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| Gerald Finzi |
Recently I have been posting recordings of the Walton-Sitwell entertainment
Façade, including the original 1929 version with Dame Edith and Constant Lambert, Walton conducting. That edition came from a LP that also offered the first recordings of two notable sets of English song - Gerald Finzi's
Dies Natalis and George Butterworth's
A Shropshire Lad. Today I am posting my transfers of that music, together with the initial recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams's
On Wenlock Edge - three landmarks in 20th century English song setting.
For
Dies Natalis, Finzi set poems by Thomas Traherne, a 17th century poet and clergyman whose work is generally grouped with the metaphysical poets although his writings were virtually unknown until the 20th century.
Dies Natalis is in form a cantata, with an orchestral introduction and then settings of four striking poems that convey the wonder and innocence of the newborn child.
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| Joan Cross |
The performance is by soprano Joan Cross and the Boyd Neel Orchestra, dating from October 1946 and January 1947. The legend is that neither the composer nor the singer were happy with the results, and today the set is seldom heard. There is something to that: Cross was a noted actor, but wonder and innocence were apparently not in her artistic arsenal. Still and all, the records are not as bad as one might think. They convey Finzi's gorgeous string writing well, and the singer is sympathetic, clear and in tune.
The full power of Finzi's work would not be displayed on record until 1964, when it was taken up for EMI by tenor Wilfred Brown and the composer's son, Christopher. This remains my own favorite, one I played for myself the night my first child was born nearly 40 years ago.
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| Gervase Elwes |
Both Vaughan Williams and his younger colleague George Butterworth set poems by their contemporary A.E. Housman, drawn from his popular collection
A Shropshire Lad. The older composer set six of the poems for tenor, piano and string quartet. The work is here performed by tenor Gervase Elwes, the work's dedicatee, with pianist Frederick Kiddle and the London String Quartet. Elwes and Kiddle both took part in the first performance, in 1909. The recording dates from 1917, and is thoroughly remarkable. Elwes is more declamatory than is the norm a century later. His sense of time is flexible; he and the instrumentalists draw out the concluding "Clun" to powerful effect. It's impossible not to reflect that the sense of loss and impending doom - always implicit in Housman - were especially pronounced during the recording sessions, which took place three years into the horrific first world war.
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| George Butterworth |
Butterworth himself was a victim of the war, killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916 at age 31. He left relatively few works; notably this collection and the orchestral work
The Banks of Green Willow. Both he and Vaughan Williams set Housman's ironic "Is My Team Ploughing?" As you might expect, given their similar styles and close association, the settings have some similarity. Vaughan Williams left out the poem's two stanzas that dealt with football, to Housman's irritation. The composer thought the poet ought to be happy he left out a passage with the clunky couplet "The goal stands up, the keeper / Stands up to keep the goal."
Butterworth set 11 poems from
A Shropshire Lad; this is the first set, which strictly speaking is called
Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad. The second set, not included here, is
Bredon Hill and Other Songs.
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| Roy Henderson |
The present recording comes from 1941, with Roy Henderson, one of the finest baritones of his generation, and Gerald Moore, the most famous accompanist of the time.
The sound on all these issues is well balanced and pleasing - even the Vaughan Williams from a century ago. Using modern tools, it's possible to get good results from many such acoustic recordings, within the limits of their constricted frequency range.
