CHORAL MUSIC BY JONATHAN DOVE - Abeille Musique

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© Hugo Glendinning <strong>JONATHAN</strong> <strong>DOVE</strong> wonderful coup de théâtre at the words ‘God in man’, which temporarily interrupts the flow and has all voices high and in a remote key from what has immediately preceded it—a magical effect. The Star-Song is another piece for Christmas which, like Wellcome, all wonders, uses different characters to create a little drama. In this case it is a dialogue between 4 the star in the east and a chorus (perhaps representing the shepherds). The poem is by Robert Herrick (1591–1674) and he colourfully has the chorus asking where Christ is to be found. The assumption is that he will be laid in lily-banks or in ‘some ark of flowers’ or ‘in the morning’s blushing cheek’ and so on. The star replies emphatically ‘No’, and tells them that he is simply at his mother’s breast. The chorus then replies ecstatically that ‘He’s seen, He’s seen!’ and that they will give him ‘wassailing’ and ‘choose Him King, and make His mother Queen’. It is a wonderfully upbeat poem and Dove’s response to it is simple and effective. The organ part creates a ‘bright and twinkling’ star effect which continues throughout as another moto perpetuo. The tenors and basses are the chorus and the upper voices represent the star. When the moment of recognition comes the whole choir sings together. The use of a constant metre keeps the excitement buzzing, and the ending simply flies into the air. The Three Kings was commissioned by the choir of King’s College, Cambridge for its annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols in the year 2000. For the text Dove chose a fascinating poem by Dorothy L Sayers called ‘The Three Kings’. It is written in a quasi-medieval style with an ‘O balow, balow la lay, / Gifts for a baby King, O’ refrain. Sayers portrays her three kings in the three ages of man— young, in the prime of life, and very old. With perhaps an unexpected twist and a departure from received imagery Sayers portrays the young king as doleful and bringing myrrh; the prime-of-life king is a solemn priest who brings incense, ‘sad and sweet’, and it is the very old king who brings the handfuls of gold which are not money but gaud, baubles and glittering toys for a baby boy. Dove simply reflects these different personalities. The first is sung by two soprano soloists accompanied by the choir singing the words of the refrain. For the second king the speed increases a little but upper voices still sing the descriptive
text whilst the choir sings the refrain words as accompaniment. The third king is introduced mysteriously but, out of the blue, Dove throws the music into an energetic scherzo as he describes the golden baubles and the excitement of the child’s response in receiving them. The piece ends in quiet reflection. Run, shepherds, run! is a completely different conception and underlines Dove’s preoccupation with and feel for drama and the dramatic. This was another Spitalfields Festival commission, this time celebrating the life of Christopher Robert Vaughan, who died in his late thirties. Vaughan was a local resident in Spitalfields and Patron of the Festival who left part of his estate to funding the Festival’s ‘Learning and Participation’ programme. (This was not the only work commissioned from Jonathan Dove in memory of Vaughan as he was also asked to write a community cantata On Spital Fields to celebrate Vaughan’s life.) The poem—‘The Angel’s Song’ by William Drummond of Hawthornden (1585–1649), from a collection called Flowers of Sion—is energetic and ideal for Dove’s purposes. The music was written to be performed with audience participation and they need to be taught their ‘refrain’ before the performance. In fact the music is quite complex as the audience part is divided up as the piece progresses, first into two parts and then into four parts, all of whom sing with a section of the choir. As Dove writes in his preface: ‘The four-part division presents the audience with quite a challenge: it may result in a degree of happy chaos, but this is all part of the fun.’ Wells Cathedral Choir take no such risks on this recording; the highly trained Wells Cathedral School Chapel Choir act as the ‘audience’ and all is well! The main theme that runs throughout is also taken by the audience. Dove treats it in a number of different ways and, imaginatively (and helpfully), before the audience’s first entries their phrases are sung strongly by the choir, 5 which they then imitate. The model for much of this piece is Britten’s A Boy was Born in which he has a constantly repeated energetic figure passed around the vocal parts over which is sung a binding longer-note melody (sung by the boys’ choir in Britten’s case). The result is very exciting and strongly energized. Ralph Allwood is well known for his influential summer choral courses at Eton College. He commissioned Dove to write an anthem for the 1997 course at Eton and Dove responded with Ecce beatam lucem, a setting of words which, in a prefatory note, Dove says were possibly written by Alessandro Striggio (1540–1592). Striggio wrote a fortypart motet setting these words which is often coupled with the more famous one by Tallis. It is an ecstatic poem in praise of light and its source from the sun, the moon and the stars which are all created by God. The music is underpinned by a series of fast-moving and constantly repeated keyboard figures on the organ as the choir moves between slower-moving lyrical phrases and quickly imitative figures thrown from voice to voice. The final section (‘O mel et dulce nectar’), in a slower, reflective mood, leads to the final beautiful bars, which Dove marks to be ‘slow and serene.’ In beauty may I walk was composed as a leaving present for Anthony Whitworth Jones, a great supporter of Dove’s who commissioned him to compose numerous works for the Glyndebourne Festival including the opera Flight, on his departure from Glyndebourne in August 1998. This is a short and simple setting of anonymous words from the Navajo translated by the American poet Jerome K Rothenberg, who made a remarkable job of the almost untranslatable. The Navajo is a huge tribe of North American Indians whose reservation (mostly in Arizona) is the largest in the United States. The Navajos have never stopped speaking their native Athabaskan language which is spoken only on the Navajo reservation. Until recently it
Page 1 and 2: CHORAL MUSIC BY JONATHAN DOVE WELLS
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Page 7 and 8: Bless the Lord, O my soul 1 Ah, Ble
Page 9 and 10: In a poor cottage inned, a virgin m
Page 11 and 12: MATTHEW OWENS is Organist and Maste
Page 13 and 14: en dessous, maintienne l’élan. U
Page 15 and 16: vit commander une autre œuvre, On
Page 17 and 18: CHORMUSIK VON Jonathan Dove JONATHA
Page 19 and 20: Crashaw aus dem 17. Jahrhundert. Da
Page 21 and 22: der Navajo-Indianer übertragen wur
Page 23 and 24: Recorded in The Cathedral Church of
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CHORAL MUSIC BY JONATHAN DOVE - Abeille Musique

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