THE UNACCOMPANIED CHORAL WORKS OF RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT: A CONDUCTOR'S GUIDE

by Norene A. Walters

_____________________ Copyright Norene A. Walters 2008

A Document Submitted to the Faculty of the SCHOOL OF MUSIC In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2008

2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE

As members of the Document Committee, we certify that we have read the document prepared by Norene A. Walters entitled "The Unaccompanied Choral Works of Richard Rodney Bennett: A Conductor's Guide" and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the document requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Musical Arts.

_______________________________________________________________________

Date: May 6, 2008

Bruce Chamberlain
_______________________________________________________________________

Date: May, 6, 2008

Elizabeth Schauer
_______________________________________________________________________

Date: May 6, 2008

John Brobeck

Final approval and acceptance of this document is contingent upon the candidates submission of the final copies of the document to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this document prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the document requirement.

________________________________________________ Date: May 6, 2008 Document Director: Bruce Chamberlain

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This document has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this document are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder.

SIGNED: _____________________ Norene A. Walters

4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I express my gratitude to the members of my advisory committee, Dr. Bruce Chamberlain, Dr. Elizabeth Schauer, and Dr. John Brobeck, for expertly guiding this project through to completion. Especially, I offer sincere thanks to Dr. Chamberlain, my advisor, whose enthusiasm and encouragement were essential to its progress.

5 DEDICATION

To my parents, Berlyn and Verla Walters

6 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS...............................................................................................7 ABSTRACT.........................................................................................................................9 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................11 CHAPTER 2. SIR RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT ......................................................18 Biography.......................................................................................................................18 Compositional Output ....................................................................................................19 Choral Works .................................................................................................................20 CHAPTER 3. HISTORICAL CONTEXT.........................................................................22 English Choral Tradition ...............................................................................................22 Twentieth-Century Musical Renaissance .......................................................................25 Leighton, Mathias, Patterson.........................................................................................26 CHAPTER 4. MUSICAL ANALYSIS .............................................................................29 Tudor Traits ...................................................................................................................29 Twentieth-Century Techniques ......................................................................................37 Hallmarks of Style ..........................................................................................................47 CHAPTER 5. UNACCOMPANIED CHORAL WORKS SURVEY ...............................56 English Carols ..............................................................................................................56 Texts by John Donne ......................................................................................................65 Miscellaneous Part-Songs .............................................................................................67 Extended Works .............................................................................................................74 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSION...........................................................................................82 APPENDIX. LIST OF UNACCOMPANIED CHORAL WORKS ..................................85 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................................88

7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Musical Examples Page

1. Mirrored Imitation .......................................................................................................30 2. Canonic Imitation.........................................................................................................30 3. a. Non-Imitative Polyphony.........................................................................................31 3. b. Rhythmic Diminution ..............................................................................................31 4. Dorian Mode ................................................................................................................32 5. Lydian Raised Fourth...................................................................................................32 6. Phrygian Cadence ........................................................................................................33 7. Pitch Cross-Relation, Byrd ..........................................................................................34 8. Pitch Cross-Relation ....................................................................................................34 9. Pitch Cross-Relation, John Bennet ..............................................................................35 10. Pitch Cross-Relations...................................................................................................35 11. Cross-Rhythm, Tallis ...................................................................................................36 12. Cross-Rhythm ..............................................................................................................36 13. Sonic Strata ..................................................................................................................38 14. a. Messiaen's Second Mode of Limited Transposition ................................................39 14. b. Octatonic Pitch Class ...............................................................................................40 15. Extended Vocal Technique ..........................................................................................42 16. a. Tonal Stasis ..............................................................................................................44 16. b. Melodic Contour, Poulenc .......................................................................................45 17. Irregular Meter .............................................................................................................46

8 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - Continued 18. a. Two-Part Texture .....................................................................................................47 18. b. Textural Doublings ..................................................................................................48 19. Converging Lines.........................................................................................................48 20. Textural Fanning..........................................................................................................49 21. Parallel Thirds..............................................................................................................50 22. Parallel Fourths/Sixths .................................................................................................50 23. Signature Sonority .......................................................................................................51 24. Linear Tritone Cadence................................................................................................52 25. Linear Neapolitan Cadence..........................................................................................52 26. Quarter-Note Triplet ....................................................................................................54 27. Metric Shift ..................................................................................................................55 28. Scotch Snap..................................................................................................................55 29. Quartal Melody ............................................................................................................59 30. Call-and-Response .......................................................................................................61 31. Bitonality......................................................................................................................64 32. Word-Painting..............................................................................................................71 33. Melodic Inversion ........................................................................................................78

9 ABSTRACT

As one of Great Britain's leading composers, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (b. 1936) is prolific in a wide range of media, idioms, and genres, including concert and stage music, jazz, and film scores and has to his credit an extensive discography. He excels in solo vocal, instrumental, and chamber music composition and has a significant but lesser known corpus of choral music. A classically trained pianist, Bennett enjoys a parallel performing career as a jazz musician and cabaret singer. He has lived in New York since 1979. Bennett is one of a group of twentieth-century British composers who have cultivated distinctly English styles of composition. Like his near contemporaries Kenneth Leighton (192988), William Mathias (193492), and Paul Patterson (b. 1947), Bennett borrows from ancient and modern English traditions and from twentieth-century techniques to create an individual style. This study provides an historical context for English choral tradition, traced from its medieval roots through a twentieth-century musical renaissance, then identifies and examines a wide array of eclectic traits in Bennett's unaccompanied choral compositions for mixed voices. A component of the study is a literature survey to aid the choral conductor's preparation of these works for performance. This investigation revealed Bennett's affinity for English poetry and his desire to communicate the emotional content of his chosen texts through musical expression. Salient features of his compositional method are fluent linear part-writing within a contrapuntal texture, skillful textural manipulation, refined rhythmic control, and

10 structural symmetry and balance. Other style traits emerged, including modality, pitch cross-relations, canonic imitation, word-painting, cross-rhythms, metric shifts, harmonic shifts, tone clusters, driving repetitive rhythms, extended vocal techniques, and use of the octatonic scale. Collectively, these suggest the composer was influenced by Tudor polyphony (possibly subconsciously), Igor Stravinsky (18821971), Francis Poulenc (18991963), William Walton (190283), Olivier Messiaen (190892), and Benjamin Britten (191376).

11 CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION

British composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett (b. 1936) is a consummate musician. He is prolific in a wide range of media, idioms, and genres, including concert and stage music, jazz, and film scores and has to his credit an extensive discography. A classically trained pianist, he enjoys a parallel performing career as a jazz musician and cabaret singer. As one of Great Britain's leading composers, he has experienced unequivocal success in a multifaceted career. Who might imagine that this classically trained pianist, who maintained a performing repertory of rigorous twentieth-century literature, "crossed over" to enjoy longtime jazz partnerships with singer greats Cleo Laine and Marion Montgomery, and recently with Claire Martin? Or who would guess that this composer, who with a stroke of genius "glamourized"1 the train ride sequence from Istanbul to Paris with a lush waltz in his film score for Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express, and who wrote the original music for Four Weddings and a Funeral, was appointed International Chair of Composition (1995) at the highly esteemed Royal Academy of Music in London? In the composer's own words: "Nobody does exactly what I do."2 It comes as no surprise then that Bennett composes serious choral music.

Richard Rodney Bennett, "Knowing the Score: Interviews," interview by Neil Brand, in Dramatic Notes: Foregrounding Music in the Dramatic Experience, Arts Council of England Series, ed. Will Bell, vol. 9 (Luton, Bedfordshire, England: University of Luton Press, 1998), 136. Richard Rodney Bennett, "Nobody Does Exactly What I Do," interview by Andrew Ford, in Composer to Composer: Conversations about Contemporary Music (St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1993), 204.
2

12 Since 1979 Sir Richard has made his home in New York City. Among American choral conductors his music remains relatively unknown. In a published compilation of music performed at its own conventions from 19602000, the American Choral Directors Association lists only three titles by Bennett; none of those received exposure during a national convention.3 In literature sources that discuss his oeuvre, Bennett's choral works receive little attention. British Music Now (1975), a book project conceived to showcase a younger, post-Tippett generation of composers and to demonstrate the "unparalleled upsurge of creative activity in Great Britain since the Vaughan Williams-dominated generations . . . ,"4 devotes an essay to Bennett's "serious" compositions, film scores, popular music, and jazz. Epithalamion (1966) for chorus and orchestra is the only choral work by Bennett that is mentioned. In The English Musical Renaissance (1979), Peter J. Pirie recognizes Bennett's early successes as an operatic composer and a symphonist and briefly discusses his Piano Concerto but makes no reference to his choral music.5 Of 396 annotated citations Stewart R. Craggs lists in his Bio-Bibliography (1990), a mere eleven relate to the choral music.6 Otto Karolyi, in Modern British Music: The Second British Musical RenaissanceFrom Elgar to P. Maxwell Davies (1994), laments the limited

Sandefur Schmidt, comp., Music Performed at American Choral Directors Association Conventions: 19602000, American Choral Directors Association Monographs, no. 12 (Oklahoma City, OK: ACDA Monograph Publications, 2002), 9.
4

Lewis Foreman, ed., introduction to British Music Now (London: Paul Elek, 1975), 11. Peter J. Pirie, The English Musical Renaissance (London: Victor Gollancz, 1979), 22931, 243.

Stewart R. Craggs, comp., Richard Rodney Bennett: A Bio-Bibliography, Bio-Bibliographies in Music, no. 24, Donald L. Hixon, series adviser (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990), 11129.

13 parameters posed by his project: "Another book could be written on those who have been excluded from this short history. Composers such as Edmund Rubbra, . . . Herbert Howells, . . . and Richard Rodney Bennett immediately come to mind."7 The Blackwell History of Music in Britain acknowledges Bennett's Sea Change with a short paragraph and mentions neo-medievalism in one of his Christmas carols but fails to address the whole of his choral work.8 The Grove Music Online article by the late Susan Bradshaw provides a general account of Bennett's life with a works-list current through November 2002.9 A handful of miscellaneous journal articles and published interviews with Bennett offer insight into his compositional philosophy and method. Brief descriptions of individual choral works may be gleaned from various sources that include choral music reviews, audio recording liner notes, and his publisher's online catalogue.10 A study of Richard Rodney Bennett's choral works is timely following a year of celebratory concerts and events throughout the United Kingdom to honor him for his seventieth birthday. Several recent commissions have come from American choirs.11 In 2005 British conductor John Rutter and his Cambridge Singers (in consultation with the

Otto Karolyi, Modern British Music: The Second British Musical RenaissanceFrom Elgar to P. Maxwell Davies (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1994), 130. Stephen Banfield, "Vocal Music," in The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, ed. Ian Spink, The Twentieth Century, vol. 6, ed. Stephen Banfield (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1995), 439, 465. Grove Music Online, s.v. "Bennett, Richard Rodney" (by Susan Bradshaw), http://www.grovemusic.com (accessed January 22, 2008).
10 9 8

Http://www.chesternovello.com.

Among them, Philip Brunelle's Minneapolis-based Plymouth Music Series and VocalEssence, a consortium including eleven American choirs, and the Young People's Chorus of New York.

11

14 composer) released a compact-disc recording exclusively devoted to selected choral works of Richard Rodney Bennett.12 Bennett is one of a group of twentieth-century British composers who have cultivated distinctly English styles of composition. For example, Ralph Vaughan Williams (18721958) and Gustav Holst (18741934), considered "revolutionaries" of a twentiethcentury English Musical Renaissance,13 employed modern scholarship, a rediscovery of Tudor counterpoint, and the revival of English folksong to create English music largely independent of continental (mainly German) influence. Vaughan Williams, Holst, and their successors William Walton (190283), Benjamin Britten (191376), Michael Tippett (190598), Kenneth Leighton (192988), William Mathias (193492), Richard Rodney Bennett (b. 1936), and Paul Patterson (b. 1947), all maintained a distinct English identity in their choral music. In the preface to British Music Now (1975), Lewis Foreman wrote the following: It must be increasingly difficult for a characteristic voice to emerge and establish itself in the way Vaughan Williams or Walton or Britten did in the past. The composer today has the internal personality problem of finding himself and his style in relation to the major historical figures of the twentieth century and to developments abroad, seen from a country that until very recently was traditionalist by temperament.14 In his dissertation on the twentieth-century English Musical Renaissance as seen in the choral works of Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson, Christopher M. Cock observed

Richard Rodney Bennett, Sea Change: The Choral Music of Richard Rodney Bennett, The Cambridge Singers, John Rutter, conductor, Collegium Records CSACD 901, 2005.
13

12

Frank Howes, The English Musical Renaissance (New York: Stein and Day, 1966), 2425. Foreman, British Music Now, 1314.

14

15 that scholars had gone as far as Britten and Tippett in their discussions of English musical traditions in the twentieth century, stopping short of the next generation of British composers.15 Through personal interviews with Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson, and upon examination of their representative works, Cock demonstrated that they belong to a continuing English renaissance tradition.16 Moreover, Cock showed how these composers drew from ancient Tudor style and the work of modern British composers as freely as they employed twentieth-century techniques associated with Bla Bartk (18811945), Igor Stravinsky (18821971), Olivier Messiaen (190892), and others outside of Britain. Interestingly, when interviewed Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson expressed surprise at the suggestion of direct influence from Tudor composers; each denied any awareness of a connection. Contemporary composers are encountering the complex task of sifting through the musical legacy of this century, as well as previous eras, to carve out singular places. Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson have each looked beyond the island of Great Britain for ideas, yet idioms adapted by their British predecessors have influenced them. A subconscious understanding of native style is stronger than any overt or obvious external influence. Consequently, the British looked to tradition.17 Citing compositional stylistic traits common to the sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Tudor, Elizabethan, and Jacobean periods that were also used by

Christopher Moll Cock, "The English Musical Renaissance of the Twentieth Century: Its Philosophical and Musical Stylistic Elements as Exemplified in Representative Choral Works of Kenneth Leighton, William Mathias and Paul Patterson" (D.M.A. diss., University of Arizona, 1987), 3. Cock prefers the term renascence, a semantic difference, to describe a continuous rebirth of English music during the twentieth century.
17 16

15

Ibid., 1112.

16 twentieth-century British composers ("dissonant" suspensions and passing tones, pitch cross-relations, polymetric devices, syncopated rhythms, and the use of modality),18 Cock proceeded to identify traditional English traits in the music of Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson. He also found in their composition modern elements common to twentieth-century composers in and outside of Great Britain such as quartal sonorities and tritones, added chord tones, linear harmony, contrapuntal devices, and twentiethcentury avant-garde techniques. Close analysis of Richard Rodney Bennett's unaccompanied choral works reveals eclectic stylistic borrowing from ancient and modern English choral traditions and from twentieth-century techniques outside of Great Britain, borrowing that places Bennett squarely in the center of what has been termed an English renaissance of the twentieth century as cultivated by Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson. The purpose of this study is to identify in Bennett's choral works stylistic traits that are rooted in English choral traditions and to show that Bennett, like his near contemporaries Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson, synthesizes diverse stylistic elements to create an individual style. This project offers the first in-depth discussion of Richard Rodney Bennett's choral works and is limited to examination of his unaccompanied works for mixed voices. Chapter V, a comprehensive survey of the unaccompanied works, serves the choral conductor as a resource for the selection, study, and preparation of this repertory for performance. This study provides an instrument by which

Cock, "English Musical Renaissance," 17, referring to Ernest Walker, A History of Music in England, 3d ed., rev. and enl. J. A. Westrup (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952).

18

17 Richard Rodney Bennett may be better known as a choral composer. It is the hope of the author that it will serve to inspire research into the balance of Bennett's choral corpus.

18 CHAPTER 2. SIR RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT

Biography Sir Richard was raised in the Devonshire countryside in a home environment filled with music and literature. His mother Joan Spink, a pianist, composer, and singer, was a pupil of Gustav Holst; she sang in the first performance of The Planets; his father Rodney was a singer and a well-known author of children's books. Richard Rodney began composing at an early age. In his teenage years he took an avid interest in atonal and serial music and won a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he studied piano and composition. To his contemporaries, "Bennett was the most spectacular rising star on the British musical scene in the 1950s."19 During summer months, Bennett attended the pioneering Darmstadt courses for new music, and subsequently went to Paris on a French government scholarship as the first composition student of Pierre Boulez, who was the recognized head of the abstract European avantgarde movement. Reflecting on those years, Bennett later admitted, "As soon as I left Paris in 1959, after two years with Pierre, it all disappeared. Boulez's influence on me musically didn't leave much of a mark . . . ."20

19

Christopher Palmer and Lewis Foreman, "Richard Rodney Bennett," in Foreman, British Music

Now, 109.
20

Andrew Stewart, "Cross-over King," Choir & Organ 13, no. 2 (2005): 21.

19 While Sir Richard has devoted most of his career to composing and performing, he has periodically held academic positions. From 197071 he was Composer-inResidence at the Peabody Conservatory in Maryland; in 1983 he was named Vice-President of the Royal College of Music in London; and, as already noted, he served as International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music. Bennett has received many accolades throughout the course of a remarkable career. In 1964 he won the Arnold Bax Society Prize for composition; in 1965, the Vaughan Williams Award as Composer of the Year; in 1974, an Academy Award nomination for his symphonic film score to Murder on the Orient Express. In 1977 Bennett was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) and in 1998 was knighted for his Service to Music. More recently (2004), he was honored with the Ivor Novello Classical Music Award.

Compositional Output Bennett's compositional success in the realm of concert music is evident in his published output of 200 musical works. His classical catalogue includes three operas, three symphonies, three ballet scores, chamber music for large and small ensemble, concerti, solo vocal and instrumental music, and a considerable corpus of choral music. He excels at writing chamber and solo works for nearly every instrument and for voice. Like Benjamin Britten, Sir Richard has written literature for amateurs and young performers.

20 Choral Works Bennett's choral output has been steady over the span of the past four decades. He has now more than forty choral titles in print, including works for choir and orchestra (4), for choir plus one instrument (8), and for choir unaccompanied (30+). His early choral music is published by Universal Edition-London; Novello & Company has been his publisher since the mid-1970s. In a televised interview Bennett once said, "I hope I am a composer who provides music which is beautiful to listen to and which people can use, because one without the other is to me only a half-way stage. . . . I don't like the idea of composition as a sort of self indulgence."21 This is not to suggest that Bennett has compromised his personal integrity to write for mass-market appeal; in fact, there is no hint at commercialism in his choral music. Bennett has written on commission for a long list of British choral and vocal ensembles including the BBC Singers, the William Byrd Singers, the Canterbury Cathedral choir, The King's Singers, the Choir of King's College, Cambridge, and the New Cambridge Singers; he also has written for the historic Three Choirs Festival. In the past decade, requests have come from America, too: from a nationwide consortium of choirs, from New York City men's and youth choirs, from the Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New York, and, notably, from Minneapolis conductor Philip Brunelle, a champion of contemporary British music. Bennett's recent choral composition, Four Poems of Thomas Campion, an extended unaccompanied work, was premiered by the

Richard Rodney Bennett, 17 May 1987, in Crossover: Richard Rodney Bennett, ITV Network; quote in Stewart R. Craggs, comp., Richard Rodney Bennett: A Bio-Bibliography, Bio-Bibliographies in Music, no. 24 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990), 6.

21

21 BBC Symphony Chorus for the London Proms in August 2007, and later released for publication. What was true for English composers in the early part of the twentieth century holds true for Bennett: "The search for suitable ways of setting the English languageso rich in its power to inspirewas of major importance to most of the English composers of the period. They sought in their texts not only inspiration for subject matter but also the very roots of a musical idiom."22 Bennett's discriminating taste is evidenced by his choices of texts of uniformly high literary value. In a recent interview he noted, "I'm delighted that people still ask me to write for choir, not least because I can do it without too much difficulty, and I love finding the poems."23 He has drawn texts exclusively from English poets, the Missa brevis excepted, and has turned more than once to the metaphysical verse of John Donne. Alongside the indigenous English carol, recurrent themes of flowers, the sea, sleep, and death emerge, as well as the contrasting images of English town and countryside. Within Bennett's unaccompanied choral works his writing for soloists is minimal; the majority of pieces are composed as part-songs, elegant miniatures. In addition to Four Poems of Thomas Campion, his choral song cycle Sea Change and the Missa brevis may be classified as extended works. Each is very different from the others, and all are fine examples of the composer's imagination and consummate technique.

Michael Trend, The Music Makers: Heirs and Rebels of the English Musical Renaissance: Edward Elgar to Benjamin Britten (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985), 7.
23

22

Ibid., 24.

22 CHAPTER 3. HISTORICAL CONTEXT

English Choral Tradition English choral tradition is historically rooted in the monastic medieval church, collegiate chapel, and Chapel Royal. Canterbury Cathedral, the mother church of the Anglican Communion worldwide, boasts a tradition of liturgical music dating back to the end of the sixth century, when a choir was established at the time St. Augustine was sent as a missionary from Rome to become the first Archbishop of Canterbury. Undoubtedly this choir consisted of a few adult males singing plainchant monophonically. A sacred music tradition extends through Henry VIIIs break with Rome in the English Reformation of the sixteenth century, through his dissolution of monasteries and founding of the Church of England, and continues to the present day in cathedral and collegiate chapel choirs and their associated choir schools. By the end of the fifteenth century, five-voice polyphony sung by a choir of men and boys was standard in church practice.24 St. Pauls Cathedral has maintained its choir of men and boys since the Bishop of London founded a choir school there in the year 1127, nearly nine centuries ago. At the heart of that choirs very being to the present day is the monastic tradition of daily sung services in the Cathedral. When Henry VI founded Kings College, Cambridge in 1441, he endowed a choral foundation there to provide the chapel with a choir of twenty-four

Roger Bowers, "To Chorus from Quartet: the Performing Resource for English Church Polyphony, c. 13901559," in English Choral Practice: 14001650, ed. John Morehen, Cambridge Studies in Performance Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 1.

24

23 men and boys. This choir today is renowned for its annual Christmas Eve Service of Nine Lessons and Carols, which is broadcast around the world. The Chapel Royal, the company of court musicians devoted to the performance of sacred music, are believed to have been singing composed choral polyphony as early as the fifteenth century. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries members of the Chapel Royal traveled with the reigning monarch, singing and playing for services in the private chapels of the royal residences, Whitehall, Hampton Court, and Windsor included. Elizabeth I retained a liturgical choir of thirty-two gentlemen and twelve boy choristers, larger than any of the cathedral or collegiate choirs at that time.25 Tallis, Byrd, Purcell, and Handel are among the illustrious musicians associated with the history of the Chapel Royal. Although during the past century court musicians no longer have been maintained by the British monarchy, it has become customary for the royal family to commission new compositions from Englands leading composers for ceremonial occasions. For example, Parry, Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Walton, Britten, and Mathias all have provided new works for coronations and royal weddings. Bennetts newest orchestral piece, a major work for cello and string orchestra titled Reflections on a Scottish Folksong, was composed at the request of Prince Charles to memorialize the Queen Mother and was first performed by the Philharmonia of London in 2006. Choral festivals, too, have a role in English choral tradition. An early and famous occasion was the Handel commemoration of 1784 in Westminster Abbey. It attracted a

Grove Music Online, s.v. "Chapel Royal" (by Roger Bowers), http://www.grovemusic.com/ (accessed January 25, 2008).

25

24 crowd of spectators, who witnessed a performance of Messiah by 525 performers. The annual meeting of the Gloucester, Worcester, and Hereford Cathedrals for the Three Choirs Festival is a 300-year-old tradition that has grown into a weeklong event with invited performers from all over Great Britain. In the nineteenth century amateur choral societies sprang up throughout England to perform the great oratorios of Handel, Mendelssohn, and others, including J. S. Bach. Recent decades have seen the formation of a number of professional choral ensembles, several of which were cited above in a listing of Bennetts commissions. Many of these choirs are mixed, as they have been able to glean trained female singers from the colleges at Oxford and Cambridge ever since the admission of women into the Oxbridge colleges was first allowed in 1972. In his foreword to Jeffrey Sandborgs book, English Ways: Conversations with English Choral Conductors, John Rutter produces alarming statistics on the current choral climate in England.26 Sadly, the present state of the choral art in Britain is not as rosy as may be perceived from the outside. In the Church of England, resident men and boy choirs are still active in many of its sixty-one cathedrals, but below that level parish choirs are virtually extinct, owing to the fact that today only four percent of the population attends the Anglican Church. In the secular arena, school choirs now exist rarely in the public sector, so that choral activity is concentrated on the eight percent of the youth population attending private schools. In addition, budget cuts have precipitated

John Rutter, foreword to English Ways: Conversations with English Choral Conductors, by Jeffrey Sandborg, ed. and interviewer (Chapel Hill, NC: Hinshaw Music, 2001), xixiv.

26

25 the disappearance of many county youth choirs, which are the near equivalent to all-state choirs in the United States. One can only wonder how long the State will continue to endow longstanding choral foundations if current trends continue unabated. As for Bennett's connection to English choral tradition, reflecting on his childhood days as a chorister he once remarked, "I sang in choirs a great deal because I had perfect pitch, could sight-read and was a useful singer. My prep school choir performed some rather nice things, and we occasionally sang in Canterbury Cathedral. I was very much part of that English choral tradition in those days. It's in my blood, . . . as part of my musical personality."27

Twentieth-Century Musical Renaissance In 1966, in an important early attempt to assess compositional trends in British music of the first half of the twentieth century, music historian Frank Howes published a book titled The English Musical Renaissance. In it, Howes discussed a revival of musical activity in Britain, detailing the achievements of a succession of native composers from Parry and Stanford, Elgar and Delius, to Vaughan Williams and Holst. Owing to the advent of modern scholarship, a rediscovery of sixteenth-century Tudor polyphony, and the revival of English folksong, Howes concluded that English music had fully regained independence from continental influence in the culminating work of Vaughan Williams, whose English pastoral music assumed a nationalist identity. Other scholars added William Walton (190283), Benjamin Britten (191376), and Michael Tippett (190598)

27

Stewart, "Cross-over King," 22.

26 to a growing list of composers who maintained a distinct English identity during the twentieth century. Looking back more recently, Michael Trend notes, "The tradition of the English musical renaissance was to be one of independent not insular growth: Vaughan Williams knew Ravel's music, and Bax that of Schoenberg, for example, but both knew also that they needed to find their own voices in their own way."28 For the choral conductor, this entire period is perhaps best exemplified by its yield of major choral-orchestral works: Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, Vaughan Williams' Hodie, Holst's The Hymn of Jesus, Walton's Belshazzar's Feast, and the crowning achievement, Britten's monumental War Requiem for Coventry Cathedral.

Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson As discussed in Chapter 1, Kenneth Leighton, William Mathias, and Paul Patterson cultivated distinctly English styles of composition and also found individual voices within a modern idiom. Leighton openly acknowledged the influence of Vaughan Williams, Walton, and Britten on his early choral writing. However, a year of study in Rome with serialist composer Goffredo Petrassi (19042003) freed him of purely English influence. He also claimed the influence of Bartk on his writing. Stylistic elements of Leightons choral music include modality, pitch cross-relations, hemiola, quartal harmony, tritones, and changing meters. While tonal, much of Leightons choral music is dissonant. Linear writing in voice pairs with textures that begin unison and fan out is

28

Trend, Music Makers, 5.

27 characteristic; he employs contrapuntal techniques. Leighton expressed a particular fondness for metaphysical poetry. Welsh composer William Mathias cited influence from Bartk, Messiaen, Britten, and Tippett. Mathias was fascinated by Medieval texts, which he complemented with open fourths and fifths in his writing. Traits of his musical language are modality, pitch cross-relations, hemiola, changing meters, tritones, added harmonic sevenths and ninths, and use of the octatonic scale. Curiously, Mathias concludes nearly all of his choral pieces on a G-major ninth chord, often as the result of a tritone shift from D-flat major, as his signature cadence. Paul Patterson, who received two years of private tuition in composition from Bennett, uses pitch cross-relations, cross-rhythms, and strands of parallel fourths in his choral music; he favors the quartal quality of the second-inversion triad. A substantial portion of Pattersons choral music reflects his fascination with Penderecki and the Polish avant-garde of the 1960s and '70s. For this idiom, he employs graphic notation and specifies a wide range of virtuosic vocal techniques. To summarize, a rich tradition of English choral music emanating from the early establishment of choral foundations for abbey and cathedral churches, collegiate chapels, and the Chapel Royal court musicians continues unbroken to the present day in several of Britain's venerable institutions. With the inception of choral festivals and the formation of amateur societies in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and through the proliferation of professional choral ensembles in the late twentieth century into the present, some

28 whose reputations are built through concert tours abroad and ambitious recording projects, choral music has permeated British culture. Many scholars have recognized a twentieth-century renaissance in English music, evidenced by renewed independence from the continent and a fresh flowering of composition from native composers. As the century progressed, English composers faced new challenges, reconciling tradition with innovation. Bennett's near contemporaries, Leighton, Mathias, and Patterson each have assimilated traits from the twentieth century's most influential composers, in Britain and beyond, while retaining a certain "Englishness" that sometimes reaches back to the sixteenth century or earlier. The next chapter is devoted to the identification of eclectic stylistic traits in Bennett's choral compositions.

29 CHAPTER 4. MUSICAL ANALYSIS

Tudor Traits The first English musical renaissance reached its height in the Elizabethan age during the second half of the sixteenth century with the vocal polyphony of three leading composers, Thomas Tallis (150585), William Byrd (c.15401623), and Orlando Gibbons (15831625). As gentlemen of the Chapel Royal, all wrote anthems, motets, and service music, usually composed in four to six equal voices (now often termed Tudor counterpoint or Tudor polyphony), writing which frequently included sections of homophony. Each successive text-phrase could develop a new melodic motive from a new point of imitation, employing various contrapuntal devices. To a lesser extent the English madrigalists, too, wrote counterpoint. Bennett's writing borrows stylistic traits from Tudor polyphony. The first three examples illustrate different types of counterpoint. Unless otherwise indicated, all musical examples that follow are from Bennett's choral scores. In Example 1 voices are paired in mirrored imitation; i.e., the lower voice pair moves in contrary motion to the upper voice pair. Example 2 shows canonic imitation between soprano and tenor within the context of paired voices. Example 3.a. is a contrapuntal point comprising four nonimitative entrances; in 3.b. the same musical material appears in diminution, beginning a major third lower.

30 Example 1. Mirrored Imitation: What Sweeter Music, mm. 910

Example 2. Canonic Imitation: This Day, mm. 910

31 Example 3.a. Non-Imitative Polyphony: Missa brevis, "Gloria," mm. 8386

Example 3.b. Rhythmic Diminution: Missa brevis, "Agnus Dei," mm. 5659

Modality permeates Bennett's choral scores. The type of modality exemplified here is any borrowing from the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, or Mixolydian modes, the most commonly used sixteenth-century church modes. Bennett's English carol settings are replete with modal writing that lends a medieval quality to archaic poetry. In Example 4 from Nowel both the mirrored fourths imitating carillon bells and the melody framing

32 them are in the B-Dorian mode, as defined by a G-sharp raised-sixth scale degree. In Example 5 D-sharp pitches are borrowed as the Lydian raised-fourth scale degree in the key of A-major. In Example 6 Bennett employs a Phrygian cadence that resolves to open fifths, befitting this ancient text. Example 4. Dorian Mode: Nowel, mm. 3841

Example 5. Lydian Raised Fourth: On Christmas Day, mm. 59

33 Example 6. Phrygian Cadence: Missa brevis, "Agnus Dei," mm. 45

Pitch cross-relations, also termed "false" relations, are characteristic in the modal counterpoint of Tudor composers. Cross-relation occurs when a pitch in one voice is followed by a chromatic alteration of that pitch or its octave equivalent in another voice. Simultaneous cross-relations also are possible; these typically result from modal mixtures; i.e., major/minor thirds or sevenths on different melodic paths in vertical alignment.29 Example 7 shows cross-relation in a well-known Byrd motet. Example 8 shows Bennett's similarly striking use of cross-related pitches in the outer voices. Here Bennett paints the word "panegyric," which means high or hyperbolic praise, with a twooctave register shift from G-sharp in the tenor and bass parts to high G-natural in the exposed soprano voice. Example 9 from Tudor composer John Bennet's (fl. 15991614) madrigal shows minor/major sevenths in cross-relation. A web of cross-relations set up

In a later period during the second half of the seventeenth century, Restoration composer Henry Purcell's music is noted for pungent harmonic clashes resulting from cross-related pitches.

29

34 by minor/major thirds in Richard Rodney's counterpoint produces kaleidoscopic patterns of harmonic color (Example 10). Example 7. Pitch Cross-Relation: Byrd, Ave verum corpus, mm. 14

Example 8. Pitch Cross-Relation: Verses, No. 3, mm. 89

35 Example 9. Pitch Cross-Relation: John Bennet, Weep, O Mine Eyes, mm. 14

Example 10. Pitch Cross-Relations: Missa brevis, "Sanctus," mm. 1618

Rhythmic pulses generated by natural speech tend toward duple or triple syllabic groupings. When the natural flow of text is preserved within individual linear strands, syllabic stresses do not always fall into vertical alignment, and cross-rhythms result. Because no bar lines existed in manuscripts and early printed scores of Tudor polyphony, modern editions of this music that notate bar lines can mislead, wrongly implying

36 conformance to regular metrical patterns. In Example 11, excerpted from a well-known Tallis anthem, unstressed syllables ("the" and "-ther") fall into direct vertical alignment with stressed syllables ("pray" and "I"), precluding simultaneous metric stress in all parts. Bennett addressed this issue in his Verses with a cautionary note in the score: "The bar lines in No. 1 should not interfere with the natural rhythm of the words"; in other pieces, he uses a horizontal bracket in the score to indicate the independence of internal phrase rhythms from an established metric pattern (Example 12). Example 11. Cross-Rhythm: Tallis, If Ye Love Me, mm. 58

Example 12. Cross-Rhythm: Missa brevis, "Gloria," mm. 2932

37 Twentieth-Century Techniques In the early part of the twentieth century tonality together with functional harmony had been pushed to the limit with highly chromatic writing that exceeded the bounds of diatonicism. Composers sought new pitch language and new modes of expression. Atonalism, dodecaphonic serialism, aleatoric composition, and synthesized electronic music were important innovations for mid-century avant-garde composers. Schoenberg was soon labeled the "emancipator" of pitch and Stravinsky the "emancipator" of rhythm. Bartk, Paul Hindemith (18951963), Messiaen, and others developed their own approaches in answer to a tonal crisis. Now in post-modern times, with declining interest in experimentalism, composers have increasingly reverted to a tonal palette.30 All of Bennett's choral music addressed by this study is tonal, yet clearly belongs to a modern idiom. When asked what he thought about the post-modern, neoromantic, minimalist axis of the last quarter-century, Bennett replied the following: I think the only thing that is important is whether something is new for you. . . . I did a third symphony . . . which has been played a lot, and at one point in the last movement, which is slow, it comes to a C-minor chord, and the C-minor chord had nothing to do with George Rochberg, and had nothing to do with neo-romanticism; it was what [the piece] needed there. . . . [then] it went into a whole series of strange tonal chords that were sort of divorced from one another. And I was terribly proud of it because it was something I hadn't been able to do before.31 In Example 13 Bennett's compositional process is manifest in the linear generation of each phrase. From a choral unison, the texture fans out in voice pairs with

30

Recall that Bennett abandoned serialism after leaving Boulez. Bennett, "Nobody Does Exactly What I Do," 20910.

31

38 divisi into treble and bass pitch clusters. These layers of tone may be labeled sonic strata.32 Bennett uses this procedure to build successive phrases until a climax is reached; he ultimately allows the piece to fade away into a lull of undulating major/minor seconds. It is music that evokes an atmospheric, dreamy sleep-state. "Spell of Sleep," the only unaccompanied movement from Spells (1974), a work for soprano solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra, celebrates the unique beauty of pure choral sound. Example 13. Sonic Strata: Spells, "Spell of Sleep," mm. 17

32

Author's terminology.

39 The second movement of Sea Change, "The Bermudas," is a hymn of thanksgiving offered up by mariners who on a voyage of discovery have been spared peril at sea and have safely come ashore on an island whose great beauty and bounty they extol. As a homophonic setting of long meter (L.M.) poetry, eight syllables per line (88.88), the passage represented in Example 14.b. bears the markings of an English Protestant hymn, clothed in a modern idiom. Its tune is harmonized exclusively with simple major triads, spelled as enharmonic equivalents from the octatonic pitch-class collection. The octatonic scale is the second of Messiaen's Modes of Limited Transposition, comprising eight pitches in a pattern of alternating whole and half steps. Its three possible transpositions (by semitone) are spelled out in Example 14.a. The corresponding derivation of pitch content from these transpositions of the octatonic scale for the hymn passage in 14.b. is identified within each outlined region. Because of this scale's internal symmetries, there is no dominant-to-tonic harmonic polarity; it is by assertion rather than function that E-major is the tonic triad; a tritone shift from B-flat to E-natural constitutes the final cadence. Example 14.a. Messiaen's Second Mode of Limited Transposition

1. B C# D E F G G# A# B 2. C D D# E# F# G# A B C 3. C# D# E F# G A A# B# C#

40 Example 14.b. Octatonic Pitch Class: Sea Change, "The Bermudas," mm. 819

41 Example 15, also from Sea Change, displays an array of wild effects in a sound complex not far removed from Penderecki and other members of the Polish avant-garde. Wide melodic leaps with glissandi that exceed an octave, melismas in cross-rhythm, approximate pitches, and choric speech require virtuosic vocal technique. Bennett's instruction in the score reads as follows: "The pitches in the third movement are only very approximately suggested; however, the movement is to be sung, rather than spoken. The widest vocal and dynamic range is to be used and the maximum (melo) dramatic effect aimed for; rhythmic precision is essential. Unisons of pitch should be avoided, also any suggestion of diatonic 'melody.' "33

33

Richard Rodney Bennett, Sea Change (London and Sevenoaks: Novello, 1989), 19.

42 Example 15. Extended Vocal Technique: Sea Change, "The Waves Come Rolling," mm. 1523

43 The opening bars of the Missa brevis (Example 16.a.) exhibit several engaging stylistic features. A linear approach to part-writing, especially in the narrow ambitus of the bass line, can readily be observed, along with motivic construction, and telescoping textural expansion and reduction. Parallel sixths occur consistently between tenor and bass voices. With chord roots assigned to upper voices, the buoyant bass voice carries a minimum of harmonic weight; a second inversion triad substituting for a root position tonic triad is most unusual as an opening chord. To slow the music at the close of this section, Bennett employs hemiola in a stock Baroque cadence. Throughout this passage, the D-pitch functions as a central pivot note, effecting tonal stasis.

44 Example 16.a. Tonal Stasis: Missa brevis, "Kyrie," mm. 120

Portions of Bennett's Missa brevis sound strikingly like music of Francis Poulenc. Both composers are fond of extended triadic sonorities as part of their harmonic language. Close examination of Bennett's mass reveals phrase development by repetition, re-harmonization, and extension, all traits associated with Poulenc's compositional method. Bennett most certainly had studied Poulenc's mass, because as Example 16.b. reveals, he pays an enormous compliment to the Frenchman with a discreet borrowing Canterbury and Paris are not that far apart!

45 Example 16.b. Melodic Contour: Poulenc, Messe en sol-majeur, "Benedictus," mm. 12

For its sheer rhythmic energy, the music found in Example 17 could be Bartk or Stravinsky. Relentless driving rhythms, repetitive pitches, and irregular meter clothed in harmonic language that includes major ninths, perfect elevenths, and major thirteenths show Bennett here at his most exuberant.

46 Example 17. Irregular Meter: Missa brevis, "Gloria," mm. 115

47 Hallmarks of Style In the musical examples already presented, a linear approach to part-writing is everywhere evident. Linear writing is characterized by equal voices that move in conjunct motion; i.e., vocal lines proceed mainly by step or by small intervals. This is a primary component of Bennett's compositional method. It is hardly possible, moreover, to mention linear part-writing without discussing texture. The rich variety of textures represented in the next examples illustrates Bennett's fluency at part-writing. Examples 18.a. and b. show six voices in what is essentially a two-part texture. In 18.a. the soprano/tenor voices are paired on the melody in octaves while the alto/bass voices harmonize; in 18.b. roles reverse so that the alto/bass voices have an inversion of the melody while the soprano/tenor voices harmonize in octave doublings. Example 18.a. Two-Part Texture: Missa brevis, "Sanctus," mm. 2324

48 Example 18.b. Textural Doublings: Missa brevis, "Sanctus," mm. 2829

Textural reduction occurs in Example 19, where the outer voices begin two octaves apart and all voices converge on a unison D-pitch in the final cadence. Example 19. Converging Lines: This Day, mm. 2931

49 Manipulation of texture alone can be a device for text-painting. In Example 20 the texture fans out in a momentary outburst for a royal fanfare on "And all the four monarchies." Example 20. Textural Fanning: This Day, mm. 1314

British composers have long sustained a predilection for harmonic thirds and sixths, a trait reaching back to the early improvised harmonization of plainchant. Medieval music scholar Richard H. Hoppin writes that of the elements contributing to the distinctive sound of early English polyphony, "the most important seem to be a large amount of parallel motion, simple and similar rhythms in all voices that often give a chordal effect, and above all an emphasis on imperfect consonancesthirds and sixths."34

34

Richard H. Hoppin, Medieval Music (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 506.

50 Frequent parallel thirds and sixths, also parallel fourths, appear in Bennett's writing. Example 21 shows parallel thirds in contrary motion; Examples 22 features parallel fourths on the upper stave and parallel sixths on the lower. Used in this fashion, strands of consecutive parallel intervals lend transparency to the texture. Example 21. Parallel Thirds: What Sweeter Music, mm. 1214

Example 22. Parallel Fourths/Sixths: Missa brevis, "Gloria," mm. 7077

51 Harmonic major and minor seconds, perfect fourths and fifths, and major sevenths and ninths are common parlance in the twentieth century and for Bennett. His penchant is to substitute a major ninth for the third of a triad, thereby imparting a consistent quartal/quintal quality to his writing. Example 23 illustrates the openness of this sonority. This idiosyncratic harmonic trait, too, contributes to textural transparency. Example 23. Signature Sonority: On Christmas Day, mm. 149151

Cadences are telling indicators of Bennett's harmonic language. Consistent with a linear writing style, he typically executes cadences without an ascending leading tone or a dominant sonority; the resolution or cadential goal in the bass voice often is approached from a whole step below or a semitone or fourth above. The cadence in Example 24 shows the bass line moving from A-natural to A-flat, a move from a semitone above. Although sublimated by the linear direction of this passage, the harmonic root movement is from D-natural to A-flat, a tritone shift. Example 25 again illustrates an approach from the semitone abovein this instance as a descending leading tone in a Neapolitan

52 cadence that resolves directly to the tonic. Here Bennett freely eschews conventional voice-leading procedures in order to signal final rest with a uniform descent (the interrupting soprano F-pitch notwithstanding) into the final cadence. Example 24. Linear Tritone Cadence: Missa brevis, "Kyrie," mm. 3440

Example 25. Linear Neapolitan Cadence: A Good-Night, mm. 4750

Quoting E. J. Dent writing in Music and Letters in 1925, Trend writes, "The singing voice, directed by our own poetry, can give us varieties of rhythm perhaps more

53 subtle than many which occur to [even] the born fiddler." Bennett takes great care to preserve patterns of syllabic stress in poetic meter and to faithfully represent internal speech rhythms of words; to these ends he employs frequently changing meters, metric shifts, triple and quadruple subdivisions, and dotted rhythms. He specifies precise phrasing and articulation with rests and engineers exact durations for phrase endings by adding rhythmic units in lieu of the fermata. Rhythmic interest is highlighted in the following remaining examples. A quarter-note triplet effects a broadening of tempo in the dramatic buildup to the climax of Sea Change shown in Example 26. As shown by the refrain that concludes a strophe of "Calico Pie" (Example 27), metric shifts naturally accompany text repetition. Example 28 captures the Scotch snap, a distinctive rhythmic figure immediately recognizable on the surface of Bennett's choral scoreshis compositional thumbprint.
35

35

Trend, Music Makers, 7.

54 Example 26. Quarter-Note Triplet: Sea Change, "Full Fathom Five," mm. 1618

55 Example 27. Metric Shift: Calico Pie, "Calico Pie," mm. 1417

Example 28. Scotch Snap: This Day, mm. 12

56 CHAPTER 5. UNACCOMPANIED CHORAL WORKS SURVEY

This chapter is a survey of Richard Rodney Bennett's unaccompanied choral scores for mixed voices.36 It is the author's intention to present concise descriptions of each composition, while not wholly dwelling on formal and stylistic theoretical aspects. Pertinent historical and source information will be included, as well as comments to aid the conductor's selection and preparation of this music for performance.

English Carols The main body of early English carols comes from fifteenth-century manuscript sources.37 As a genre and prototype, the late medieval pre-Reformation carol can be identified by its form: an initial polyphonic burden (refrain) in two or three voice parts repeated in alternation with solo verses, and concluded with the burden. Some carols with multiple verses have double burdens, i.e., two distinct refrains, one for chorus and another for soloists. Carols could be on any subject; most were associated with the Christmas season; they could be secular, sacred, or, as were many popular carols, somewhere in between. Carols were sung for Christmas feasts, e.g., the boar's head carols, to the movement of outdoor religious processions, and as greetings on doorsteps by carolers. The question remains open as to whether any were used as processions or

36

See Appendix.

Grove Music Online, s.v. "Sources, MS: IX, 4, Renaissance Polyphony: Carol Manuscripts" (by Charles Hamm, Jerry Call/R), http://www.grovemusic.com (accessed January 9, 2008).

37

57 vernacular substitutions in the official liturgy of the church. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, English Christmas hymns, loosely termed carols, appeared as strophic settings with or without refrain; e.g., "Joy to the World" (Isaac Watts), "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing" (Charles Wesley), and "The First Nowell" (traditional). All of Bennett's carols are his own original musical settings composed in refrainverse or modified strophic forms. About half employ the rhymed verse of traditional carol texts; others set lesser-known poetry. His carol settings are ideally suited to a chamber choir (defined here as twelve to thirty-six voices) comprising trained singers with clear, agile voices, who can read and tune well. For the most part, tessituras lie in the comfortable middle of vocal ranges. The composer's tempo indications with metronome markings and provision of detailed score markings for expression and articulation are a useful aid to interpretation. When the conductor's rehearsal procedure reflects the structural repetition within this music the choir can efficiently learn these pieces. For late middle English (Chaucer) and early modern English (Shakespeare) texts, including those of the medieval carol, the question of historically correct pronunciation frequently arises, particularly for words having no modern equivalent.38 The New Oxford Book of Carols provides a short authoritative guide to pronunciation for the fifteenth-

38

With the exception of a few words, Bennett's carols employ modernized spellings.

58 century carols contained therein; other editions print similar aids. Often pronunciation can be deduced from the rhyme scheme in play, after first identifying eye rhymes.40
39

The Sorrows of Mary (1965) Anonymous, 15th c. For this Passion carol depicting Mary at the foot of the cross, Bennett composed a modal plainchant-like melody within a narrow ambitus, which he set in an austere formulaic manner with points of canonic imitation and mirrored writing in recurrent sections. The title is a reference to the "Seven Sorrows of Mary," a traditional Roman Catholic devotional observance that was propagated by the London Oratory (founded in 1849).41

Five Carols (1967) A prefatory note in the score indicates that these carols may be sung separately or as a group and may be sung by four solo voices or by a choir. For these attractive short settings, Bennett eschews traditional carol melodies. Each is a strophic part-song in SATB voicing, the interest of which derives from varied voicing combinations and textures, transposition, and re-harmonization. Modal writing with attendant pitch crossrelations, extensive use of fourths, open fifths, added harmonic major seconds and ninths, and a spare use of thirds imparts an archaic quality to this music. Cadences on open fifths
Andrew Parrott, "Pronunciation of Fifteenth-Century English," in Appendix 1 to The New Oxford Book of Carols, ed. Hugh Keyte and Andrew Parrott (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 65556. For further elucidation of pronunciation together with illustrations from Tudor anthems and other English-texted music the choral conductor is referred to Alison Wray, "English Pronunciation, c.1500c.1625," in Morehen, English Choral Practice, 90108.
41 40 39

Frederick William Faber, preface to Foot of the Cross, new ed. (Philadelphia: Peter Reilly,

1956), ix.

59 or a choral unison are common. Mixed meters facilitate the straightforward syllabic treatment of text and give impetus to the eighth-note pulse. Each setting concludes distinctively. 1. "There Is No Rose" (Anonymous, 15th c.). Mary is likened to a rose in many medieval carols. In this one, a macaronic text, the last line of each strophe is in Latin: Alleluia (Praise the Lord!); Res miranda (Wondrous thing!); Pares forma (of the same form!); Gaudeamus (Let us rejoice!); and Transeamus (Let us go!). Through direct modulation and simple transposition, strophes alternate between the (modal) key centers of G and A. The last bars are grounded on a G-pedal.42 2. "Out of Your Sleep" (Anonymous, 15th c.). A jaunty, quartal tune sets the first strophe of this vigorous setting (Example 29). A contrasting melody accompanies alternate stanzas.43 Example 29. Quartal Melody: Five Carols, "Out of Your Sleep," mm. 14

42

Faber, Foot of the Cross, 8283. Keyte and Parrott, New Oxford Book of Carols, 9597.

43

60 3. "That Younge Child" (Anonymous, 14th c.). A melodic broken minor third repeating back-and-forth in 6/8 meter sets this charming rocking carol into motion. The motion momentarily stops and starts again before cadential hemiola signals the end of the piece. 4. "Sweet Was the Song" (William Ballett, 17th c.). This Marian carol is one of two carols Ballett included in his Lute Book (1600). Bennett preserves the intimacy of a lute song, and his melodic incipit, canonic writing, and G-minor key reflect earlier settings. He pairs voices, SA/TB, in strict canon between soprano and tenor voices with overlapping phrases, to which he adds accompanying alto and bass voices. Lovely harmonic hues result from this linear writing. A codetta is indicated molto espressivo.44 5. "Susanni" (Traditional, 14th c.). Leggiero articulation energizes a lively calland-response (Example 30), taken up in turn by each voice in successive strophes. For the third call within each strophe, the melody appears in retrograde. Quickly shifting D-major/D-minor triads in the response produce colorful pitch cross-relations. An Allargando final phrase with a cadence on a full D-major triad brings this delightful carol and the set to an emphatic finish. Its refrain is known to be of German origin.45

44

Keyte and Parrott, New Oxford Book of Carols, 12829.

Percy Dearmer, R. Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw, The Oxford Book of Carols (London: Oxford University Press, 1928), 23839.

45

61 Example 30. Call-and-Response: Five Carols, "Susanni," mm. 16

Flower Carol (1968) Anonymous, 15th c. In this Nativity carol in refrain-verse form the Jesus child is likened to a flower. Here Bennett has reversed the roles of chorus and solo voice so that the burden is sung in turn by solo voices (s a t b) and then taken up by the choir; the choral verses are widely varied in voicing and texture. Frequent meter changes ensure the supple flow of text. The Lydian raised fourth figures prominently into the refrain.

62 What Sweeter Music (1968) Robert Herrick (15911674). Bennett's carol has a precedent in Henry Lawes' mid-seventeenth-century part-song, A Christmas Carol, Sung to the King in the presence at White-Hall (Charles I), which sets the same poetic verse. Bennett has composed clearly contrasting sections, [a b c b a b c' b a'], where he treats [a] and [b] sections as refrains and [c] sections as solo verses sung in choral unison. The [a] section is tertian, homophonic writing, while the [b] and [c] sections are linear and modal in style.

Puer nobis (1983) Alice Meynell (18471922). By its title, this modified strophic part-song could be mistaken for the well-known Latin hymn, Puer nobis nascitur. The assignment of a Latin title to an English text or vernacular translation (here the English language poem, Unto Us a Son is given) is an idiosyncratic British convention. For this exquisite Nativity carol, Bennett's writing is more lyrical and less motivic in style than in his earlier settings. Modal inflections color predominantly tertian harmony.

Lullay Mine Liking (1985) Anonymous, 15th c. This narrative carol uses the standard verse-refrain form. Bennett sets the burden, a cradle song text, with undulating major seconds and 3/8 meter and presents it in various keys and voicings. Its monophonic verses, appearing transposed in different keys, may be sung either by a section or solo voice. This setting borrows heavily from the Lydian and Mixolydian modes.

63 Nowel (1987) Walter de la Mare (18731956). Here Bennett recreates musically the scene of London townsfolk celebrating Christmas at the turn of the twentieth century depicted in the poem. He casts the title, ''Nowel," an outburst of joy, as the ringing of a carillon. Reveling carolers ("waits in the dark streets") compete with the clamor of "wild" bells. Bennett's carillon is a three-bar ostinato, enlivened with the Scotch snap and quartal harmonies. (Recall the nowells in the Prologue to Vaughan Williams' Christmas cantata, Hodie.) Bennett presents the poem in two melodic strophes intermingled with the ostinato; the result is a dense six-part texture. With a final upswing of bells to a brilliant D-major triad, marked fff, he ends the piece.

On Christmas Day: To My Heart (1999) Clement Paman, c.1660. Commissioned for the 1999 Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols of King's College, Cambridge, Bennett's composition is well suited for the choir of men and boys at King's and for the dimensions of its famous Gothic chapel. Transparent texture, slow harmonic rhythm, and rests, are all calculated to render this music intelligible for the listener in the chapel's reverberant space; high-pitched treble parts at the climax are written to soar through its fan vaulting. This score is replete with Bennett's salient stylistic compositional traits; i.e., intervallic fourths and fifths, major seconds and ninths, sixths between tenor and bass, the second-inversion triadic sonority, modality, pitch cross-relations, cross-rhythms, metric shifts, voices paired in points of contrapuntal imitation, enharmonic spellings, passages of choral unison, and the Scotch snap figurea nearly comprehensive list! The piece

64 reaches a climax with a bitonal carillon passage, which is left suspended to resonate on a pan-diatonic sonority (Example 31). Example 31. Bitonality: On Christmas Day, mm. 155166

Carol (2000) W. R. Rodgers (190969). For this Nativity carol, a lovely part-song, four stanzas of verse are represented musically as [a b a' b']. One or two independent voice parts are staggered in overlapping phrases, lending a mild contrapuntal sense to homophonic writing. Tertian harmonies predominate in G-major music tinged with modality, added

65 notes, and chromatic passing tones. Increased harmonic rhythm in an angular transitional phrase in the [b] sections propels the music forward and engages the ear. A linear approach to the final Neapolitan cadence is a vintage Bennett trait. The score is published as a reproduction of the holograph, SATBB, in a Special Order Edition.

Texts by John Donne Shortly before his death, John Donne (15721631) wrapped himself in his burial shroud and posed for a portrait drawing while standing on a funeral urn, as he believed he would appear rising to life at the final judgment. A marble effigy of Donne, created from this portrait, stands in the South Quire Aisle of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, one of the few to have survived the Great Fire of London (1666). Donne was a celebrated preacher in his day and from 1621, Dean of the Cathedral. As one of Britain's finest poets, he left a great legacy to English literature in his secular and religious poetry and prose. He is considered the founder of the metaphysical genre, noted for its figurative language and opposing imagery.46

Verses (1965) The Litanie, stanzas XVI, XX, and XXIII. The three short pieces on penitential verse comprising this set may be classified as sacred part-songs. Bennett indicates that they should ideally be performed without a break. Although not written for St. Paul's, their slow tempi (quarter note, M.M. 4850) and slow harmonic rhythm render them well

Margaret Drabble, ed., The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 6th ed., rev., s.v. "Donne, John" (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 291.

46

66 suited for the rolling acoustic properties of Sir Christopher Wren's architectural masterpiece; it is easy to imagine their sound filling its great dome. Voice-pairs in close canonic imitation contrast phrases of monophonic choral unison. Parallel thirds and sixths are ubiquitous; modal inflections populate the score. Changing meters facilitate the flow of these prose texts. Helped in part by its declamatory style and use of the minor mode, this music conveys the gravity of Donne's verse with a serious tone. Bennett's own comment on these early pieces is unduly harsh: "They were tonal pieces, but I was desperately trying not to write simple triads. They're not unsingable, but I can always hear myself twisting the harmonies to avoid sounding conventional."47

Devotions (1975) 1. A Statue of Snowe (Meditation II) 2. A Flowre at Sun-Rising (Sermon 71) 3. Poor Intricated Soule (Sermon 48) 4. The Seasons of His Mercies (Sermon VIII) These pieces were written while Bennett was Composer-in-Residence at the Peabody Conservatory (Maryland). This is highly complex writing, hardly idiomatic, testing the vocal technique and musicianship of even the most virtuosic of singers with difficult pitch content, extreme dissonance, wide intervallic leaps, clustered tones, intricate rhythms, fast tempi, and demanding tessituras. The scores call for eight-part divisi, glissandi, and whispered text. There is no evidence that Devotions has ever received public performance.

47

Stewart, "Cross-over King," 22.

67 Nearly two decades later, in response to a commission from The King's Singers to mark this vocal ensemble's twenty-fifth anniversary, Bennett composed new music to reset these texts and added a movement, 5. The Bell Doth Toll (Meditation XVII). The new work is titled Sermons and Devotions (1992).

This Day (2003) From Sermon LXXIII. This is a choral fanfare written for American conductor Philip Brunelle. Bennett creates a sectional musical form, [a a' b a''], unified by an upward-bounding fanfare figure. SA/TB voice pairs in canonic imitation define the [a] sections; the telescoping texture of the [b] music varies from dense homophonic divisi writing to choral unison. Intricate dotted figures and triplets reproduce internal word rhythms. Like Verses, this music is composed in a declamatory style; This Day however, is less accessible, since its technical and musical challenges necessitate a choir of highly trained musicians.48

Miscellaneous Part-Songs Madrigal (1962) Anonymous. In this playful trifle, added tones and modal mixtures obscure the A-major tonality. Imitative paired-voice phrases expand outward from unison; frequent parallel sixths and tenths occur between tenor and bass voices. In compound meter,

For definitions and etymologies of early modern English words contained within Donne texts, the conductor is referred to the Oxford English Dictionary Online, 2000 ed.

48

68 hemiola cross-rhythms and syncopations add to its rhythmic vitality. Bennett begins the final verse-refrain stanza a whole-step higher than the first two.

Calico Pie (1994) Edward Lear (181288). As a writer and a watercolorist, Edward Lear is best known for his inventive nonsense verse, published in several books, complete with his own illustrations. Calico Pie comprises five part-songs on Lear's rhymed verse, commissioned from Bennett by the William Byrd Singers of Manchester, United Kingdom, to mark the choir's twenty-fifth anniversary in 1995. The voice distribution of that choir is 8.6.6.8. These are imaginative and engaging piecesand purely entertaining, due largely to Bennett's ingenious manipulation of sonority and texture, melodic invention, subtle text-painting, and refined rhythmic control. 1. "Calico Pie" (Nonsense Songs, 1871). Bennett sets the four stanzas and refrain of this poem simply with four clearly delineated strophes, each employing the same melody. The refrain "never came back to me!" is coupled with metric shifts that blur bar lines (see Example 27 above). Leggero and marcato articulations enliven the Allegro tempo.49 2. "The Jumblies" (Nonsense Songs, 1871). Six stanzas and a refrain describe how diminutive Jumblies "went to sea in a Sieve," and returned twenty years hence (accompanied by Bennett's musical fanfare), when everyone said of them "How tall they've grown! . . . We too will go to sea in a Sieve." Bennett writes wavy melodic

49

This movement is available as a stand-alone piece. See http://www.chesternovello.com/.

69 contours in continuous triplet figures within the refrain to depict the motion of the sea. The soprano line contains octave leaps, and its upper register extends to high B-flat. 3. "The Cummerbund (An Indian poem)" (Laughable Lyrics, 1877). In five strophes, this music begins Lento. A florid soprano melody with grace-note embellishment suggests the unique sound of a bamboo flute from India. Parallel fourths and fifths figure prominently in the accompanying voices. The music moves at a leisurely pace until the sudden appearance of the Cummerbund, a horrid angry monster, at which the music is dramatized, subito molto agitato and molto marcato. With open jaws the Cummerbund "followed" then "swollowed" [sic] (Bennett uses inverted double-dotting for these words and their rhymes) a fair maiden who sat out at night gazing at the evening star. The music at last dies away with the "ahoomm" of the contented monster whose appetite has been satisfied. 4. "The Yonghy-Bonghy-B" (Laughable Lyrics, 1877). Lear's poem titled "The Courtship of the Yonghy-Bonghy-B" is ten stanzas in length. The choir delivers the narrative and produces an accompanied direct dialogue between the Yonghy-Bonghy-B (tenor section) and the Lady Jingly Jones (soprano section). The music accelerates and becomes agitated as the drama of their courtship unfolds, then relaxes into lento e dolce for its sad conclusion. Segments of "sea" music undulate in triplet subdivisions. 5. "The Akond of Swat" (Laughable Lyrics, 1877). This poem is a riddle: "Who, or why, or which, or what, / Is the Akond of SWAT?" Twenty-one questions in the form of rhymed couplets with refrain follow before the last: "Some one, or nobody, knows I wot / Who or which or why or what / Is the Akond of Swat!" There is little reprieve from

70 a chatter of repeated eighth-notes in this delightfully energetic setting. Textural build-up and reduction adds to its interest. Marked with accents and sforzandi, monosyllabic rhymes for the word "Swat" in each refrain virtually shout out from the texture. Bennett concludes this part-song, and the whole set, with a characteristic upward sweep to a D-major ninth chord, and lands down on unison D-pitch, senza ritardando and tutta forza.50 Perhaps the greatest challenge to performing the pieces of Calico Pie is to toss them off with flair, as though this virtuosic writing were easy to sing. Wide intervallic leaps, voice-crossings, and modal harmonic shifts within fast tempos require a good ear and accomplished vocal technique.

A Good-Night (1999) Francis Quarles (15921644). A Good-Night is Bennett's contribution to an EMI Classics recording project, A Garland for Linda: A Commemoration of the Life of Linda McCartney, which garnered participation from nine contemporary composers. A sense of restraint governs Bennett's part-writing throughout this piece but not at the expense of musical interest. Phrases begin with an independent voice or pair of voices and continue to unfold in a staggered manner. Within the phrase, "The music and the mirth of Kings / Are all but very discords / When she sings," a linearly disguised tritone shift to an E-minor sonority at its apex on the word "discords" is surely intended to bend the listener's ear (Example 32). Surface details abound, particularly, chromatic harmonic

50

This movement is available as a stand-alone piece. See http://www.chesternovello.com/.

71 sequences, appoggiaturas, suspensions, and cross-related pitches. With descending lines, Bennett skillfully slows the harmonic rhythm and gradually allows this [a b a] miniature to settle into repose (see Example 25 above). Example 32. Word-Painting: A Good-Night, mm. 2733

72 A Contemplation upon Flowers (1999) Henry King (b. 1592). This poem is an extended metaphor, a simile, through which the poet likens himself to flowers. Rather than creating a strophic setting that follows the poem's three six-line stanzas, Bennett partitions the poetic verse in a manner that structurally supports his musical ideas for text expression: [a] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Brave flowers, that I could gallant it like you, And be as little vain; You come abroad and make a harmless show, And to your beds of earth again; You are not proud, you know your birth, For your embroidered garments are from earth. You do obey your months and times, but I Would have it ever spring. My fate would know no winter, never die Nor think of such a thing; Oh, that I could my bed of earth but view And smile and look as cheerfully as you. Oh teach me to see death, and not to fear But rather to take truce; How often have I seen you at a bier, And there look fresh and spruce; You fragrant flowers, then teach me that my breath Like yours may sweeten and perfume my death.

[b]

[c]

[a'] [c']

Chromatic progressions, enharmonic shifts, added tones, and complete diatonic major triads (!) at phrase endings define a rich harmonic vocabulary. Contrasting textures and repeated words, enhanced by the score indications sonore, appassionato, and dolcissimo, amplify text expression. To conclude the piece, Bennett reverts to an unconventional Phrygian final cadence on open fifths. This score is published as a reproduction of the holograph in a Special Order Edition, SATB divisi.

73 Town and Country (2002) Here Bennett pairs two lyric poems to present the quintessential contrasting images of English town and countryside in a through-composed musical setting, unified by recurring melodic themes. 1. "The Sun Has Long Been Set" (William Wordsworth, 1807). In this poem, the enjoyment of a long summer evening in the country is favored over "parading" and "masquerading" in London. Rhymed verse flows in elegant part-writing that achieves a new level of sophistication. With graceful contours, Bennett shapes long, lyrical dovetailing phrases and employs sequential melody to lead into a climax on "night of June." With rhythmic nuance, he onomatopoetically represents the "cuckoo's sov'reign cry," "thrushes," "wind that rushes," and "water that gushes"; a minor third is a prominent melodic figure. A transitional codetta creates a seamless segue into poetry of Charles Morris. 2. "Town and Country Life" (Charles Morris, 1795). In lengthy rhymed verse of eleven stanzas, the poet weighs side-by-side the virtues of living in (London) town or in the countryside. Bennett sectionalizes this music and brings back the opening measures from the first setting, so that the overall form of the piece is [a b b' c c' a' c'']. He begins the music of "Town and Country Life" with a romping scalar melody spanning the descent of a tenth and introduces new melodic themes as the piece unfolds. The climactic closing, in four-bar homophonic phrases, is a triumphant declaration of the poet's wish: "In town let me live, then in town let me die / for in truth I can't relish the country not I. / If one must have a villa in summer to dwell, / Oh give me the sweet, shady side of Pall

74 Mall!" This is difficult music, requiring the vocal technique of skilled singers. The score is published as a reproduction of the holograph in a Special Order Edition, SATB divisi.

Extended Works "Spell of Sleep" from Spells (1974) Kathleen Raine (19082003). "Spell of Sleep" forms the fourth movement of Spells, a large work for soprano solo, mixed chorus, and orchestra that was premiered at the Three Choirs Festival in Worcester Cathedral in 1975. As the only unaccompanied movement, Bennett directed that it may be sung separately as an independent composition (published separately). This music presents layers of choral sound in a "vocal" orchestration (see page 38). With an initial C-sharp choral unison, Bennett calls into play all twelve pitches of the chromatic scale throughout the course of this piece; the movement concludes on a D-flatE-flat harmonic major second (as the enharmonic equivalent of C-sharp, D-flat is the tonal center). Long pianissimo phrases, close intervals, wide melodic leaps, and demanding vocal ranges are challenges for the choral singer. Changing subdivisions challenge the conductor's rhythmic aptitude.

Sea Change (1983) Sea Change is a choral song cycle. Commissioned by the Three Choirs Festival, the first performance was given in Worcester Cathedral in 1984 by the Donald Hunt Singers, a virtuoso chamber choir. In it, Bennett creates an evocative sound-world with melodic and harmonic material derived from the octatonic scale, a synthetic scale rarely

75 employed in choral composition. Three tubular bells, pitched C-natural, E-natural, and C-sharp, sounded offstage begin the first, second, and fourth movements respectively. 1. "The Isle Is Full of Noises." The Tempest: William Shakespeare (15641616). Perpetual eighth-note motion in 5/8 (3+2) meter, wide melodic leaps, and glissandi evoke an illusory dream-like state. Composed in [a b a'] song form, in the [a] section, soprano, tenor, and bass voices sing the text in a richly harmonized homorhythmic style to a backdrop of three-part alto divisi humming a texture of internal canonic imitation that culminates on an ethereal tone cluster. In the [b] section, men's voices echo women's until they unite in a climactic buildup to "riches"; text-painting follows in a cascading triplet figure on "ready to drop." When [a]-section music returns, it is modified to effect a reduction of voices, and the movement concludes a niente on a harmonic minor third. 2. "The Bermudas." Andrew Marvell (162178). For this movement, framed by a beginning tenor solo and a concluding baritone solo, Bennett creates an elaborate hymn of praise (see Example 14.a. above), partitioning Marvell's rhymed couplets into four-line stanzas as eight strophes, [a b c d c' e a' a'']; the [a] sections are set in characteristic hymnlike homorhythmic style. For the brilliant final strophe, pitched up a minor third, Bennett expands the texture to eight parts, and divided sopranos ascend to a majestic high G-naturalB-flat minor third for a marvelous climax on the phrase "may Echo beyond the Mexique Bay," followed by echoing sequential phrases (text painting), through which the texture is reduced to a three-voice, pianissimo D-flat major triad.

76 3. "The Waves Come Rolling." The Faerie Queene: Edmund Spencer (?155299). This is wild, cacophonous music to depict tumultuous seas filled with monsters; an array of unusual effects unleashes terror on the listenerand Bennett does this without relinquishing canonic imitation (see Example 15 above). At the conclusion of the movement, the score calls for "very quiet, low pitched, terrifying monster noises: growling, snarling etc." from the basses who "enter gradually and fade out one by one."51 4. "Full Fathom Five." The Tempest: Shakespeare. The sonorous decay of "dingdong" bells recalls Vaughan Williams' setting of this text in Three Shakespeare Songs (1951). Parallel motion, octave displacements, paired voices, a C-sharpG-natural tritone, and a C-sharp pedal, all figure prominently in this movement. Undulating eighth-notes in mirrored imitation, coupled with a text underlay at odds with the rest of the texture, leads to the climax of the entire work with exotic linear sonorities on "but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange" (see Example 26 above). Sea Change is the most virtuosic of Bennett's unaccompanied works, posing formidable challenges to the choir. The composer specifies a minimum requirement of twenty-four voices (eight-part divisi). For the singers, vocal stamina is requisite; perfect pitch an asset. The conductor must comprehend multiple score complexities.

Missa brevis (1990) Bennett's Missa brevis, his only liturgical composition, was written for the Choir of Canterbury Cathedral, seat of the Archbishop of the Anglican Communion worldwide. That choir numbers thirty boy choristers (treble) and twelve male clerks (bass, tenor, and

51

Bennett, Sea Change, 31.

77 countertenor). As a strictly choral polyphonic setting of the Roman Mass Ordinary (omitting the Credo) sung in Latin, Bennett's mass doubles as a concert work, and as such holds a singular place within a genre of twentieth-century Anglican choral music for the celebration of Holy Communion; other liturgical settings by British composers typically set English vernacular translations with organ accompaniment; many supply intonations and responses, indicate a decani-cantoris treble split, and have the Gloria movement printed out of sequence as last in the score. The missa brevis settings by Walton and Leighton, each of which may have served as a model for Bennett's, are no exception. "Kyrie." In triple meter, this movement follows the standard tripartite text divisions [a b a'/b' codetta], with a return of both "Kyrie" and "Christe" music in the third section, and offers phrase reiteration throughout to strengthen the (cheerful) petition. Phrase development occurs through repetition, re-voicing, re-harmonization, and extension. Unison to six-part voicing varies its normative four-voice texture. Cadential hemiola is characteristic. The movement reaches a climax with a long cadential melisma in four-voice homorhythm at the end of the [b] section, two-thirds of the way through. In the codetta (Example 33), the soprano line is an exact inversion of the soprano line that begins the piece, mm. 14 (compare to Example 16.a. above), and is presented in rhythmic augmentation and perpetual hemiola against a descending bass line.

78 Example 33. Melodic Inversion: Missa brevis, "Kyrie," mm. 8390

"Gloria." The text is delivered quickly with driving pitch repetition in additive 7/8 and 5/8 meters. (A discussion of this music on pages 4445 above links compositional traits to Poulenc; however, an essential difference in their treatment of text may be noted here: Bennett accurately represents syllabic stresses of the text, while Poulenc, in his multi-movement Gloria, deliberately places emphasis on unstressed syllables as part of its irreverent charm.) This movement is organized [a b a' codetta] according to standard text divisions: Gloria / Domine Deus / Quoniam. The sharply contrasting middle section on "Domine Deus, Agnus Dei" employs white notation (hinting at stile antico) and contrapuntal voice-pairs for the sobering nature of this text. Ascending lines for "qui tollis peccata mundi" may be symbolic; certainly Bennett's saving of the highest pitch in the movement for "Christe" in "tu solus altissimus, Jesu Christe" is word-painting. The "Amen" codetta quotes the "miserere nobis" melody (from m. 37) in close four-part

79 imitation with a phrase extension and concludes appropriately with a plagal final cadence. "Sanctus." The first eighteen bars form a litany on the word Sanctus; modal mixtures as juxtaposed major and minor thirds result in pitch cross-relations. Melodic inversion, invertible counterpoint, and non-harmonic tones, especially accented passing tones, are prevalent. Cadences are modal; added major ninths lend quintal color to the harmonic language. The climax to this lengthy movement is an elaboration of "Hosanna in excelsis" with increased rhythmic activity (tenor/bass) and melodic embellishment, which signal a codetta (the same music as seen in Example 33 above in rhythmic diminution and transposition). Extensive melodic borrowing from the "Kyrie" in the "Sanctus" is significant; no less so, the brief benedictus text within the "Sanctus" (mm. 7987) that quotes the first seven bars of the "Gloria." "Agnus Dei." Again Bennett reverts to a contrapuntal idiom for text addressing the Lamb of God. Harmonic color is important, and Phrygian cadences lend a forlorn sound in his tempo Lento. Although the movement begins quietly, he creates a loud, insistent plea for mercy in overlapping phrases with eight-part divisi as two SATB choirs. With repeated thirds and open fifths the plea gathers momentum into a demand for peace based on the triadic motive that accompanies the word Kyrie. Then it softens in character into a poignant deceptive cadence. The remaining bars wind down molto tranquillo, into a codetta using in rhythmic diminution the same music as the "Gloria" codetta (see Example 3.a. above) a 23 retardation in the tenor voice adds the final touch to an exquisite conclusion.

80 Structural symmetry, balance, tight motivic construction, and economy of material are defining features of Bennett's mass. As the above descriptions of individual movements suggest, his setting follows many conventional compositional practices associated with the genre. Most noteworthy of these is the cyclic principle at work in the "Sanctus" and "Agnus Dei," where the recurrence of musical material from the "Kyrie" and "Gloria" assures a unified whole.52 Italianate Latin is the correct diction choice for this setting.

Four Poems of Thomas Campion (2007) 1. Winter Nights 2. Never Weather-Beaten Saile 3. Fire, Fire! 4. The Hours of Sleepy Night Thomas Campion (15671619). These poems were written between 1613 and 1618. Bennett's new work was commissioned by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Proms.53 The first performance, conducted by Stephen Jackson, was given by the BBC Symphony Chorus in the Royal Albert Hall, London, for Prom 30, August 5, 2007. Reviews of the premiere by the London Times and Guardian newspapers describe

The first fully cyclic polyphonic Mass Ordinary, prescribed for use in the Sarum rite, was taken from an English model. Leeman L. Perkins, Music in the Age of the Renaissance (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 360. Founded in 1895 by Sir Henry Wood, the Proms is an annual music festival running each evening from mid-July to mid-September, held in the Royal Albert Hall, London. A Prom is a promenade concert where part of the audience stands in a "promenade" area of the Hall, directly in front of the orchestra. The BBC Symphony Chorus is the resident choir at the Proms.
53

52

81 Bennett's writing as "tender" and "sensitive." The music critic for The Independent wrote as follows: The BBC Symphony Chorus takes part in five Proms this season, and was even allowed a solo outing to flaunt its new piece. It sets four texts by the Elizabethan Thomas Campion, for which Bennett comes up with a huge range of striking colours and translucent textures to match words perfectly designed for music. The scoring for unaccompanied choir is hugely imaginative, the individual parts cleanedged and well defined. The performers brought it off impressively, . . . 55 Four Poems will challenge a chorus of well-trained singers with divisi writing to eight parts.
54

54

"Sunday 5 August 2007," reviews of Prom 30, http://www.bbc.co.uk/.

George Hall, Music reviews: "Tristan und Isolde, Glyndebourne Festival, Lewes/Prom 27, Royal Albert Hall, London/Prom 30, Royal Albert Hall, London," review of Four Poems of Thomas Campion, by Richard Rodney Bennett, Independent (London), 12 August 2007, http://www.independent.co.uk/.

55

82 CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSION

With the identification of traditional English traits, both ancient and modern, and techniques born of the twentieth century outside of Britain in Richard Rodney Bennett's unaccompanied choral music for mixed voices, a niche is found for him alongside his near contemporaries Kenneth Leighton, William Mathias, and Paul Patterson. Like them, Bennett is a traditionalist who draws from a wide array of techniques to create an individual style. In truth, no composer creates in a vacuum. Unique about British composers, however, is an inherent understanding of tradition and style that seems to arise from a collective subconscious. Bennett openly acknowledges influence from English composers of previous generations, William Walton in particular, with whom he enjoyed written correspondence during his youth and shares a birthday. "It was Walton who remained a most important influence on him."56 What Donald Mitchell wrote in his essay on Britten in The Britten Companion might also be said of Bennett: "His 'style,' . . . is singularly and immediately recognizable and 'individual,' but the techniques that service the style often represent the summation of astonishingly heterodox compositional principles drawn from a variety of distant and recent pasts and presents." Mitchell also wrote, "I am convinced, moreover, that it is just

56

Craggs, Bio-Bibliography, 1.

83 this synthesizing aspect of Britten's technical thinking that will prove particularly influential on and appealing to succeeding generations of composers. . . . It could well be that Britten's "eclecticism," . . . will offer composers and music a way forward."57 Indeed it has. Bennett's synthesis of "eclectic" stylistic traits, identified in Chapter 4, goes a long way toward defining his compositional style. Taken together with the descriptions in Chapter 5, a comprehensive body of salient features may be recognized. To summarize, Bennett's choral writing is tonal. Fluent linear part-writing is the most distinctive feature of his method. He employs contrapuntal techniques, including canonic imitation and melodic inversion, in SA/TB voice-pairs. Motivic melodic construction is characteristic. He masterfully manipulates voice-parts, sometimes allowing them to fan outward with added voices and harmonic fill or to telescope inward with a reduction of voices and converging lines. He often contrasts widely varied textures in abrupt juxtaposition. Consecutive parallel intervals, especially sixths between the tenor and bass voices, are a common occurrence. Bennett's tertian harmonic language is highly spiced with colorful modal borrowings, triadic extensions, and added notes, particularly major seconds/ninths. Conjunct motion is the norm for bass lines that seldom outline harmonic root progression, least of all, dominant-to-tonic. Modal cadences typified by an ascending whole step or descending fourth in the bass line frequently arrive at a choral unison or open fifths. Modulations are accomplished through third-related, tritonal, or enharmonic shifts, or by

Donald Mitchell, "What Do We Know About Britten Now?" in The Britten Companion, ed. Christopher Palmer (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 3132.

57

84 a direct move. Bennett's choral scores are littered with accidentals, with or without a key signature. A second-inversion triad often substitutes for the root position as a consonant sonority. Evidence of rhythmic control is prominent in Bennett's scores. Tempo changes are built into the notation, as are precise durations to accomplish elongated phrase endings. Diminution, augmentation, and metric shifts including hemiola are among the devices employed. Bennett's affinity for English verse is at the fore of his choral writing. Melodic lyricism beautifully complements the lilt of his well-chosen texts. Changing meters facilitate the natural rhythmic flow of text, and subtle word-painting depicts the emotional content of the poetry. Detailed score indications draw attention to expressive qualities in the music. Finally, Richard Rodney Bennett's unaccompanied choral music for mixed voices is extremely well-crafted, upholding classical ideals of balance and symmetry in modified strophic and rounded structural forms.

85 APPENDIX LIST OF UNACCOMPANIED CHORAL WORKS FOR MIXED VOICES BY RICHARD RODNEY BENNETT (b. 1936) ______________________________________________________________________ Title Text Duration Date ______________________________________________________________________ Madrigal Verses (Nos. 1, 2, and 3) The Sorrows of Mary Five Carols Anonymous John Donne (15721631) Anonymous, 15th c. Anonymous, 14th c., 15th c. William Ballett, 17th c. Robert Herrick (15911674) Anonymous, 15th c. John Donne Kathleen Raine (19082003) < 5' 7' < 5' 25' 1962 1965 1965 1967

What Sweeter Music Flower Carol Devotions "Spell of Sleep" from Spells

< 5' 5' 15' 4'

1968 1968 1975 1974/ 1986 1980 1983

Puer nobis Sea Change

Alice Meynell (18471922) William Shakespeare (15641616) Andrew Marvell (162178) Edmund Spenser (?155299) Anonymous, 15th c. Walter de la Mare (18731956) Latin Roman Mass Ordinary Edward Lear (181288) Henry King (15921669) Francis Quarles (15921644)

< 5' 15'

Lullay Mine Liking Nowel Missa brevis Calico Pie A Contemplation upon Flowers A Good-Night

< 5' < 5' 15' 28' 5' < 5'

1985 1987 1990 1994 1999 1999

86 APPENDIX - Continued ______________________________________________________________________ Title Text Duration Date ______________________________________________________________________ On Christmas Day: To My Heart Carol Town and Country Clement Paman, c. 1660 W. R. Rodgers (190969) William Wordsworth (17701850) Charles Morris (17451838) John Donne Giles Fletcher, c. 1593 Anonymous Thomas Campion (15671619) Holy Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13 John Skelton (14601529) < 5' < 5' 7' 1999 2000 2002

This Day Time* I Saw Three Ships* Four Poems of Thomas Campion These Three* Serenades*

< 5' 3' < 3' 13' 4' 14'

2003 2005 2006 2007 2007 2007

______________________________________________________________________

*During the author's final preparation of this document for submission to the Graduate College at the University of Arizona for the doctoral degree audit, these new choral works were added to Bennett's catalog.

87 REFERENCES

Ashley, Carl Philip. "A Survey of the Sacred Choral Works of William James Mathias (19341992) with an Analysis of Selected Works." D.M.A. diss., University of Miami, 2002. Banfield, Stepehen, ed. The Twentieth Century. The Blackwell History of Music in Britain, ed. Ian Spink, vol. 6. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1995. Bennett, Sir Richard Rodney. Madrigal. London: Novello & Company, 1962. ________. The Sorrows of Mary. London: Oxford University Press by arrangement with Universal Edition, 1965. ________. Verses. London: UE, 1965. ________. Two Carols. London: UE, 1968. ________. Five Carols. London: UE, 1967. Reprint, 1999. ________. Four Devotions. London: UE, 1975. ________. Puer nobis. London: Novello, 1983. ________. Lullay Mine Liking. London: Novello, 1985. ________. Spell of Sleep (from Spells). London and Sevenoaks: Novello, 1986. ________. Nowel. London: Novello, 1987. ________. Sea Change. London and Sevenoaks: Novello, 1989. ________. Missa brevis. Reproduced from holograph. London: Novello, 1990. Reprint, 2004. ________. "Nobody Does Exactly What I Do." Interview by Andrew Ford. In Composer to Composer: Conversations about Contemporary Music. St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1993. ________. "Knowing the Score: Interviews." Interview by Neil Brand. In Dramatic Notes: Foregrounding Music in the Dramatic Experience. Arts Council of England Series, ed. Will Bell, vol. 9. Luton, Bedfordshire, England: University of Luton Press, 1998.

88 ________. Calico Pie. London: Novello, 1998. ________. A Contemplation upon Flowers. Reproduced from holograph. London: Novello, 1999. ________. A Good-Night. London: Novello, 1999. ________. On Christmas Day: To My Heart. London: Novello, 1999. ________. Carol. Reproduced from holograph. London: Novello, 2000. ________. Town and Country. Reproduced from holograph. London: Novello, 2002. ________. This Day. London: Novello, 2003. ________. Four Poems of Thomas Campion. London: Novello, 2007. Blake, Andrew. The Land Without Music: Music, Culture, and Society in TwentiethCentury Britain. Music and Society, ed. Peter J. Martin and Tia DeNora. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Boulez, Pierre. Boulez on Music Today. Translated by Susan Bradshaw and Richard Rodney Bennett. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971. Bradshaw, Susan. "Richard Rodney Bennett: The Last Decade." The Musical Times 123 (1982): 60911. ________. "Bennett's Versatility." The Musical Times 125 (1984): 38184. ________. Liner notes to Spells. The Bach Choir, Sir David Willcocks, conductor. Continuum CCD 1030, 1991. Cock, Christopher Moll. "The English Musical Renaissance of the Twentieth Century: Its Philosophical and Musical Stylistic Elements as Exemplified in Representative Choral Works of Kenneth Leighton, William Mathias and Paul Patterson." D.M.A. diss., University of Arizona, 1987. Cole, Hugo. "Patterson's Progress." The Musical Times 121 (1980): 43437. Cottrell, Willard Charles. "The Choral Music of Paul Patterson." D.M.A. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1984.

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