Robert Tear

I did not want the recent death of Welsh tenor Robert Tear to go unremarked. Although he has not appeared on this blog before, he was one of my favorite artists, with a particular affinity for English music.

While I am not in the habit of posting material that is in print, in this case I can think of no better tribute than Tear's performance of the quasi-folksong The Captain's Apprentice, here in Vaughan Williams' arrangement for voice and piano. This is one of the most doleful songs in the English language, sung by a sea captain whose cruelty had killed an impoverished boy who had been apprenticed to him out of penury. Tear's interpretation of this extraordinary (and extraordinarily beautiful) song is deeply affecting.

Robert Tear at a 1970s recording session

The Captain's Apprentice may remind you of the story of Peter Grimes. Britten's opera is based on a verse narrative by George Crabbe, which was modelled on a early 19th century broadside that told the tale of a cruel sea captain who had killed an apprentice and was tried in King's Lynn. This broadside also was apparently the source of the song that Vaughan Williams gathered in 1905 from a King's Lynn fisherman, and published in 1908.

The haunting Captain's Apprentice was a favorite of Vaughan Williams and appeared more than once in his orchestral music. The Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 makes use of the tune and another from Norfolk called On Board a Ninety-Eight, also gathered from a fisherman, and also based on a broadside from a century before. (You can find Adrian Boult's mid-50s recording of the Norfolk Rhapsody over at my friend Fred's blog, Random Classics.)

On Board a Ninety-Eight (that is, a 98-gun ship) tells the droll tale of a young man so bad that his parents gave him up to a pressgang looking for "recruits" to go to sea. (Pressgangs were paid bounties both to secure such "recruits" and also to round up deserters - goodness, what a time). This post also includes Tear's perfect performance of the song. This time, the unwilling sailor turns into a hearty tar who survives Trafalgar and getting an arm shot off, and eventually retires a pensioner.

The pianist on these recordings is Philip Ledger. Here is a link to a review in The Gramophone of the original 1978 issue.