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The Gurnal

Richard Carder was championing unpublished Gurney songs, bringing them to performance, with his English Poetry and Song Society (which took the initiative for the present recording) long before most of us had even heard of them, let alone heard them.

His vision, dogged determination, insistence on their quality, and passion for bringing them back to life, pre-empted and heralded the healthy, improved situation today, when we see many of these hitherto hidden gems, of undoubted quality, brought out of manuscript and appearing on CD with singers of note newly championing them.

Sometimes he took and weathered a degree of flak for the urgency with which he stated his case. But he has been proved right. We owe it to him, too, that we now have Seven Sappho Songs which launches the first of these double discs, entering the repertoire, thanks to his pioneering in getting a handsome volume issued by Thames Publishing. The idea was that several of these sets of songs – settings or verses by Rupert Brooke, or F. W. Harvey, or fellow wartime poets, for instance – merited preserving as a cycle. This is the notion behind the Seven Sappho Songs, and it has to be admitted it largely works.

On this attractively programmed Divine Art (divine art) compilation – and it is a handsomely designed production too, well laid out, with composer biographies and all texts given in full – Carder’s initiative has yielded a tangible benefit for those drawn to English art-song. As well as the Gurney cycle (which starts), he has brought together ten or so composers, mostly with birthdates spanning 1926 to 1943, to which add two more recent ones, Robert Hugill (b. 1955) and Janet Oates (b. 1970). Of these, mercifully, only one, Simon Willink (1929-2015) had died at the time of the making of this disc. Dennis Wickens is into his nineties, and Brian Daubney and Graham Garton just entering them.

It is thus drawing attention to a range of repertoire from a period that, apart from the sterling work of the EPSS, is only just making its way into public awareness. It is even in that respect a valuable service.

After Gurney, from each of the first three composers on disc 1 – Carnell, Watts, Wickens – he includes a cycle of six or seven songs; each. Five others are represented on CD 2 by four (or five) songs each. One or two songs from three others complete that second disc. One of the most pleasing things is the rich wealth of poetry chosen and set by all of these composers.

The slightly fruity voice of Sarah Leonard on this divine art recording is perhaps a matter of personal taste. But she gives us the songs, warmly delivered, with some superbly articulated accompaniments throughout from the beautifully accomplished Nigel Foster. It helps that ‘The Apple Orchard’ one of three previously published items in the Gurney songs, is so light and dancing. Leonard sings it with utter charm, dainty and eloquent, a treat of a performance.

Yet interestingly, Carder notes that he sought the advice of the late Trevor Hold, himself an English song composer of note, who told him that ‘The four unpublished [Sappho] songs were much better than the three published ones’, a judgment that gives added weight and support to Carder’s own opinion on their quality.

The other initially scherzoish song is ‘Love shakes my soul’. Sappho’s poem is indeed violently passionate (though not all through); one senses, for the sake of variety, that the song might have benefited from being taken a mite faster – although from the way Gurney writes that might be not easily achievable. To a degree the chromatics, as in ‘The Quiet Mist’ (with more piano triplets) come across less than precise with Leonard’s quite marked vibrato.

The need for variety arises because the bulk of the Gurney settings are on the slow side, wafting somewhat, sometimes ingeniously but sometimes with less clear intention; although rightly capture the essence of the decidedly wistful last line of song no. 7: ‘The Pleiads / Gone, the dead of night is going, / Slips the hour, and on my bed / I lie alone’ (a thought Housman was to recall’). ‘Soft was the wind’ undulates gently, the swifter rocking triplets of the piano echoed in the voice part, the key shifts still perhaps a little too wafting. ‘I shall be ever maiden’ gains in pace, the accompanying semiquavers supplying a sort of simmering underlay, notably assured; only the conclusion feels a bit abrupt, whereas that of the ‘Apple Tree’ is beautifully spaced out, a gentle end to the dance.

The most exquisite slow song is probably ‘Hesperus’, a moving hymn to the Evening Star. It breaks into two equal verses, and comes closer to the idiom of the most expressive of Gurney settings, such as Edward Thomas’s ‘Lights Out’ (‘I have come to the borders of sleep…’). ‘The Quiet Mist’ seemed to know where it is going; but gradually the wafting in voice or piano part alike seem to be searching for apt key shifts, rather than in control of them. Is there a continental influence in some of this? Just possibly.

The wistful last song (‘Lonely Night’) begins enchantingly, the link passage between the two verses works well, and the undoubted pathos of the desolate lines is well brought out, the end especially.

William (Will) Carnell, (b. 1938) studied music with another gifted composer who would have sat well on these discs, Ruth Gipps, whose orchestral output has recently been championed by Chandos. A Country Lover is a collection of six poems by AEH, including the popular ‘Bredon Hill’, but also embracing other Housman verses less commonly set.

Carnell’s first song, prefaced by a warm if slightly naïve long introduction, unfolds a lightly dancing, or prancing, amusingly confidential main tune (‘…Tis true, young man, ’tis true’). It’s not far from the attractive way Butterworth treats Housman. ‘If truth in hearts that perish’ is aptly slow, again a relatively straightforward setting, pleasantly tonal, perhaps a fraction simplistic, though it enlivens in verse 3. The whole cycle benefits from the appearance of Johnny Herford, a baritone of attractive timbre and excellent, pure enunciation, who engaging personality – like Leonard’s – enhances many of the settings on the disc.

Bredon of course suggests bells, and Carnell’s evocation of their sound across village and fields is enchanting and not just pealing, but appealing (as Brian Daubney’s equally evocative depiction of them on disc 2 will also prove). It’s, rightly, a blithe and cheerful song till the penultimate verse, when we encounter the ominous ‘and went to church alone, and then ‘the one bell only’ – the grim tolling of the funeral summons. Both performers hold the music back to striking effect. And an attempt at a return to the blissful start yields instead a poignant hold up: ‘Oh, noisy bells, be dumb; I hear you, I will come’. Both settings of this famous Housman poem are markedly successful.

The setting of ‘Along the field’ (‘Along the field as we came by A year ago my love and I’), a shy andante, is seemingly optimistic, but – this being Housman – there is a poignancy lurking underneath, which finds fruition in the last two lines, set perhaps a little benignly: ‘When I shall sleep in clover clad And she beside another lad.’ ‘White in the moon the long road lies’ involves a rocking, even (again) marginally bell-like accompaniment, though the second verse (‘My feet upon the moonlit dust’ ‘Pursue the ceaseless way’. is appropriately more halting, as if the journey is a difficult one, more suggestive of anxiety, of unending striving: what lies beyond? This and the last song, ‘There pass the careless people’ are somewhat similar in demeanour, although the last, interestingly, has a feel of Gurney in the vocal line.

‘Gypsy Girl’, the cycle by Michael Watts (b. 1937, a handsomely prolific composer now living in Majorca (and listing some 160 works at the time of this recording) evokes the ‘Green eyes, green as basil, green as a meadow’ of the espied wench. The song wafts, tenderly. There is even a feel of bells, which emerge more obviously in the second song, ‘Silver sighs’. The text (Paul Archer) is utterly beautiful, and touchingly enamoured. Are these exquisite light-stepped dreams and sighs best evoked by a wan adagio, as here? Happily the next song is vivacious: a patent scherzo, cheekily whirling along, in both keyboard and voice. It even has the slight feel of a Britten cabaret song. A skilled effort.

The piano part, all but an ostinato, yet again seems to peal gently. Watts plays around with key, pacing and tessitura to lend these songs fractionally more bite than the preceding Carnell cycle. There is more of the unexpected here. A repeating high note on the piano suggests the ‘cold wind’ of song no. 5, ‘If the cold wind comes’, is somewhat ominous, as might suggest a ballad, not least as the poem engages ‘song of sorrow, I sing of my lost one’. As the mood grows gradually grimmer, the feeling is fraught with danger.

Watts seems often, as in the last song, ‘If you’re light’, to be urging the music into a kind of bitonality. The text (‘You say it breaks your heart…) is itself mysterious, even fatalistic: ‘But if you’re the light and I’m the shadow we’ll become as one when day fades to night’. The dark plodding passacaglia that accompanies ‘When it’s snowing in the serranas’ is pleasingly apt. Yet here too we meet an issue mentioned above: the pacing of slow, even (here) ultra-slow songs in succession can be less than ideal. While Leonard certainly catches the gloom of the setting, which one welcomes (the ‘lone shepherd’ is indeed mourning ‘a woman he once knew’, she of the ‘green eyes’ of the first song, one wonders if such an trudging adagio is the best way to get the intensity of even these sad words across best. It’s all a bit moaning (which could of course be justified). The words are all by Paul Archer, and inspired by flamenco performers from Spain.

The first of Dennis Wickens’ songs (‘This Life’ – seven well-chosen poems by W. H. Davies) is a decided pick-me-up. Its bugling salute sounds very much in the Britten mould, and the buoyant text (‘Good morning, Life – and all Things glad and beautiful…’) is very attractively handled. You could imagine Peter Pears relishing this song. (Wickens, interestingly, a noted singer, was Director of Music at the Royal Grammar School, Worcester and a Lay Clerk in Worcester Cathedral choir.)

His second and third songs (about a Butterfly, and about rain yielding to bright and joyous sunburst), are both oddly slow, though in the former the second verse picks up and emerges nicely optimistic, while the latter (‘A wondrous light will fill Each dark, round drop’) grows very mysterious, relieved by some skittish writing for the piano, to which Foster brings wit and impishness.

One naturally hopes for a successful and expressive setting of W. H. Davies’ most famous poem, ‘What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stop and stare?’, and certainly it gets it here, a boisterousness prevailing early on, the piano line skittering, the voice riding beautifully above. ‘In the Country’, however, is another of these overegged slow settings that, here at least, somehow fails to bring out the very pretty words (‘This life is sweetest; in this wood I hear no children cry for food; I see no woman, white with care..’ . Here is joy and good cheer, even if it leads on, by contrast, to the poet’s observation, and severe condemnation, of ‘Hunger in almost every place.’ Shifts of mood are clearly indicated. But why are so many of these songs, or performances, or both, dedicated to a strangely inexpressive deep gloom? ‘a wretched life’ or ‘cursed’, ‘sad and wan’, ‘misery’ of course do suggest it. But it places too much belief in the idea that the ponderous equals the communicative. It is the main drawback of this otherwise valuable CD collection.

‘This Night’, sung again by Herford, brings on another dark setting, a glowering owl adding to the gloom. . The owl’s haunting ‘to-whoo’ Oh-o-o in the Davies) lends atmosphere, and, as the poet admits, ‘Has found his fellow in my mood’. Even the Moon cast a dark shadow. Pessimism, a marked grimness, prevails. Is this a murderer, not a grieving lover? Or both? (‘Thy lover is a skeleton ! “And why is that?” I question – “why?”). The figure in the owl stanzas ‘sits here alone’; the figure in the next poem is ‘lonely’. Wickens’ sly ending is rather clever; the sort of thing one looked for elsewhere in this cycle.

Simon Willink, who died in 2015, was both an ordained priest, holding benefices in both Gloucestershire and New Zealand, and briefly Chairman of the EPSS, in whose concerts he also often sang. The beguiling words of ‘Sea and Sky’ he wrote himself. The opening is serene, fairly somnolent, floating, the piano part especially delicate and questing. The first half continues in like vein, but the voice enlivens at ‘a passing storm’ with ‘its thunderous scowl’, and the breakers ‘stabbed with crimson glory’, the setting perhaps a little benign. It has an elegance and tenderness, although why ‘the scene is beauty’ and ‘so pure, so pale’ insist on the same kind of drowsy, pensive treatment is not entirely clear. Yet it is an attractive setting for all the reservations.

David Crocker’s settings of ‘A Great Time’ (also W. H. Davies) and ‘My Whole World’ (Alfred Warren) enliven things somewhat. Crocker was also briefly Chairman `of the EPSS, so the disc is amongst other things a tribute to several fine musicians connected to the Society. Born in Lincolnshire, and recently returned there, he spent two decades teaching at what became Leicester De Montfort University.

‘A Great Time’ (Davies again: he figures large on this disc, another bonus) moves along agreeably – again a hint of Butterworth. A nice use of rubato in both voice and accompaniment helps generate atmosphere and maintain a measure of variety. ‘My Whole World’, the second Crocker song – there are only two – seems a little dependent on a simple crotchet feel. Is there is a little bit of the ‘cow looking over a gate’ here?

The elegant picking out of a skilfully devised piano part, with a kind of passacaglia feel. Though it is yet another slow song, it is possible to say there is more going on, more deftness of conceit in this song than any hitherto. It is by Sulyen Caradon, though this turns out to be an agreeable pen-name for Richard Carder himself, modestly restricting his contribution to just one song. This is undoubtedly one of the better efforts. Here the own singer is Sarah Leonard, and she catches both the spirit and the detail well. It is short, but cleverly engineered. Importantly, the song shows Carder’s skilled way with words. One of the most attractive and alluring settings.

Brian Daubney, another closely linked with the EPSS (like Crocker briefly Chairman, and likewise closely associated with Lincolnshire) is another who sets Housman, and is successful in inventing attractive, rather cleverly wrought bell patterns for ‘Bredon Hill’ – first tinkling quavers, then some rather effective chordings, and of course latterly, the ominous single bell, here chorded. He has the idea of setting the third stanza (ending ‘…And come to church in time’), where the grim truth behind the languorous poem begins to emerge, a cappella. This song has much to commend it, from several blithely wrought stanzas to the affrontedly exclaimed penultimate line. Herford’s ability to conjure mood is a distinct bonus.

Daubney’s ‘Boot and Saddle’ is a gratifying setting of Robert Browning, and here we find a genuine, if not scherzo exactly, something close: a fast-riding, fast-trotting song, well-judged for the equestrian ballad-like poem, set in a previous century, apparently the 17th. The mood here is not gloomy, but vivacious.Sarah Leonard achieves another success with Daubney’s high-reaching treatment of a touching, quite popular poem by Emily Dickinson , ‘Because I could not stop for Death’. Also thanks thanks to some telling pauses, the handling of the slowish ‘The Dream City’ (Humbert Wolfe, 1885-1940) works pretty well too. The ostinato below the voice is kept at the same pace: perhaps that might have been varied, by way of enlivening. Daubney’s last is a Thomas Hardy poem, ‘Waiting Both’, a conversation of sorts. The singing is nice; whether the ponderous pace is justified is another matter.

Enter Graham Garton, by chance the third composer here with Lincoln connections (he was a cathedral chorister there, and made his first sorties into composition while still a singing boy. Lennox Berkeley was one of his teachers at the Royal Academy. He too, initially at least, is drawn to W. H. Davies, whose ‘What is this life if, full of care’ (sung by Herford) is a great deal more vivid than Wickens’ on disc I. Indeed both at the start, with its energetic piano contribution from Nigel Foster, and later we almost could be in a Britten opera. Here is a song where the pace changes, and the mood, and the word-painting is especially proficient, while the piano has many vivid touches of its own. Much of this is highly atmospheric. The accompaniment intersperses a highly dramatic manner, with lightly fingered surges, scampering indeed, all very effective; while the voice intermittently reaches up to some high notes verging on coloratura. The operatic approach could not be more apt for Tennyson’s famous ‘The Eagle’ (‘He watches from his mountain walls, And like a thunderbolt he falls’) – the last line achieved with a wonderful unforeseen suddenness.

After the Tennyson setting, touching on graphic violence in the wild, the essence of Walter de la Mare’s ‘Song of the Secret’ is regretful: ‘Where is beauty? The cold winds have taken it…the clear naked flower if faded and dead’ is indeed sombre and wan. Too much so? Rather more effective (again Leonard) is the impish, twirling ‘The Shade-Catchers’ (Charlotte Mew, Victorian English poet, 1869-1928), with its playful interplay – both the voice and the keyboard dance – between small brother and sister, ‘scudding away on their little bare feet’.

‘Dawn’, a setting of William Barnes, the celebrated 19th century Dorset poet, is another restrained setting, with occasional or momentary changes in pace to lend a brief variety. It’s by Frank Harvey, another name to catch the eye. The composer has spent much of his time in Wiltshire – the reference by Barnes in his final stanza to nearby Hambledon in ‘Dawn’ was doubtless an attraction. Harvey brings an appealing pastoral feel to the earlier verses; the mood is lyrical, and in part pleasantly enraptured, a mood nicely caught. However as with many of these poems the mood darkens. The ominous chordings near the close (‘And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres’) sum up the tragic mien of the song, for Thomas Hardy’s poem evokes the ghastly fate of the Titanic (‘In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too’).

‘Remember’ (Christina Rossetti’s sonnet ‘Remember me when I am gone away’ suffers, one regrets, from the plodding adagio feel noted above. The thing about Rossetti’s poems, even when elegiac, is that they have a gossamer lightness of touch. Whether it is composers or performers who have a pervasive liking for grimness is not clear. Possibly the latter? Perhaps both. For her approach is positive, not maudlin. (‘do not grieve’ and ‘Better by far you should forget and smile). She has acquiesced in the departure of her friend or lover. She is consoling, not languishing.

If Harvey’s ponderousness affects the Rossetti detrimentally, it also inhabits the short-lived American poet Hart Crane’s ‘Voyages III’, the first of Robert Hugill’s four songs here. One of the additional issues with some of these songs is that the tessitura is often not expanded to add interest and contrast. It’s certainly true here, for the vocal line emerges as a kind of inexpressive plainsong.

‘Gitanjali XIII’ – this comes from a celebrated collection of poems by the Nobel Prizewinner Rabindrath Tagore – feels perhaps ingeniously, like a kind of religious intoning. The poetry is delectable, the setting tender though not riveting. ‘Gitanjali II’ comes across a little better, with Leonard trying valiantly to give the words colour. It is plangent, possibly affecting, and helped slightly by an intelligent restrained accompaniment. Religious intonation in some Eastern cultures sometimes involves wailing. Perhaps that is a possible word to use here. The words are utterly enchanting: an inspired choice by the composer. Indeed divine art has already issued a disc devoted entirely to him (DDA 25053); and Quickening, a collection of his song settings by English (and Welsh) poets, was issued in 2017 by Navona Records (NV 6121). Those he sets include Ivor Gurney and Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.

What is clear is that Hugill, a composer in a wide variety of genres, his choice of texts often enough inspired, has successfully set out to place himself within the established genre of English art-song. His aspirations are fully justified. His last song here is a setting of a sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt (‘The Pillar’), another notable choice (in fact both discs contain a wealth of desirable verses). Again it is the rippling of the accompaniment that draws one’s attention, and admiration, for the voice part is all rather samey, despite occasional upreaching surges.

You’d think that Janet Oates’s ‘Bee: Dance’ (think back to Dennis Wickens’ Butterfly), setting Carol Ann Duffy, would blow away the cobwebs. But all the skittish elements Oates (b. 1970) donates essentially to the pianist. The voice is left with a mush of gloomy phrases, even for ‘Besotted buzz-words, Dancing their flawless airy map’. Why, one wonders? The pianist has an afterword, and that certainly is nicely turned: for him, a treat. But the flittering is all with the keyboard.

Four songs by Janet Oates feature here. Gratifyingly, the voice does dance in ‘Money’, another W. H Davies poem: her setting has a nice lilting manner and a spread of charming detail, voice and piano dovetailing nicely. There is some rather characterful tapping in this ditty, and some sighs and yelps in the next, ‘The King of China’s Daughter’. Here it is Edith Sitwell up to her usual wry tongue-in-cheek fun, the accompaniment cheekily featuring some entertaining keyboard clashes. Rather a success, in a tangibly modern vein.

What better than to end with another de la Mare setting, ‘The Cupboard’; these four scherzoish songs are all sung by Sarah Leonard). ‘I have a small fat grandmamma, with a very slippery knee And she’s Keeper of the Cupboard With the key, key, key… There’s Banbury cakes, and Lollipops For me, me, me.’ That’s more like it! A hoot. Great fun.