A Garland for the Queen is a collection of part-songs
composed to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.
A work was commissioned from each of ten British composers,
to words by contemporary British writers. The idea for the work
goes back to Elizabeth I, for whom Thomas Morley edited a collection
of madrigals entitled The Triumphs of Oriana. The first
performance took place at the Royal Festival Hall in London
in June 1953.
The themes the composers chose to explore turn out to be many
and varied, with relatively little reference to the royal and
festive occasion for which the work was planned. However, the
main drawback with this disc – the only drawback, in truth –
is that no texts are provided. The authors’ names are given
in the accompanying essay, but much laborious and often fruitless
searching in anthologies and on the internet is necessary to
find the sung words. Each piece is lovely to listen to in its
own way, but makes little sense if we don’t know what the words
are about. This is a grievous omission and a missed opportunity,
and with some difficult Britten on the same disc, including
some settings of medieval poetry, perhaps more so with this
repertoire than with many another.
The set opens with Bliss’s brilliant, imposing Aubade.
The words are by Henry Reed, but the work is a series of skilfully
contrived and contrasting choral textures, with wordless passages
imitating birdsong. This most satisfying piece is followed by
Bax’s much simpler, homophonic What is it like, to words
by the composer’s brother, Clifford. Michael Tippett’s contribution,
to words by Christopher Fry, was typically uncompromising. The
opening flourishes on the word “Dance”, as well as the richness
and exuberance of the writing put one in mind of The Midsummer
Marriage, the marvellous and equally uncompromising opera
he had completed just a few months before and which was to receive
its first performance only in 1955. The work is a challenge
for even the finest choirs. Vaughan Williams’ piece, to words
by his wife Ursula, shares with the Three Shakespeare Songs
a certain disembodied choral texture, whereas Lennox Berkeley’s
Spring at this hour is notable for a gorgeous and radiant
closing passage. The words are by Paul Dehn. John Ireland’s
contribution, to words by James Kirkup, is perhaps the most
conventional, very much an English homophonic part-song of its
period, but no less attractive for that. The final cadence of
Inheritance (Walter de la Mare) is pure Howells, reassuringly
so after the surprising dissonance of much that precedes it.
Finzi’s piece, too, is typical of him, a lovely setting of words
by Edmund Blunden, though I wish in this case that he had settled
for a less emphatic close. Alan Rawsthorne’s Canzonet
is amongst the loveliest of the pieces, with a beautiful part
for solo soprano singing English words by Louis MacNeice over
a Latin text in the choir. Rubbra’s setting of Christopher Hassall’s
Salutation, on the other hand, seems pale in comparison,
despite its clearly intended decisive ending with appropriately
royal references.
Benjamin Britten composed A.M.D.G. (Ad maiorem Dei gloriam)
in the United States in 1939, but he was clearly unsure about
much or all of it, as he never made a fair copy and the work
was not performed in his lifetime. It was prepared for performance
and first given in 1984, and was published in 1989. Much of
it is extremely challenging to sing, and the anonymous booklet
notes give this as one possible reason why Britten never completed
the work. Britten scholars will have other views. At first sight
the intense spirituality and even the poetic manner of Gerard
Manley Hopkins can seem at odds with Britten’s sensibility.
And there are certainly aspects of the music that, with hindsight,
might well have given rise to doubt in the composer’s mind.
Whatever the reasons – and the composer suppressed a fair amount
of music during this period – it is a dramatic and striking
work, with a certain ascetic quality that will surprise those
familiar with, say, the Hymn to St Cecilia of only three
years later.
Sacred and Profane, one of Britten’s last works, was
written for Peter Pears and the Wilbye Consort of Voices. Eight
medieval lyrics are set to music for unaccompanied five-part
choir. As the title makes clear, the texts are a mixture of
sacred and profane, but with the unifying factor that most of
them are really rather sombre. The final song, in particular,
entitled “A Death”, is a sardonic and grimly comic meditation
on physical decline and the journey to the grave. Much of the
music is Britten at his most astringent, and it doesn’t always
make for easy listening. In spite of the immense difficulties
it presents to performers, it is superbly conceived for the
medium, and comes over with great effect in a fine performance.
The names of the twenty-seven members of the Cambridge University
Chamber Choir are listed in the booklet, but most of them will
have changed a bit since then, as this disc was recorded in
1991. It is, in fact, a reissue of a disc that first appeared
on the Gamut label. That disc was well received, and rightly
so, as the performances, under Timothy Brown, are very fine
indeed. I haven’t heard an alternative performance of the whole
“Garland” collection, but it is difficult to imagine anything
more accomplished than this. And a special word must go to Rachel
Elliot for her lovely solo singing in Rawsthorne’s piece. The
two Britten pieces also receive outstandingly satisfying performances,
but comparing them to those by Stephen Layton and Polyphony
coupled together on Hyperion one senses just a little more security,
virtuosity and homogeneity of tone in the later performances.
A Garland for the Queen, though, was a lovely idea that
could so easily have gone wrong but didn’t. If you don’t know
these pieces – and aren’t afraid of some particularly difficult
Britten – the absence of texts is the only conceivable reason
to let this disc pass you by.
William Hedley
see also review
by John France
Cambridge University Chamber Choir/Timothy Brown 
