Concert programme — Haydn, Stanford, Sullivan & Quilter

Five Shakespeare songs

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

She never told her love (1795)

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

O Mistress mine Op 65 No1 (1896)

Arthur Sullivan (1832-1900)

Orpheus with his lute (1863-4)

Roger Quilter (1877-1953)

Take, o take those lips away Op23 No4 (1921)

Hey, ho, the wind and the rain Op23 No5 (1921)

After folk song, the one most important factor in giving English song its true voice must be Shakespeare. Certainly, four hundred years of inspiration to innumerable composers of every intervening generation can only have been a formative influence, even if it has done no more than impart a respect for the words and a conscience for clarity in their setting. It has done more than that, of course, not least in begetting some of our best tunes and, through an unbroken tradition going back to Thomas Morley, preserving in English song a freshness it might have lost in an era when solemnity seemed a preferable virtue.

For Haydn, working in London in 1795 with a fairly rudimentary understanding of English, the situation was necessarily rather different from that of most composers approaching a Shakespearean text. The choice of She never told her love (from Twelfth Night) was probably not his own but was more likely made for him by Anne Hunter, the author of the texts of the first set of his English Canzonettas. Even so, his setting is the most original song in the second set. Known in London as “the Shakespeare of music,” Haydn clearly took his responsibility seriously here, creating a miniature dramatic scena in which the changing directions of the vocal line seem to be taken on impulse while they are, in fact, carefully prepared in the eloquent (Largo assai e con espressione) piano introduction.

If it was well into the English musical renaissance before a British composer could equal Morley’s It was a lover and his lass, Quilter at least came near it in his Five Shakespeare Songs Op23 in 1921 (and Finzi nearer still in Let us Garlands Bring eight years later). Stanford’s O Mistress mine, one of his three Clown’s Songs from Twelfth Night, is not as nimble in its rhythms as Quilter’s in his Three Shakespeare Songs Op6 and its harmonies might seems a little self-conscious for Feste’s appeal to immediacy but, in its late-nineteenth-century context, it is a model of modesty and melodic charm.

More than thirty years before Stanford wrote his O Mistress mine

Sullivan included a lively setting of the same words in his Five Shakespeare Songs, all of which are refreshingly different from the sentimental ballads by which he was rather better known in the Victorian drawing room. Orpheus with his lute (from Henry VIII) is routinely compared to a Schubert song, which does neither composer a favour. The lute-like motif which recurs in the piano part and which lends the song much of its attraction needed no Schubertian precedent for Sullivan to think of it, while the modulations in the two episodes that exclude it cannot fairly be attributed to Schubert’s influence.

Perhaps the most inspired item in Quilter’s three sets of Shakespeare songs is his dramatic setting of Blow, blow, thou winter wind Op6 No3. The words of neither of the last two songs in this closing group - Take, o take those lips away (from Measure for Measure) and Hey, ho, the wind and the rain (adapted from Twelfth Night) in the Op23 set - offer as much scope for expressive variety. Taken together, however, essentially modest settings though they both are, the poignancy of the one most effectively offsets the cheerful send-off represented by the other.

Five Shakespeare songs

Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

She never told her love (1795)

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924)

O Mistress mine Op 65 No1 (1896)

Arthur Sullivan (1832-1900)

Orpheus with his lute (1863-4)

Roger Quilter (1877-1953)

Take, o take those lips away Op23 No4 (1921)

Hey, ho, the wind and the rain Op23 No5 (1921)

After folk song, the one most important factor in giving English song its true voice must be Shakespeare. Certainly, four hundred years of inspiration to innumerable composers of every intervening generation can only have been a formative influence, even if it has done no more than impart a respect for the words and a conscience for clarity in their setting. It has done more than that, of course, not least in begetting some of our best tunes and, through an unbroken tradition going back to Thomas Morley, preserving in English song a freshness it might have lost in an era when solemnity seemed a preferable virtue.

For Haydn, working in London in 1795 with a fairly rudimentary understanding of English, the situation was necessarily rather different from that of most composers approaching a Shakespearean text. The choice of She never told her love (from Twelfth Night) was probably not his own but was more likely made for him by Anne Hunter, the author of the texts of the first set of his English Canzonettas. Even so, his setting is the most original song in the second set. Known in London as “the Shakespeare of music,” Haydn clearly took his responsibility seriously here, creating a miniature dramatic scena in which the changing directions of the vocal line seem to be taken on impulse while they are, in fact, carefully prepared in the eloquent (Largo assai e con espressione) piano introduction.

If it was well into the English musical renaissance before a British composer could equal Morley’s It was a lover and his lass, Quilter at least came near it in his Five Shakespeare Songs Op23 in 1921 (and Finzi nearer still in Let us Garlands Bring eight years later). Stanford’s O Mistress mine, one of his three Clown’s Songs from Twelfth Night, is not as nimble in its rhythms as Quilter’s in his Three Shakespeare Songs Op6 and its harmonies might seems a little self-conscious for Feste’s appeal to immediacy but, in its late-nineteenth-century context, it is a model of modesty and melodic charm.

More than thirty years before Stanford wrote his O Mistress mine

Sullivan included a lively setting of the same words in his Five Shakespeare Songs, all of which are refreshingly different from the sentimental ballads by which he was rather better known in the Victorian drawing room. Orpheus with his lute (from Henry VIII) is routinely compared to a Schubert song, which does neither composer a favour. The lute-like motif which recurs in the piano part and which lends the song much of its attraction needed no Schubertian precedent for Sullivan to think of it, while the modulations in the two episodes that exclude it cannot fairly be attributed to Schubert’s influence.

Perhaps the most inspired item in Quilter’s three sets of Shakespeare songs is his dramatic setting of Blow, blow, thou winter wind Op6 No3. The words of neither of the last two songs in this closing group - Take, o take those lips away (from Measure for Measure) and Hey, ho, the wind and the rain (adapted from Twelfth Night) in the Op23 set - offer as much scope for expressive variety. Taken together, however, essentially modest settings though they both are, the poignancy of the one most effectively offsets the cheerful send-off represented by the other.

[Alternative notes for Op.23 Nos. 4 & 5: Neither of the last two songs in this Quilter group, from Five Shakespeare Songs Op.23, is as successful as any of those of the earlier set. Based on material for a piano sonata from the composer’s student days, “Take, O take those lips away” (Measure for Measure) is peculiarly cramped in expression and seems to lack the spontaneity of the Op.6 settings. Presented as one of a pair, however, with “Hey, ho, the wind and the rain” (Twelfth Night), it offers an undeniably poignant contrast to the cheerful send-off represented by its companion.]