Anthony Payne

composer

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Poems of Edward Thomas

2003
15'
sop/pf/vn.va.vc

1st perf:
25 September 2003
Malvern Concert Club, Malvern Theatres
Jane’s Minstrels
Jane Manning, soprano

Text: Edward Thomas
Includes a version of Adlestrop
Recorded on NMC 
Self-published

Programme note: 

Casting about a few years ago for a suitable poem to set as a birthday present for my wife Jane Manning, I took up the poems of Edward Thomas. Suddenly, poetry which I had previously read with a merely casual enjoyment began to strike me as the product of a quite extraordinary sensibility, utterly original in language and syntax,and very appealing in its simple honesty and intensity of focus. One poem in particular leapt from the page, and I have to admit with some shame that at the time I was unaware that it was one of the best-loved and most anthologised poems of its age. If I had, I might not have chosen Adlestrop with such carefree innocence.

As it was, Thomas's account of a train that stopped unexpectedly at a deserted country station, revealing to its passengers the magical secrets of an English landscape proved irresistible. I set it with an accompaniment for piano alone, and opened with an extended introduction suggesting the speeding train and its slowing to a halt, with the, for me, fascinating attendant sounds of hissing steam and clanking pistons. After this externalised tone-picture, the song becomes internal as the singer confides the opening verses in a recitative. Then, with the train's speeding motive transformed to suggest the sounds of nature,the voice soars in lyrical flight, responding to flowers, clouds and birdsong, before closing in rapt serenity.

Adlestrop remained a piano song for some years until I was asked to make an arrangement of it for a record celebrating Jane's commitment to modem British music. I chose the ensemble Vaughan Williams had used in On Wenlock Edge, voice with piano quintet, which enabled me to colour the piano's atmospheric harmony. Increasingly, however, I felt I would like to place the song in the wider context of a cycle, and when I received the present commission I realised the perfect opportunity had arisen.

For some time I was in two minds whether to write a set of railway songs (Hardy would have been pressed into service} or an Edward Thomas cycle. Eventually I plumped for the latter as affording more expressive variety, and at the same time I decided to reduce the supporting ensemble to piano quartet, which would require a third version of Adlestrop. I had begun to feel that the piano quintet version was a little dense in string tone; also the quartet seemed better suited to programme requirements

Inventing an overall structure for the cycle which would encompass the already composed Adlestrop troubled me for a while, but eventually I decided to place it last and prefigure its quick/slow bi-partite form with a fast opening song ( that wonderful call for inspiration ·words" ) and a stately centrepiece (the much admired "Lights out" ). Thus the three songs are overlaid by four tempo sections. I have chosen the simplest of vocal styles to be true to Thomas's vision, avoiding melismas and indeed all the modernistic devices which in the past I and indeed many others have used in recognition of Jane's famed technical prowess.

The Malvern Concert Club commissioned this work with the aid of a grant from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust. Its preparation and first performance were supported with funds from the Performing Rights Society Foundation and the Elgar Society.

 

Anthony Payne

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