Tuba Tune

Norman Cocker (1889-1953) was an English organist and

composer, born in Ripponden, Yorkshire, and educated in

Oxford where he was first a chorister at Magdalen College, then

organ scholar at Merton College. However, he never completed

his degree; at his own admission, he didn't do enough work. He

was appointed sub-organist at Manchester Cathedral in 1920,

and took up the Organist post in 1943, later taking up various cinema organist posts in

the city in addition to his duties at the Cathedral. Indeed, he was often seen rushing

from the cinema to the Cathedral, or vice versa, in his carpet slippers!

The Tuba Tune is arguably the most famous work of that name ever written. It was

published in 1922, and is characterised by a confident tune first heard in chorus and

then on the solo tuba. After its initial statement in the tonic key, it is heard again in G

and B flat major, and in a thunderous F sharp major pedal entry. Fragments of the tune

are then used as motivic material in antiphony between chorus and tuba, and over a

dominant pedal point which builds towards the final and grandest statement of the tune

in the pedal. The final moments of the piece thoroughly showcase the grandeur of the

Temple organ alongside the somewhat flamboyant and flashy cinematic writing of the

composer.

Vierne 150 A programme of French and British Music

Concert 2

Tuba Tune, Cocker

Chanson de Matin, Elgar

Fantasia and Toccata in D Minor, Stanford

Prelude on Rhosymedre, Vaughan williams

Symphonie no. 2 in E Minor, Vierne

Chanson de Matin

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) was a self-taught English composer,

whose most famous works include the Enigma Variations, the

Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos for violin and

cello, and two symphonies, as well as a number of choral

works, the most well known of which are arguably The Dream

of Gerontius and his two oratorios The Apostles and The Kingdom.

Elgar was educated at Littleton House School, Worcester, where he began to learn

German in the hope of going to the Leipzig Conservatory to study music. Unfortunately

however, his father could not afford to send him and so, in 1872, Elgar left school to

begin working as a clerk in a local solicitor’s office. He did not enjoy his work and, after

only a few months, left to pursue a career in music.

Despite not having studied at Leipzig, Elgar was deeply influenced by the music of

continental Europe. His harmony was shaped by Handel, Dvořák and Brahms, his

chromaticism by Wagner, and the clarity of his orchestral writing was influenced by the

music of Berlioz, Massenet, Saint-Saëns and Delibes. A lot of his music did not gain

immediate public popularity, and took a number of years to find its place in the

concert repertory of British orchestras. It enjoyed an international revival in the 1960s,

but remains most popular in his native Britain.

The Chanson de Matin was written between 1889-90 and published in 1899. It was

originally scored for violin and piano, and later orchestrated for flute, oboe, clarinet,

bassoon, two horns, a small string section, and harp. It was first performed, together

with its ‘companion’ piece Chanson de Nuit, at the Queen's Hall on 14 September

1901, and was soon after arranged for organ by Herbert Brewer, organist at Gloucester

Cathedral. The piece opens with a beautiful lyrical melody, echoed by a livelier staccato

tune reminiscent of birdsong. The middle B minor section of the piece has a far more

fervent character: the sweeping tune forms a number of falling suspensions which build

in intensity until the accelerando, where the melody begins to rise against a falling

chromatic pedal line. Finally, the opening melody returns, and the piece gradually

draws to a close with sudden surges of grandeur, elements of each distinct tune, and

fluttering scales and trills.

Fantasia and Toccata in D Minor

Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924) produced music of

almost every genre, including orchestral symphonies, concerti

and rhapsodies, choral music, chamber music and works for

solo piano and organ.

His style was staunchly classical – he greatly admired Brahms – and, as a lecturer at

Cambridge and the Royal College of Music, centred his teaching around classical

principles rather than the emerging modernist style, of which he was very sceptical.

Although he enjoyed an outstanding career as a composer, many of Stanford’s

orchestral and operatic works have now fallen from the repertory. However, his church

music remains popular: his morning and evening services are an important part of

church and cathedral repertoire, and his organ works feature in most organists’

repertoire. He composed several works for organ, including five sonatas, two sets of six

preludes and postludes (opus 101 and 105), and the Fantasia and Toccata in D Minor,

composed in 1894 and published in 1902.

The piece opens with dramatic, scalic flourishes reminiscent of Bach’s Fantasia and

Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542, although Stanford’s dissonance is, understandably, far

more chromatic and Romantic. After the final chord of this powerful opening section,

the listener expects to hear a perfect cadence, but instead the composer completely

bypasses this harmonic conclusion, choosing instead to move to a quiet, melodic

Allegretto in F major. This builds gradually until the opening material is reiterated, this

time in the relative major and with the missing perfect cadence. The gentle, lilting

Allegretto returns in D major, and the Fantasia closes with a coda characterised by a

dialogue of scalic flourishes between the hands.

Like the Fantasia, the Toccata also demonstrates the influence of Bach in its resolute

mood and arpeggiated figurations, which bear a resemblance to the ‘Dorian’ Toccata,

BWV 538. The opening pedal theme returns at important moments throughout the

piece, either in full, or broken up into melodic or rhythmic motifs, drawing the music

back from lighter, playful moments to the increasingly chromatic and serious manual

episodes. The work concludes with a thundering maestoso which starkly contrasts the

brilliant toccata with a heavier texture of grand chords over a dominant pedal point,

finally closing in the tonic major.

Prelude on Rhosymedre

Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) was an English composer of

opera, ballet, chamber music, sacred and secular choral works,

and orchestral music including nine symphonies, the Fantasia on

a Theme of Thomas Tallis, and The Lark Ascending.

Vaughan Williams began studying music at age five, learning the piano with his aunt

and composing his first four-bar piece, and took up the violin just a year later. He was

educated at Field House Preparatory School and Charterhouse School and, on leaving

aged 18, enrolled as a student at the Royal College of Music where he studied organ

with Walter Parratt and Alan Gray, and composition with Hubert Parry, Charles Villiers

Stanford and Charles Wood. His family had always expected him to go on to receive a

university education so, in 1892, he took up a place at Trinity College Cambridge where

he read music and history, while continuing to receive lessons in organ and

composition from his tutors at the Royal College of Music. After a few years working as

a church organist, Vaughan Williams travelled to Paris to study with Ravel who helped

free him from the ‘heavy contrapuntal Teutonic’ style of writing popular at the time.

Indeed, Vaughan Williams’s music is characterised by its expressiveness, musical

imagery and the influence of Tudor music and English folk-song, most apparent in his

use of modal harmonies. A large part of his contribution as editor of the English

Hymnal in 1906 was arranging and harmonising many existing hymns, and creating

new hymns based on folk tunes he had collected from around the country.

The Prelude on Rhosymedre is the second movement of the Three Preludes on Welsh

Hymn Tunes, based on a hymn written by the 19th-century Anglican priest John David

Edwards, and named after a village in Wrexham, Wales. The Prelude has a ‘hymn-like’

feel in its gentle pace and subdued dynamic. It opens with a simple, independent

accompaniment, before the melody enters in the tenor voice. The tune is then repeated

in the treble, on a more robust registration, but still with a feeling of simplicity and

restraint. Finally, a short passage of improvisatory material connects this middle section

to a repeat of the opening tenor melody. The harmony throughout doesn’t test the

boundaries of conventional harmony, but is full of parallel fourths, fifths, and triads

typical of Vaughan Williams’s writing.

Not only is this piece the most popular of the three Welsh hymn tune preludes among

audiences, it was also played at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, and at the

weddings of Prince William in 2011, and Prince Harry in 2018.

Symphony no. 2 in E Minor

Louis Vierne (1870-1937) was a French organist and composer

who, despite being born almost blind, displayed an exceptional

talent for music from a very early age. He first heard the piano

at the age of two and, after hearing a Schubert lullaby, is

reputed to have been able to pick out the notes of the melody

on the piano. He went on to study at the Paris Conservatoire

and, from 1892, served as assistant to Charles-Marie Widor at the church of Saint-

Sulpice in Paris. He was appointed organist of Notre Dame in 1900 and held the post

until his death in 1937, where he famously died at the console.

Vierne’s second symphony for organ was written between 1902-03, when he had been

in post as organist titulaire of Notre Dame for almost three years. During this time, he

was able to build on the success and experience of his first symphony, and had come to

better know the colours and nuances of the Cavaille-Coll organ.

I. Allegro

II. Choral

III. Scherzo

IV. Cantabile

V. Final

The Symphony opens with a vigorous, sonata-form Allegro. Both the structure of this

movement, and the way its themes appear throughout the rest of the symphony, give

this work a feeling of large-scale, orchestral composition. The first theme is assertive and

angular, and the source of this movement’s tempestuous character; the second theme is

far more lyrical:

.

Theme 1 .

etc.

Theme 2

etc.

The exposition ends with a powerful C sharp diminished seventh chord. During the

development, Theme 1 and 2 are combined, deconstructed and transformed, and finally

both return after a series of scalic flourishes and percussive chords in an unrelentingly

busy recapitulation. The Choral which follows beautifully contrasts the Allegro with a

simple, singable melody whose rhythms and cadences at times feel more like a folk song

than a hymn. The first section alternates between solo pedal, and gentle chorus, and is

followed by an agitato 6/8 section, which echoes the dark, brooding energy of the first

movement. The choral appears again in a brief largo section, before the music resumes

its climb towards the final entry. Here Vierne rhythmically augments the tune, but keeps

the music moving with a moto perpetuoso accompaniment which moves from the

manuals to the pedals, gradually slowing to a majestic plagal cadence. The bright,

effervescent Scherzo dances along from beginning to end, featuring snippets of pedal

melody, which at times require the player to ‘double pedal’, a technique which requires

complete independence between the feet. As with the Final of Symphony no. 1, Vierne

R. Vinter, October 2020

later published this movement separately for organ and orchestra. The fourth movement

Cantabile employs chromatic harmony, and altered fragments of Theme 1 and 2 to

permeate the music with a feeling of restless searching and uneasiness. The wandering

clarinet solos are simultaneously beautiful and unsettling; there are moments of lyrical

eloquence and of jarring chromatic twists and turns. The Symphony concludes with a

virtuoso Final, which builds on the feelings of disquiet established in the Cantabile. Even

at its quietest, this movement still conveys the feeling of an approaching storm, with the

power of the swell reeds firmly shut in the box. At its loudest, it lets loose a maelstrom of

agitated rhythms, tortuously chromatic harmony, punchy chords and flurries of

semiquavers, which persist to the very end. The movement closes in the tonic major,

leaving the listener with a feeling of resolution and triumph after an intensely emotional

and powerful journey.