the shadows,
Recalling now the obscure shapes, the echoes, the sounds and sights after their
sorts,
The white arms out in the breakers tirelessly tossing,
I, with bare feet, a child, the wind wafting my hair,
Listened long and long.
¢ Listened to keep, to sing, now translating the notes,
Following you, my brother.
CHORUS:
i
Soothe! soothe! soothe!
Close on its wave soothes the wave behind,
And again another behind embracing and lapping, everyone close,
But my love soothes not me, not me.
Low hangs the moon, it rose late,
It is lagging—O, I think it is heavy with love, with love.
O madly the sea pushes upon the land,
(
With love, with love.
'
BARITONE:
O, night! Do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?
What is that little black thing | see there in the white?
w Loud! Loud! Loud!
Loud I call to you, my love!
High and clear | shoot my voice over the waves.
.
Surely you must know who is here, is here,
You must know who | am, my love.
CHORUS:
O rising stars,
Perhaps the one | want so much will rise, will rise with some of you.
O throat, O trembling throat!
Sound clearer through the atmosphere!
Pierce the woods, the earth,
Somewhere listening to catch you must be the one I want.
Shake out carols!
Solitary here, the night’'s carols!
Carols of lonesome love! death’s carols!
Carols under the lagging, yellow waning moon
!
O, under that moon where she droops almost down into the sea'!
O, reckless, despairing carols.
BARITONE:
But soft!
sink low!
Soft!
Let me just murmur,
And do you wait a moment, you husky-noised sea,
For somewhere | believe | heard my mate responding to me,
So faint, | must be still, be still to listen,
But not altogether still, for then she might not come immediately to me,
Hither, my love!
Here I am! Here!
With this just-sustained note | announce myself to you,
This gentle call is for you, my love, for you.
CHORUS:
Do not be decoyed elsewhere.
That is the whistle of the wind, it is not my voice,
That is the fluttering, the fluttering of the spray,
Those are the shadows of leaves.
O, darkness!
O, in vain!
BARITONE:
O, | am very sick and sorrowful.
O brown halo in the sky near the moon, drooping upon the sea!
O troubled reflection in the sea!
O throat! O throbbing heart!
And | singing uselessly, uselessly all the night.
O past! O happy life! O songs of joy!
In the air, in the woods, over fields,
Loved, loved, loved, loved, loved!
But my mate no more, no more, with me!
We two together no more.
Symphony No.
LA fis
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Eigir
Andante - Nobilmente e semplice - Allegro
Allegro molto
Adagio
Lento - Allegro
If a member of the audience at the Queen’s Hall in 1908 had been told that
the Symphony, whose first London performance he was hearing, would win a
hundred performances in its first year of existence, he would not have been
surprised, for he would have been one of an audience who had called for the
composer after the first movement, after the third movement, and then with
frantic applause at the end of the Symphony.
But he would have been sur-
prised to be told that the work would suffer an eclipse, and that for many
years its composer would be thought of as not having been a good symphonist.
Although the Oratorios, Concerti, Enigma Variations and Introduction and
Allegro have maintained Elgar's reputation over the years, it has not been
until the last ten years that the two symphonies have started to come into their
own again.
For two years before the production of his First Symphony, Elgar had produced no major work, and disturbed by his inability to achieve financial
security, he had threatened early in 1907 to give up composing altogether, but
he had been contemplating since 1898 the possibility of a symphony, and it
started to take shape in October of 1907.
He said that he composed it out
of his experience of life, and with a massive hope in the future.
The Symphony’s extraordinary power is in its ability to appeal to any audience immediately without, however, making any popular gestures.
It is strangely unified,
and most of the principal themes can be found to have some relationship with
the first noble tune. This tune starts straightaway at the beginning of the
first movement, and unfolds its whole length in simple two-part harmony, with
flutes, clarinets, bassoons and violas singing it quietly in octaves. When we
have heard it once, the full orchestra takes it up; and having given us the
main material of his work, Elgar gets the first large Allegro under way.
It
is during this Allegro that all the main developments of the first movement
take place.
Occasionally a quiet version of the first tune, played very tenderly by the first violins, or a few bars of the tune itself, intervene, but rarely
holdyup the progress of this colossal movement.
Immediately the second movement starts we realise that the weight of this
huge orchestra has been dispersed, and even with characteristically angular
material Elgar manages to keep his Scherzo light and swift. One extraordinary
Mahlerian episode for solo violin and strings reminds us that the composer
was capable of the great charm of the Wand of Youth Suites, and the Dorabella
variation from the Enigma. The rather lumpy march tune which occurs frequently in this movement serves in quiet augmentation for the beautiful transition at the end of the movement which leads to the at first serene, but later
passionate, third movement.
The mood of this movement is so entirely
different from the bustle of the first two that it is surprising to find that every
bar is characterisic of Elgar. His many-sided nature is nowhere better shown
than in the wide emotional range which the inclusion of this movement in the
Symphony confirms.
The join to the finale is made perfectly, for it opens quietly, slowly and
with great mystery. Quotations from the first movement and a strange distant
march tune, undoubtedly related to the first tune of the first movement, pass
before us. Then, a violent Allegro, full of dotted rhythms, announces the
Nothing
Elgar of the brilliant musical argument and telling orchestration.
stops the headlong flight of this movement until the reappearance of the first
tune in the Symphony, and this gathers the orchestra around it, sharing the
material of the.movement it has interrupted, until together the separate ideas
reach a coda of great triumph. Elgar’s massive hope was never clearer than
here.