Scan 4
Musical Courier 1926-09-30: Vol 93 Iss 14, 1926
81 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 5. See the scan on archive.org.
1THREE CHOIRS FESTIVAL FEATURES ELGAR
3Elgar in His Native City—Two Great Oratorios—The Spell of the Cathedral—New Works by Walford Davies and Edgar Bainton—Beethoven's Mass—From the Elizabethans to Holst
5WORCESTER, ENGLAND.—The old-established meeting of the Three Choirs of Worcester, Hereford and Gloucester has taken place at Worcester this fall. It was the 206th annual festival, this institution being the most ancient of its sort in the musical world.
7One does not go to the Three Choirs for new sensations. A spirit of mellow conservatism reigns in this part of England. It is a region of orchards, wooded hills and amiable rivers—a country still but little defaced by modern industries. Its chief pride is its grand ecclesiastical monuments of the middle ages, among which Worcester Cathedral, where the chief part of the festival is held, ranks high.
9The cathedral has indeed suffered from the hands of unruly men from time to time (both during Henry VIII's Reform and the Cromwellian war), and also from Time's slow usury. It remains a superb monument, however, and recent restorative work has been done with learning and discretion. The beautiful black-and-white thirteenth century choir and the fourteenth century nave are still virtually as the medieval builders left them.
11The cathedral setting gives to the Three Choirs' Festival its peculiar charm. The actual choral singing is not as brilliant as we get in the north of England, and the programs are inclined to be conventional. But even hackneyed music gains a new quality here. The cathedral makes the effect of veiling the sound. There is no echo. But edges are softened. One has the impression that chorus and orchestra are at a greater distance than they really are. Attention may wander—but it wanders among such beautiful things. Those high-uplifted Gothic vaults!
13Meanwhile, it must be allowed (and it would be unfair to make much of the charms of the festival without mentioning its drawbacks), the mortal body suffers somewhat from the hardness of the ecclesiastical seats, which takes us back to a more austere age.
15It is pleasant, all the same, to see that year by year the festival draws increasing numbers of visitors from overseas, principally of course from the British colonies and from the United States. The festival consists of morning, afternoon and evening sessions in the cathedral, two secular concerts (one in the old refectory of the ancient Priory) and, in between, any number of social engagements—luncheons at the Mayor's, tea at the Deanery, and so on. The Bishop of Worcester was singing in the chorus this week.
17ELIJAH AND MESSIAH
19Elijah on the first day and the Messiah on the last day are unalterable features of the festival. These time-honored oratorios attract the rural squires and parsons of the three counties, whose musical interests are simple and lacking in inquisitiveness. We London journalists who come down year by year to tell the Three Choirs what is good for them are never tired of pointing out that to give Elijah such an invariably conspicuous place is disproportionate and rather unintelligent. But there are excellent practical reasons for the practice, after all. For one thing, people come in their thousands to hear these works. (The cathedral accommodates about 3,000.) Too, the chorus knows the music so well that less familiar works get more thorough rehearsal.
21All that need be said of the Messiah is that the soloists were Elsie Suddaby, Muriel Brunskill, John Coates and Robert Radford. Miss Suddaby is a young Yorkshire soprano who has the advantage of a first-rate musician. She has a very bright and flexible voice which still has, occasionally, a hard edge. Miss Brunskill has a noble contralto voice, full of richness and dignity. She, again, is one of our newer singers, and she does not always avoid the typical fault of the English contralto in sinking into heaviness and "plummy" vowels. The two men have long been pillars of the Three Choirs. Mr. Coates brings to everything he does an artistic freshness and sense of sincerity and vision. Dear and great artist! Mr. Radford remains a splendid Handelian bass.
23The Elijah was the Australian baritone, Horace Stevens, who has established himself as the best singer of the part in England in recent years. He has a convincing earnestness of manner and a very telling declamation. The other soloists were Astra Desmond and Stewart Wilson.
25ELGAR
27The central features of the festival were the performances of a number of Elgar's works, including the two oratorios, The Apostles and The Kingdom. Sir Edward Elgar is a Worcester man, and as the years go on the Three Choirs' meeting becomes more and more an Elgar festival.
29The great man himself conducted, and although as a general thing he is not a very wonderful conductor he succeeds as no one else does with his own music. We often hear Sir Henry Wood, Weingartner and Bruno Walter conduct Elgar's music, and some of its poetry is invariably lost by them. It becomes more plain, positive and argumentative. Elgar himself gives it a peculiar capriciousness, a flicker, a variability. His style is hard on the performer. But the Three Choirs and the London Symphony Orchestra (which always plays at this festival) know him.
31These factors, together with the softening, mystifying effect of the cathedral, make the Three Choirs' performance something that no one who cares for Elgar's art can afford to miss. In fact one does not know Elgar if one has not been to the Three Choirs Festival. How intensely one cares for this music is a matter of temperament. There are energetic spirits who simply cannot bear its languishing tenderness, its rapt mystical contemplation, its dulcet and drifting chromaticism. On the other hand Elgar has plenty of admirers who are entranced when his rare sweetness degenerates into sugariness.
33The religious ecstasy of the two oratorios we heard this week is, indeed, not for every man. Many feel it to be enervating. Yet no one, surely, can deny that, for what he is and what he sets out to do, Elgar is a master. Sounds obey him. His music faithfully reflects his spirit. The vogue among the young of England is for a harsher and more bracing music. We were glad this week at Worcester that the Three Choirs are not too susceptible to the changes of fashion. one of two readings
34The religious ecstasy of the two oratorios we heard this week is, indeed, not for every man. Many feel it to be enervating. Yet no one, surely, can deny that, for what he is and what he sets out to do, Elgar is a master. Sounds obey him. His music faithfully reflects his spirit. The vogue among the youth of England is for a harsher and more bracing music. We were glad this week at Worcester that the Three Choirs are not too susceptible to the changes of fashion. one of two readings
36DAME AGNES STILL A STAR
38The soloists in the Elgar oratorios were Dame Agnes Nicholls, Olga Haley, John Coates, Herbert Heyner, Horace Stevens and Norman Allin. Dame Agnes in the music of the Virgin had no longer all the lovely quality of her first youth, but some of her soft singing was of an ideal purity still. She rose nobly to the supremely beautiful solo, The Sun Goeth Down in The Kingdom. Norman Allin's great bass told vividly in the Judas music, and Horace Stevens sang the Beatitudes with artistic dignity.
40Other Elgar works of the festival were the unfailing Enigma Variations, of which we had a thrilling performance, and the war memorial ode. For the Fallen, which touches deep chords in Worcester—Worcester the "civitas fidelis" whose regiment in the dark autumn of 1914 died holding the Menin Road against all comers.
42The new works of the festival were not of any great scope. Chief of them was Walford Davies's cantata, High Heaven's King. This was a setting of part of Spenser's Hymn of Heavenly Love, together with a short extract from St. John's Gospel. There were solos for baritone and soprano.
44WALFORD DAVIES'S NEW WORK
46Twenty years ago Walford Davies was one of the chief hopes of English music, but he has given to lecturing, to teaching and to organizing the energies that should have gone to composition. Of late years his works have been few and rather casual. Yet he has an accomplished technic and a distinct personal touch. His mind is plain, and devout. He evidently derives his ideas from Parry and Brahms.
48The new work contains some of the best music he has ever given us. Two of the baritone songs, in particular, should live.
50But it is to be feared that the work as a whole misses definitive shapeliness. In particular the realistic gospel scene seemed not to fit in with the gracious setting of Spenser in the earlier movements. Dorothy Silk and Howard Fry sang the solo music well. The composer conducted.
52A Hymn to God the Father, by Edgar Bainton, heard on Wednesday afternoon, was a setting of another magnificent poem—that prayer by the Dean which begins, Wilt Thou forgive the sin where I begun?
54Mr. Bainton, a north country musician, has a firm technic and has always aimed high. His music left us full of respect but beyond that, little feeling. It seemed a mis-take to set so intensely personal a poem to be sung by a chorus. The effect of the strong, hammering words was dissipated. The music was far from conventional, and the singers had no easy task. (Sopranos and tenors were taken up to high C.) The chill and gloomy effect of the orchestral prelude was the best imaginative stroke of the whole thing.
56At the first secular concert there were two short novelties. W. H. Reed, concertmaster of the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted his own Somerset Idylls—two short pieces based on folk-songs, the first on one of the best of our traditional melodies, The Crystal Spring, and the other on the gay May Morning. Alexander Brent-Smith, a young Worcester musician, conducted his suite In the Cotswolds, three little movements, rustic in spirit, unassuming, but perfectly neat and accomplished in workmanship.
58BEETHOVEN'S MASS
60The chief task of the Three Choirs was the performance on Thursday of Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, which had not been heard here for several years. It is music that every self-respecting choir must face; but how many face it with light hearts? Beethoven, whether he knew it or not, kept his singers on the rack. The work verges on the impracticable, and yet it is a point of musical honor that we should practise it.
62That grand testament of Beethoven's third period! The music towers above us, not to be grasped. But we should be poor-spirited, unspirited beings if we did not make attempts at grasping it.
64Sir Ivor Atkins, organist of Worcester Cathedral, conducted. It is one of the characteristics of this festival that the general conductor is the local organist. Organ-playing is no school for conducting, and one cannot pretend that Sir Ivor, excellent musician though he is—organist, choir-trainer, theorician and composer—is a great conductor. The Three Choirs came through the Mass without accident, and that is saying much.
66The soloists in the Mass were Dorothy Silk, Muriel Brunskill, John Coates and Norman Allin. Individually these are distinguished singers, but as a quartet they did not blend very well. The contralto and bass had grand heroic voices. The tenor was strongly individualistic. He gave the verbal sense; he felt the general meaning and not merely the notes. But his tone was too separate a strand in the texture.
68Miss Silk is an exquisite soprano. She sang beautifully in her very personal way, but we knew that this was not her real line. And yet, all said and done, we left the cathedral feeling that a good deed had been honestly attempted, and that all concerned were better men and women for the undertaking.
70HOLST AND VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
72These two names are inevitably linked. We had music by both men this week—Holst's Te Deum and Vaughan Williams's Pastoral Symphony, the latter conducted by the composer. They are the chief influences in a big section of musical England today—the section which is a little weary of the dreaminess and the lusciousness of Elgar and Delius.
74The Te Deum is a short work, but a very good one. It is straightforward and bold. Holst has not a subtle mind. He makes for the main point and drives his idea home. How many composers have struggled to make their musical thoughts fit the text of the Te Deum! Holst has done it so naturally that it looks easy. He has not found it necessary to worry over words in the usual modern way. The work is not new, but it is not much heard of, strange to say.
76(Continued on page 25)
77(no line here) one of two readings
79MARION TALLEY one of two readings
80Metropolitan Opera prima donna, who sprang into sudden fame last season. Such a demand was there to hear her throughout the country that she had to begin her fall concert tour on August 21, at Ocean Grove, N. J., where a record crowd of 7,000 turned out to hear her sing in the great Auditorium. Her tour will continue until October 18, after which she returns to New York to rehearse for the Metropolitan season. The cities which are to hear her include Winona Lake, Colorado Springs, Denver, Springfield, St. Joseph, Salina, Chattanooga, Pittsburgh (Kansas), Wichita, Topeka, Lincoln, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Fargo, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Akron. one of two readings
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.