FROM PUB TO PULPIT – HULL MINISTER Saturday 26 November 2022 7.00 pm
PROGRAMME Hull Minster Director of Music/Organist: Mark Keith Solo Tenor: Ben Pieper (Breedon Hill) Conductor: Ben Newton (Let all the world) We are presenting three pieces of music that wonderfully illustrate the influence of folk song during the early years of the 20th Century. Interest in folk song can be traced back to the collection of 'rustic' songs published by piano manufacturer John Broadwood in 1847. His example being followed later 19th Century by Harriet Mason from 1877 and by his niece, Lucy Broadwood (working in collaboration with J.A. Fuller Maitland) who published the highly influential English Country Songs in 1893. She also collected songs in Lincolnshire with Percy Grainger. Cecil Sharp started collecting folk songs in 1903, followed closely by RVW. These pieces also illustrate the importance of Gervase Elwes. Although Elwes is now relatively obscure, he was one of the leading tenor soloists of the early 20th Century. He was closely associated with many famous composers/musicians before his death in 1921, and arguably prepared the way for performers such as Peter Pears. In this context, we can see how he directly connects the work/worlds of Percy Grainger and RVW. Percy Grainger: I'm Seventeen Come Sunday. 1906/1912 Used by RVW in his English Folk Song Suite. 1923 The area surrounding Brigg in North Lincolnshire is critical to the story of the English folk song collectors. In the early 1900s, Gervase and Winefride Elwes (of Brigg Manor) created a music festival for North Lincolnshire. This quickly became a reforming engine for musical activity and local education, prompting the formation of many SATB village choirs where few had existed. In 1905, Percy Grainger suggested that an open competition for folk singers should be included. Accordingly, Grainger used Brigg Manor as his base and energetically collected songs from local people, including Fred Atkinson (a labourer from Redbourne: I'm Seventeen Come Sunday) and Joseph Taylor (a farm worker from Saxby All Saints: Brigg Fair). Among other songs discovered were Horkstow Grange the source of the name 'Steeleye Span'. Vaughan Williams: Bredon Hill. 1909 From RVW's song cycle On Wenlock Edge, a setting of six poems from A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad. The cycle was composed in 1909 and premiered by Gervase Elwes along with Frederick Kiddle and the Schwiller Quartet) in the Aeolian Hall, London. Bredon Hill itself lies within the Cotswolds and extends over nine parishes. Therefore, it is surrounded by churches. Church bells are fundamental to the narrative of the poem, and RWV fully exploits this device to create his musical motifs, making extensive use of modal scales and parallel movement. Although the musical language used by RVW evokes the world of folk music, he makes no use of actual folk song. Vaughan Williams: Let all the world in ever'y corner sing (Antiphon). 1911 This is the final section of Five Mystical Songs, a setting of texts by George Herbert (1633). This set was composed from 1906-1911 and premiered at the Three Choirs Festival of 1911 in Worcester Cathedral. Again, RVW makes extensive use of modal scales and parallel movement to conjure a vigorous impression of ringing church bells in the instrumental writing and vocal lines.