Dame Ethel SMYTH (1858-1944)
The Prison (1930)
Sarah Brailey (soprano), Dashon Burton (bass-baritone), Experiential Orchestra and Chorus/James Blachly
rec. 2019, Concert Hall, SUNY Purchase, New York
Texts included
CHANDOS CHSA5279 SACD [64:00]
This is a very strange work. It was premiered in the Usher Hall in Edinburgh in February 1931, its London premiere following just under a week later when Adrian Boult conducted Elsie Suddaby, Stuart Robertson, the LSO and Bach Choir at Queen’s Hall. Its New York premiere came in April 2018 and this recording followed in February 2019. It’s not formally a symphony or an oratorio, though Smyth calls it a ‘Symphony for soprano, bass-baritone, chorus and orchestra’. Perhaps problems of nomenclature were in the air. Arthur Bliss’s Morning Heroes was first performed in October 1930 and was called ‘A Symphony for orator, chorus and orchestra’. Both composers were working on their large-scale projects at the same time and were, in any case, very different musical animals. Nevertheless, the problem remains – unlike Morning Heroes, The Prison is a difficult work to get to grips with.
The text was taken from the writings of H.B. Brewster, who had died in 1891 and with whom she had conducted a long and close friendship. The text was adapted from Brewster’s book The Prison: a Dialogue which Smyth noted concerned the discussion of a manuscript left behind by a prisoner that details the desire to escape the bonds of self (The Prison); the text largely focuses on the Prisoner’s last words. The words ‘bonds of self’ indicate the speculative, philosophical nature of the writing; ‘We are full of immortality,/It stirs and glistens in us/Under the crust of self…’ is, I am sorry to say, not unrepresentative of the swamp of verbiage to be encountered. Possible influences on Smyth must remain a matter of speculation but let’s speculate anyway; Fidelio, as the ultimate exemplar of the escape opera though escape in Brewster’s text is via the agency of death; Gerontius in its two-part structure, and the involvement of a corporeal character and a Soul; and then Delius’ A Mass of Life, though his setting of Nietzsche is dramatic and opulent.
Still, the Platonic nature of the undertaking argues for a degree of textual stasis. The text moves toward a conclusion but there’s only so much musical mileage to be gained from the life eternal, the gallant ship of self (was there ever a text with more ‘self’ than this?) and questions concerning the unity of consciousness. Smyth’s response to the text is to employ heightened speech for much of the time and for large swathes the vocal lines are unremarkable. It is surely difficult for most composers to set the lines ‘the flight of the divine vultures’ – at least with a straight face – but it’s what Smyth has constantly to do, and the reconciliation of the density of the text and the limited vocal means at her disposal create an impossible fracture in her music. This is why things works better for the chorus and especially the orchestra. She uses brass and percussion well here and is keen to be descriptive – there is much in the text about birds - and she responds to this conventional-seeming demand with a certain pleasure. Listen to the lines about thrushes and swallows and hear how avidly she responds to them as, clearly, birdsong is better evoked musically than brooding philosophy. She is at her best in the lyric refulgence of the writing and at places where late-Romanticism meets a more forward-looking musical awareness such as the start of Part II, where musical expressivity is overt. But then, too, there is the problem that the various philosophies espoused are not easily differentiated musically; the result is a kind of philosophical blancmange effect. Composers have often succeeded despite their texts or librettos and it’s true that Smyth drives to the pitch of quasi-operatic fervour despite such dross as ‘I disband myself,/I set my ineffaceable stamp/Upon the womb of time!’, lines that put me in mind of Vivian Stanshall. Yet the introduction of Greek solo choruses in archaic modes sounds altogether weird in the context; so too does the use of The Last Post, repeated too often, as a culminatory-consolatory interpolation.
Smyth favours a text-heavy, largely quiescent musical undertow rich in contrapuntal refinement, that erupts into moments of jog-trotting vehemence, choral panache, and pastoral depiction. The final part of the work is a 10-minute scena, in effect, in which the voices of The Prisoner and The Soul and chorus interweave, allowing The Last Post to make its final appearance and the work to end in silence.
There’s no doubting the commitment and excellence of the solo singers with Sarah Bailey as The Soul and the splendid Dashon Burton as The Prisoner. Orchestra and chorus are directed by James Blachly who masterminds the music’s trajectory and uses his own new edition. The booklet notes have been expertly organised, and the recorded sound is great. Everything is firmly committed and focused. The question remains, though: what kind of work is this and does it succeed in conveying its textual meaning through musical form?
Jonathan Woolf
Previous review: John Quinn
