Geoffrey Bush was born
in London. At the age of eight he was
exposed to the English choral tradition
in the best possible way when he became
a chorister at Salisbury Cathedral.
While still a schoolboy he had the good
fortune to become an unofficial pupil
of John Ireland, with whom he remained
very friendly until Ireland’s death
in 1962. He went up to Oxford University,
though his studies there were interrupted
by the war. After graduating in 1946
Bush devoted his professional life primarily
to composition and to teaching music.
He had a particularly long and close
association with London University.
His large portfolio
of compositions eventually included
no less than six operas and also two
symphonies. The First symphony was completed
in 1954 and the first performance was
given at the Cheltenham Festival that
year. The Second followed in 1957. Unfortunately,
Bush’s music, which is tonal, tuneful
and accessible, fell out of fashion
from the 1960s onwards, a fate he shared
with many other fine British composers.
In fact the few recordings that have
been made demonstrate the high quality
of Bush’s music. Both of the symphonies
are well worth hearing, for example.
review
Geoffrey Bush’s output
includes two Christmas cantatas. In
Praise of Mary (1955) for soprano
solo, chorus and orchestra, is a lovely
collection of settings of medieval carols.
Fittingly, for a piece so firmly rooted
in the English choral tradition, it
was first heard at the 1955 Three Choirs
Festival at Hereford under Meredith
Davies with Isobel Baillie, no less,
as the soloist.
A Christmas Cantata
(1947) is a rather longer work,
but the orchestration is restricted
to strings and oboe. It was composed
for the Musical Society of Balliol College,
Oxford by whom it was premièred
that year under the direction of its
dedicatee, Ronald Gordon (individual
movements are dedicated to other Oxford
friends, identified only by their initials.)
It is the sort of anthology work which
British composers, including Vaughan
Williams and Britten, tend to do so
well. For his cantata Bush chose a number
of well-known, mainly English traditional
carols and wove them into a delightful
tapestry. Several of the carols settings
use traditional melodies. The treatment
of all the carols, especially the well
known ones, is very thoughtful. There
are often unexpected and subtle harmonic
touches, either in the accompaniment
or within the choir. However, the carols
are never overwhelmed and their simple
direct spirit is retained.
I first encountered
this charming work when the choir with
which I sing gave a series of performances
of it in 2004 and again in 2005. It
was noticeable that the music made an
immediate and favourable impression
on the singers as we learnt it and,
in due course, on our audiences.
The piece begins with
a relatively extended orchestral prelude.
The music is innocent and transparent,
very firmly in the best English pastoral
tradition. The light scoring ensures
that the textures are airy. Eventually
the sopranos sing a gentle ‘Lullay’
before the male voices chant an opening
prayer.
The first carol is
‘The Seven Joys of Mary.’ The melody
that is sung by the choir is apparently
a traditional tune but not the one often
associated with the carol and I’d not
heard it before. The tune is robust,
foursquare and quintessentially English.
The movement is described as a Theme
and Variations but ingeniously the variations
are in the accompaniment. The
strange remote string harmonies for
the fifth variation (‘the sixth good
joy’) are particularly notable. In this
performance there’s a good solo contribution
from Mair Robins but in the two variations
(verses) where the men have the melody
I sensed they were rather pressing the
pace.
After this a lovely
chorale-like setting of a poem by Hilaire
Belloc, ‘When Jesus Christ Was Four
Years Old’, recalls the chorales of
Bach - as Vaughan Williams was to do
a few years later in his own Christmas
cantata, Hodie. This setting
is simple in style but harmonically
sophisticated. In this performance the
conductor doesn’t appear to observe
the markings of ‘avanti’ over a couple
of passages which, I believe, suggest
that the music should move on for a
few bars. Instead everything is at the
same tempo, which is a pity. The singing
is good but I’d have welcomed a bit
more dynamic shading.
There follows a setting
of the Czech carol, ‘Rocking’, which
is typical of Bush’s treatment of his
core material in remaining faithful
to the original carols while presenting
them in a new light without suffocating
their direct, straightforward nature.
Here, once again, Mair Robins sings
her solo well.
Having given us quite
a stretch of gentle music Bush now increases
the temperature significantly with ‘Make
we merry both more and less.’ This is
a virtuoso scherzo, which employs frequent
harmonic shifts and is possessed of
tremendous rhythmic vitality. Unfortunately,
though the choir gives the music the
required rhythmic zest they, or their
conductor, are much less observant of
the accents and many dynamic contrasts
that Bush writes into the score. As
a consequence the movement sounds rather
unvaried and a good deal of excitement
is lost.
The next movement is
a short and tender lento tranquillo
setting of the fifteenth century English
carol, ‘This Endris night’. Unfortunately
and unaccountably this movement is omitted
here. I can only think that it was left
out in order to accommodate the recording
on a single LP side when it was originally
released. However, it’s a great shame
that this cut has been made because
we lose the chance to hear a lovely
setting. The next carol is also English
and from the fifteenth century and here
again there’s a departure from the composer’s
intentions. ‘I sing of a Maiden’ is
marked to be sung by the soprano soloist
but here all the sopranos sing it together.
They sing it nicely but for me the sense
of fragile femininity that one gets
with a single voice is lost. We remain
in fifteenth century England for ‘The
Coventry Carol.’ The music of the opening
and closing stanzas is subdued and very
sad but in the central section, where
Herod confronts us, there is a fitting
degree of bite and ferocity. However,
once again it seemed to me that insufficient
regard is paid to dynamic contrast:
and the crescendo leading up to the
climax is largely ignored.
In the finale the joy
of Christmas reasserts itself with an
extrovert setting of ‘I saw three ships’,
complete with pealing choral bells.
Here the singing is lively and joyful
and benefits from much better attention
to the dynamic markings. However, Geoffrey
Bush has a surprise in store. Instead
of ending his cantata with the fairly
obvious joyfulness of this carol he
brings the work back full circle, reprising
briefly the various strands of vocal
and orchestral material that we first
heard in the Prelude. The work ends
quietly. It is the Peace of Christmas
that has the last word.
To complete the disc
there’s a miscellaneous selection of
carols. The first one, Shiao
Bao-Bao employs a traditional
Chinese melody and is really rather
nice. There are also two Welsh carols,
Ar Gyfer Heddiw’r Bore and the
more extrovert Tua Bethlem Dref.
The setting of As I Outrode This
Enderes Night is lively and jolly.
It sounds to be a fairly recent piece
but the documentation is completely
silent on this point. The conductor’s
own arrangement of Good King Wenceslas
rounds of the programme. I found
this a bit too boisterous and frenetic
but, then, it’s never been a carol that
does a great deal for me and others
may respond to the high spirits of this
arrangement.
The recording was made
some years ago but still sounds well.
Perhaps it would have been better if
the choir had been placed a little further
away from the microphones but the sound
is still fully acceptable. The documentation
is inadequate, I’m afraid. There are
no texts, the note about the Bush piece,
which will be unfamiliar to many listeners,
is perfunctory and the only two carols
to get a mention are the Welsh ones.
I’d have liked just a little information
about the Chinese item, for example.
This is the first and,
so far, only recording of Bush’s A
Christmas Cantata and that makes
this CD an attractive proposition. It’s
a captivating work and despite the reservations
I’ve expressed there is much to commend
the performance. I hope, however, that
one day another company, perhaps Naxos,
will give us a rival recording and that
this time Geoffrey Bush’s engaging score
will be given complete. Until then,
despite its short playing time, this
disc usefully fills a gap in the English
repertoire.
John Quinn
Mair Robins (soprano)/John Macintyre (oboe)/***Michael
Bradley (countertenor)/**Michael Griffiths (organ)/Cardiff
Polyphonic Choir and*Orchestra/Richard Elfyn Jones
