A Garland for the Queen

To celebrate a coronation 70 years ago, the Arts Council of Great Britain commissioned 10 leading composers to provide choral works in honor of the new Queen, Elizabeth II. In doing so, it was in effect recreating the famous choral compilation, The Triumphs of Oriana, that had attended the accession of Elizabeth I nearly 400 years earlier.

Sheet music

The resulting Garland for the Queen is unlikely to leave such a lasting impression, and was not particularly well received following its premiere by the Cambridge University Madrigal Society in the Royal Festival Hall. As critic John France noted, "it is conventionally regarded as being a generically substandard work from its ‘composer collective’."

That said, it is hard not to enjoy the works as prepared by the "collective" - Arthur Bliss, Arnold Bax, Michael Tippett, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Lennox Berkeley, John Ireland, Herbert Howells, Gerald Finzi, Alan Rawsthorne and Edmund Rubbra. The first performance was led by Boris Ord, who recently appeared here leading music for an Easter service. He and his choir then recorded the program for a 1953 UK Columbia LP.

Today's post is devoted to what I believe to be the second recording of the "garland," as done by the Exultate Singers, conducted by Garrett O'Brien. That ensemble was previously heard here in a program of choral music composed for the 1953 coronation. (Both records were issued to commemorate the Queen's Silver Jubilee in 1977.) The Singers also have appeared on the blog in a Vaughan Williams choral program.

Ad in The Gramophone, June 1977

In his Gramophone review, Roger Fiske wrote that the Singers "have a clean fresh youthful quality, especially the two soprano soloists. They have all been meticulously trained and agreeably recorded." He did complain about the sameness of the settings and the inability to understand the texts.

The latter complaint is a valid one, especially so in that RCA did not include texts with the LP. It's a shame because the words are by notable poets of the time - Henry Reed, Clifford Bax, Christopher Fry, Ursula Wood, Paul Dehn, James Kirkup, Walter de la Mare, Edmund Blunden, Louis MacNeice and Christopher Hassall. I have partially remedied the text void by hunting down the words for six of the 10 compositions.

Southwark Cathedral

I believe this program was recorded in London's Southwark Cathedral, where O'Brien was on the music staff.

In the process of posting three of the Exultate Singers' LPs, I have yet to find a photo of the group or its conductor. There is an ensemble with the same name today, but it doesn't seem to be related. RCA managed to misspell O'Brien's first name on the cover of this LP. Sic transit gloria mundi musicale.

ADDENDUM - A friend of the blog found a photo of Garrett O'Brien and the Exultate Singers, dating from a program in Grimsby, England in 1972 and taken from the local Evening Telegraph. He admits it is "laughably poor," but we can see O'Brien at the left and note that he wore sideburns in the fashion of the time, also glasses. See below.

Masses by Vaughan Williams and Rubbra

This record represents two notable firsts by London's Fleet Street Choir, which managed to premiere many important works even though it was an amateur ensemble.

Vaughan Williams

In the case of the Vaughan Williams Mass in G minor, this was the first LP version, recorded in Decca's West Hampstead studios in March 1953. The group had made the first-even recording of the piece in 1946, also for Decca.

The choir and its director, T. B. Lawrence, gave the first performance of Edmund Rubbra's Missa in Honorem Sancti Dominici in 1948. This is its first recording, also from March 1953. Lawrence died during the sessions, and the composer conducted the Kyrie and Gloria heard here.

Lawrence formed the choir in the 1920s, drawing its members from journalism and the printing trades. They gave a number of notable first performances, including Britten's A Ceremony of Carols and Hymn to St. Cecilia. (You can find a transfer of their 1943 recording of the latter at Bryan Bishop's Shellackophile blog.) Nonetheless, there is some evidence that Britten did not like the Hymn to St. Cecilia recording - a letter from his publisher tells him that "legally, I could not stop their issue". They also made the first recording of Byrd's Mass for Five Voices. Vaughan Williams and Rubbra both were influenced by the liturgical music of Byrd's 16th century contemporaries.

Rubbra

The performances here have their merits but are not all that one might hope. As the Gramophone reviewer, Alec Robertson, delicately puts it about the Rubbra mass, "The writing, harmonically, is sometimes very difficult for the singers and their intonation is not impeccable in the Kyrie". For "not impeccable" substitute "fairly painful" and you will be closer to the truth.

Despite its prominence in London musical life many decades ago, the Fleet Street Choir is largely forgotten and you will find little mention of it on the web, and no photographs, either of the choir or Lawrence. The overwrought portrait of Rubbra above is by the illustrator-photographer Peggy Delius, a niece of the composer. William Rothenstein did the Vaughan Williams portrait in 1919.

Addendum: note that the download also includes the choir's 1943 recording of Holst's "This I Have Done for My True Love," the fill-up to the Britten set mentioned above.

Barbirolli Conducts Rubbra

Born in 1901, Edmund Rubbra was a contemporary and friend of such English composers as Gerald Finzi and William Alwyn. Like them, he wrote music that was conservative for its time.

His fifth symphony comes from 1947. This is its first recording, and the only recording of any of his symphonies for many years. (All 11 have now been recorded at least once.)

Barbirolli was a champion of this work, and the attractive record sleeve gives him the play over Rubbra - it's actually hard to read the title of the piece because the script font is reversed out of light blue.

It's an elegant package, and if the music inside is more earnest that elegant, it is well worth getting to know.