It seems unbelievable that a composer as good and as famous as Sir Charles Villiers Stanford should have nine complete SATB folksongs unpublished for a hundred years. In Church of England churches and cathedrals he is, as the young choristers might say, the absolute GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) in terms of crowd-pleasing and singable canticles and anthems. If you have a new set of singers and only 10 minutes to rehearse before the first Evensong of the year, Stanford's Canticles in C (or the ones in G, or, for that matter, the ones in B flat) and his exquisite anthem Beati quorum via will see you right. It is fair to say that his secular music has aged less well than his church music, the choral short-form works included, but The Blue Bird, from his Eight Partsongs Op. 119, is one of the most beautiful choir pieces in the repertoire.
The prospect of nine new choral works, especially of folk texts, which, like Christian texts, retain their credibility amid changing fashions, is extremely exciting. The Dublin-born Stanford was well known for arranging folk melodies from his homeland for solo voice and for SATB unaccompanied choir, and so it isn't clear why these pieces weren't published in his lifetime. The volume's editor, Jeremy Dibble, writes: ‘It may be conjectured from the handwriting and musical notation that these arrangements are from late in the composer's life when, in reduced circumstances in retirement, he sought to supplement his income.’
The first thing to say is that the whole book is strictly in four parts, with no divisi, and it is of low to medium difficulty for choirs. As you would expect, the vocal lines are a pleasure to sing. As you would also expect, this is a thoroughly diatonic affair. Stanford put many of the most important composers of the 20th-century folk revival through their tonal paces in his role as professor of composition at the Royal College of Music, including Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst, but was not himself given to writing in a modal idiom. Folkish flat sevenths are woven with fluent grace into Stanford's familiar major/minor tonal landscape.
My favourite pieces from this volume, published by Stainer & Bell, are the ones that are driven by accompaniment figures that work in dialogue with the melody (as in The Blue Bird). Twas pretty to be in Ballinderry is one such piece. It is a beautiful lament for a sweetheart lost at sea. It sets the simplest of triadic tunes to a haunting repeated descending chordal figure from the accompanying three parts, and the interplay between D minor and F major here, settling on a brittle F major, gives it a modern, other-worldly quality.
Other works in the collection, such as When she answered me and Wreathe the bowl are more homophonic and sound rather more of their time. Come, rest in this bosom is in Stanford's declamatory, dramatic soundworld. The strength of Thomas Moore's poem shines through, and if you indulge the melodrama, you will be rewarded at the point when the texture suddenly thins out and the accompanying parts lean into the strong beats of the bar on the words ‘I know not, I ask not’. This is mirrored in the final few bars, with a fortissimo ‘To shield thee, and save thee’. It's lovely stuff.
She is far from the land is entirely homophonic and has the most wonderfully singable phrases, with the shimmering, timeless quality of his Beati quorum via. Both your choir and your audience will thank you for programming it.
St Mary's Bells and Awake, awake, Fianna are grand narrative miniatures with fascinating texts. There is a page of ‘Notes on the songs’ at the back of the volume that will help you to connect with these texts and be able to present them to an audience.
Silence is in our festal halls is another heartfelt tribute, and seems bang up-to-date musically through its warming E flat major tonality and the way it dwells on the subdominant tonal area. It is also a chance for the sopranos, or a soprano soloist, to engage with some gentle and heartfelt melismas. Molly Hewson goes at a lick and is three minutes of filthy-minded fun. As it romps through phrases including ‘None felt sure he knocked the floor, With his heels or with his head’, and ‘After Lent I'm content, Father Tom and all should know’, Stanford seems happier here than elsewhere to allow the melody to sit in its modal roots. Molly makes a great encore piece.
This is an excellent volume of well-written works by an old master, with two or three outstanding pieces that will work well for medium-ability choirs in schools and concert halls.
