Empire to Commonwealth – Organ and Vocal music after 1939
Robert James Stove (organ)
Elizabeth Barrow, Tina Battaglia (soprano), Emily Tan (mezzo-soprano), Leighton Triplow (tenor), James Emerson (baritone)
rec. 2023, Basilica of Our Lady of Victories, Camberwell, Australia
Ars Organi AOR005 [40]
The premise behind this disc is a simple but rather effective one. To collect together organ music and church anthems written since 1939 by British, Australian and New Zealand composers who have mainly fallen from common knowledge. The driving force behind this project – of which this is the second disc (I have not heard the first) – is Robert James Stove who plays the organ, I imagine devised the programme and also supplies the enthusiastic quite extensive liner note (English texts are included for the four sung selections). Of the fourteen works nine are listed as receiving World Premiere recordings. Again of the fourteen, ten are for solo organ with the other four are anthem settings. For I presume economic reasons these anthems are sung one to a part by five young fresh voiced singers.
The plus side of this disc is the quality of the playing and singing and the recording which finds an effective balance between instrument and voices although there is a fair amount of wind and action noise from the organ. The downside, for all of Stove’s protestations to the contrary, is the music itself which is modest at best. Now there is nothing wrong at all in music that serves a chosen purpose well. In no disparaging sense this sounds in the main like music written for competent parish church players and singers to perform as part of the weekly liturgy. The vocal writing is mellifluous and grateful to sing – in the main I would imagine a decent professional could sight sing these with ease. There are a couple of exceptions where the level of compositional inspiration seems higher but in the main I hear little that commands the listener’s attention.
The recital is bookended by a pair of marches. Of the two the closing The Queen’s Procession is slightly more interesting with Henry Coleman’s opening Festival March sounding too much like any generic post-Elgarian British March that populates a black and white World War II movie. Stove in his liner rightly points to the Elgaresque style but suggests that the senior composer would have been pleased to have written the main theme – surely an exaggeration. I had not heard of Birmingham-born Melbourne-settled Alfred Ernest Floyd before. He is represented by Church Prelude No.1which encapsulates the unassuming – but gently attractive – music that characterises this disc. Stove again hears far greater virtues than I.
He makes even greater claims for Cyril Vincent Taylor’s hymn-like Abbot’s Leigh. Unless I am completely getting the wrong end of the stick the liner seems to suggest that this simple, indeed plain melody was written by Taylor for wartime use by the BBC as a substitute for Germanic melodies such as Haydn’s Emporer’s Hymn or Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Stove describes this as a “bold, soaring diatonic melody”. As the first of four sung items it brings to the listener’s attention the singers. As mentioned the voices are suitably fresh and youthful. There is a balance question because the three upper female voices have soft-grained tone which is rather dominated by the brighter bolder sound of baritone James Emerson. This is not a question of Emerson singing louder than his colleagues simply that his timbre draws the ear away from the melodic leading/upper line. Another issue with all four of these sung items is a marked lack of expressive or dynamic variety. For sure they are well and confidently sung but with almost no light and shade.
Yorkshire-born George Oldroyd’s Le Prie-Dieu is a skilfully understated meditation on two Lutheran melodies. Again I can imagine this having a very useful (and practical) function in a church service but its slightness makes its enduring value on a recital such as this more questionable. John Ireland’s name leaps out of the composer roster as having enduring fame. But his Intrada – the first movement of his Miniature Suite – seems cut from much the same cloth as the rest of the programme. By this stage it is hard not to wonder if a little more ‘display’ in the choice of repertoire might have broken up the rather monotone character. In Dom Gregory Murray’s Interlude XXXIX Stove hears “intense sadness” – a description which again I have to say eludes. More engaging is Australian born William G. James’ Carol of the Birds. James’ reputation apparently rests with his carols – but carols that do not inhabit the frozen winter world of the Northern Hemisphere. The recurring conclusion to each verse “Orana! Orana! Orana to Christmas Day” does have an attractive melodic hook although again Stove’s description of it being “apt to stay in one’s head for hours after a first hearing” did not occur in my case.
At last with Leslie Woodgate’s Impromptu Op20 No.1 there was a piece I enjoyed without reserve. Woodgate belonged to that cohort of musicians who provided the BBC with performances, compositions, talks and editions across a wide range of musical subjects. These were genuinely talented polymaths who were able to produce large quantities of broadcastable material in a way that embodied the BBC’s original charter to entertain, educate and inform. While this Impromptu is hardly revolutionary – especially given its 1951 composition – there is an energy and sinew to the music that has been lacking before. John Longmire’s name I knew from his authorship of a John Ireland biography but I did not realise he was a composer too. His hymn-like O Life that makest all things new is a perfectly decent fairly four-square hymn written while he was teaching at a school in Auckland New Zealand – the latter fact more interesting than the hymn. Another glimmer of greater individuality is offered by Arnold Cooke’s Impromptu although here Stove hears a pastiche of Hindemith (one of Cooke’s teachers) “so acute as to inspire fears of outright plagarism”. Again I am not sure I would express things in quite such extreme terms but Cooke’s austere writing is a welcome change from the cosy certainties of much else on offer here.
Another Yorkshire-born composer unknown to me is Gordon Slater. Here Stove plays his prelude on his hymn tune titled Cheshire. Here Stove hears a link (“close to anticipating” is his phrase) to the Dr Who theme – keener ears than mine will understand what he means. Of the remaining three works Christopher Steel’s Dance Op.33 No.4 is again unpretentious in scope and intent but quite attractive although very conservative in its idiom given its 1974 composition. I have a lot of time for Alec Rowley – another polymath like Woodgate but one who produced prodigious amounts of music – much of it for pedagogical purposes. The best of Rowley is very good indeed – and belies the ‘teaching’ status. However, the sheer volume of his output also means that he could fall back on generic gestures and styles to fill the page. His Sing to the Lord has the distinct feel of one of those ‘factory’ pieces. Well crafted and easy on the ear and voice but really rather forgettable.
With a last flourish of hyperbola Stove makes great claims for Oliphant Chuckerbutty’s The Queen’s Procession. Stove hears a combination of “Arthur Rank film”, “neo-Elgarian eloquence” and even “allusions to Jamaican popular song”. Again I struggle to hear any but the faintest echoes of these instead noting a perfectly adequate march that serves a function without coming close to the stirring impact of so many other examples by other superior composers. At just 40:05 playing time this is hardly a well-filled disc but in all honesty I cannot say I wanted it to be any longer. All in all a curious disc – one planned and executed with clear passion and no little skill and sympathetically recorded to boot. Yet to my ear the essential modesty of the music – it is clear this is the word that kept popping back into my head while listening – precludes this disc from any kind of strong recommendation except for those curious to hear this very specific type of repertoire.
Nick Barnard
Availability: Ars Organi
Contents
Henry Coleman (1888-1965)
Festival March (1959)
Alfred Ernest Floyd (1877-1974)
Church Prelude No.1 (1941)
Cyril Vincent Taylor (1907-1991)
Abbot’s Leigh (1941)
George Oldroyd (1886-1951)
Le Prie-Dieu: A Meditation (1949)
John Ireland (1879-1962)
Intrada (1944)
Dom Gregory Murray (1905-1992)
Interlude XXXIX (1946)
William Garnet James (1892-1977)
Carol of the Birds (1948)
Leslie Woodgate (1900-1961)
Impromptu Op.20 No.1 (1951)
John Longmire (1902-1986)
O Life that makest all things new (1953)
Arnold Cooke (1906-2005)
Impromptu (1967)
Gordon Slater (1896-1979)
Prelude on ‘Cheshire’ (1950)
Christopher Steel (1939-1991)
Dance Op.33 No.4 (1974)
Alec Rowley (1892-1958)
Sing to the Lord (1944)
Oliphant Chuckerbutty (1884-1960)
The Queen’s Procession (1952)
