Choral music by Bax and Villette

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Product Details

Artist: The Rodolfus Choir
Conductor: Ralph Allwood
Organ: Christopher Huges
Label: Herald (Released: December 1993)

Critic Reviews

The young Rodolfus Choir, splendidly recorded in the wholly sympathetic acoustic of Eton College Chapel, realises all the complex yet translucent contrapuntal and chromatic parts of Bax’s inspired and sublime masterpiece, Mater, ora filium, the highlight of this marvellous collection. The Villette items deserve wider recognition. His Salve, regina’s solo soprano soaring over hummed chords is particularly moving. Top marks.
Ian Lace, BBC Music Magazine

More Information

The English musical renaissance of the early twentieth century brought forward an individual figure in Sir Arnold Bax (1883-1953). His works, not least those for choir, have enjoyed such recent popularity that it is surprising how difficult it remains to assess his exact position among his contemporaries. Less impressionistic than Holst, eschewing the modality and parallelism of Vaughan Williams (and less 'folksy' than either), he is in some ways closer to the Germanic chromaticism of Delius, yet separated from him by an inclination to Celtic mysticism not far removed from that of Warlock. In addition, there remains a trace of the hearty Victorian 'public-school' idiom inherited from Parry and Dyson; and this in turn co-exists somewhat uneasily with his reverence for his medieval and Tudor choral heritage. His counterpoint, for example, moves between straightforward diatonicism (with occasional hints of modality) and the most sumptuous and obscure chromaticism, often resolving unexpectedly into one of his characteristically enriched cadences. The success of his choral works, therefore, belonging to a period when counterpoint was assuming increased importance in his structures, depends on the varying degrees of subtlety with which he was able to integrate these elements. One should finally mention his attraction to literary rather than biblical texts, such as the three medieval lyrics which inspired his most substantial works. The golden age of English poetry clearly epitomised a national past for which he felt a real, if undefined, affinity.

In Lord, thou hast told us (1931), Bax sets Thomas Washbourne's engagingly simple and unpretentious poem like a hymn, somewhat in the tradition of Gibbon's Songs; the flowing homophony forms the ideal complement to the text. 1 sing of a maiden is a more substantial setting of the well-known 15th-century carol. The outer sections, in a cheerful and largely diatonic G major, frame a central part which moves from G minor ('He came all so still') through darker and more chromatic regions, using a descending bass. The texture alternates resolutely chordal passages with short imitative points, after the practice of a Tudor motet. This worldës joie is a sombre and powerful poem of c. 1330 bewailing the transience of life. Bax responds with a gripping work of total stylistic integrity, in which the unstable harmony is, for once, an apt evocation of the poet's spiritual desolation. The tension is gradually intensified by the use of an obsessive quaver motif ('All we shall die'), creating a shattering climax and a desolate, lamenting coda. Of special note, particularly in the later sections, is the effective layering of the contrapuntal strands, each moving at a different speed.

Two years earlier, in 1921, Bax had already written his choral masterpiece, Mater, ora Filium. The influence of Byrd's 5-part Mass is well-documented; yet the wild, complex, and highly ambitious writing cannot but suggest an another, earlier, source of inspiration: could Bax by any chance have heard a performance of pre-Reformation polyphony? Whatever its genesis, the result is something entirely new in British choral writing-while in the final section the contrapuntal technique is breathtaking, it is arguably the effects of magical stillness that are the most remarkable, such as the triadic 'Amen' closing each Latin refrain. Bax reserves his most intense chromaticism for moments of climax, particularly the sharpened 13th six bars before the end, and otherwise restricts himself to a clear and bracing diatonic, or a quasi-medieval pentatonic, harmony On the other hand, he allows his textural imagination free rein, using the voices almost orchestrally to create pedal-points over four octaves, hypnotic syllabic chanting, or rhapsodic lines of unstoppable energy.

The Epithalamium for unison chorus, after Spenser, dates from 1947 but only occasionally betrays its modernity by advanced chromaticism in the organ accompaniment. For the most part, it represents a throwback to the Edwardian confidence of Bax's setting of the Magnificat, composed in 1906 as a solo song (inspired by a Rossetti picture), which he transcribed for choir in 1949. Despite the splendid martial middle section of the Magnicat, it could be argued that the muscularity of the writing is more in keeping with Spenser's festive text than with the song of the Virgin Mary.

Bax's later style may partly have been moulded by his public r61e as Master of the King's Musick. By contrast, Pierre Villette, born 1926, spent most of his working life in academic administration, as Director of the Conservatoires at Besançon, from 1959 to 1966, and at Aix-en-Provence, from 1967 until his retirement in 1990. Although this has inevitably limited his compositional output, he has nevertheless produced a significant cruvre of choral and orchestral music, winning the second Grand Prix de Rome in 1949 and the Georges Bizet Prize in 1954. In this country, he has chiefly become known for his a capella motets on familiar Latin texts, written between 1944 and 1983. The style of these is not unlike Bax's, in their alternation of modal austerity and chromatic sophistication; however, Villette draws upon a French tradition of altogether more static and sensuous textures than Bax's involved dynamism. In any case, the two styles tend to be represented in separate works rather than within each.

In the first category comes O magnum mysterium (1983): a restrained piece, supple in counterpoint, whose thematic melos suggests the influence of Poulenc's motet on the same text. Minor turns to major for the radiant coda, which properly quotes the opening words of the Ave Maria, as the motet is a setting of one of the Responsories for Christmas Day. Salve, Regina is in a similar style. The tripartite structure contains a central solo for soprano, soaring eloquently over hummed chords; the opening F major is only regained in the final bars. O sacrum convivium falls firmly into the second category: richly chordal in eight parts, it shows the harmonic influence of Debussy, Poulenc and, indeed, Messiaen. The initial antiphonal exchanges between high and low voices establish a tension of sharp and flat triads (particularly G and B flat) which coalesce into majestic G major alleluias, enriched with seconds and sixths. The ending recalls the opening, with its opposing harmonic poles now in luminous conjunction. This motet, containing some fifteen tempo changes, also shows Villette's highly volatile and subjective response to his text.

Attende, Domine, written for Worcester Cathedral Choir in 1983, is the most substantial of his works in this recording. The opening unison phrase, stark in whole-tones, soon opens into six increasingly chromatic parts; but it recurs as a solemn refrain either in unison or expansively harmonised. The motet is notable for its mood of urgency, reaching a climax at 'lapis angularis' but ending, like O sacrum convivium, in a seraphic G major. Finally, the Hymne à la Vierge (1954) stands alone, not only in the French vernacular of its text, but also stylistically. The harmony, although still rich, is basically straightforward and directional, with a melody of song-like intimacy. It displays the charming and wholly personal devotion of its composer, whose widespread recognition is surely long overdue.

© 1995 David Goode

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