Charles Wood (1866-1926)
Songs for Voice and Piano
Carolyn Dobbin (mezzo-soprano); Roderick Williams (baritone)
Iain Burnside (piano)
rec. 2017/24, St Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington, East Lothian, UK
Texts included
Delphian DCD34339 [71]
Charles Wood was born in 1866 in Armagh, a city situated in what is now Northern Ireland. He demonstrated musical talent from a very early age, singing as a treble chorister in the choir of the city’s St Patrick’s Church of Ireland Cathedral. In 1883 he became one of the inaugural intake of students at the Royal College of Music in London where his composition teachers were Parry and Wood’s fellow Irishman, Stanford. In 1887 he moved to Cambridge University, first as a student and from 1889 onwards as a member of the academic staff. In 1924 he succeeded his former teacher, Stanford as Professor of Music at Cambridge but he was only able to occupy the post for some two years before his death in 1926 at the early age of sixty.
Next year, therefore, the centenary of Wood’s death will occur. His reputation as a composer largely rests on his Anglican church music but I hope the centenary might lead to something of a re-evaluation of Wood’s music more generally. I have heard quite a number of his liturgical works; there are some 17 sets of the Evening Canticles – though I’ve heard only a few of them – and a large body of anthems. There is also his setting of the St Mark Passion (1920), a recording of which I bought some years ago. I have to confess, though, that virtually all of his secular output is unknown to me and I wonder, for example, if any label will follow the example of SOMM Recordings which not long ago released a recording of the last of his six string quartets; have any of the others been recorded, I wonder? I’ve yet to hear that SOMM disc but it was admired by my colleague, Jonathan Woolf (review). So, although we won’t mark the Wood centenary until next year, this Delphian disc, containing twenty-three of his songs is more than welcome. And it’s a mark of how little we know of Wood’s secular music that no fewer that fourteen of these songs are here receiving their first recordings. Furthermore, I learned from the booklet that quite a few of these songs were only published in the year after Wood’s death; at least one of the songs, the impressive By the bivouac’s fitful flame remains unpublished to this day, it seems.
Before considering the individual songs, I think I should make two general points. Firstly, as I hope to show, Wood’s songs deserve to be ‘brought in from the cold’ and they could be in no better hands than those of Carolyn Dobbin, Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside. Most of the songs were recorded in January 2024, but five of them were recorded by Ms Dobbin in the same venue in March 2017. Had I not spotted this detail in the booklet I would not have known that nearly seven years separate some of the recordings from the rest of the programme: the quality of both Ms Dobbin’s voice and of the recorded sound are completely consistent. (I think those performances may have been included on an earlier Delphian disc of songs by composers from Northern Ireland (review).) Secondly, the booklet essay by Jeremy Dibble is excellent and I have drawn upon it a good deal for this review; not the least helpful aspect was the information he provided about the dates of composition of many of the songs
The programme opens imposingly with one of several Walt Whitman settings. O Captain! my Captain! is in every sense a big song. It’s a setting of the poem that Whitman was moved to write on the death of Abraham Lincoln. There are three stanzas and Wood’s treatment of Whitman’s verse is very interesting. In the first two stanzas he sets the opening lines in a proud, confident fashion; the music is martial. However, in the closing lines of each stanza he matches Whitman’s shift into melancholy by moving into a sorrowful minor key. The last of the three stanzas has a much more reflective, poignant tone to it. I was impressed with this eloquent song and by the stirring advocacy which it receives from Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside. Later in the programme there are more Whitman songs. Darest thou now, O soul takes the poem which a number of other British composers set, most notably Vaughan Williams in Toward the Unknown Region (1907). Apparently, this was Wood’s first attempt at setting Whitman’s poetry and I’d say it was pretty successful. Jeremy Dibble points out that there are no cadences in the vocal line at the end of each verse; instead, the piano transitions from one verse to the next. The effect, to my ears, is that the voice part has a continuous thread (despite the inter-stanza breaks). Much of the music is pervaded by what I might term elevated mystery but in the last two stanzas Wood changes the mood; in response to the poem’s imagery, his music becomes more rapturous. Carolyn Dobbin sings the song very well indeed. She also performs By the bivouac’s fitful flame. Jeremy Dibble thinks that Wood may have been the first composer to set these words. I think Wood’s response to the text is very acute. Ms Dobbin sings the song with great intensity, bringing words and music to life in a way that makes Wood’s song very moving. The other Whitman song is Ethiopia Saluting the Colours. This is a rather remarkable song and so is the way it is performed here. The poem depicts, in Jeremy Dibble’s words, “General Sherman’s Union soldiers as they file past, bemused by the brightly turbaned slave woman who gladly salutes the American flag (a symbol of her emancipation)”. Wood begins with a robust march and the words are sung by Roderick Williams but at the third stanza, when Whitman voices the woman’s thoughts, both Wood and this performance achieve something of a coup. Wood’s music becomes more inward, almost hesitant and this effect is enhanced by Carolyn Dobbin taking over from Williams to sing the woman’s words. It’s a most imaginative gesture (I suspect that in earlier performances it was more usual for one singer to deliver the entire song). Williams then resumes the narration of the scene. This is a fine song and the way it’s performed here enhances its stature.
Two of the songs are somewhat unusual, at least as far as professional recitals are concerned, in that they are set as canons for two singers. In fact, both come from a collection of vocal canons that Wood published in 1913. The Ride of the Witch uses Robert Herrick’s poem The Hag. The deployment of two voices, one chasing the other, as it were, imparts great urgency to the setting. Right at the end of the programme we hear another Herrick poem set as a canon. To Music could not be more different. This is a smooth, soothing song. It’s a most unusual way to set words such as these, but it’s very effective. There’s a great deal of technical skill involved in both of these settings, especially the latter, I think, but one is scarcely aware of the technical prowess.
A song which particularly struck me is At the mid hour of the night. Wood was still a student, aged only twenty, when he composed this setting of lines by Thomas Moore. In listening, one recognises that Wood’s talent was not by then fully mature but the confidence of his approach more than compensates. Jeremy Dibble notes the song’s “almost Brahmsian aura of autumnal melancholy”, a description which seems entirely apt. Carolyn Dobbin’s voice is ideally suited to this song and both performance and music impressed me very much.
Like his erstwhile teacher and compatriot, Stanford, Charles Wood delved into the Irish folk tradition quite a lot and this programme includes several examples of this side of his art. A number of these come from an 1897 collection of arrangements, which Wood published under the title Irish Folk Songs; he dedicated the collection to Stanford. Among the songs that caught my ear is The Enchanted Valley. Jeremy Dibble attributes to this song “a questioning pang of caution and regret”. It’s a rather beautiful song which Roderick Williams and Iain Burnside perform most sensitively. Williams performs some of the Irish songs allotted to him, such as The Sailor Man and Over here with an Irish burr in his voice; the effect is not overdone. The former is, in Dibble’s words, “an amusing patter song”; Williams characterises it nicely. Birds is a setting of a poem by the Irish poet Moira O’Neill – a pseudonym for Agnes Shakespear Higginson (1864-1955). It’s a charmingly attractive song, with a folk-like melody, and I mean no disrespect to Carolyn Dobbin when I say that the most appealing feature is the decorative piano part, which is highly suggestive of birdsong. O love, ’tis a calm starry night is another Irish song. Jeremy Dibble rightly references the simplicity of the texture and harmony; however, the gentle expressiveness with which Williams and Burnside invest this song makes a great deal of the piece.
I haven’t mentioned every song specifically but I can assure readers that every song in this collection is worth hearing. Wood’s achievement in the art-song genre may not match the very finest composers of his era but they are far from negligible and this CD has left me keen to hear more of them. That’s in part a tribute to the quality of the songs themselves but the sterling quality of the performances also plays a significant part. Carolyn Dobbin and Roderick Williams are ideal advocates for these songs. The quality of their singing and the clarity of their diction make listening to these songs a great pleasure; that pleasure is enhanced still further by the perceptive and skilled pianism of Iain Burnside. Delphian could not have put this project into better hands. I had not encountered any of these songs before but I’m jolly glad that this fine disc has led me to them and to a wider appreciation of the music of Charles Wood.
The mellow acoustic of St Mary’s Parish Church, Haddington seems ideally suited to recording song recitals; Paul Baxter has recorded the artists sympathetically and clearly. As I’ve already indicated, Jeremy Dibble’s notes are excellent; I learned much from them.
If you enjoy British art songs you should certainly listen to this very welcome release.
Buying this recording via a link below generates revenue for MWI, which helps the site remain free
Contents
O Captain! my Captain!* (1898)
The Sailor Man*
Birds*
The Blackberry Blossom*(publ. 1897)
Oh! Skylark, for thy wing!* (1884)
The Ride of the Witch (1913)
The Enchanted Valley (publ. 1897)
Fortune and her Wheel (1886)
Over here (publ. 1897)
Ethiopia Saluting the Colours* (1898)
I’d roam the world over with you* (publ. 1897)
Darest thou now, O soul*
Denny’s Daughter*
Beside the River Loune* (publ. 1897)
By the bivouac’s fitful flame* (1897)
O love, ’tis a calm starry night* (publ. 1897)
At the mid hour of the night (1886)
At Sea
Shall I forget (1887)
The Outlaw of Loch Lene (1898)
Credhe’s Lament for Cail (publ. 1897)
Ask me no more* (1886)
To Music* (1913)
*Premiere recording
