It is not surprising
that Bax’s choral-orchestral works have
had to wait until almost the end of
the queue before being recorded for
the first time. Bax’s reputation, after
all, stands on his instrumental music
especially the symphonies and tone poems.
Bax was not naturally a Three Choirs
cathedral person. Like Bantock his inclinations
were pagan and pantheistic. If he set
Christian texts they looked back to
the early church and to the margins
between nature worship, Christianity
and mysticism.
The major works here,
St Patrick’s Breastplate, The
Morning Watch and Crashaw’s To
the Name Above Every Name are compact.
The longest work is the Crashaw setting
at just over twenty minutes. In their
compression and concentration these
pieces bear a closer resemblance to
the exotic-ecstatic works of Szymanowski
(Stabat Mater, Litany and
Song of the Night) than they
do to the Three Choirs mainstream represented
by Stanford’s Requiem, Howells’
Missa Sabrinensis, Finzi’s Intimations
of Immortality, Cyril Rootham’s
Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,
the Hodie and Dona Nobis Pacem
of Vaughan Williams (a rugged agnostic
happy using the medium of the cathedral
tradition) and that still fine yet unsung
work Maurice Jacobson’s Hound of
Heaven. Szymanowski was one of Bax’s
idols (the initial dedication of the
Sixth Symphony was to the Polish composer).
Of course Bax did write
some rather dull ecclesiastical music
but this came in the late 1940s and
is completely atypical. The works here,
especially St Patrick and To
The Name Above Every Name, have
a lineage stretching to Mater Ora
Filium. This in turn has its own
roots in the mulch of Byrd’s masses
but with a sensuality very much of the
twentieth century.
The two Nocturnes
are songs with orchestra - not choral
works. They are early settings of Dehmel
and Hartleben and are best viewed through
the spectacles of German late-romanticism.
There is a Klimt-like starry gorgeousness
about the orchestration that links with
Schrecker, Korngold, Zemlinsky and especially
with Marx. The demands on soprano Christine
Bunning are considerable but she rises
to the occasion even if her vibrato
tremor is not ideal. Fascinating anyway.
The Morning Watch
came the year after the Sixth
Symphony. It sets Henry Vaughan's poem
and was a Three Choirs commission for
Worcester. The dedication is to Sir
Ivor Atkins ‘in memory of very old days’.
The long orchestral introduction takes
up about a quarter of the work's total
time. The elements here are Delian and
celebratory as in the Coronation March.
There is even a momentary anticipation
of John Ireland's These Things Shall
Be in the trumpets at 3.13 and the
march at 5.19. The nostalgic contentment
as in the Seventh Symphony is apparent
here. Vintage Bax mysticism is apparent
in the swirling colours of 6.32 with
harp and exalted singing. The velvety
return of the theme from the opening
at 12.31 is affecting. The complexity
of the valedictory ‘amen’ touches on
Mater Ora Filium. The stratospheric
exposed writing for voices at the very
end is creamily delivered by the Huddersfield
Singers.
While The Morning
Watch shows the first signs of the
dutiful Bax this is not true of To
The Name Above Every Name which
was written without a commission. Listen
to the gruff grind of the counterpointing
brass at the start as the voices enter.
Echoes of the Second Symphony and of
Mater Ora Filium are threaded
through this work. The Symphony is quoted
just before the entry of the solo soprano.
Altogether an impressive piece.
Perhaps the most cogently
fervent of the works here is St
Patrick's Breastplate which
has a resolute trencherman's defiance
about it. It is perhaps no accident
that the text's subject matter is Irish
and its year of completion was the same
year that saw the founding of the Irish
Free State. The performance of this
work at the 1934 Gloucester Three Choirs
probably brought about the commission
for The Morning Watch. To complete
the circle 1923 was also the year in
which Bax heard To The Name Above
Every Name at the Three Choirs in
Worcester. The indomitable march at
5.10 is of the highest conviction -
completely natural and unmanufactured.
The melismatic treatment of the word
‘amen’ at 9.00 is a vintage Baxian hallmark.
The disc is, as usual,
handsomely documented with notes by
Lewis Foreman and full texts also in
German and French translation.
Choral Societies looking
to revive a Bax work should hear this
disc. In order of originality and patent
conviction I would recommend first St
Patrick's Breastplate, then To
The Name Above Every Name and then
The Morning Watch. These works
are impressively performed with a fervour
that suits them very well indeed. Recommendable
of course to the legions of Baxophiles
worldwide but beyond that to enthusiasts
of the British choral tradition into
which Bax sometimes slipped with more
ease than you or he might have expected.
Rob Barnett
Christine Bunning (soprano) 