Members of the British Music Society may well remember Brian Daubney who was for some time Chairman of the Society and Editor of the newsletter. He was and remains a dedicated champion of the music of Benjamin Burrows with whom he studied. Long-standing members of the Society may also know him as a composer since a handful of his songs had been recorded during the early pioneering years of the BMS (BMS 403 - cassette only). Since the time of his professional retirement in 1997, Brian Daubney resumed his composing career and composed a huge quantity of songs with remarkable regularity and consistency. Incidentally, the Society’s archives hold a considerable number of volumes of his songs, no less than twelve at the time of writing, as well as other material.

This brand new release includes seventeen songs written between 1999 and 2004, which give a good idea of Daubney’s "late flowering", to quote Stan Meares’ phrase. Incidentally I am much indebted to Stan for providing me with some factual information concerning Brian’s songs. The thirty songs recorded here are all fairly recent, composed between 1992 and 2004, with the exception of John Anderson, my Jo (words by Robert Burns) and She hath an Art (words by Thomas Campion) that date from the late 1950s. His literary sources are quite varied, from fairly well-known to some less familiar writers and poems. Over recent years, he has composed quite a number of songs to words by the American writer Theodora Goss (born 1968) and by John Alan Davis (born 1929); but a quick glance at the names of the writers reveals wide-ranging interest with settings to words by Keats, Yeats, Hardy, Betjeman, Charlotte Brontë and Randall Swingler to name but a few. The variety of literary sources ensures a remarkable variety in musical settings avoiding any monotony which may often be the main shortcoming of song recitals.

The comparatively early She hath an Art delightfully nods towards Warlock. I can imagine Brian’s eyes blinking with malice when writing this, whereas The Lent Lily and March (both to Housman’s words) bring John Ireland to mind, and none the worse for that. Other songs have an appropriately folk-like tone, such as John Anderson, my Jo and The Fiddler of Dooney (to words by Yeats) or the very beautiful Yeats setting The Lake Isle of Innisfree that sometimes brings Moeran to mind. Theodora Goss’s words, by turns deeply-felt and mildly ironic, find Daubney responding with equally vivid and eloquent tones. His setting of The Singer is one of finest here, very contrasted: declamatory, at times overtly dramatic and beautifully lyrical.

John Alan Davis’s poems, too, obviously mean a great deal to Daubney, and some of the Davis settings are among the finest things in this recital. I particularly like I must go and sleep, the mildly ironic October Roses and Resurrection Spiritual, the latter alluding – both in text and music – to some exalted American Allelujah-shouting preachers, again with tongue-in-cheek irony.

Brian Daubney is not afraid to set words that have been regularly used by generations of composers, such as poems by Housman (The Lent Lily) and Hardy, including Lyonnesse set by Gerald Finzi and by the Irish-born Gerard Victory, or Yeats (e.g. The Cloths of Heaven). However, settings of lesser-known poems also feature here, such as the deceptively simple but deeply moving On the Death of Anne Brontë (words by Charlotte Brontë) and the very fine Absence to words by Charlotte Mew, a name new to me. I was very happy to hear A Rose for Lidice to Swingler’s words again. This song was among the finalists of the 2002 Golden Jubilee Song Composers’ Competition. I suppose that some know Rawsthorne’s beautiful choral setting of this utterly moving text, but Daubney’s own setting is equally moving for all its apparent simplicity.

It would be idle on my part to go into detail about each of these thirty songs. They are all very fine, each one bringing off some facet of Daubney’s music-making. At the risk of repeating myself, I will say again that there is much variety here as far as literary sources and settings are concerned and much to relish. Daubney’s songs may not add anything new to the long British tradition of song-writing, to which they clearly belong, but they certainly breathe fresh air into it.

Both singers obviously enjoy these songs and are superbly partnered by John Talbot, who again proves a very attentive accompanist. The recorded sound is very fine too, with some nicely natural piano sound and the voices not too close. In short, a most welcome release.

Hubert Culot

As ever with British Music Society releases you can depend on a disc of carefully compiled and thoughtfully researched music. Quite whether the music here is as revelatory as some is more open to debate. In fact, my abiding thought is, yet again, what an extraordinary surge of musical creativity the English Musical Renaissance was when compared with the blandness of much that came before. This disc is in fact a recording of a concert given on 15 November 1997 showcasing (for want of a better word) music that was written during the reign of Queen Victoria. As a conspectus of the style and type of British music (away from the Parry/Stanford axis) it is a very useful document and I can imagine that attending the concert was both fascinating and rewarding. Whether any of the music here deserves preservation except for curiosity or reference value is more open to question. In the midst of the relatively well-known composers like Arthur Sullivan and Alexander Mackenzie we get to hear music by John Hullah, John Liptrop Hatton and Brinley Richards to name but three.

The concert was based on an idea by BMS stalwart Stan Meares and it is a well structured programme. I enjoyed the mixture of items from choral, to inspirational(?) songs to solo piano items. Quite deliberately I am sure this recreates a kind of concert-party atmosphere which the slightly dusty nature of the music does little to disperse. John Talbot on piano is the standout performer. The solo piano items are the most technically demanding items on offer here and Talbot plays them each impeccably and with as much musicianship as one could wish. It is quite extraordinary however just how hard these composers found it to throw off the shackles of 19th Century Germanic models. Sterndale Bennett’s Romance No.2 Op.14 impresses by its workmanship and easy-flowing melody while at the same time being more Mendelssohnian than Mendelssohn in his most Songs without Words mode. On that subject – is it just me or is the opening phrase here of Mackenzie’s Dormi Jesu (track 3) rather close to Mendelssohn’s O for the wings of a dove! Likewise, you can imagine Walter Macfarren’s L’Amitié – Caprice having composition professors purring their approval for all the things it does ‘right’ without ever troubling the concept of originality. Talbot is also the accompanist for the solo items in the programme. Unfortunately, given the number of items with words no texts are provided but this disadvantage is countered by clear diction from all the singers. The piano parts are uniformly dull providing little more than a simple harmonic basis on which the melodies lie. In the main the songs are in ballad form with a basic verse structure allowing the recounting of an enlightening narrative or text. In all honesty it could not be said that any of the soloists have exceptional voices but they are all very well attuned to the style required. Perhaps it does take a Benjamin Luxon in his pomp to ‘sell’ this type of song. The choral items are sung by the Midland Chorale. They are a hardworking and enthusiastic amateur chorus who sing well but again lack that last ounce of tonal refinement and technical address that would help lift the mediocre material onto a higher plane. Sullivan’s Jubilee Hymn – O King of Kings is a good example. It was commissioned personally by Queen Victoria to be sung “throughout the Empire” as part of her Jubilee. One wonders if she was hoping for another Onward Christian Soldiers because if so she didn’t get it. This is Sullivan at his most po-faced and least original – I’m sure the Victorian establishment was delighted! To take one further example – Michael Balfe (his dates are given wrongly in the liner-notes) was a composer hugely feted by the Victorian age. His statue was erected at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane as one of 4 ‘immortals’ of theatre – the other three are Shakespeare, Garrick and Keane. For sure his melodies are fluent and easy on the ear, but an immortal I think not.

In fact it is the slightest spark of real compositional genius that is conspicuously absent from this programme. Take Philip Armes’ madrigal, Victoria written in 1897 for the Jubilee it won (out of 34 other submissions) the Molyneux Prize and the Madrigal Society’s Medal but a hundred years hence it sounds drear and a pastiche in the worst way. Unfortunately it is this item that shows up the limitations of the choir with Armes’ carefully (too carefully?) written polyphonic lines finding out the singer’s weaknesses in terms of tuning and ensemble. Bear in mind by that year Elgar had already produced the relatively minor Songs from the Bavarian Highlands Op.27 and such miniature gems for choir as The Snow and Fly, Singing Bird Op.26, pieces which in their emerging personality go way beyond anything on offer on this disc. The best known work on the CD is Home! Sweet Home! by Sir Henry Bishop. This is a classic case of a melody known to nearly everyone but few, myself included, could name the composer. Yet in the context of this programme it is fascinating how naturally this drawing-room ballad evolves out of the musical language of the other more self-conciously ‘serious’ works. They are all ploughing the same musical/aesthetic furrow. To my mind that is the crux of the problem facing composers in 19th century Britain. They were struggling to produce work that served the dual purposes of ‘moral rectitude’ on one hand whilst paying homage to Germanic musical ideals on the other. It would take an outsider like Elgar, driven by his own artistic creed and from outside the establishment to break through this cultural glass ceiling.

Perhaps the ultimate example of the general mediocrity of the music here is the fact that ‘talented amateur’ Prince Albert’s Does my brother think of me? fits perfectly into the programme! Almost every piece seems to be a dilution of something else. So Macfarren’s Pack Clouds Away is blatantly influenced by Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock; one of the less successfully performed pieces to be honest – neither soprano Katy Morrell or clarinetist Wilfred Goddard sounding completely at ease. Conversely the two settings by Walter Carroll benefit from having a deliberate simplicity that makes them grateful to sing and pleasant to listen to. The largest piece in the concert closes the CD, Sir George C. Martin’s Short Festival Te Deum in A. This has historical interest as Martin, in his role as organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral, wrote this for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. The occasion is recorded by the painting reproduced on the CD’s cover and a vast and impressive event it looks too. Performed on the steps of St Paul’s by a military band, massed choirs and the ‘Great Paul’ bell of the Cathedral you can imagine the pomp. Sadly, stripped of that adrenalin-fuelled scenario again the music appears as frankly dull. Sadly, the organ of Tettenhall College where this concert was recorded, is simply not up to the job and the choir struggle to project the work as well as they might. Don’t forget The Dream of Gerontius was only three years away when Martin did his dutiful best, chalk and cheese doesn’t even come close!

The recording of this concert is straightforwardly achieved. The audience are immaculately quiet – barely a rustle or a cough from beginning to end with applause after the final item reminding one of its live nature. Very much a curiosity item then and not a disc I would return to often except for reference purposes. But as a disc to remind one of the blazing genius of Elgar and the unique path he trod through 1890s British musical culture invaluable.

Nick Barnard