The thirty-eighth concert in the Enterprising series
Guildford
Philharmonic
Orchestra
A
_ suildford Borough Council Concerts
1975/76
Civic Hall—Guildford
SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER 1975
at 7.45 p.m.
38th concert in the enterprising series
Roy Gillard
The Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra is
led tonight by Roy Gillard, sub-leader of
the London Symphony Orchestra. He has
led the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra
on several occasions, and took over for one
of the concerts in the “enterprising” series
in Guildford on the morning of the concert.
In 1974 he appeared as soloist with the
Orchestra in a performance of Stravinsky’s
Violin Concerto.
Kenneth Lank
Kenneth Lank was born in Guildford, and
educated at the Royal Grammar School.
Guildford
He had his first music lessons at the age
of seven, and studied more concentratedly
Philharmonic
in
Orchestra
Led by ROY GILLARD
from the age of fourteen. From the time
he left school, and during his service
the Army he studied Radiography,
and has made his career in this profession
at St Luke’s Hospital, Guildford, where
he is Superintendent Radiographer in the
Radiotherapy Centre. From 1948-1957, he
was organist and choirmaster at the
Methodist Church, Guildford, and sine
1957 he has held a similar appomtment
at St Martin’s, East Horsley,
For a number of years before Mr Crosslzy =
Clitheroe’s death, Kenneth Lank acted as
his assistant conductor, and has continued
- Kenneth Lank
Conductor
in this position for Vernon Handley since
1962. He has conducted the Philharmonic
Choir in many concerts, including a
performance of Parry’s “Songs of Farewell”
by a section of this choir at the Cathedral
in 1965, and the Proteus Choir in Evensong
Vernon Handley
Conductor
at the Cathedral in 1966 and 1967. He
shared the conducting of the Herbert
Howells 75th birthday tribute at
Charterhouse with William Llewellyn and
Vernon Handley. In 1967, Kenneth Lank
undertook the final preparation and
performance of Bach’s B Minor Mass.
In 1968 he conducted the Guildford
Philharmonic Orchestra in performances
of Schubert’s Overture in E minor and
Gordon Jacob’s Trombone Cencerto (with
Christopher Devenport as soloist), and he
conducted a performance of Parry’s ““‘Blest
This concert is promoted by Guildford Borough
Council with financial support from the
South East Arts Association
Pair of Sirens” given by the Guildford
Philharmonic Orchestra and Philharm.
Choir in 1970—the 25th season of the
Choir.
ic
Vernon Handley
PROGRAMME
Vernon Handley has been Guildford’s
Musical Director since 1962, He is now one
of the busiest British Conductors,
broadcasting with all the BBC Regional
Orchestras, about 30 concerts a year, and
appearing regularly as guest Conductor
with the London Philharmonic and Royal
hilharmonic Orchestras. He made his
debut in this season’s Promenade Concerts
with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He will
be appearing with the New Philharmonia
in the Festival Hall next week.
Vernon Handley is particularly noted for his
championship of British music and in 1974
was voted Conductor of the Year by the
Composers’ Guild of Great Britain.
He has recently returned from a highly
successful visit to South Africa, where he
conducted concerts with the Durban
Sympheny Orchestra, all of which received
critical acclaim.
Hammersmith—Prelude and Scherzo for
Orchestra
Holst 1874-1934
Hammersmith was composed in 1930, and was
originally scored for military band, the
composer orchestrating it himself later.
Holst always said that he never composed
anything unless the “‘not composing of it”
ecame a positive nuisance to him.
“Hammersmith” dates from his full
maturity and he had never written anything
like it before. “Prelude and Scherzo”
implies that whatever musical ideas he had,
he wished to cast them in a certain form.
In fact the music of the Prelude provides
the first tune of the Scherzo, and when that
section has spent itself, the Prelude turns
itself into an epilogue. This is not simply a
tone picture of Hammersmith as Holst knew
it. It is much more a mystical projection of
the place and its history, dominated always
by the slowly moving river, but Holst’s view
of music included the vulgar as well as
the mystic, and the direction to the
principal trumpet to play his first flcurish
with “‘coarse tcne” evokes Hammersmith
Philharmonic Choir
Broadway cn a Saturday night.
The Philharmonic Choir is the larger of the
The Prelude begins with double basses and
two choirs under the conductorship of the
violas repeating climbing and falling phrases;
Musical Director, who acknowledges with
their key signature is three sharps. Against
thanks the help he has received in training
them, two bassoons play a melancholy tune;
the choir frcm Mr Kenneth Lank and
their signature is cne flat. The resultant
Miss Mary Rivers, and also Linden Andrew,
clashes in harmony remain unresolved and
Jane Parry, Michele Hart and Prudence
are interrupted by a spiky phrase from the
Smith for their help in sectional rehearsals
piccolo, which has, with typical Hclst
of the choir.
economy, the first four notes of the double
basses’ rising phrase as its opening. The
mood is so different, however, that one
wculd be forgiven for not noticing this.
The trumpet imitates the piccolo but
neither are able to disturb the onw~rd flow
of the earlier music. This ccrmzs to rest on
an extension of the rising phrase, an the
Scherzo begins. The rising phrase is taken
cver by flutes and is treated fugally, even
when interrupted by a new phrase from the
first horn in six-eight across the two-four
cf the rest of the orchestra. The two ideas
are worked cut with brilliance and, at times,
fury, the second one of the two showing
its kinship with the spiky phrase of the
piccolo and trumpet. In the midst of the
Scherzo, the mood of the Prelude with the
material of the Scherzo form a wierd
interlude, with solo string players playing
the spiky piccolo phrase in canon. It is a
perfect musical comma, The truncated
Scherzo returns, works up to a violent
climax and abruptly finishes at the height
of its noise to allow the music of the
Prelude to draw the work to its close.
Songs of Farewell
Parry 1848-1918
. My soul, there is a country (a 4)
-wAnWm
. I know my soul hath power (a 4)
. Never weather-beaten sail (a 5)
. There is an old belief (a 6)
. At the round earth’s imagined corners
(a7
6. Lord, let me know mine end (a 8)
By 1910 Parry had composed five sets of
Part-songs, ranging in mood from the lighthearted gaiety of “Come, pretty wag” to the
autumnal beauty of the six-part Meditation
“Sorrow and pain”. For his final set of
pieces for unaccompanied choir he turned
to the Motet, producing the culmination
of all his compositions for this medium, the
six “Songs of Farewell”. The first five were
performed at the Royal College of Music
on 22 May 1916 by the Bach Choir under
Dr Hugh Allen; and it is to this conductor
and choir that the seven-part motet is
dedicated. Allen also conducted the first
performance of the eight-part motet, in the
Chapel of New College, Oxford, on 17
June 1917; and this work is dedicated to
him and the Oxford Bach Choir.
The first of the group, “MYy soul, there is a
country”, is a four-part setting of the poem
entitled ’Peace’ by the metaphysical poet
Henry Vaughan. “I know my soul hath
power” is a setting for four voices of two
quatrains from the philosophical poem
‘Nosce TeipsumTM— Know thyself’—by Sir
John Davies. The subject is ‘Man’, whose
high potential for good is illustrated by
aspiring rising phrases, whilst the harsh
reality of his contrary nature is represented
by a striking use of the descending
diminished fifth—"diabolus in musica’.
“Never weather-beaten sail” is a five-part
setting of two stanzas by Thomas Campion
éxpressing a longing for rest at the end of
the voyage of life. The beginning of the
third line, “Than my wearied sprite now
longs”, introduces a figure which reappears,
sublimely transforimed, in the fifth motet,
at the words ““And you whose eyes shall
behold God”. The words of “There is an old
belief” are taken from some lines written by
John Gibson Lockhart, the biographer of
Scott, in a letter to Carlyle. This motet is
particularly remarkable for the way Parry
sets “Beyond the sphere of grief dear friends
shall meet once more”, where the music
goes from G major through C minor to E
flat, and then, magically, to D major.
The seven- and eight-part motets are larger
in every way, and Parry adopts a number
of devices to achieve variety. “At the round
earth’s imagined corners”, the seventh of
Donne’s ‘Holy Sonnets’, is set with much
contrast of tempo. Some passages are
allocated to the four women’s or three
men’s voices only; polyphonic sections
are contrasted with homophonic ones; and
complex chromatic passages are offset by
simple diatonic writing. This process is
carried even further in “Lord, let me know
mine end”’, a setting for double choir of
verses from Psalm 39. Here there is much
use of antiphonal writing, marked rhythmic
variety, and many changes of tonality. But
whether expressing the drama of “Take thy
plague away from me” or the yearning of
“O spare me a little”, Parry sets the words
with a sensitivity and mastery of largescale design which place this work, together
with its predecessor, alongside the finest
motets of Bach and Brahms.
Michael Pope
MY SOUL, THERE IS
A COUNTRY
My soul, there is a country
Far beyond the stars,
Where stands a winged sentry,
All skilful in the wars;
There, above noise and danger
Sweet Peace sits crowned with smiles
And One, born in a manger
Commands the beauteous files.
He is thy gracious friend
And—O my soul, awake!
—
Did in pure love descend
To die here for thy sake.
If thou canst get but thither,
There grows the flow’r of Peace,
The rcse that cannot wither,
Thy fortress and thy ease.
O leave then thy foolish ranges,
For none can thee secure
But One who never changes
Thy Geod, thy life, thy cure.
I KNOW MY SOUL HATH POWER TO
LORD, LET ME KNOW MINE END
KNOW ALL THINGS
Lord, let me know mine end and the number
of my days
That I may be certified how long I have to live.
Thou hast made my days as it were a span long;
And mine age is as nothing in respect of Thee,
And verily ev’ry man living is altogether vanity
For man walketh in a vain shadow, and
disquieteth himself in vain;
He heapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall
I know my soul hath power to know all things,
Yet she is blind and ignorant in all:
I know I'm one of Nature’s little kings,
Yet to the least and vilest things am thrall.
I know my life’s a pain and but a span;
I know my sense is mock’d in everything:
And to conclude, I know myself a Man,
Which is a proud and yet a wretched thing.
NEVER, WEATHER-BEATEN SAIL
Never weather-beaten sail more willing bent to
shore,
Never tired pilgrim’s limbs affected slumber
more,
Than my wearied sprite now longs to fly out
of my troubled breast:
O, come quickly, sweetest Lord, and take my
soul to rest.
Ever blooming are the joys of Heaven’s high
Paradise
Cold age deafs not there our ears nor vapour
dims our eyes:
Glory there the sun outshines; whose beams
the blessed only see:
O ccme quickly, glorious Lord, and raise my
sprite to Thee!
gather them.
And now Lord, what is my hope?
Truly my hope is even in Thee
Deliver me from all mine offences
And make me not a rebuke to the foolish
I became dumb and opened not my mouth
For it was Thy doing.
Take Thy plague away from me,
I am even consumed by means of Thy heavy
hand.
When Thou with rebukes dost chasten man for
sin,
Thou makest his beauty to consume away,
like as it were a moth, fretting a garment;
Every man therefore is but vanity.
Hear my pray’r, O Lord, and with Thine ears
consider my calling,
Hcld not Thy peace at my tears!
Fcr I am a stranger with Thee and a sojourner
as all my fathers were.
O spare me a little, that I may recover my
strength
Before I go hence, and be no more seen.
THERE IS AN OLD BELIEF
Songs of Farewell
Delius 1862-1934
There is an cld belief,
That on some solemn shore,
Beyond the sphere of grief
Dear friends shall meet once more.
The Songs of Farewell were written in 1930
and were dedicated to Delius’s wife. Walt
Beyond the sphere of Time
And Sin and Fate’s control,
Serene in changeless prime
Whitman was a source of inspiraticn to
many compgosers from the turn of the
Of body and of soul.
century; Vaughan Williams, Holst and,
later on, Hindemith turned to his
That creed I fain would keep
That hone I’ll ne’er forgo
individual verse when writing choral music.
E‘ernal be the sleep
If not to waken so.
Delius had already written one of his
masterpieces arcund a poem of Whitman,
and “Sea Drift” was established before he
AT THE ROUND EARTH’S IMAGINED
CORNERS
At the round earth’s imagined corners blow
Your trumpets angels and .arise
From death you numberless infiinities
Of souls arise and to your scatter’d bodies go!
All whom the flcod did and fire shall overthrow
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain; and you
whose eyes
Shall behold God and never taste death’s wce.
But let them sleep Lord, and me mourn a
space.
For, if above all these my sins abound,
Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace
When we are there. Here on this lcwly ground
Teach me how to renent, for that’s as gocd
As if Thou’dst sealed my pardon with Thy
blocd.
wrote the ‘Songs of Farewell”, They date
from late in his life, when blind and
paralysed, he dictated every note of the
score for double choir and full orchestra
to Eric Fenby. The Songs are five in
number, the first and last sharing sc me of
the musical material so as to give the cycle
a feeling of unity, and the middle three
aptly balanced against one another in mood.
The first of the five songs looks back.
Delius is concerned with ‘“‘the meditation of
cld times resumed”. The second is hardly a
song of farewzll, the poet and composer are
looking cut to sea, and are inspired by the
waves and the wild unrest of the ocean.
The third song is in praise of all nature,
and finishes with the passionate cry of an
explorer to be away on his journey. The
fourth song is so joyous that it is almost
impossible to believe that it was written
by a man in Delius’s terrible physical
condition: Joy, shipmate, joy! (Pleas’d to
my soul at death I cry,) finds all the strings
and the double choir pouring out the tune
with forte certainty. Delius’s mind seems
intent on joy, rather than the feeling of
farewell. The last song, however, although
still in a strange way looking forward to the
soul’s journey, is allowed to be a finale.
The choir sing that although land and life
are to be left, “much for thee is yet in
store”. It is with a great positive shcut that
the soul is urged to “depart upon thy
endless cruise, old sailor”. After this
injunction, the orchestra takes us slowly
into the distance until the choir repeat the
word “depart” pianissimo at the end of the
Passage, immediate passage! The blood burns
in my veins!
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!
IV.
Joy, shipmate, joy!
(Plzas’d tc my scul at death I cry,)
Our life is closed, cur life begins,
The long, long anchorage we leave,
The ship is clear at last, she leaps!
She swiftly ccurses from the shere,
Joy, shipmate, joy.
Va
Now final2 to the shore,
Now land and life final¢ and farewell,
Ncw Veyager depart, (much, much for thee
is yet in store,)
Often encugh hast thou adventur’d c¢’er the
seas,
Cauticusly cruising,—studying the charts,
Duly again to port and hawster’s tie returning;
But now obey they cherish’d secret wish,
Embrace thy friends, leave all in order,
To port and hawser’s tie no mcre returning,
Depart upon thy endlzss cruise cld Sailor.
work.
SONGS OF FAREWELL
Walt Whitman
(Leaves of Grass)
During the interval refreshments will be
How sweet the silent backward tracings!
The wanderings as in dreams—the meditation
of old times resumed—their loves, joys,
persons,
INTERVAL
served in the Surrey Room by members of
the Concertgoers’ Society.
voyages.
Apple crchards, the trees all cover’d with
blossoms;
Wheat fields carpeted far and near in vital
emerald green;
The eternal, exhaustless freshness cf each early
morning;
The yellow, gclden, transparent haze of the
warm afternoon sun;
The aspiring lilac bushes with profuse purple
or white flowers.
1T
I stand as on some mighty eagle’s beak,
Eastward the sea abscrbing, viewing, (nothing
but sea and sky,)
The tossing waves, the foam, the ships in the
distance,
The wild unrest, the snowy, curling caps—that
inbound urge and urge of waves,
Sezking the shores forever.
111.
Passage to you!
O secret cf the earth and sky!
Of you O waters of the sea! O winding creeks
and rivers!
Of you O woods and fields! Of you strong
mountains of my land!
Of you O prairies! Of you gray rccks!
O morning red! O clouds! O rain and sncws!
O day and night, passage to you!
O sun and moen and all you stars! Sirius and
Jupiter!
Passage to you!
Symphony No. 1 in A flat
Elgar 1857-1934
Andante - Nobilmente ¢ 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 composcr after the first
movement, after the third movement, and
then with frantic applause at the end of
the Symphony. But he wculd have been
curprised to be told that the work would
suffer an eclipse, and that for many years
its composer would bz thought of as not
having been a gocd symphonist. Although
the Oratorios, Concerti, Enigma Variations
of this movement is so entirely different
and Introduction and Allegro have
from the bustle of the first two that it is
maintained Elgar’s reputation over the
surprising to find that every bar is
years, it has not been until the last ten
characteristic of Elgar. His many-sided
years that the two symphonies have started
nature is nowhere better shown than in the
to come into their own again.
wide emotional range which the inclusion of
For two years before the production of his
First Symphony, Elgar had produced no
this movement in the Symphony confirms.
The join to the finale is made perfectly,
major work, and disturbed by his inability
for it opens quietly, slowly and with great
to achieve financial security, he had
mystery. Quotations from the first
threatened early in 1907 to give up
movement and a strange distant march
composing altogether, but he had been
tune, undoubtedly related to the first
contemplating since 1898 the possibility
tune of the first movement, pass before
of a symphony, and it started to take
us. Then, a violent Allegro, full of dotted
shape in Octobzar of 1907. He said that he
rhythms, announces the Elgar of the
composed it out of his experience of life,
brilliant musical argument and telling
and with a massive hope in the future. The
orchestration. Nothing stops the headlong
Symphony’s extraordinary power is in its
flight of this movement until the
ability to appeal to any audience
reappearance of the first tune in the
immediately without, however, making any
Symphony, and this gathers the orchestra
popular gestures. It is strangely unified,
and most of the principal themes can be
focund to have some relationship with the
first noble tune. The tune starts
straightaway at the beginning of the first
around it, sharing the material of the
rmovement it has interrupted, until
together the separate ideas reach a coda of
great triumph. Elgar’s massive hope was
never clearer than here.
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
FRIDAY 14 NOVEMBER at 7.45 p.m.
the main developments of the first
movement take place. Occasionally a quiet
versicn of the first tune, played very
tenderly by the first violins, or a few bars
of the tune itself, intervene, but rarely
hold up 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
cwift. One extraordinary Mahlerian episcde
for sclo viclin and strings reminds us that
the compcser was capable of the great
HOLY TRINITY CHURCH,
GUILDFORD
PHILHARMONIC CHOIR
Works by Mozart, Bruckner, Parry,
Vaughan Williams and Leighton
Conductors Kenneth Lank and
Vernon Handley
BAROQUE CHAMBER GROUP
Works by Telemann and Gerhard Maasz
charm of the Wand of Ycuth Suites, and
the Dorabella variation frcm the Enigma.
Admission by programme 60p
The rather lumpy march tuns which occurs
obtainable at Guildford Public Library
frequently in this movement serves in
quiet augmentation for the beautiful
transition at the end of the movement
and at Holy Trinity Church on the
night
which Icads to the at first serene, but
Proceeds in aid of local Breast Cancer
later passicnate, third movement. The mood
Screening Project