CMQ June 2018 contained a series of
tributes to Gordon Appleton describing his many-sided contributions to the work of the RSCM. Here, as if a postscript, are his reviews of Christmas music that he completed last February ready for this issue.
ADVENT CALENDAR [E/M]
David Ogden SATB and piano
RSCM Press A3427 £2.50
CAROL OF THE SHEPHERDS [M]
Thomas Hewitt Jones SATB and keyboard RSCM Press A3596 £2.50
A lovely poem, Advent Calendar, by former Archbishop Rowan Williams is given a sensitive treatment by David Ogden. The instruction ‘Mysterious with certainty’ suits the music, which serves the text well. With accompaniment more suited to piano than organ, and straight-forward vocal parts, this is a welcome addition to music for Advent.
For his Carol of the Shepherds, Thomas Hewitt Jones has composed fast and lively music to words of William Billings. Reminiscent of American square dancing, it will be enjoyed by agile choirs with excellent diction and a sense of fun. Written throughout in D major, the last verse is a tone higher, yet there is no new key signature; rather, the music continues to be written in D with plenty of accidentals. I wonder why?
A VIRGIN MOST PURE [M]
arr. Stephen Cleobury SATB and organ
Novello NOV040106 £2.75
WEXFORD CAROL [M]
arr. Mack Wilberg SATB and piano
Oxford 978-0-19-351800-1 £2.65
These two traditional melodies
are given attractive yet not difficult settings. Stephen Cleobury arranges beautifully for voices and organ
the familiar English carol, A virgin most pure. There are effective unaccompanied sections within the carol but, beware, there is a top B flat in the soprano part!
Wilberg’s arrangement of the haunting Irish Wexford Carol begins with a men-only first verse leading to an upper-voices verse, followed by a brief two-part contrapuntal section before the whole choir ends the carol. Although written with piano accompaniment, a competent organist could easily adapt this.
WHAT CHILD IS THIS? [M]
Brian Chapple
SATB with ad lib. piano Oxford X602 £2.25 WHILE SHEPHERDS WATCHED [M]
Owain Park SATB and organ
Novello NOV296692 £2.25
These two carols are both well known when set to other melodies, but here the composers have written new tunes. That for ‘What child is this?’ is nothing like Greensleeves, but matches the metre of the poem beautifully – with a lovely refrain: ‘the babe, the son of Mary’. For unaccompanied choir, this is well worth discovering.
I am not sure it was wise for Owain Park to write a new tune to Nahum Tate’s familiar words ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’. It probably will not be appropriate in a concert or carol service that already includes the familiar congregational hymn, although the newly-composed tune with descant is pleasant enough.
LULLABY BABY [D]
Richard Rodney Bennett SATB
Novello NOV166386 £2.25 NOWELL, NOWELL, TIDINGS TRUE [M/D]
Richard Rodney Bennett SATB
Novello NOV296659 £2.25 LITTLE BABE, BORN OF MARY [M]
James Kevin Gray SATB
Oxford X692 £1.95
Here are two contrasting, unaccompanied pieces by Richard Rodney Bennett (1936–2012), written long ago but newly reissued. Lullaby Baby was written in 1986 for King’s College, Cambridge, whose choir can provide the fine tuning this piece needs. Competent choirs will enjoy this gentle setting with attractive harmonies, very much jazz-inspired.
Nowell, Nowell, tidings true was first published in 1963 and is a Re-working of an English medieval carol. Verses are sung by soprano, alto, tenor and bass soloists who need both flexibility and rhythmic vitality. The simple chorus, varied in each appearance, is sung by the whole choir.
James Kevin Gray is a composer in North Carolina who has written a gentle, a cappella piece, Little babe, born of Mary, with attractive melody and harmony that will sound particularly good in a spacious acoustic. No separate acknowledgement is given of the words, which are presumably by the composer.
Gordon Appleton
CHRISTMAS FOR UPPER VOICES
THE MIDNIGHT OF YOUR BIRTH [E-M]
Bob Chilcott
Upper voices and piano Oxford 978-0-19-351429-4 £5.50
Christmas carols, sacred and secular, have often referred to nature, including trees (cherry, holly) and birds (swans, geese, doves). These five carols, with words by Charles Bennett, make striking use of images from the natural world. The second is titled The blackbird with one white feather; the third, Kindness, is subtitled ‘A raven flew to Bethlehem’; the fourth is a list, with their attributes, of acorn, berry, robin, blossom and so on up to twelve. The fifth is Cherry Tree Carol-like, but the berries of the tree are raindrops that Mary and Joseph address. To start, The Angel did fly includes the striking line, ‘Stars in the ocean and fish in the sky, sang you a heavenly lullaby’. Scorings vary from unison to SSA, and with a solo voice. Bob Chilcott writes that ‘I have always felt that carols need tunes and I have done my best to write some that might stick in the memory.’ He has done so with a delightful freshness and artful simplicity.
COVENTRY CAROL [E]
Toby Huelin SA and piano
Tim Knight Music (Spartan Press) TKM830 £1.50
The words are those we know from the medieval carol. The tune is new, simple and memorable, with a lower part in verses 2 and 4 and a contrasting canonic treatment for Herod’s raging in verse 3. The composer has effectively captured the major/minor mood of the words – an attractive piece for the smallest of choirs.
CHRISTMAS FOR SA/MEN
CAROLS FOR SA & MEN
John Rutter
SA/Men and organ or piano
Oxford 978-0-19-352418-7 £8.25
John Rutter has rescored nine of his carols, not flexibly but in three parts, soprano, alto and ‘unison men’ with keyboard accompaniment that again is specified either for organ or for piano – with two exceptions: Mary’s Lullaby for piano or organ, and Angels’ Carol for piano or harp. Other popular carols given this three-part treatment include Candlelight Carol, Mary’s Lullaby, Star Carol and What sweeter music. I was particular struck by the less well-known opening item, All bells in paradise, where, despite two forte climaxes, the overall impression is of sweetly singing angel voices as well as the ringing of the bells, all effectively portrayed in the music.
Stephen Patterson
MORE CHRISTMAS SATB MUSIC
O MAGNUM MYSTERIUM [E/M]
BEATA VISCERA MARIAE [E/M]
Darius Milhaud arr. Rupert Jeffcoat
SATB
Alphonse Leduc AL30765, AL30764 £2.25 each
Many French composers in the 19th and 20th centuries wrote sacred works for solo voice and organ, several of which have been arranged for SATB. The solo line is normally transferred unaltered to the sopranos; the difficulty is to make the other parts interesting. Darius Milhaud (1892–1974) wrote Cinq Prières for soprano and organ. Rupert Jeffcoat has been successful in his arrangement of these two, helped by Milhaud’s tendency to imitate phrases from the solo line in the organ writing. The music has a touching, straightforward directness that enhances the words of these ancient liturgical texts for Christmas Day. Presentation is excellent for such little pieces (62 and 34 bars respectively) with open score plus piano reduction, separate text plus non-singing English translations, and card covers.
Julian Elloway
NOWELL! NOWELL! OUT OF YOUR SLEEP [D]
AVE REX ANGELORUM [M/D]
SWEET WAS THE SONG [M]
DING! DONG! MERRILY ON HIGH [D]
John Tavener
SATB (with divisions) and organ
Chester CH73755 £3.50; 73766 £2.25; 73623 £2.25; 72501 £2.75
These four pieces are all extracted from Tavener’s Ex Maria virgine of 2008. None is easy; indeed ‘Nowell!’ and ‘Ding! Dong!’ must have been difficult even for Clare College, Cambridge for whom they were written. Three of them are characterized by tempo marks such as ‘With joyous exaltation’, ‘With wild, primordial joy!’, ‘With dazzling, ecstatic joy!’. The exception, in difficulty and mood, is Sweet was the song, although it also packs an emotional punch. These are not pieces for those who like their Christmas music to be politely understated; rather, with their extremes of speed and dynamic, they convey something of the excitement of God being made man and the heavens ‘riven with angel singing’.
THIS ENDERNIGHT [M]
Michael Berkeley
SATB and organ
Oxford X672 £2.35
CHRISTMAS EVE [M/D]
Gabriel Jackson
SATB with divisions
Oxford X688 £2.05
The infant Jesus sits on his mother’s lap. The affecting dialogue between the two provides the 15th-century carol text for This Endernight. Michael Berkeley’s setting was written for King’s College, Cambridge 2016 Nine Lessons and Carols. Undemanding on singers or listeners, it builds up gradually from an opening solo soprano to a full final chorus, given a sense of propulsion by an ostinato-like rising scale passage repeated in the organ pedals.
Gabriel Jackson sets a poem by Christina Rossetti, Christmas Eve, simple on the surface, but jam-packed with meaning. The composer has taken meticulous care over the setting of each syllable, making the whole rewarding to sing and listen to. I particularly liked the swinging four-against-three rhythm first heard to illustrate the ‘bells that ring’ that reappears for the ‘Angels soon to sing’.
SILENT NIGHT [M]
Paul Mealor
S solo, SATB (with divisions)
Novello NOV296846 £2.25
THE SHEPHERDS’ CAROL [E/M]
Philip Lowe
SATB and organ
Robin Walker www.events.robinwalker.org/#home £2.50
Here are two carols with familiar words, but not the expected tune. Mealor has written a gorgeous setting of Silent night in a slow triple time, like the original tune. Indeed the last line of Gruber’s music breaks in with ‘Sleep in heavenly peace’ and ‘Christ the Saviour is born!’ at the end of the first two verses – as inspired an effect as is the decision not to do so at the end of the third verse but to leave it there to the imagination. Soprano solo and first sopranos need top B flats.
The Shepherds’ Carol is an entirely original setting of the words of ‘While shepherds watched their flocks by night’ that takes its inspiration from Luke 2.20, ‘and the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God’. They glorify and praise in a sprightly 5/8 alternating with 3/4. The six verses of the original are combined into three longer verses with a sense of forward direction through each, and a real climax in the final verse as the angels sing ‘Glory be to God on high’.
O HOLY NIGHT! [M]
Adolphe Adam
arr. Paul Langford
SATB (with divisions) and piano
Oxford X717 £2.35
TOMORROW SHALL BE MY DANCING DAY
arr. Stuart Nicholson
Tenor solo, SATB and organ
Novello NOV167079 £2.75
In both these arrangements we find the expected tune. O Holy Night!, after a lightly written opening, is given a fuller-textured treatment than customary, with six-part chords for the choir and big piano writing – this looks like a setting designed for a large choir. Stuart Nicholson has arranged Tomorrow shall be my dancing day with a light, spritely organ part that inspires the singers to dance (vocally) until a fuller repeat of the opening verse at the end. The syncopated rhythm of the linking ‘Sing, Oh! my love’, also a feature of David Willcocks’s arrangement, is used to good effect and provides a strong finish.
James L. Montgomery
ORGAN MUSIC
E Easy
M Medium
D Difficult
CHRISTMAS
FOUR OFFERTOIRES AND MUSETTE-CANZONETTA [M]
Gabriel Baille
- David Patrick
Fitzjohn Music Publication £9.00
The original title of the first part of this publication was Quatres Offertoires et Sorties sur des noëls Op.10, hence the Christmas designation. Gabriel Baille (1832–1909) was organist and conservatoire director in Perpignan and, according to John Henderson’s Directory ‘a composer of piano and violin music said to be in the style of opéra-comique’. There is certainly an attractive, popular touch to these pieces, nos.1 and 4 of which would be effective Sorties, and no.2 an Offertoire. No.3, ‘sur un noël Catalan’, alternates sections that display a jolly swagger with uncharacteristically subtle treatments of the noël tune. The lightweight little Musetta-Canzonetta fills up the final three pages – a pretty and pleasing, pastoral song-without-words.
Duncan Watkins
ORGAN VOLUNTARIES
SONATA IN THE STYLE OF HANDEL [M]
William Wolstenholme
- David Patrick
Fitzjohn Music Publication £7.00
Wolstenholme (1865–1931) was the first blind organist to gain an Oxford B.Mus. since Stanley, and (according to David Patrick’s note) a close friend of organist Alfred Hollins (also blind), who regularly played this Sonata. It is late-19th-century Handelian pastiche, so one expects full textures and much doubling, but if treated on its own terms there is much to enjoy in the four varied movements.
Duncan Watkins
ORGAN ENCORES VOLUME 1
arr. Ian Tracey
Church Organ World COW-2018-005 £20.00
This is a useful collection, if a little expensive for 24 pages of music and without any hints as to where the lesser-known pieces come from. But the music is all well worth playing, the arrangements for organ as idiomatic as one would expect from Ian Tracey – and quite easy as well. A Rigaudon de Louis XIV by Lully (concluding triple forte and allargando molto – the arrangements are unashamedly old-fashioned in their approach) is followed by a Vivaldi Largo from a Mandolin Concerto that transcribes very nicely for organ. A Stanley Trumpet Tune, with pedals of course, is similarly followed by a Fiocco Arioso. Then comes the unexpected, if probably the best-known piece, the ‘Clog dance’ from Hérold’s La fille mal gardée, with the option of a ‘woodblock or tap on music desk’ for the clog rhythms. A Purcell B flat Trumpet Tune rounds off the volume. If the contents appeal, do buy it.
ORGAN HOURS [D]
Philip Wilby
Fagus-music.com £12.00
Subtitled ‘Contrapuntal Exercises after the Medieval Clock of Wells Cathedral’, here is a delightful collection of five pieces inspired by the medieval ‘Great Clock’ of Wells Cathedral, and written for the new house organ of the cathedral’s director of music, Matthew Owens. A Prelude and Fugue are inspired by the clock mechanism ‘in perpetual motion’; the third movement refers to the sun, moon and stars on the inner clock face. A pair of ‘automata’, Jack Blandifer who appears every quarter and the jousting knights who appear on the hour, are depicted in the fourth. For the final movement, ‘Night Fugue and a Chime in the Dark’, we return to the ticking clock – against the tick tock, the fugue descends from the highest to the lowest register, concluding with a threefold ‘chime in the dark’. This is richly inventive music, worth learning by any organist with an imaginative mind.
Duncan Watkins
PARTITA: MACH’S MIT MIR, GOTT, NACH DEINER GÜT [M/D]
Reinhold Birk
Edition Dohr (Universal Edition) 26306 £11.95
Reinhold Birk (1923–2013) was based in Stuttgart for most of his working life, and a conductor and composer of considerable standing. From the 1960s he composed chiefly using serial techniques, following the example of Ernst Krenek and Hans Werner Henze; this work from 1949 owes more to the rich harmonic world of Reger. A series of chorale meditations, some virtuosic, some tender and expressive, it will be of much interest to followers of the late romantic German style.
Huw Morgan
ELGAR TRANSCRIPTIONS
Pomp and Circumstance Marches 1–5, Op.39
Edward Elgar
arr. Edward Tambling
Butz-Verlag BU 2811 €16.00
Edward Elgar (1857–1934) wrote four ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ Marches before the outbreak of the First World War, and a fifth (six had been commissioned) in 1930. From Edwin Lemare, who arranged the first within a year of its 1901 composition, and George Sinclair, dedicatee of the fourth, to Iain Farrington (3 and 5) and William McVicker’s recent arrangements, organists have risen to the challenge of arranging these masterfully orchestrated pieces that alternate a ‘quick march’ scherzo with a ‘big tune’ trio section.
So how is Edward Tambling’s approach different? Well, for a start it is complete with all five pieces. Also complete in the sense that all the pieces are complete as Elgar wrote them. McVicker (published by Boosey and Hawkes) provides shorter versions based on the recordings that Elgar himself made, which gives the cuts a degree of authority although they were doubtless prompted by the restrictions of 78 rpm records. Tambling’s arrangements manage to be a little easier than most earlier arrangements, yet incorporate more Elgarian detail with imaginative ways of transferring the composer’s orchestral effects to the organ. McVicker’s are easier still, written at an ‘intermediate level’. Many organists wanting to play these pieces when requested after a particular festive service will prefer the shortened and easier McVicker versions. For organists wanting the complete pieces and with the technique to play them, this new Edward Tambling publication is the one to choose.
ENIGMA VARIATIONS Op.36 [M]
Edward Elgar
selected and arr. Eberhard Hofmann
Carus-Verlag 18.011 €28.00
How often organists, when playing ‘Nimrod’ at the start or end of a service, must wonder about preceding or following it with other of Elgar’s variations! Here is the opportunity. The arranger has made two sensible decisions, the first being to omit the three longer and more difficult variations (10, 11 and 13) – those organists who transcribe Mahler symphonies can of course do similarly with Elgar, but for use as voluntaries the eleven given here provide a wide variety of playable pieces that can be used separately or as a sequence (the order has been changed slightly to compensate for the omitted ones). The second excellent choice was to base the arrangements on Elgar’s own piano version as well as the orchestral score – for the piano version shows what details in the full orchestration were important to the composer and what he was happy to omit. ‘Nimrod’, in particular, looks closer to the piano version, as well as more idiomatic for the organ. This is an excellent publication, clearly printed and generously laid out.
Julian Elloway
ORGAN AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS
ORGAN PLUS ONE: Epiphany & Whitsuntide [M–D]
Carsten Klomp
Score and 4 parts
Baerenreiter BA 8502 £15.00
ORGAN PLUS ONE: Praise and thanks; Baptism; Wedding [M–D]
Carsten Klomp
Score and 4 parts
Baerenreiter BA 8505 £13.50
Two further volumes in Baerenreiter’s Organ plus one series cover a wide range of music, especially in the Praise and thanks/baptism and wedding volume. The wedding section does not include the two wedding pieces, but we do have ‘Air on the G string’ and ‘Handel’s Largo’ – pieces that are untypical in a volume mostly of festive, ceremonial music, often with trumpet and organ in mind. The Epiphany and Whitsuntide volume has a wider range of music, more idiomatic for lower solo instruments. Composers here include Grieg, Gigout, Dubois, Vierne and Widor – yes, the Symphony No.5 but represented by its fourth movement. As with previous volumes, a ‘free’ non-cantus-firmus based piece is often followed by a ‘Begleitsatz’ or ‘accompanying movement’ designed to allow the solo instrument and organ to accompany singing. However, in many cases the differences in the melodies as sung in various traditions mean that these need to be treated with care. Solo parts are provided in C, B flat, E flat and F.
Julian Elloway
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