Great Britain, Great Britten!
The title of this concert– “Great Britain, Great Britten”– alludes to the centenary, on November 22, 2013, of the English composer, conductor and pianist (Edward)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976). Britten, born on St. Cecilia’s Day– Cecilia is the patron saint of music, and from his birth his parents expected music of him! – is known for a variety of works, including operas such as Billy Budd and Peter Grimes, the tone poem A Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra (based on music by another English composer, Purcell), and the War Requiem. This concert also features works by two of Britten’s contemporaries, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst; and the remaining work, although written by a living American, nonetheless employs some English carols.
St. Nicolas
Britten wrote St. Nicolas for the 1948 centenary of Lancing College, a public boarding-school that had nurtured Britten’s partner, tenor Sir Peter Pears. The idea of a work honoring St. Nicholas of Bari, Italy (where his remains were relocated in 1087) came in 1947 from a Lancing schoolmaster, Basil Handford, who related some of the Nicholas legends to a fascinated Britten. Britten envisioned a cantata, embedding a series of episodes, and utilizing Lancing schoolchildren among its performers. The libretto was written by Eric Crozier, with whom Britten had collaborated on other works.
Unfortunately, “the only certainty about Nicholas’s life is that he lived in the fourth century and was bishop of Myra in Lycia”(Rosemary Guiley, in her Encyclopedia of Saints, 2001). Nicholas– the patron saint of sailors, travelers, children, prisoners, pawnbrokers, and both the nations of Russia and Greece– officiated in Myra, a port city now in south central Turkey. Beyond that, almost nothing is known to be factual; the “least unreliable” account is that of St. Methodosius of Constantinople, compiled in 847 A.D., 505 years after Nicholas’s presumed date of death! At the time of Methodosius’s account, the best-known miracle ascribed to Nicholas was the release of three functionaries condemned to death by the governor, Eustathius, who had accepted a bribe to pronounce that sentence; Nicholas rescued the men at the hour of their execution, then hounded Eustathius until he confessed and pled for mercy from the Saint. (This is one of six legends included in movement VIII of the cantata.) Another oft-repeated story concerns a citizen of Patara, Nicholas’s birthplace (about 100 miles west of Myra, on the Gulf of Makri, due east of Rhodes): The destitute man was about to sell his three daughters into prostitution, when Nicholas anonymously gave a purse of gold from his own fortune as a dowry for the eldest. Later, dowries appeared for the second and third daughters as well. Nicholas is in fact represented in art with three gold objects, often spherical, representing the three purses– probably the origin of the universal symbol of a pawnbroker! The giving of gifts at Christmas is said to stem from this tale, although the American Santa Claus appears to have come from Dutch traditions which may or may not have had such an origin. Other Nicholas legends include invoking a storm to punish scornful sailors
(movement IV of the cantata); and the precocious infancy described in movement II. In the latter instance, Britten uses an interesting device: The repeated
utterance, “God be glorified!” that Nicholas repeats from his birth, is sung each time by a soprano (i.e., a youth), save for the last repetition in a tenor (broken) voice, representing Nicholas verging upon manhood.
Another legend, embedded in movement VIII, has Nicholas, as a participant in the Council of Nicaea, slapping the face of another Bishop, Arius. Arius had been excommunicated in A.D. 321 for promoting a view of the Trinity different from that held by others. Controversy continued to divide the Church after Arius’ expulsion, and in 325 Constantine called the Council of Nicaea to resolve the issue. The Council first affirmed the excommunication– if Nicholas indeed confronted Arius, he was of the same mind as most of the other delegates– but remained strongly divided on what view to espouse. A measure of concord was reached with the approval of the carefully worded Nicaean Creed, still in use today, but the argument has re-emerged periodically ever since. Regrettably, there is not a shred of evidence placing Nicholas at Nicaea, much less taking physical action.
Hagiologists also discount the story of the “pickled boys,” movement V of the cantata: While on a journey, Bishop Nicholas is offered meat, in the midst of famine, by an innkeeper who has butchered three boys and placed their dismembered remains in a tub of brine; Nicholas warns the travelers of the crime and restores life to the boys, who enter singing Alleluias. The story almost certainly dates from a much later period than that of Methodosius and other historians. This story was not included by Crozier in the draft of his libretto; however, it was added, probably at Britten’s own request, and Britten, ever the dramatist, makes it the emotional high point of the cantata.
Britten ultimately determined to involve the audience itself in the work, inserting two familiar hymns, the Old Hundredth (“All people that on earth do dwell…”, a setting of Psalm 100) and God moves in a mysterious way… to be sung by both choir and congregation. Thus he takes advantage of the emotional content of the
Nicholasian legends– which he acknowledges as legends, in movement VIII, but defends as a means to keep Nicholas’s memory and his piety alive for future generations.
Christmas Day
Gustav Holst was born in England in 1874 of German ancestry—the surname originated as von Holst, and he dropped the particle in 1918, probably because of continuing anti-German sentiment in Britain. He was a shy individual, and was not well known until the success of The Planets in 1916. However, he had great originality, and the Grove Dictionary of Music remarks that he was “if not the most gifted of his English contemporaries, probably the most individual.” He was a close friend of Ralph Vaughan Williams, and each gave the other credit for musical stimulation. Holst spent much of his career directing the musical
activities at St. Paul Girls’ School, Hammersmith, although he was at times associated with several colleges. Vaughan Williams had a strong interest in folk song, and Holst caught that fervor as well; band aficionados may remember his two Suites for Military Band, both of which embed English folk songs. Christmas Day was composed in 1909, when Holst was also working on one of his operas based on Sanskrit texts. Christmas Day uses three carols— Good Christian Men, Rejoice (In Dulci Jubilo); God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen; and Come Ye Lofty, Come Ye Lowly, which Holst identifies as an old Breton melody, that is, probably of Celtic origin; there is no attribution for the text. There is also a brief appearance of The First Noel. In Dulci Jubilo is a German melody from the 14th century; versions of the original words appear as early as 1540, but today’s familiar words come from an 1850 paraphrase by the translator John M. Neale. God Rest Ye Merry is first found in a 1770 collection in England, although The Oxford Book of Carols also identifies another tune, with slight variations in the words, which may be significantly older. Holst’s settings of these carols are, to put it simply, classic, even though their setting probably was undertaken because of economic necessity.
Fantasia on Christmas Carols
Ralph (the English pronunciation is “Rafe”) Vaughan Williams was born in 1872 in the village of Down Ampney, where his father was a clergyman. A close friend of Gustav Holst— both were students of such musical giants as Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry at the Royal College of Music—, Vaughan Williams was central to 20th-century English musical output. Both he and Britten supplied music for the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II—Britten’s offering being the opera Gloriana, and Vaughan Williams’ a setting of the hymn, The Old Hundredth. He was an early collector of English folk music, beginning in 1903; edited the English Hymnal (1906); and was a co-editor of the Oxford Book of Carols (1928). Fantasia was written in 1912: At that time, Vaughan Williams’ work was just becoming known— his Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, published in 1910, was one of his first works to attract critical notice. Fantasia on Christmas Carols utilizes three English carols: The Truth Sent from Above, from Herefordshire; Come All You Worthy Gentlemen from Somerset; and On Christmas Night” from Sussex. Another Herefordshire carol tune is also employed without words. These carols led to Vaughan Williams’ work on the Oxford Book, and he collected two of these three; his collection of English folk melodies ultimately numbered over 800.
A Feast of Carols
Randol Alan Bass, 60, a Texan by birth and by current activity, is a member of the Dallas Symphony Chorus and has been an active conductor, composer and clinician. A Feast of Carols sets five carols: Gloucestershire Wassail, which Vaughan Williams dates from before 1800; Il Est Ne (He is Born), of French origin, first published in 1862; Veni Emmanuel, a 12th century Latin plainsong, adapted as an English hymn in the 19th century; The Holly and the Ivy, a British carol which embeds pagan imagery in addition to obvious Christian references (some sources date this lyric from the 18th century, although the present version was collected after 1900); God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, discussed in connection with Christmas Day above; and finally, a secular carol, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, which Wikipedia attributes to the West of England as early as the 16th century.
The Chorus previously sang Britten’s St. Nicolas in 1997, and first sang Christmas Day and Fantasia on Christmas Carols in 1980, and A Feast of Carols in 2002.