GUILDFORD
PHILHARMONIC
ORCHESTRA
William Armon Leader
PROTEUS CHOIR
Guildford Corporation Concerts
Vernon Handley Director of Music
THE SEVENTEENTH CONCERT IN
THE ENTERPRISING SERIES
Saturday 22nd February 1969 at 7.45 pm
GUILDFORD CIVIC HALL
GWENNETH PRYOR
Pianoforte
Is
-~
R
R
R
T
B
R
A
T
R e
oL R
sS
P L
By
GWENNETH PRYOR Pianoforte
Gwenneth Pryor, who was born in Australia, studied at the New South
Wales State Conservatorium, from which she graduated in 1960 with the
prize for the most outstanding student of her year. She came to England
in 1961 on a travelling scholarship to study at the Royal College of
Music with Lamar Crowson, and she has also studied abroad with Karl
Engel, and with Vlado Perlemuter. Miss Pryor made her London debut
at the Wigmore Hall in October 1965, in a recital presented by the
Royal College of Music in aid of the New Building Fund. In addition
to her engagements in this country, she has performed in Vienna, Prague,
Brussels, Switzerland and Australia, and she has several records to her
credit. She forms a Duo with Carlos Villa, the leader of the New
Philharmonia Orchestra.
R
R
R
T
e P
T S
e
THE PROTEUS CHOIR
The Proteus Choir, which numbers 65 young people between the ages of
15 and 24, was formed in 1963 as an additional choir in the
Corporation’s music scheme, where young people could gain experience
in choral work. In its ranks are trained musicians and singers, as well as
young people still at school or in the professions. It gives a number of
unaccompanied concerts each year both secular and religious, as well as
singing large choral works with the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra,
including first performances of works in this country. The Choir has
appeared on television, recorded background music for the Yvonne
Arnaud Theatre, and visited Germany to make a record of English music
for Cologne Radio.
The training of the choir falls on a team, and the Musical Director wishes
to record his thanks to Miss Prudence Eddon, Miss Patricia Finch, Miss
Mary Rivers and Mr. Kenneth Lank for the help they have given with
sectional rehearsals.
The programme this evening has been chosen to show the different
facets of French music in this century. It is impossible in the space of
one programme and with rehearsal limitations to have examples of all
the important composers, but an attempt has been made to show
differences of style and the different use of instrumental and vocal
combinations. The first part of the programme deals really with
entertainment music; the second with works of more serious intention, A
deliberate attempt has been made, in keeping with this series, to choose
some works which are not necessarily fashionable, thus giving the
concertgoer chance to fill in, in his picture of French music, some of the
gaps left by current musical fashion. Honegger was not actually French,
but Swiss. However, he was resident in France where he received his
musical education, and because of this and his connection with Milhaud,
Poulenc and Auric, he is always ranked amongst the French composers
of the century.
Ravel 1875-1937
Alborada Del Gracioso
Many of Ravel’s orchestral pieces started life as works for keyboard,
and the brilliant Alborada del Gracioso is No. 4 of Miroirs for Piano,
written in 1912. The title is a peculiar one, and means quite literally the
Morning Song of the Clown. It is an orchestral show piece in three parts:
the first a very lively dance; the second a rather more reflective song
for the first bassoon against two harps, percussion and extensively
divided strings, and the third, a recapitulation of the dance. Triple
woodwind, full brass, eight percussion instruments, two harps and the
strings are the forces employed, and there is much extremely difficult
writing for woodwind and brass soloists within the piece, including a
passage for flutes, and later flutes and trumpets which disposes of 108
notes in six bars.
Milhaud 1892-
Symphony No. 4 for String Orchestra
Overture—Chorale—Etude
In many ways Darius Milhaud rebelled against the large orchestra and
luxuriant harmonies of his immediate predecessors, leading violent
attacks on the work of Wagner and others, and so, even though the
works that we are to hear this evening are the products of the 1920’s,
they are of a clarity and simplicity of invention which was found very
refreshing at the time they were written. It is not that they are less
modern, but simply that Milhaud was rebelling against harmonic
luxuriance for its own sake. They represent a musical imagination which
was remarkable both for sparkling vitality and for profound feeling.
Milhaud, himself, said, “The most difficult thing in music is to write a
tune. Anybody can acquire a brilliant technique. The vital element is the
melody, which should be easily remembered, hummed, and whistled in
the street. . . . I have never been able to understand the establishment
of different categories in music. . . . There is only music, and one can
find it in a café melody or an operetta tune as well as in a symphony, an
opera, or a work of chamber music”. He was self-confessedly open to the
influences of any sort of music that he felt to be enjoyable, as can be
seen in the two works to be played this evening.
The string symphony is one of five that he wrote for small orchestral
combinations. This one, the fourth, was finished in Paris in 1921, and
bears at the top of the score the message that it could be played either on
10 instruments or the full string orchestra with four violin sections, two
viola, two ’cello and two double bass. The formal procedure of the three
short movements is classical, but the resulting harmony can only have
been produced in the twentieth century.
—
Milhaud 1892Symphony No. 6 for Oboe, ’Cello and Mixed
Chorus
James Brown—oboe
Raymond Adams—'cello
Calme et Doux—Souple et Vif—Lent et
Expressif
Although he wrote symphonies in extended
form for large orchestra, the
five referred to above, plus a number of
other works for small
combinations of instruments and/or voices,
reflect Milhaud’s
determination to spring clean the critical world’s
view of the word
“symphony”. Like Stravinsky’s “symphonies”
of wind instruments, these
works return to a more literal definition
of the word which means simply
“sounding together”. Milhaud expresses the
different textures and
sonorities that each group can make when
sounding together. The chorus
in this symphony sing no words, nor is any
indication given in the score
of the sounds they should make. The compos
er occasionally marks that
their vocalisation shall be “chanté”, or “‘sans
nuances”, without
expression. The first movement is pastoral
in character; the second in
seven/four throughout, and the third shows
clearly that Milhaud took
very seriously what he is quoted as saying
above, for it is nothing more
or less than a superb “blues”, beautifully
expressed on this unlikely
combination of instruments and voices.
The first two movements are
polymodal; each voice occasionally departi
ng into a different mode from
the others. Milhaud deliberately allows the
modes to wend their way
along, not bothering to resolve them for the
ears that are used to major
and minor Keys.
:
e
et
Ravel 1875-1937
Piano Concerto in G major
Allegramente
Adagio assai
Presto
Koussevitzky asked Ravel for a new score
for the fiftieth anniversary
season (1930-1931) of the Boston Symph
ony Orchestra. Ravel was
working on the Concerto in G major at
the time, but did not submit it
until the following year, and it receiv
ed its first performance in 1932. In
the two outer movements Ravel treats
the piano as a biting percussive
instrument, and as part of the orchestral
texture which is pointilliste and
luminous,
The crack of a whip opens the first moveme
nt which is built of rhythmic
chords, orchestral colour, glissandi, trills
; in fact, this is Ravel in the
Ringmaster’s role. There is plenty of wit,
and the principal theme bows
directly in the direction of Gershwin. The
jazz style which Milhaud
adopted completely in the last movement
of his Sixth Symphony is here
only borrowed, for nothing could be more
French than this movement,
The second movement makes a fine contrast. All the crispness is gone,
and now the music is slow and contemplative, the piano singing a long
tune and adding the most liquid of backgrounds to the cor anglais’
version. The quasi rondo of the finale bristles with tricks, and the jazz
style comes back with syncopated accents and a sliding trombone.
Nothing could be lighter or fuller of good intentions.
B
BB
R
e N
R
e T
RSS
R
INTERV
AL
Coffee will be served in the Surrey Room during the interval by
members of the Concertgoers’ Society
S
R R
R T
e
R
R D R
o
o P
S BT
Messiaen 1908O Sacrum Convivium
Motet au Saint-Sacrament
Messiaen is one of the most revolutionary of modern French composers.
He has said of himself that the formation of his musical personality was
chiefly due to “Hindu rhythms, and especially the 120 Indian folk
rhythms collected by Charnagadeva in the thirteenth century. Also
bird-song, especially the songs of the lark, the thrush and the
nightingale”. It ought to be said that this quotation applies to his
technical musical personality and that his character is grounded in
religion, many of his works having religious titles like the colossal
two-hour piano work, “Vingt regards sur I’enfant Jesus”. His best-known
large work is the Turangalila Symphony. A far cry from this monstrous
musical expression is the small motet, “O Sacrum Convivium”. Although
it is for mixed choir a cappella or for soloists, the difficulty of the
intonation, as well as the different number of circumstances in which it
might be performed, have led the composer to add that it can have an
organ accompaniment. Short, subtle, rapt, its intensity is expressed in
uneven rhythms, and it rises only once to a forte.
O sacrum convivium! In quo Christus sumitur:
Recolitur memoria passionis eius
Mens impletur gratia, et futurae gloriae.
O sacrum sacrum sacrum
O sacrum convivium! In quo Christus sumitur:
Mens implatur gratia, et futurae gldriae.
Nobis pignus datur, alleluia
A sacrum sacrum convivium.
[
o A
e R
G L
RS R S A A R I N S U
L S TSR DR SN
e A
S
e
Honegger 1892-1955
Symphony No. 3 (Symphonie Liturgique)
Dies Irae (Allegro marcato)
De Profundis Clamavi (Adagio)
Dona Nobis Pacem (Andante)
Honegger wrote five symphonies, and although they are works of musical
argument and integrity, he often likened the form to a Novel. He would
not give page by page programmes, but there was little need to; his
symphonies are so outspoken that we can appreciate the elementary
conflicts that they are concerned with. His own words are the best
possible illustration of this: “The Third Symphony is, in common with
the majority of my symphonic works, in the form of a triptych. The
score is a direct reaction against the fashion of so called ‘absolute’ music.
Each of the three sections endeavours to express an idea—a fault which
I should not presume to call philosophical, but which is my own personal
feeling. I have, therefore, called upon liturgical subtitles, and given the
work the name of ‘Liturgical’ Symphony in the hope of making my
intentions the more clear.
“The first movement is entitled Dies Irae. This poses no problem, for we
have all lived through times of war and revolutions, by which those who
preside over destinies have gratified their peoples. The second movement,
De Profundis Clamavi, reminds us of all the purity and trust which is
still to be found in Man, and which reaches out toward that force which
we feel above us—God perhaps, or what everyone fervently nourishes
in his most secret soul. The third movement, Dona Nobis Pacem, depicts
the inevitable rise of the world’s stupidity: nationalism, militarism,
beaurocracy, administrations, customs barriers, taxes, wars, which
transform human beings into robots with everything which Man has
invented to persecute Man. All this terrifying imbecility ends by forcing
out this cry of despair, Dona Nobis Pacem. The movement closes with a
brief meditation on what life could be: calm, love, joy . .. a song of
birds, of nature and of peace”.
The work was written in 1945-1946 and, as can be seen by the above
remarks, is deeply marked by contemporary events. When Honegger calls
his Symphony a triptych, he is implying that the movements are
interlinked, and indeed material from the first movement is used in
variants of considerable importance in both the Adagio and the
terrifying march of the last movement. It is the mark of a true
symphonist that the composer can use a tune to express such exhaustion
and anxiety in the second movement, and complete the symphony with
the same tune, now joyfully serene on the solo violin.
Saturday 8th March 1969 7.45 pm
The Crossley Clitheroe Concert
Adagio and Fugue in C minor
Symphony No. 31 in D major
Requiem
Mozart
Philharmonic Choir
Annon Lee Silver Soprano
Meriel Dickinson Alto
Alexander Oliver Tenor
Richard Van Allan Bass
Vernon Handley Conductor
Mozart
Mozart