Resurrecting Rootham and Parry – A Voyage of Discovery.
By Alistair Jones
As a choral conductor I am always seeking new and interesting
works but I hardly expect them to appear on emails from a mail
order company. It was in this way that I discovered Cyril Rootham’s
For the Fallen. Those readers who purchase CD’s from
Amazon on line will know that they frequently follow up your
order with a “if you liked that, you may like this” message
and display a number of CD’s for your view. A Richard Hickox
CD of music by Rootham caught my eye and I ordered it, little
thinking that it would set me on a path that has now led me
to be transcribing a forgotten work of Hubert Parry.
The Rootham CD was marvelous, in particular For the Fallen
which I played over and over. It was a work whose name was
known to me only through references in books on Elgar. Now here
was a work I knew I had to perform and set about researching
the performing materials. It will not surprise members of the
BMS that this was not an easy task. I discovered that Stainer
& Bell had some Rootham in its hire library and the librarian
was very helpful in ascertaining that the publisher of For
the Fallen had been Novello. I made a fruitless call to
Novello Chester and was told that they had never heard of Rootham!
Other sources also confirmed that Novello had been the publisher
when the work went into print in 1915.
A member of my choral society, The Chiswick Choir, obtained
a copy of the vocal score – he refuses to tell me the source,
and this Novello copy is itself of interest. It was clearly
used by a member of the CUMS chorus at the premier. It has the
date and performance information inscribed in a neat hand at
the top of the first page; First performed 14th March,
1919, in Guildhall, Cambridge, by C.U.M.S. and signed H. Shaw.
Also contained in the score is the concert programme, also inscribed
by H. Shaw, 14.3.19. This too is a fascinating document. Inside
the front cover is a Memorial to those members of CUMS who fell
in the Great War and they are listed by college. F.K. Bliss
(Arthur Bliss’s brother) is amongst those from King’s College.
The orchestral players for this concert are listed at the back
of the programme and it is interesting to note that E.J. Dent
is there under Kettle Drums! The other works in the concert
are Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, Butterworth’s Rhapsody – A
Shropshire Lad and Parry’s Blest Pair of Sirens.
Together with the premier of Rootham’s work, it is a significant
collection of music. Parry died one month before the armistice
which he longed for, having seen so many of his RCM students
killed in action. The Roothams and the Parrys were friends,
and the inclusion of the Ode to act as a finale to the concert
that opened with Beethoven would, I think, have pleased Parry.
Listening to the Rootham CD and following this score made me
more determined than ever to find performing material for what
I consider a masterpiece. I placed a letter in the ISM’s Music
Journal asking for information and received a number of helpful
replies including one from John Talbot, BMS Chairman, that pointed
me in a number of directions. I wrote further to Lewis Forman
and to Dan Rootham, the composer’s grandson. These also led
me to two interesting contacts, Nick Steinitz and Richard Barnes
of Cathedral Music publishing company. While these contacts
were useful, they did not lead me to a full score and set of
orchestra parts. Having an out-of-copyright vocal score meant
that choral material was possible and Richard Barnes readily
agreed to produce that for me. Then the obvious solution occurred
to me; Rootham had been a distinguished Cambridge don and Director
of Music at St. John’s College for many years. I called the
librarian at St. John’s who confirmed that they had a number
of Rootham works in their “special collections”. My contact
with the college was now Mrs. Kathryn McKee, Sub-Librarian,
and she told me that they had a full score and set of orchestral
parts of For the Fallen. A request was put to the College
Council for the loan of this material and this was granted for
a concert later this year. (November 26, 2011). In the end,
so simple. As the score may be Rootham’s original autograph
MS, Richard Barnes is hoping to copy this and the orchestra
parts, thus bringing this wonderful choral work back into print.
In the course of this research, the correspondence with Nick
Steinitz led me on to Parry. He had rescued one of Parry’s choral
works from the now (in)famous Novello black hole, The Chivalry
of the Sea. Lewis Forman had suggested this work to me as
well and as Nick Steinitz has vocal scores and all the orchestral
material, this fine Ode, written as a memorial to those who
died at the Battle of Jutland, will be performed alongside the
Rootham. Curiously, the vocal score of Parry’s Chivalry of
the Sea I found in pdf format on the internet, free to download.
Even for those of us whose knowledge of Parry’s choral writing
is limited to the anthem I was glad and the masterly
Blest Pair of Sirens, the quality of his other choral
works should not come as a surprise. Relatively recent recordings
of The Lotus Eaters, The Soul’s Ransom and the particularly
fine Invocation to Music have brought three of Parry’s
finest choral works before the public but performances by choral
societies still remain a rarity.
Having decided on performances of Chivalry of the Sea
with the Rootham, I found in my own collection of vocal scores
another Parry work that I had acquired 30 years ago while working
in Bristol. Two scores were purchased from a sale of music at
a rehearsal of the Bristol Choral Society, of which I was organist
and accompanist. One score was of Elgar’s The Banner of St.
George and the other Parry’s L’Allegro ed Il Pensieroso.
Both scores still had the chorus member’s tickets attached.
The Elgar had been sung at 2 concerts in October and November,
1914. The first in a “Patriotic Night” on October 28th
and the second, in a programme that included Clara Butt and
Kennerley Rumford as soloists, on November 12th.
Parry’s L’Allegro, together with Dvorak’s The Spectre’s
Bride, had been given on November 10th, 1917.
Reading and playing through the Parry, I found that here was
another forgotten piece worthy of resurrection. However, one
phone call confirmed my fear that L’Allegro ed Il Penseroso
had been thrust into Novello’s “black hole” and that no
performing material was available. Richard Barnes at Cathedral
Music also had a vocal score and he told me that Jeremy Dibble’s
book stated that the autograph score was in the library at the
RCM. A phone call to Peter Horton at the RCM produced results.
I had determined that if I could get hold of a copy of the autograph,
I would, using Sibelius Software, produce my own score and set
of orchestra parts and, with the collaboration of Richard Barnes,
bring another fine forgotten work into print.
The copy of the Parry autograph (RCM 4201) was prepared for
me with great speed by Dr. Michael Mullen of the RCM and I am
most grateful to him for enabling me to get on with this project
so swiftly. Prior to receiving the autograph copy, I used the
Novello vocal score to copy into a full score framework all
the solo vocal and choral music and texts. Parry revised L’Allegro
in 1909 and my VS predates that revision. The autograph
includes Parry’s revisions in the form of crossings out, cuts
and slight alterations to the orchestration. These revisions
sometimes include instructions in the composer’s hand, eg. “give
1st clarinet part to 1st oboe”. These
notes are extremely helpful, though some of the revisions are
written out on a new stave with an arrow pointing to bar where
it should take effect. My copy is in A4 format as that is the
only size the RCM were able to supply copying from their microfilm,
so a magnifying glass has also become a useful tool. However,
I am grateful to Peter Horton who has promised me access to
the original score when I need to verify some of my transcriptions.
So far I have completed the whole of the Introduction and first
“scene” of the L’Allegro and most of the second Soprano
aria. I think it was Vaughan Williams who advocated copying
down a composer’s work to get to know him best. This has certainly
been the case thus far with L’Allegro ed Il Penseroso. While
I am a great advocate of the new “music technology” and in particular
music publishing software, it will certainly be less interesting
for future researchers when they have no autograph manuscripts
to work on, but only pristine computer generated scores! The
Parry autograph reveals a good deal. Copying everything in that
detailed score has been an enlightening process. The vocal score
has been a useful reference point to check harmonies when pitches
of the transposing instruments have been unclear. But much that
is in the full score has not been transferred to the vocal score;
not so much the transference to the piano arrangement as to
the detailed markings. Parry seems most particular in the string
and wind phrasing, slurring frequently across the natural rhythmic
accents. The score abounds in small accent signs and staccato
dots. Rarely does Parry use hairpins for crescendo and diminuendo,
preferring dim and cresc written minutely above
and below the staves. Parry the conductor leaves little to chance
with his orchestral players! Sometimes the composer was aware
that the Novello copyist would have difficulty in reading his
corrections and so has written in note names. Parry’s writing
is neat and at times shows a composer working at speed and with
confidence as the music seems to gather pace on the page. In
places one can almost sense the composer’s excitement at his
own ideas; at the end of the first movement (bar 292ff) an upward
rushing figure, marked con fuoco, given to unison violins,
is a counterpoint to a brief, triumphant re-appearance of the
main theme of the soprano’s aria on 2 trumpets, leading to the
full orchestra final cadence – the only bars marked ff in
the entire movement. It is a great moment and one can feel the
composer writing at speed to get down this thrilling conclusion.
While one can hear a certain amount while reading the music,
it is the advantage of using the Sibelius software that my Imac
computer can play back the score reasonably accurately, tempo,
dynamic and articulation markings and all. This is the most
exciting thing, hearing the music gradually coming back to life
after it has lain silent for so many years.
I subtitled this brief article “A Voyage of discovery” as if
it had been a great musical adventure. Well, all the best adventures
have happy endings and the conclusion of the journeys, for both
Rootham and Parry, is, on the one hand, the re-appearance of
the music in print, making them available again to choirs and
orchestras. On the other, the 2 concert dates when For the
Fallen, The Chivalry of the Sea and L’Allegro ed Il Pensieroso
will be heard again, the latter for the first time in almost
90 years. On November 26th later this year, The Chiswick
Choir will give a programme of Parry’s the Chivalry of the
Sea, Rootham’s For the Fallen and Eine Deutsches
Requiem of Brahms. On December 1st, 2012, The
Chiswick Choir will perform L’Allegro ed Il Pensieroso along
side Elgar’s The Banner of St. George and Beethoven’s
Choral Fantasia. Both concerts will take place in St.
Michael and All Angel’s Church, Bath Road, W4. Full details
of the concerts will appear on the choir’s website in due course
– www.chiswickchoir.org.uk.
These are two important occasions, giving opportunities to hear
three rarities from the British music choral repertoire. I am
hoping that the resurrection of this wonderful music will inspire
other organizations to programme them and bring them before
a wider, appreciative public.
AJ.
