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.