‘The British are coming!’
Said to be uttered by Paul Revere in 1775 as he sped from town to town, it was definitely uttered by Colin Welland in his Oscar speech in 1982, but it proved a damp squib, as the film industry he was referring to remained earthbound and, arguably, still is. Europeans persist in calling the British unmusical, but this claim is not supported by the evidence of 400 years of history, and today we celebrate a handful of unique talents.
Henry Purcell was the earliest bona fide genius born in these islands, and though he died at just 36, a few months older than Mozart, he mastered almost all the musical forms of the day, along the way introducing some of his own making. Klaus Nomi didn’t see his 40th birthday, dying of an Aids related illness. Seen here in the Cold Song, from Purcell’s King Arthur his spooky, eerie stage presence seems ideal for this extraordinary number. His career spans Bowie to Baroque, with a bit of everything gathered along the way. But imagine, if you will, what this must have sounded like in 1691.
Gavin Bryars has trodden a unique path in British music for the last 40 years. A highly skilled double-bass player, he began composing experimentally in the late 60’s, producing a masterful sound-painting in The Sinking of the Titanic in 1969, a piece which literally describes that dreadful event, but in a half-hour wash of impressionistic sound, complete with the string quartet that continued playing until the waves engulfed them. He followed this with an even more emotional work, ‘ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet’. Bryars was working in London with a film maker and, almost accidently, produced a 13 bar loop of tape that enshrined the simple tune you hear on this recording, sung by a homeless man in the area around Waterloo. Returning to his teaching job in Leicester, he was editing the tape and left it running while he grabbed a coffee. When he came back to the normally noisy, bustling room, it was curiously quiet, with people drifting slowly around, some weeping. And he realized the power contained in those few bars, and the quiet nobility and faith that was undimmed by the tramp’s dreadful circumstances. From this modest beginning, Bryars created a layered symphonic tone poem that regularly overwhelms those who hear it. The tramp never heard it, dying soon after the tape was made. This is the latest recording of the piece, and Tom Waits junkies will doubtless spot his voice from about the mid-point adding, to these ears anyway, very little to the power of the whole. Waits had heard it in America, and wanted to get involved.
The shocking images in the photo-montage have their own poetry, but are a stark reminder of the uncaring cruelty of the world around us.
Ralph Vaughan Williams composed a large quantity of simply exquisite music – the Tallis Fantasia, The Lark Ascending and Serenade to Music being just three that come to mind. Many, including several revered musicians, believe he was a greater talent than Elgar, a greater symphonist even. And listening to the pulverizing beauty of the Romanza movement from his 5th Symphony you can easily weaken, and imagine that nothing more purely beautiful has even been composed. But note the unease that punctuates the serenity. The cow-pat tag that he was saddled with, exemplified in the montage of images from pastoral England was never the whole story, as a look at his rumbustious private life will attest. He was a man of big appetites and deep feelings.
A tenuous link perhaps, as Robert Burns could never be described as ‘British’, but it gives me the opportunity to include this haunting version of his 1789 poem My Heart Is In The Highlands by the great Estonian Arvo Part, with just a counter-tenor supported by a pipe organ.
A wonderful read for a Sunday morning. I particularly loved the Purcell piece. I think it’s the first time I have heard it in its original form. I remember it from Peter Greenaway’s film The Draughtsman’s Contract where Michael Nyman used it for part of the soundtrack.
Great selection, thank you. Three are old favourites of mine (and I’m glad you mentioned Vaughan Williams’s Serenade to Music too – everyone should go and listen to it, preferably in the version with the original 16 solo singers, conducted by Sir Henry Wood) and one surprise, the fascinating meeting of Robert Burns and Arvo Pärt. I’d not thought of Pärt as a composer I’d go to to be surprised, but I’m happy to be proved wrong!
I agree with Toby about the extraordinary Purcell. It sounds quite contemporary to my untutored ears, which I suspect indicates how much composers such as Nyman and Glass have been inspired by him.
The Gavin Bryars’ piece – ‘overwhelming’ is right. But is it possible to listen to it without picking up a sense of irony?
By the way, for those who enjoyed the Arvo Part, I have to direct you to one of Mahlerman’s Lazy Sunday Afternoon selections featuring Part from a few weeks ago. It’s here, second one down, and is made so memorable by the use of Tarkovsky’s Mirror. I keep going back to it – really a remarkable combination.
well I always love a bit of RVW, but I have to say the Purcell piece was brilliant! So so good, I’ve watched it back lots of times already!
All good stuff, especially Henry, possibly the finest recording of Purcell’s work was Benjamin Britten’s Fairy Queen, at The Maltings with the ECO in 1970 and with his usual crew including Jennifer Vyvyan, Mary Wells, Peter Pears and one of the two famous Geordies, Owen Brannigan. Sit back, enjoy, picture in your mind if you will…Michelle Pfeiffer and Calista Flockhart frolicking in the woods as the fifes and clarions play, and the night is chas’d away.
Mahlerman, sorry, old chum, but YouTube, or whatever it is, is not letting me hear the music on those clips 🙁 It all sounds very interesting, though.
Haunting stuff. I’m an RVW man too but clearly I need to get me some Purcell. That Klaus Nomi performance is just extraordinary.
Grab all the Purcell opera that you can. Its full of wonderful moments like this or the witches song from Dido and Aenaes. And not forgetting The Indian Queen.
For the Bryars everyone should try to get to hear an earlier version. As much as I love Tom waits, by the time this recording was made the piece was so overlong and overblown that it collapsed under its own weight. Yes the technology allowed it to get ever longer but just because you can doesn’t mean you should.
Better to find the 1975 version recorded for Eno’s Obscure Records by a small ensemble that included Derek Bailey if my memory serves… which it usually doesn’t. 25 minutes, the length of an LP side and just perfect.
The same can be said for The Sinking of the Titanic from the same period.