Fand IncWessex Press

Reginald Spofforth wrote around 75 glees; they are the music for which he is best remembered, and several of his glees won prizes. Hail, Smiling Morn (composed in 1810, probably to the composer’s own words) won no prize, but nevertheless ended up being widely regarded as the most popular glee in the entire repertory. It is still frequently performed today and can be found on many different recordings in a variety of guises. It is often sung as either a Christmas or an Easter carol (though there is no compelling reason why it should be, as its words are not seasonal), and is particularly popular in the West Riding of Yorkshire (especially in Huddersfield, Sheffield, Bradford and the Holme Valley). It is frequently performed by choral societies and in the pub-singing traditions at Christmas in the area; in the Borders, it is also sung during the centuries-old Selkirk Common Riding festival.

Hail, Smiling Morn was originally written for four unaccompanied male voices (ATTB), but has been widely adapted. The new Fand edition is an enhancement of the nineteenth-century edition published by Hart & Co., London for three voices (SAB) with optional piano accompaniment. In recognition of the difficulties faced by many 21st-century choirs and choral societies that attempt to perform music of worth (namely, problems in attracting sufficient singers in the lower voices), the new Fand edition makes the Bass line accessible to all male singers, with optional upper and lower pitches where appropriate so that the line can be performed by tenors and/or basses simultaneously, leaving the rest of the harmony to the sopranos and altos.

There is also a piano accompaniment that adds something of substance to the performance, being a genuine accompaniment rather than just a reduction of the voice parts. Nevertheless, the piece may be performed by the three voice parts alone, and this new edition contains small harmonic improvements to improve its effectiveness when sung without accompaniment.

Appropriately enough, given the popularity of this glee in and around the Huddersfield area, this new edition was produced for performance by a Huddersfield choir.

Note that this music has been priced affordably, and is presented as a coverless four-page copy on a folded A3 sheet, to keep its price within the reach of amateur choirs.

POSTAGE COSTS £1.50 ON THIS ITEM.

This book was written in the first decade of the twenty-first century and comes under the shadow of the Iraq war, but is far-reaching in its outlook, being full of both local interest and the sunny vistas of a new and international perspective from the digital age.

This is a perfect-bound paperback volume of 70 pages, including a full-colour cover.

Julian Farmer reads The Cyclists

Visitors may be interested in seeing a video of the poet reading one of his poems from the collection:

Fand Music Press is delighted to have played a major role in the inception of the latest CD from the highly acclaimed cello and piano duo of Lionel Handy and Nigel Clayton, featuring a couple of world-première recordings of music published by Fand.

The meatiest work on the disc is the monumental Cello Sonata of Fand composer John Barton Armstrong. This rarely-performed masterpiece, which the composer considered to be one of his most important works, has occasionally been heard in radio broadcasts, but is receiving its first commercial recording on this CD.

The second piece to receive its first recording on this CD is by another Fand composer, Peter Thompson: his Cello Sonatina was written, coincidentally, in the same year as the Barton Armstrong Sonata (1981).

Finally, the third work on the CD is the Cello Sonata no 2 by Bohuslav Martinů; Lionel Handy and Nigel Clayton have already recorded his Sonata no 1 on a previous CD. The Cello Sonata no 2 is a stylistically pivotal work, being one of the first pieces written by Martinů after his arrival in America.

The CD itself is another particularly high-quality production: it shares a similar presentation to its preceding disc, BAX: Works for Cello and Piano, including a lavish 12-page full-colour booklet and top-quality presentation throughout (see sample images and track samples below). A must for anyone who bought the companion Bax CD!

Peter Thompson’s Cello Sonatina, as recorded on this CD, has generously been made available, with suitable accompanying imagery, as a set of videos on YouTube, as presented below:

Thompson: Cello Sonatina (CD tracks 5–7 in a playlist)

The Happy Forest, completed on 13th May 1914, is based on a prose-poem of the same name by the writer and drama critic Herbert Farjeon (1887–1945), whose original text is reproduced in Lewis Foreman’s Bax: A Composer and his Times (3rd edition, 2007, pp. 428–9). A few brief sketches for the score, in pencil, are owned by Dr Clifford Gillam, and the completed manuscript is in the British Library (Add. MS 50176), having been bequeathed by Harriet Cohen, who died in 1967.

In 1922 Bax returned to the work and started making notes on it for a proposed orchestration, which was completed later that year or early in 1923. The first performance was given by the Goossens Orchestra under Eugene Goossens at Queen’s Hall on 3rd July 1923 as part of a concert in aid of the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children. Subtitled Nature-Poem, the orchestral version was published in 1925 by Murdoch, Murdoch & Co. with a dedication to Goossens. Henry Coates’s programme note for its première clearly uses material supplied by the composer:

This work by Mr Arnold Bax was only recently completed. It was inspired by a fantastic prose-poem of the same name by Mr Herbert Farjeon, the composer intending his score to be a ‘musical counterpart’, to use his own expression, of the poem. The latter is too long for reproduction here, and in any case Mr Bax prefers the music to be listened to apart from the poet’s lines, and to tell its own tale.

The piece was first planned as a work for pianoforte, but never appeared in this form and was eventually evolved into an orchestral work. It takes the form of a Scherzo and Trio, and is so simple in construction that its composer deems any detailed analysis unnecessary.

The subtitle of the work, ‘A Nature-Poem’, sufficiently indicates the scope of the music, and one may add that its aim is to depict the delicate charm of the early days in May in woodland country. The first section of the work is brilliant in its movement and colour: the Trio strikes a quiet pastoral note, of more reflective mood, in contrast with the opening and concluding portions.

—Graham Parlett

The Fand edition of The Happy Forest has been recorded by pianist Natalia Williams-Wandoch on the CD Piano Music by Arnold Bax (USK 1236CD) from Usk Recordings.