The English Landscape and Façade

Notes on the Program

by Steven Blier

Britain's song tradition started with an explosion of lyric genius in the seventeenth century. Campion, Byrd, Gibbons (Glenn Gould's favorite composer), and Purcell created a brilliant repertoire of lute songs and theater music--works of great psychological complexity and nuance that continue to fascinate the modern age.  But after the glories of Handel (a non-native) and homegrown craftsmen like Thomas Arne in the 1700's, there was a gradual falling off of serious musical composition in England.  By the nineteenth century, when composers from Scandinavia, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, and Italy started to create art songs, England was still offering lighter fare.  While artists like Berlioz, Schubert, Schumann, Glinka, and Rossini created a new genre of vocal music made of complex poetry, detailed piano writing, and subtle variations of declamation and melody, the parlor song kept its hold on England.  Later, Victorian London was flooded with comedy tunes and moralistic story songs for amateur performance; composers such as Sullivan, Balfe, and Benedict plundered the language of bel canto and the operetta stage to create an endearingly performable, accessible repertoire, with titles like "The Lost Chord" and "Come Into the Garden, Maud."

If England was slow to abandon the strophic ballad, it made up for lost time in our century with a stunningly rich contribution to the art song.  Much of it hearkens back to the ballad tradition from which it sprang, and some draws on folk themes and modal scales.  Tonight Miss Evans, Mr. McMillan and I (with the invaluable aid of my British colleague Graham Johnson) have chosen a brief sampler of some of our favorites from this vast, beautiful repertoire--one song each from twelve British songwriters, and two from Miss Evans' homeland, Wales.

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