This is a handsome and substantial book, beautifully presented.
If the title reads like a slightly intractable doctorial thesis
then that is probably not that far off the mark. The author
is the professor of music at Missouri State University and I
think it fair to say that the target readership for this is
in the main Academic. To that end Town makes no apology for
the fact that this is a highly specialised and detailed book
dealing with the niche of specific choral works within the niche
of music of the English Musical Renaissance within the overall
niche of Classical Music. Personally, this is a field in which
I am very interested and what a delight to encounter a book
so lovingly presented which will never be featuring on any bestseller
list simply by dint of its extreme speciality.
What this is not is an overview or survey of British
Choral Music since 1850. Instead, Town has chosen in the course
of the book’s eleven chapters, to focus on a dozen specific
works that he feels are representative of their composer’s finest
work, show those composer’s working practices to best effect
and also have never benefited from any detailed analysis or
discussion in print previously. Central to his choices are the
fact that Town has in every instance examined in great detail
the original manuscripts and sketches of the works in question.
The choice of just twelve works means a debate will
rage about works omitted before a page is turned. So not only
is there nothing by Elgar, Howells, Delius, Walton, or Britten
to name but a few but also the Vaughan Williams works examined
are surprising ones; Flos Campi and An Oxford Elegy
but not Sancta Civitas or Dona Nobis Pacem.
This is because a) this is a personal choice and b) Town is
being true to the remit outlined above; would much have been
added to the sum of our knowledge by revisiting well-known and
oft-studied works by Elgar or Britten?
The book has proved to be a dense and quite demanding read.
Certainly the style of the writing and the way it addresses
the music discussed presumes of the reader a reasonable level
of technical musical comprehension. Although Town finds and
highlights linkages between the works each chapter is written
as a self-contained entity and indeed has the feel of the written
up notes of a lecture. Town has a template he uses which again
has an academic air to the structure. Simply put this is a historical/personal
context of the composer, their work and the age in which they
lived. Then a focusing in on the work in question, the literary
sources and often a very detailed description of the actual
manuscript itself and what evidence for revision and amendments
it shows. Then the actual music is analysed with generous use
of musical excerpts usually from the vocal score but also using
fascinating photographic reproductions of key pages of the manuscripts
– this is the section that demands greatest technical competence
on behalf of the reader especially for those works not available
through recordings. Finally Town writes a brief conclusion,
revisiting the central thrust of the argument contained in the
chapter. The section is completed by detailed footnotes and
for some of the chapters separate appendices – nine of the twelve
chapters are so appended. Curiously I found much of the most
interesting information was contained in these supplementary
sections.
Town’s strengths are the breadth and rigour of his research
and his ability to collate into a coherent text information
obtained from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources.
You have the sense that unlike some writers he has acknowledged
the work of earlier texts but he is not willing to regurgitate
their views and interpretations. Wherever possible he has referenced
original sources, manuscripts or letters, and reached his own
conclusions. Where the secondary sources have produced conflicting
opinions he outlines the differing points of view and offers
his own. Of particular interest is the way Town shows how certain
interpretations of the composer’s personality and work have
been taken up and repeated over the years thereby becoming a
standardised view which through repetition becomes received
fact. By his choice of format, for these very specific works
this does provide the reader with as good a ‘one-stop-shop’
as it would be possible to imagine. The downside is that this
academic rigour and near forensic approach does result in a
text that is a rather dry narrative.
I do not intend to describe in detail the works studied here
but in every chapter Town illuminates and informs way beyond
the remit of the usual umbrella studies of the individual composers
and their works. The music is not presented in strict chronological
order but there is a general flow from earlier to later. Hence
the first three chapters focus on works by Parry and Stanford.
In many ways these are some of the most interesting yet hardest
chapters for the lay-reader to ingest. Most interesting because
the chosen works languish unknown and unrecorded and even the
vocal scores are all but impossible to source. Hardest because
without the crutch of scores or recordings you fall back on
the written musical analysis. What does become clear is the
significance and stature of these works and their place in their
respective composer’s outputs. Certainly, it does make one wish
to be able to hear these works to judge for one’s self. Indeed
in passing I offered up several quiet prayers of thanks to the
likes of Chandos, Dutton and Hyperion for their work preserving
the rarer British Choral works.
A common thread through the works – which in the main draw
on more than one literary source – is just how well and carefully
the respective authors chose and edited the texts for their
musical ends. At first sight it seems nearly perverse to chose
as the two Vaughan Williams works one – Flos Campi
– which is choral but uses the chorus wordlessly and the other
– An Oxford Elegy – where the bulk of the narrative
is carried by a speaker. On further consideration these are
in fact canny choices. The preservation of a huge amount of
original manuscripts and personal documents allows the researcher
to trace back Vaughan Williams’ working practices and sources
of inspiration. This is the kind of area where Town’s book is
at its strongest. The description of Vaughan Williams’ chaotic
compositional style – with ideas thrown upon the page at the
instant of conception makes for a vivid impression of the white
heat of inspiration. Compare this to Rubbra’s meticulous presentation
of a score ‘clean’ and clear enough to be used by his publisher
as the published version or Finzi’s laborious – dare one say
occasionally laboured – efforts at crafting a work over potentially
many years. But this is not to say Vaughan Williams was not
just as careful. Town reproduces the complete texts of the two
Matthew Arnold poems – The Scholar-Gipsy and Thyrsis
and shows how cunningly the composer conflated and filleted
the two poems to give the text a quite different slant from
the one the poet conceived. The deeper one gets into the book
the more one appreciates the subtle linkages Town perceives
and highlights between the various composers and their works.
I had forgotten – if I ever knew! – that Finzi fulfilled for
Vaughan Williams the dual role of colleague/critic (in much
the same way as Holst had done until his early death) and also
was regarded by Vaughan Williams as his natural musical successor.
With Finzi’s own untimely death this mantle passed to Rubbra.
And so the connections come thick and fast; Town details an
early Vaughan Williams work Harnham Down – an orchestral
work from 1907 prefaced with lines from the self-same Scholar
Gipsy which not only appears to have provided some musical motifs
for the later Oxford Elegy but in turn inspired Finzi when writing
his own Intimations of Immortality. The significance
of this work is made all the more interesting by the fact it
is not mentioned – or even listed – by Michael Kennedy in his
1992 revision of his classic The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams.
I assume it is in the appended catalogue of works.
The inclusion of Dyson’s Quo Vadis and Nebuchadnezzar
prompted me to listen again to two works – the latter especially
– which has rather underwhelmed me on superficial acquaintance.
Once more Towns is very good at charting the position and significance
of the music in their author’s output. So again he found links
between Quo Vadis to the all but forgotten Noble
Numbers by Walford Davies and by lavishing such care and
attention on what might be perceived as ‘lesser’ works forces
the reader to reconsider their – hastily simplistic – dismissal
of these substantial pieces. Which is rather what I think Town
intended all along. Walford Davies is the source of the only
‘error’ I spotted in the text; footnote 38 on page 286 refers
to Dyson when I’m sure it should be Davies.
This is a beautifully produced book – all credit to the small
independent publishers Ashgate for the care that has gone into
its production; the text is beautifully clear At around the
£70.00 mark it is far from cheap (there is a Kindle edition
available for about £12.00 less – but part of the delight of
this kind of book is its tangible weight in your hand to my
mind!) but conversely I cannot imagine the works discussed ever
benefiting from such attention again so this automatically and
by default becomes a key reference work. Which rather neatly
brings me back to my opening assertion that this is a book more
likely to appear on the library shelf than the coffee table.
Without a shadow of a doubt my appreciation of all the music
discussed here is increased and indeed some transformed and
for that I am forever in the debt of Stephen Town.
Nick Barnard
