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Peter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of London
The Curlew / Four Hymns / Merciless Beauty

Album UK 1974 on His Master's Voice label
Classical (Neo-Romantic)

Issued with 4-page insert containing texts Transcription of liner notes: Among the several strange figures in English music, few are stranger than Peter Warlock. He belongs to the fascinating period of the early 1920s when a new group of English composers was coming to the fore in the place of the then almost silent Elgar and the established middle- aged generation represented by Vaughan Williams and Holst. Eugene Goossens, Lord Berners, Bernard van Dieren, Arthur Bliss, Arnold Bax, E. J. Moeran and later William Walton and Constant Lambert were among the names which began to dominate the avant-garde concerts in London. They owed allegiance to a variety of influences, chief among them Stravinsky and the French composers Poulenc, Milhaud and Satie. Warlock, A however, chose a different path. His real name was Philip Heseltine. He was at Eton from 1908-11 and during this time first met Delius, whose music he admired passionately. Six years later, in 1916, he came to know and admire van Dieren. These were the contemporaries to whom he was devoted; from the past he found inspiration in the Elizabethan and Jacobean song-writers, lutenists and madrigalists. Heseltine was a true schizophrenic, and he recognised this duality by adopting the name Warlock - with its association with the devil to distinguish the composer from the critic and scholar. Often gentle, diflident and charming, Heseltine could also be satanic, dabbling not merely in outrageous drinking sessions but in drugs and black magic. His roistering dedication to work, drink and love as a holy trinity might have remained no more than tiresomely high- spirited, but it became, under the influence of van Dieren, more sinister, turning him into a destroyer of other men, most notably and tragically Lambert, and ultimately himself. Today his work is all that matters. He recognised that he could not compose in large scale forms, so the bulk of his output is songs, some swaggeringly Elizabethan, some exquisitely tender, some macabre. His masterpiece is unquestionably The Curlew, not only because of its intrinsic beauty but because in it he explored creatively the melancholy and despair which lay at the roots of his Jekyll-and-Hyde personality. The Curlew was composed in 1920-21, performed in 1921 and revised for its second performance at a Gerald Cooper concert in 1922. It is a setting of four poems by W. B. Yeats on the subject of unrequited love, for which the crying of the curlew becomes a symbol. The choice of flute, cor anglais and string quartet as instrumental accompaniment was a stroke of genius. We hear the curlew’s cry (cor anglais) at the outset, its theme taken up and elaborated by the viola. During the fairly lengthy instrumental introduction-solo violin arabesques, a rhapsodic flute solo and the melancholy sound of the cor anglais-the mood of desolation is established. A cello solo leads into the tenor’s entry: “O curlew, cry no more in the air ... because your crying brings to my mind the passion-dimm’d eyes and long heavy hair that was shaken out over my breast. There is enough evil in the crying of wind.” Flute, viola, cor anglais and cello dominate the interlude before the tenor recounts his dream that “the old despair would end in love”. This is followed by a wonderful passage in which cor anglais and flute represent curlew call and peewit cry while the singer longs for “your merry and tender and pitiful words”. A change in mood, with triplets in the second violin and viola parts, describes the poet’s dream in the moonlight: “No boughs have withered because of the wint’ry winds”; very soft tremolandi sul ponticello for violins and viola, followed by the cor anglais’s lament, then: “The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams”. A faster section, with flowing viola part and the flute’s principal theme, introduces the witches with “their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool and their secret smile”. The music becomes louder and more dramatic at the reiteration of “No boughs have withered”, but reverts to a slow and gentle tempo to depict the characteristic Yeatsian imagery of “the sleepy country where swans fly round coupled with golden chains and sing as they fly”. This hallucination is shattered--cor anglais agitato and pizzicato strings-as the singer again declaims:_“No boughs have withered because of the wint’ry w1nd” and then speaks almost in a whisper: “The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams”, a most impressive moment. The woodwind instruments add their symbolic commentary, and an instrumental section, moderato, with violin solo and flute as if from a distance, introduces the final poem, most of which is sung unaccompanied and very slowly. The poet now knows that “your breast will not lie by the breast of your beloved in sleep.” Viola and cello bring the music to quiet acceptance of the inevitable. Vaughan William’s Four Hymns were composed in 1914 for Steuart Wilson to sing at that year’s Worcester Festival, but war caused postponement of the first performance until 1920 in Cardiff. The accompaniment was originally for pianoforte and viola or Strlngs and viola, but there also exists a version for pianoforte and string quartet. The modality of the harmony and the prominence of the viola link this work with the 1925 masterpiece Flos Campi, to which it is a pointer. The first hymn, Bishop Jeremy Taylor’s “Lord! Come Away!”, has a bold declamatory opening, a march-like section and an accompaniment in which consecutive chords of the sixth occur. The viola’s pastoral melody which opens Isaac Watts’s “Who is this fair one ?” develops ecstatically as the music grows more intense. The hymn is a paraphrase of the Song of Solomon, so that one is justiiied in regarding this song as the seed from which Flos Campi grew. Crashaw’s “Come love, come Lord” also has a long viola introduction, and a piano accompaniment consisting almost entirely of parallel sixths. The last song is the Evening Hymn, “O gladsome light”, in Robert Bridges’s translation from the Greek. The pianist plays a descending ostinato on which the viola superimposes a chorale which becomes the singer’s melody. Merciless Beauty was also first sung (in 1921) by Steuart Wilson. It comprises three love poems, attributed to Chaucer, set with the flexibility which characterises the vocal and instrumental writing in other Vaughan Williams works of this period such as the Pastoral Symphony and the Mass in G minor. The theme of “Your eyén two” resembles the opening of the Phantasy Quintet in its rapt mood. The lyrical “So hath your beauty” gives the cycle its name: “Alasl that nature hath in you compassed so great beauty, that no man may attain to mercy, though he stervé for the pain”; and the light-hearted “Since I from love” could well have influenced Warlock-and even Britten. It is a slight work but beautifully wrought. © MICHAEL KENNEDY, 1974

     
Musicians
PortraitPeter Warlock voc, 1894-1930 GB
album by, composed by
PortraitRalph Vaughan Williams voc, 1872-1958 GB
album by, composed by
PortraitIan Partridge voc, *1938 GB
album by, tenor vocals
PortraitDavid Butt fl,
album by, flute
PortraitJanet Craxton ob, 1929-1981 GB
album by, cor anglais
PortraitThe Music Group Of London ,
album by, ensemble
PortraitNeville Boyling , *1922 GB
engineer, balance
PortraitEileen Croxford vc, *1912
cello
PortraitChristopher Wellington vl, GB
viola
PortraitFrances Mason vn,
violin
PortraitHugh Bean vn, 1929-2003 GB
violin
PortraitWilliam Butler Yeats , 1865-1939 IE
words by
PortraitDavid Parkhouse p, 1930-1989 GB
piano
PortraitJeremy Taylor ,
words by
PortraitIsaac Watts , 1674-1748 GB
words by
PortraitRichard Crashaw ,
words by
PortraitRobert Bridges , 1844-1930 GB
words by
PortraitGeoffrey Chaucer , 1343-1400 GB
words by
Producers
Michael Kennedy liner notes
Stephen Dalton photography, cover
Christopher Bishop producer
Album Tracks
No Title Artist Composer Duration
1The CurlewPeter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of LondonPeter Warlock
2Four HymnsPeter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of LondonRalph Vaughan Williams
3No. 1: Lord! Come AwayPeter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of London
4No. 2: Who Is This Fair One?Peter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of London
5No. 3: Come Love, Come LordPeter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of London
6No. 4: Evening HymnPeter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of London
7Merciless Beauty- Three RondelsPeter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of LondonRalph Vaughan Williams
8Your Eyën Two (Andante Con Moto)Peter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of London
9So Hath Your Beauty (Lento Moderato)Peter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of London
10Since I From Love (Allegro)Peter Warlock / Ralph Vaughan Williams / Ian Partridge / David Butt / Janet Craxton / The Music Group Of London
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To all the music fans that are contributing on Discogs, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia. Thanks to Franz Flückiger for providing Storygram used to visualize band membership.
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