Roger Quilter - Volume 1
If Sir Edward Elgar was the orchestral composer par excellence of the Edwardian Age, then Roger Quilter was its most typical and representative songwriter. So popular were his songs during the first decades of the century, and so evocative of their time, that they quickly became period pieces, soon to be ignored, indeed ridiculed and despised. It is only in the last few years that his very individual voice has come to be valued for its true worth.
Roger Cuthbert Quilter was born at Brighton on November Ist, 1877, the son of Sir Cuthbert Quilter, a wealthy business-man, landowner and politician. His education began a predictable course: prep. school (at Farnborough) followed by Eton (which he hated). But instead of continuing the chartered voyage to Oxbridge, he proceeded to Hoch's Conservatorium in Frankfurt-am-Main. Here he studied for four and a half years with the eminent Russian professor of composition, Iwan Knorr. Amongst his fellow students were Cyril Scott, Norman O'Neill, Balfour Gardiner and Percy Grainger, and the five have often been referred to as 'The Frankfurt School'. Quilter realised from the beginning that songwriting was his natural metier and he made his London debut as a composer with settings of his own verse, Four Songs of the Sea (1900). But it was the practical encouragement of the great tenor, Gervase Elwes (1866-1921) that established his reputation. Greatly impressed by Quilter's setting of Tennyson's Now sleeps the cn'mson petal, Elwes persuaded Boosey to publish it, and from then until his tragic death (crushed by a locomotive during a tour of the USA) he was to introduce some of Quilter's finest songs, notably To Julia and the Seven Elizabethan Lyrics. These, with the Three Shakespeare Songs, Opus 6, established Quilter as the foremost English songwriter of his generation. From 1900 until the late 1940s, when mental illness hindered his ability to compose, he published well over 100 songs. He died on September 21sl 1953 and was buried in the family vault at St Mary's Church, Bawdsey, Suffolk.
As a songwriter, Quilter’s virtues are fastidious craftsmanship - everything works - and a remarkable understanding of what the human voice can and likes to sing. Above all, his songs are tuneful. Though they spring from the same soil as the Victorian/Edwardian drawingroom ballad, musically shallow and unpromising ground, it was his achievement to raise that tradition to a perfection that has never been surpassed.
The Arnold Book of Old Songs (1947) appeared late in Quilter's career and is dedicated to a favourite nephew, Arnold Guy Vivian, who was killed in World War Two. Five of them had in fact been published many years earlier as Old English Popular Songs (1921) and these - notably Barbara Allen and The Jolly Miller rank as the best of the collection. But some of the later arrangements show Quilter's flair for making old tunes dance to his own pipe. Ca' the yowes to the knowes is movingly effective in its simplicity, whilst Charlie is my darling, with its hint of out-of-tune bagpipes, is a rare example of the composer in unbuttoned mood. The best of these arrangements are worthy alternatives in recital programes to the more usual Grainger and Britten.
The remaining songs on this disc cover the first 30 years of Quilter's career. The earliest, Now sleeps the crimson petal and Love's Philosophy, were published in 1904 and 1905 respectively, the latest, Wind from the South in 1936. His favourite poems for songsetting were taken from that great lyrical Treasure Chest of the 16th and 17th centuries. Morning Song (1922) sets a poem by Thomas Heywood, Go, Lovely Rose (1922) - arguably his finest song - one by Edmund Waller, and 0, the Month of May (1926), one by Thomas Dekker. Dream Valley, one of his most popular songs with recitalists, is the first of Three Songs of William Blake (1916) and The Valley and the Hill the second of Two September Songs(1916) to poems by the Victorian poetess Mary Coleridge (1861-1907). The text of The Fuchia Tree (1923), though described as "a Manx ballad", is sometimes attributed to Charles Dalmon, whilst Fairy Lullaby (1921) is to verses by Quilter himself.
There may be nothing in Quilter's output to match the dark foreboding of Warlock's The Fox or, at the other extreme, the exhilaration of Warlock's "sociable songs", nor is there a dramatic song to compare with the stark, numbed atmosphere of Gurney’s The Folly of Being Comforted. His aims were modest, his talent that of a Campion rather than a Dowland. But for what he did achieve, let us be truly grateful. Songs such as Go Lovely Rose and Love 's Philosophy are precious gems whose exquisite perfection we would be wise to treasure.
Trevor Hold
JEFFREY BENTON, baritone, with RONA LOWE, piano
The Arnold Book of Old Songs arranged by Roger Quilter
1. Drink to me only with thine eyes...(Ben Jonson)
2. Over the mountains...(from Percy's Reliques)
3. My Lady Greensleeves...(John Irvine)
4. Believe me, if all those endearing young charms...(Thomas Moore)
5. Oh! 'tis sweet to think... (Thomas Moore)
6. Ye banks and braes...(Burns)
7. Charlie is my darling...(Anon)
8. Ca' the yowes to the knowes...(Burns)
9. The man behind the plough...(Rodney Bennett)
10. My lady's garden...(Rodney Bennett)
11. Pretty month of Map..(Anon)
12. The jolly miller...(Anon)
13. Barbara Allen...(Traditional)
14. Three poor mariners...(Anon)
15. Since first I saw your face...(Anon)
16. The ash grove...(Rodney Bennett)
and the following songs:..
.17. Now sleeps the crimson petal...(Tennyson)
18. The valley and the hill...(Hillary Coleridge)
19. Dream Valley...(William Blake)
201 Fairy Lullaby...(Roger Quilter)
21. Morning Song...(Thomas Heywood)
22. Go, lovely rose...(Edmund Waller)
23. 0, the month of May...(Thomas Dekker)
24. The Fuchsia tree...(Charles Dalmon?)
25. Wind from the South...(John Irvine)
26. Love's Philosophy...(Shelley)