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Founder: Len Mullenger | Classical Editor: Rob
Barnett |
ROGER QUILTER: His Life and Music by Valerie Langfield, Boydell Press, 2002: xviii, 375pp, plus CD ISBN 0-85115-871-4 £40 hardback / US$70
Sir Quintin Hill: Obituary in 'Music & Letters' 35/1 Jan 1954 ______________________ Can I for a brief moment be permitted to indulge in nostalgia. I am, in imagination, a lad of fourteen or fifteen, tortured by the pangs of adolescence. On the piano rest is the music of ‘Fill a Glass with Golden Wine’ - on the turntable the voice of Gervase Elwes. How exquisite that torture - how fragrant last year’s rose! It will come as something of a surprise to many - it certainly did to me - to find a book on Roger Quilter occupying around 375 pages: almost an inch and a half thick: devoted to this small and "limited talent". Valerie Langfield, in this beautifully produced book, demonstrates clearly both the exquisite nature, and the limitations of that talent. The ‘exquisite’ is set in the scene of yesteryear and today’s limitations, within that ‘walled-in garden’ that Quilter chose to cultivate, are demonstrated without detracting one whit from the richness of those songs which, although perhaps in domestic circles rather than on the concert platform, have retained their popularity.
My moment of nostalgia (sharpened by the ubiquitous flattened seventh in the closing bars of ‘Fill a Glass with Golden Wine’ and elsewhere) passed quickly enough - for page after page is fussed with footnotes (mostly references to correspondence with friends such as the Graingers and de Glehns) And the text, eminently readable in the biographical pages nevertheless becomes somewhat dense with analytical description, having to do mostly with movement and exchanges of tonal centres:
In the accompaniment the opening appoggiatura from d1 resolving onto c1 (a) with a resultant dissonance, reinforced by repetition of the right hand chord, sets the tone: the fall to the b flat below completes a three note motif (b) that pervades the song (ex 8.30a opening) It is immediately imitated. by the voice's opening notes, doubled by the piano In the tenor range the voice continues the downward scale to d1 (ex 8.30 bars 3-4 (b1)): the motif is echoed in the next line, a third higher with a temporary move to the relative major: pairs of notes in the bass line sigh as they fall from e flat 1 to d1 on 'drooping wings' (ex 8.30 c bars 7-8): the first verse comes to an end, seemingly complete? but the piano now harks back to the voice recalling its opening notes, and emphasising the fall to d1 by adding a chromatic e natural 1 (ex 8.30 d bars 11-12 (c).) pages 208/9 As this refers to a late, and evidently more significant song, ‘Drooping Wings’ (Edith Sterling-Levis), less well known, such description conveys not a great deal to the reader/listener, though admirable in a thesis. The song, which she singles out as ‘in an altogether different league’ was published by Chappell in 1945 - and I have not yet ascertained whether copies are still available? However, with other better known songs even this kind of analysis spurs the memory to run through in one’s mind the familiar lines of melody and characteristic harmonies. Yet, how DOES one ‘describe’ such fragile expression? However the publishers have been wonderfully generous with music examples - some 175 to be precise (tho’ numbered à la Professor Banfield’s Finzi - in related groups.) The fourteen bars quoted from this particular song are enough to whet the appetite - and the author continues her description, with poetic insight. An abrupt shift to D major draws the curtain aside, allowing a moonbeam brief entrance, a ray of hope. An exquisite A major chord. second inversion, prolongs the possibility , the 'whispering wind stirs' and the vocal line rises in sequence, but it is held back by the pedal e in the bass (ex 8.30 e bars 17-18): at the very point of escape, escape is withdrawn, the dream dies and we are drawn back to the opening. The voice has been silenced and its music (b2) can only be heard on the piano over a bass G, sustained until it falls a further octave to the end. (ex 8.30f last 5 bars.) My appetite is whetted, and I now search for a copy of this song.
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