Christmas Music by Bax, Holst, Rutter and Vaughan Williams

A quick post to conclude the Christmas season here - a very good LP of music by or arranged by the English composers Arnold Bax, Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Rutter.

The performers are the Plymouth Festival Chorus and Orchestra, a Minneapolis organization, under their long-time director Philip Brunelle. This record dates from 1984. It is a follow-up to a 1983 LP I shared last year.

Philip Brunelle conducts

The most interesting music on the LP is the contribution by Arnold Bax, his "Five Fantasies on Polish Carols." The carols themselves are lovely, and are set off by Bax's heavily chromatic orchestral style, such a contrast to the simple carols. The effect is heightened by the charming performance of the Bel Canto Voices, a choir of high school-age girls.

Sir Arnold Bax

The Holst carols come from 1907 and were originally set with piano accompaniment. Producer Cary John Franklin contributed the effective orchestrations heard here.

John Rutter is famous for his carol settings today; even 40 years ago he was renowned for his music. This LP adds seven of his works to the like number contained on the 1983 album I mentioned above. Also, a few weeks ago I shared a "Carols for Choirs" LP that includes five of his compositions.

Today's album share is completed by that Vaughan Williams seasonal staple, the "Fantasia on Greensleeves."

My best wishes to everyone for a fine holiday!

LINK

Carols for Choirs with Sir David Willcocks

One of the greatest contributions of the eminent choral director Sir David Willcocks (1919-2015) was the Oxford University Press' series of Carols for Choirs. The first volume, issued in 1961, was intended to codify the best traditional carols and settings by modern composers as well. It succeeded so well it became the OUP's top selling title, and led to five additional volumes.

The first Carols for Choirs

The editors of the original book were Willcocks and his older colleague Reginald Jacques (1894-1969), who was the conductor of the Bach Choir in London. Willcocks succeeded him in that role in 1960, while remaining the director of the King's College Choir, Cambridge, a post he held from 1957 to 1974.

Following Jacques' death, Willocks and OUP sought a new collaborator for the carols series, selecting Cambridge undergraduate John Rutter (1945- ). Splendid choice - Rutter has become one of the most popular choral composers and conductors of our time.

John Rutter and David Willcocks

In 1976, OUP sponsored a recording of 14 carols as led by Willcocks, 13 of which had been published in one of the Carols for Choirs compilations. The program mirrored one led by Willcocks with the Bach Choir in the Royal Albert Hall that year. Participating were the choir, the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and organist Richard Popplewell.

The Philip Jones Brass Ensemble

On the LP, the traditional carols are "O Come, All Ye Faithful," "Away in a Manger," the Sussex Carol, and "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," all arranged by Willcocks (the first and last with his descants), and "Silent Night," arranged by Donald Cashmore. Willcocks' "Birthday Carol" also is on the program, together with five compositions by Rutter: "Jesus Child," "Shepherd's Pipe Carol," "Star Carol," "Donkey Carol" and "Nativity Carol." The program also includes three other works by then-living composers, William Mathias' "Sir Christèmas," Alun Hoddinott's "Puer Natus" and Peter Hurford's "Sunny Bank."

Here is an excerpt from Rutter's tribute to Willcocks:

I learned many lessons from him by example: perfectionism, attention to detail (he was a crackshot proof-reader), leadership, willingness to work exhaustingly long hours without weakening, the psychology and technique of training and conducting choirs, and above all the value of life itself and the crime of wasting any of it.

Everything he wrote (including the iconic descant to O come, all ye faithful, scribbled on a train journey) met an exacting standard of craftsmanship, and his Christmas music still lights up the sky.

I am immensely the richer for having been his student, assistant, and friend.

The recording was made in St. George's Church, Hanover Square. The sound is very good.

LINK

The present-day Bach Choir at Cadogan Hall

Christmas Music by Vaughan Williams, Finzi and Rutter

To start off the holiday season this year, we have Christmas music from three favorite English composers - Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gerald Finzi and John Rutter. These come to us from a 1983 LP by Philip Brunelle and his Plymouth Festival Chorus and Orchestra.

The "Plymouth" in the title refers not to Massachusetts, but to Minneapolis' Plymouth Congregational Church, where Brunelle was and still is the choirmaster. Brunelle has had a notable career, making quite a few recordings, some of neglected operas (he was music director of Minnesota Opera for 17 years). I have in my collection his pioneering recordings of Britten's John Bunyan and Copland's The Tender Land.

In recent years, the Plymouth Festival Chorus has become known by the new-agey name "VocalEssence."

Vaughan Williams - Carols from The First Nowell

Philip Brunelle

Vaughan Williams' Christmas cantata Hodie is fairly well known, but his second effort at a holiday work, The First Nowell, much less so. In part this is because the latter is a very late work - so late that it was unfinished at the time of the composer's 1958 death. (Roy Douglas completed it.) But it is also because the music was written to accompany a nativity play, and is largely carol settings. Vaughan Williams arranged quite a number of carols through the years, so these are not unusual in his output.

Even so, these particular carols are treasurable pieces. Three are familiar - "On Christmas Night" (here in both orchestral and choral settings), "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," and "The First Nowell." "How Brightly Shone the Morning Star" is based on a chorale that Bach used in his cantata BWV 140, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.

Finzi - In Terra Pax

Gerald Finzi's In Terra Pax is, like The First Nowell, a late work, dating from 1954, two years before the composer's death. Similar to much of Finzi's music, it is both gorgeous and poignant. An article by John Bawden explains that "its genesis can be traced to an event some thirty years previously, when one Christmas Eve he [Finzi] had climbed up to the church at the top of his beloved Chosen Hill, between Gloucester and Cheltenham. The sound of the midnight bells ringing out across the frosty Gloucestershire valleys evidently made a lasting impression on him, retrospectively providing the idea for In Terra Pax, as he told Vaughan Williams."

The bells can be heard in the opening of the work, along with the melody of "The First Nowell." The words are a setting of Robert Bridges' "A Christmas Poem," dating from 1913, together with Biblical passages. (The texts can be found here.)

Brunelle and his choir

As Bawden writes, "Finzi, perhaps more than most, must have been aware of the terrible irony of Bridges’ reassuring Pax hominibus being swiftly followed by the outbreak of World War I, yet despite this, and despite his own terminal decline, In Terra Pax is a radiant, optimistic work of great beauty and sincerity; a miniature masterpiece that unites emotions, images and the familiar events of the Christmas story into a compelling musical narrative that is at once personal yet universal."

In Terra Pax is another English work that is in part a contemplation on the English countryside, a theme that flows through Vaughan Williams' work. On this blog, we have encountered this tendency most recently in his An Oxford Elegy.

Rutter - Carol Settings

Brunelle completes his program with the open rejoicing that John Rutter's contemporary carol settings represent. The conductor begins with "In Dulci Jubilo," another theme that was utilized by Bach, for both a chorale and chorale prelude.

Rutter also sets "Away in a Manger," "The Sans Day Carol" (which is related to "The Holly and the Ivy"), the French carols "Quelle Est Cet Odeur Agréable" and "Il Est Né le Divin Enfant," "Don in Yon Forest," and "I Saw Three Ships."

Philip Brunelle and John Rutter

These all display Rutter's gift for airy but satisfying settings, often flute-led, which are most appropriate for this joyous season.

Together with the Vaughan Williams and Finzi works, they make for a diverse but unified program that is a credit to this fine ensemble.

The sound as recorded was - as sometimes happened with early digital productions - both wooly and a bit strident, which I've addressed in the transfer. The result is very good.