7.30pm, Saturday 15 December 2007 – St Mary’s Platt, Nr Borough Green

Soloist

Iestyn Evans – organist

Programme

Kenneth Leighton – Let all the world in every corner sing
H J Gauntlett – Once in royal David’s city
arr. Elizabeth Poston – The boar’s head carol
16th c French – Ding dong! merrily on high
arr. Vaughan Williams – O little town of Bethlehem
Francis Poulenc – Quatre motets pour le temps de Noël
arr. David Willcocks – The first nowell
arr. John Rutter – Here we come a-wassailing
arr. David Willcocks – Deck the hall
arr. Reginald Jacques – Good King Wenceslas
Cecilia McDowall – Christus natus est

Programme notes

Let’s be honest! What most of us really want at Christmas is the same as we have enjoyed about every previous Christmas. However much we exclaim that this year we will not eat so much, buy so much or play the same games with Auntie Maud, we actually crave the timelessness of the traditions. The story of Christmas is 2,000 years old and the ways in which we celebrate and recall that are what bind us together as families and communities. They remind us that some important things are constant however much the world changes us or we change it. The peculiar feature of English carols, with their intriguing mix of English, Latin and French (sometimes in the same song!), also connects us to our Anglo-Saxon, Roman and Norman past.

That said, what we don’t expect is for people to save the wrappings and serve up this year’s pair of socks in last year’s paper! That is why in tonight’s concert nearly all the music will be familiar to you but wrapped up in settings which may be new or unfamiliar.

Celia McDowall demonstrates this beautifully for us in her Christmas Cantata, Christus Natus Est, which ends our programme. She takes five ancient carols in the three languages and sets them in new ways but not so strangely as to affront our sense of what’s fitting. She playfully links them with her own music, which remains true to the subtle mix of medieval and modern.

The least familiar may well be the four Christmas motets by Francis Poulenc. If you are not already a fan of this composer, become one immediately! Written in 1951-2 for unaccompanied choir, these are each a perfect miniature and typical of his style. Each one captures the mood of the traditional Latin texts with extraordinary precision and finesse. Imagine you are looking under a magnifying glass at the perfect gem settings in that amazing watch you have just unwrapped on Christmas morning. That is the music of Poulenc. Not a single note or dynamic or accent out of place. Understated so as not to be garish, subtle and rich enough to be breathtakingly beautiful.

A very happy Christmas to all our friends, especially to those who are kind enough to read my notes throughout our musical year!

Sara Kemsley

7.30pm, Saturday 30 June 2007 – St Mary’s Platt, Nr Borough Green

Soloists

Susie Winkworth – cello
Costas Fotopoulos – piano

Programme

Sergei Rachmaninov 1873-1943 – All-Night Vigil
Sergei Rachmaninov – Sonata for Cello & Piano in G Minor, Op. 19
Sergei Rachmaninov – Morceaux de Salon, Op. 2

Programme notes

Orthodoxy is first of all the love of beauty. Our entire life must be inspired by the vision of heavenly glory, and this contemplation is the essence of Orthodoxy… Russian asceticism aims at manifesting God’s kingdom on earth. It does not deny this world, but embraces it. (S N Bulgakov)
The Eastern Orthodox Church, which thrives today particularly in Russia, Bulgaria and Greece, is arguably the oldest form of Christianity, stemming as it does from the Greek writings of the early apostles. The Byzantine Rite developed as a result of the shift of the seat of imperialism from Rome to Constantinople by Emperor Constantine in 320AD. Of particular significance were the veneration of Mary as Mother of God, and the adoption of icons as symbols of Christ’s presence on earth in human form. The split with Rome was worsened in the 9th century, when the Roman Pope refused to recognise Photius as Patriarch of Constantinople, and again at the time of the crusades and the sacking of Constantinople in 1204.

Since that time, Western Orthodoxy has evolved into many forms, while the Eastern Orthodoxy has been largely preserved as it was. The services always involve music, always voices, never instruments.
In the late 19th century, there was a renaissance among Russian composers, who turned to setting liturgical texts as part of their search for national identity. Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov were major contributors but a significant school of Russian Church Music, centred in Moscow, developed. It was for this Moscow Synodal Choir that Rachmaninov wrote his setting of the All Night Vigil Op. 37.

Commonly, but incorrectly, known as The Vespers, this work is in fact a setting of three services for the canonical hours: Vespers, Matins and Prime. Vespers begins at sunset and reflects on the idea of Christ as the Light of the World. Movements 1-6 are from this section, and it ends with Gabriel’s salutation to Mary “Blessed art thou among women”. Matins (movements 7-14) meditates upon ideas of Christ in human form and ultimately the Resurrection, the most significant aspect of all in the Christian faith. This takes us to dawn and to Prime, the first hour of the day. Rachmaninov chooses to set just one text, the final triumphant movement, ‘To Thee, triumphant leader of triumphant hosts’. This is the eternity of Heaven.

Rachmaninov’s Vigil uses authentic znamenny or medieval chants in seven movements. In two, he prefers Greek chants and three are in the ‘Kiev’ style. Where he invented his own, he described them as ‘conscious counterfeits’, so closely did he keep to the traditional style. What he brings to the setting is often termed choral orchestration. This is almost a symphony, such are the demands made of the human voices: profoundly low bass parts, extreme ranges for other voices, huge dynamic and tonal ranges and many combinations of voices, which are frequently divided to form lush textures. Throughout, however, he preserves a simplicity in the harmonic, largely modal, language. There is no polyphony or fugal writing here, simply beautiful lines threading around the stepwise chants, whether for meditative introspection or praise and proclamation.

The choice of music for cello and piano by Rachmaninov as a counterpoise to this great choral masterwork is perfectly judged. The same yearning for a national identity is here in the use of simple folk melodies and brooding minor keys. There is the same breadth of expression in the sweeps of passion, sublime delicacy and exciting, rhythmic gesturing. The Cello Sonata was written shortly after his second piano concerto in 1901 and shares that same immediate appeal for the listener, as does the poignant and reminiscent Vocalise, familiar in many arrangements. The two pieces Op.2 (Prelude and Orientale) were written in 1892, just as he completed his studies at the Moscow Conservatoire. No mere palate-cleansers or padding here, as some programmes might provide. The intimacy and warmth of the cello tone allows us to ‘embrace this world’ between the choral contemplations upon higher things.

Sara Kemsley

7.30pm, Saturday 3 March 2007 – St Nicholas Church, Sevenoaks

Soloists

Hazel Brooks – leader
Donna Bateman – soprano
Susan Gilmore-Bailey – soprano
Julia Riley – mezzo-soprano
Charne Rochford – tenor
James Gower – bass

Programme

Antonio Vivaldi 1678-1741 – Magnificat
Pachelbel – Canon in D (instrumental)
Henry Purcell 1659-1695 – Rejoice in the Lord alway
Henry Purcell - Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes
George Frederic Handel 1685-1759 – Dixit Dominus

Programme notes

Johann Mattheson said in 1713: In these times, whoever wishes to be eminent in music goes to England. In Italy and France there is something to be heard and learned; in England something to be earned.

These were turbulent but exciting times: the age of empire, when fortunes were to be made at home and abroad. In the hundred years between the birth of Henry Purcell and the death of George Frederic Handel, the Cromwellian Parliament gave way and the monarchy was restored. Some seven or eight monarchs (it depends on how many you consider williamandmary to be) held sway. Purcell’s London was one of the most musically cosmopolitan European cities in the late seventeenth century. During the period of the Commonwealth, music had been pared down to its essentials, dancing prohibited and most musicians became unemployed. When Charles II was restored to the throne, he set about re-igniting the pleasure centres of the nation. Both Purcell and Handel did well from royal patronage in church and theatre alike.

Vivaldi (1678-1741) was working in that other great cultural and commercial city, Venice, which though past its greatest days, still had much to offer and a rich cultural heritage to boast. Vivaldi represented progressive Italian musical thought of his day. His impact was immediate but he died almost totally forgotten in 1741. All his works were composed for definite occasions, many, like the Magnificat, performed by the renowned girls of the Orphanage de la Pieta. His contribution was that vital link in the transition from late Baroque to early Classical style, choosing a simpler harmonic code and clarity of form and structure over ornate polyphonic textures.

The Baroque period was the great age of instrumental music, when the instrument was freed from the position of slave accompanist to the human voice. This is the time of the great violin builders and the birth of the orchestra as we know it. By the end of the seventeenth century there is a noted difference between orchestral music and chamber music. It is fitting that we have a professional orchestra playing on period instruments at the pitch which would have been played in Handel’s own performances, approximately a semitone lower than modern pitch. The Canon in D is sumptuous baroque polyphony for strings by the ‘one-hit wonder’ Johann Pachelbel. Only the cellists dread it. 54 repetitions of the same eight-note ground bass. YouTube fans (and cellists) will enjoy a video called Pachelbel Rant on the subject of this piece (http://www.youtube.com/ just to show how modern we are in Cantate!)

Purcell (1659-1695) was the first English musical genius after William Byrd and last great composer in this land before the twentieth century. He was appointed organist of the Chapel Royal in 1682 and his verse anthems date between then and 1685. Charles II had ordered the use of instrumental sections in church music and Purcell rose to the challenge with a string of beautiful anthems (English) and motets (Latin). He also has a possibly unique body of funeral music for monarchs to his credit (see above).

Handel (1685-1759) was truly cosmopolitan, combining German seriousness, Italian suavity and French grandeur. These qualities matured in England, which was the centre for internationalism with a choral tradition which made his oratorios possible, when the popularity of Italian opera began to wane. A great orchestral innovator, he was noted for his imaginative use of instrumental colour, for word painting and dramatic effect. Dixit Dominus dates from his time in Italy and is a thunderbolt of a piece from a young and confident composer. Acknowledged as one of the great composers for chorus, he handles the texture and voice range in masterful fashion. He is not afraid to go after the poetic effect. Listen out for Conquassabit capita in terra multorum in No.6 of Dixit Dominus, when the Lord shatters the heads of the multitude, literally pounding them into the ground. Handel was internationally renowned in his own lifetime and his fame was never eclipsed.

Sara Kemsley

7.30pm, Saturday 11 November 2006 – St Mary’s Kippington

Staged on Armistice Day November 11 at St Mary’s Church, Kippington Road, Sevenoaks on Saturday 11 November 2006. For this special day the choir devised a programme titled Remember!, comprising remembrances and recollections in music and verse.

Soloists

Iestyn Evans – organist
Nimrod Borenstein – composer
James Wallace – reader
Lonnie Christophers – reader

Programme

Karl Jenkins’ – The Armed Man
Samuel Barber’s – Adagio for Strings
Vaughan Williams’ – Greensleeves
Elgar’s – Nimrod
Nimrod Borenstein’s – If I rise
Poems by Wilfred Owen, Christina Rossetti and Tennyson

Programme notes

The Armed Man must be feared; Everywhere it has been decreed
That everyman should arm himself, With an iron coat of mail.
Anon, c1450-1463

The fifteenth-century French song, L’homme armé, gave rise to a tradition of Armed Man masses still alive today. The idea that the armed man must be feared seemed as painfully relevant in the twentieth century as in the late Middle Ages. Karl Jenkins, commissioned to write a Mass for Peace, saw an opportunity to look ahead with hope and commitment to a more peaceful millennium. But even as he was writing it, the tragedy of Kosovo unfolded. The first CD was released, ironically, on September 10th 2001. The complete mass includes words from the Koran, British poets and the Hindu Mahabharata. Musical styles as diverse as the words sit fairly comfortably together. The Choral Suite consists of the Kyrie, Sanctus, Benedictus, and Agnus Dei from the Mass and a final Hymn before Action by Rudyard Kipling. We are interspersing these choral movements among the poems and music of our concert tonight, which invites us all to remember, to be grateful and to have hope.

The first two-minute silence was held on November 11th 1919, when King George V asked the public to observe a silence at 11am. Since the so-called ‘war to end all wars’, and during a century of further conflict, this date has become the nearest we have in this country to a National Day. It has been said that all post-war memorials feature two motifs – ‘war as both tragically, unendurably sad and noble and uplifting’. Is there some explanation here of why the very island character, explored in our last concert, also means that remembrance of war, resistance to invasion and the heroism of struggle are what seem to bind us together as a nation when other ideals do not? Certainly, English-language composers do ‘unendurably sad and noble and uplifting’ extremely well.

The first half of the programme deals with the nostalgia and pity of war. Greensleeves is an old song, thought to be penned by Henry VIII. It looks back wistfully at the loved one, who is out of reach. ‘I have both waged life and land, your love and goodwill for to have’. This arrangement by Ralph Vaughan Williams is sumptuous and yearning.

Samuel Barber wrote his Adagio for Strings in 1936, apparently inspired by the idea of a stream growing in size to a full river. However, it quickly became an anthem of mourning, especially in this choral version setting the words of the Agnus Dei. ‘Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have pity on us, grant us peace.’

John Ireland carefully crafted his short anthem Greater Love hath no Man with words from no less than seven sections from five books of the Bible: Song of Solomon 8, St John 15, 1 Peter 2, 1 Corinthians 6, Romans 12. Written in 1912, it must have provided enormous comfort as more and more young men set off abroad ‘for King and Country’. Over one million never returned.

Folk songs took on a particular importance in the early part of the century. Many composers set about collecting and setting down the large canon of songs from all around the British Isles. Popular songs from the music halls also seemed more stirring than a rather lack-lustre National Anthem. Little wonder that soldiers and their girls felt more moved and patriotic when singing a rousing chorus of ‘It’s a long way to Tipperary’ or ‘D’ye ken John Peel’. Our representative sample is a wordless setting of the Londonderry Air by Percy Grainger.

Nimrod Borenstein is an Israeli-born composer who lives and trained in Britain. His works are popularly performed here and abroad and are considered to belong to a New Consonant Music. Composers such as Steve Reich and Michael Nyman moved away from the former complexity of ‘modern music’ for simpler styles that performers and audiences could understand. This setting of Psalm 139 explores the idea that wherever we go the hand of God will be there to guide us. Even if darkness surrounds us it will be as the light and ‘the night will shine like the day’. The piece is broadly tonal although different voice parts can be in different keys simultaneously. For much of the setting, the sopranos provide the melodic and lyrical line, while the lower voices build shifting textures from the sometimes disjunct words. He also makes use of words for rhythmic motion rather than meaning, however the overall journey from darkness to light is unmistakeable.

Nimrod is the ninth of Elgar’s Enigma Variations. Nimrod the mighty Hunter of the Old Testament stands here for A J Jaeger, of the Novello publishing company (Jaeger means huntsman in German). Jaeger mused to Elgar that no-one could match the slow tempi of Beethoven’s great slow movements, Elgar set out to prove him wrong. With its ever rising repetitions and painfully falling intervals of the seventh, the piece epitomises ‘unendurably sad and noble and uplifting’ and has come to be a piece associated with state mourning, much as Barber’s Adagio has in America.

Herbert Howells lived for ninety years but felt himself a composer out of his times. His style harks back to that exceptional period of English choral music, to Tallis and Weelkes, to the subtle swings of minor to major, to unexpected false relations resolving to glorious concordance. In fact the modal swings between major and minor are intrinsic to the traditional English folksong and the musical revival of the twentieth century, thus making Howells very much a man of his times. He described his music as full of the ‘agony and the ecstasy’ and our final anthem from Psalm 42 certainly combines these two ideas. ‘My tears have been my meat day and night… where is now thy God?… my soul is athirst for God… when shall I come before the presence of God?’

Sara Kemsley

7.30pm, Saturday 10 June 2006 – St Mary’s Platt, Borough Green

Soloist

Michael Higgins – piano

Programme

Mathias – Shakespeare Songs
Mendelssohn – Songs without Words – Nos. 1, 9, 10
Vaughan Williams – Toward the Unknown Region
Finzi – Seven Poems of Robert Bridges
Chopin – Waltz in A flat major, Opus 34 No. 1
Elgar – From the Bavarian Highlands

Programme notes

There is music in the air, music all around us, the world is full of it and you simply take as much as you require. Sir Edward Elgar

Of all the arts, we have excelled in literature. Our flexible language wants to persuade and enlighten, to uplift and censure. There is an unbroken tradition of great English writers from medieval times to modern day. No other country can boast the heights of the King James Bible or Shakespeare and it is no coincidence that they go with you to your desert island.

In music and the visual arts however, we have some peaks and troughs. From the death of Henry Purcell to the birth of Edward Elgar, we were almost silent. Until Turner, Constable and Blake got to work, we were a blank canvas. The work of our great Tudor composers was generally less cluttered and ornamented than our southern European counterparts. English and Dutch painters have generally reflected the cooler, gentler climate and landscape, which we still recognise today. Perhaps this love of our natural world around us, a land without extremes, meant that neither the contrived formality of Classicism nor the bolder temperament of Romanticism appealed to our northern phlegm. Or perhaps we were just too busy taking over the world!

The period from the late nineteenth century through the major part of the twentieth is therefore seen as the English Musical Renaissance: Standford, Elgar, Holst, Vaughan Williams, Delius, Finzi, Bantock, Bax, Quilter, Ireland, Tippett, Walton, Britten, Arnold, Bliss, Bridge, Warlock, Mathias… All of a sudden, the pantheon seems more extensive than anything the French, Germans or Italians have to offer! And yet, many of our finest composers were, and indeed still are, slow to be performed regularly abroad. Why? Most probably because each of them reflects, and reflects upon, that uniquely island character, which sets us apart in so many things.

They choose the wistful, modal qualities of British folksong, images of our rolling hills and gentle streams, our birdsong and our freedoms. They turn naturally to the poetry of our English heritage, with its easy rhythms and gentle consonants. Do they never get worked up? Oh yes, when it comes to notions of justice, pride and the reaching of goals, the grandeur comes through. And that renowned English wit can be found a-plenty in satirical dance forms and quipping rhythms.

So this is the fertile soil from which our concert springs.

William Mathias, as it happens, was Welsh. Born in Dyfed in 1934, he studied in Wales and London, worked mostly in Bangor but regularly involved himself in the great choral festivals which gave birth to so much great work.

He set the eight songs from Shakespeare plays for mixed choir and piano for the third Cardiff Festival of Choirs in 1979. Although all different in origin, he says he saw them “as a linked set like a song cycle. This concept is emphasised by the fact that the last song recalls some of the music of the first; both are winter poems. There is also a similarity of feeling between the settings of Full Fathom Five and Dirge from Cymbeline. No.3 is for men only and proceeds immediately to Sigh no more Ladies for women’s voices only. The piano part is integral to the whole helping to emphasis the different moods. It is particularly helpful in highlighting Shakespeare’s love of bell sounds to indicate the passage of time and the transience of human life.”

Vaughan Williams frequently turned to the poetry of the American Walt Whitman as did so many English composers. Unlike so much poetry of the time which relied on symbolism, allegory and meditation, Whitman’s poetry exalted the body and the material world. He praised nature and the individual human’s role in it. He does not diminish the role of the mind or spirit but sees both mind and body as worthy of praise. Toward the Unknown Region was composed in 1906 using text from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass anthology. It is the quest of the mind to be accompanied by the soul as it leaves the known, temporal world for that unknown region ‘when the ties loosen, all but the ties eternal, time and space, nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds bounding us.’

Gerald Finzi wrote mostly works for voice or chorus but his clarinet and cello concertos are well-loved also. His settings of Thomas Hardy poems are inspired. Many of the settings for mixed choir of poems by Robert Bridges are well-known individually. Tonight we perform the full set as intended. Each song sets a subtle mood from the text and makes full use of the natural rhythms of the words in defining the musical language. Several of the songs are through-composed, that is to say, they take their shape from the ongoing narrative of the text, but even in the songs with a verse structure, Finzi alters the repetitions each time to give a sense of travel through the poem.

From the Bavarian Highlands by Edward Elgar shows the good-humoured family man in fine form and makes a light-hearted finale. He and his wife Alice loved holidays in Southern Bavaria, where they frequently went with their circle of friends, many of whom found their way into his Enigma Variations. On their return, Alice wrote some folksongs in the style of Bavarian ones she had heard, which her husband amiably set with appropriately southern German music. This is the equivalent of going through someone’s holiday photo album but a great deal more entertaining.

Sara Kemsley

7.30pm, Saturday 11 March 2006 – St Nicholas’ Church, Sevenoaks

Soloists

Gillian Keith – soprano
Julia Riley – mezzo-soprano
Charne Rochford – tenor
David Soar – bass
Hazel Brooks – leader

Programme

Mozart – Requiem
Schubert – Mass in C

Programme notes

The pairing of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Requiem with Franz Schubert’s fourth Mass ought to be a marriage of great works by two great composers. Scholars have argued, and continue to do so, over whether Mozart’s final work was born great or had greatness thrust upon it by the romantic and mysterious circumstances surrounding its genesis. Schubert, by his own admission, knew that his choral works lacked the masterstrokes of his illustrious forbears and decided to have lessons in counterpoint very late in life. What is not in doubt is that both works have rightly held a firm place in the hearts of performers and audiences for around 200 years.

The two composers had much in common. Both were violinists and pianists of prodigious talent. Both were dominated by their fathers. Both remained poor for much of their lives, struggling for positions which would provide money and status. Both died in their early thirties of illnesses which still arouse some debate. Both left behind an enormous body of work, as if they knew that time was short. Coincidentally, Antonio Salieri was Schubert’s teacher and Mozart’s archrival, holding as he did the coveted position of court composer to Emperor Josef in Vienna.

More importantly, both inhabited a musical paradise, although they might not have thought so at the time. Anton Schindler, writing in 1840, described turn-of-the-century Vienna: ‘There was a preference for music without ostentation – music which, whether performed by four voices or four hundred, would work magic on the listener, cultivating his mind and senses, ennobling his emotions… and yet this was not a time of philosophical sophistication; it was rather a period of uninhibited enjoyment, whose purity lasted well into the first decade of our century.’

Schubert’s Mass in C, D452, was written in 1816. It has a very light orchestration with no violas and optional clarinets and trumpets, giving the whole a light and airy texture. Unusually, the Kyrie belongs primarily to the four soloists, with chorus merely providing punctuation and emphasis. The light classical style is even more pronounced in the Gloria. The homophonic choral writing is underscored by a ‘Mannheim skyrocket’, the rapidly rising scale passage found so commonly in the early symphonic works of the Mannheim school. This musical style possessed an overwhelming energy, exuberance and almost uncontainable excitement. This is Schubert’s style here too some fifty years later.

The Credo, often the most solemn section of the Mass, is almost a dance. The triple time measure at first seems at odds with the metre of the words but what joy it brings to the words ‘creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible’. Contrast this with the next section, which speaks of the spirit made carnate, and crucifixion, where the harmonic language moves forward in time to wring full sentiment before returning to the joyful, chordal C major declaration that ‘on the third day he was resurrected and ascended into heaven.’

A rather thoughtful start to the Sanctus is another surprise but the solo soprano quickly dispels any doubt with her jubilant ‘Osanna in excelsis’. Schubert is best known for his tunes and so allows the soloist full measure in the Benedictus, which commonly in masses is in a slow duple time as here. This melody is perhaps unusual in its athleticism however. The solo voice has to navigate tricky rising and falling jumps without the least sign of strain or risk spoiling the calm for ‘blessed are they that go in the way of the Lord’. This is followed by a sinuous setting of the Agnus Dei and a final dance-like and precise ‘Dona nobis pacem’ as if to say that eternal bliss is a foregone conclusion.

Surely everyone recognises the opening of the Requiem in D minor K 626 of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? The sombre basset horns over the plodding, brooding bass chords seem inseparable from our memory of the film Amadeus and all the myths surrounding this final work of the genius, cut down in 1791 in his 35th year. Yes, Mozart was troubled by the anonymous commissioner of the piece. Yes, as he approached death himself, he felt he was writing his own requiem. Yes, he died with the manuscript on his bed trying to give instructions about its completion. It is also true that several lesser composers had a hand in completing what he had started and who continue to this day. The version we perform tonight is the reworking by Beyer in 1983 to correct some of Mozart’s pupil Süssmayr’s worst errors.

But forget all of that. Whoever wrote what, when and why, this is a glorious and idiosyncratic work, by turns sumptuous and terrifyingly stark. It should be indulged, not analysed. We should subject ourselves both to the power and majesty of the music and the startling message of the catholic rite: through the pains and rage of death to eternal light, through tears and death’s dark vale to eternal rest, from prayers and supplications to the acknowledgement that the Lord will deliver us ‘as once promised to Abraham and his seed forever’.

Sara Kemsley