I have a piece in today's Independent about John Foulds (1880-1939), the extraordinary British composer whose biggest work, A World Requiem, is to be performed for the first time in 81 years at the Remembrance Sunday concert at the Royal Albert Hall this weekend. The work was premiered at the Remembrance Day Festival in 1923 and was given for the same event for four years running, with 1250 performers each time, before being unofficially 'banned'. Apparently Sir Adrian Boult thought it was boring and the editor of the Express thought Foulds was a communist.
Foulds spent his life in a radical exploration of music and spirituality: he experimented with quarter-tones before Bartok did and with Indian music techniques before Messiaen got to them. With his partner, the musician, educator and fellow Theosophist Maud MacCarthy, he moved to India in 1935, becoming head of western music for the country's national radio and seeking a way to make a synthesis of Indian and European music, decades before anyone thought of terms such as 'world music fusion' (see photo). He died of cholera four years later. Most of his manuscripts were subsequently lost or destroyed, rotting in the heat or being eaten by rats.
The concert is a live broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and you can listen to it on Sunday evening at 6.30pm local time. Be warned: there are 20 movements.
20 comments:
Hi Jessica,
There are 20 movements but some of them are only a page or so long, so only a moderate warning is in order, I'd say.
Keep up the good work,
Malcolm MacDonald
Thank you, Malcolm. I love your book, which was of course where I saw the photo of the fireplace, amongst other things!
By the way, before anyone says anything about it, yes, I know, there was a typo in the Indy piece; of course he was 34, not 24, in 1914.
Dear Jessica,
What a wonderful, fullsome article this is .. what can I say but thank you thank you, and again thank you!
The kind of article which my Grandafather must have dreamt about in his dissapointment - but at last Roger Wright (bless him) is making up for past BBC blunders!
I have the great, great privelage in singing with the Crouch End Festival Choir on Sunday and it would be lovely to thank you personally!
A great dept and depth of gratitude also to Malcolm for his tireless crusade over the last 35 years or so! I hope to meet him again on Sunday.
Until then - a marvellous article and thank you once more,
kindest regards,
Paul Foulds.
Paul, I can't thank you enough for your kind words. This means the world to me! How wonderful that you are singing in the performance. I would love to meet you. Please would you email me direct? You'll find the address at the bottom of the index.
Thank you again for writing!
I heard the Tryptich yesterday via the file theft site Soulseek, which I use as sort of a preview function.
Wow.....just....WOW. What astonishing music--there's the one part where the piano is going nuts and the strings start doing microtones that's out of this world.
Hearing that download had me scrambling to order the CD off of Amazon to hear the rest of the stuff that's on it.
Mr. Foulds, are there any plans to release a recording of the upcoming performance at the Albert Hall? I have a family obligation I can't get out of so I won't be able to hear the relay. :-( :-(
It makes you wonder just how much wonderful music is just scores gathering dust in the archives of Schott, Boosey & Hawkes, Universal Edition, Faber and so on. I love the music of the era surrounding the Great War; Rued Langgaard is another recent discovery--his opera Antikrist is pretty amazing, as is his piece Music of the Spheres.
David Ward has this article in The Guardian which quotes Paul Foulds at the outset. Mr. Foulds, it's marvelous to know that you will be singing in the Sunday performance. How have the rehearsals been? How many other members of your family will be at the concert?
I second HH's question; any chance of a CD release, or perhaps access to an archived webstream for a week, like with the Proms? I too will be nowhere near a computer to listen from this side of the pond, so sadly I must miss hearing the event.
Dear George and Henry
Rehearsals have been very exciting .. it is very much like learning brand-new piece in that there are no previous recordings and no access to what the complete orchestration sounds like ... but if it's anything like the chorus parts - wow! We will get the total effect tomorrow when we are joined by the Maestro and Orchestra. I think you'll enjoy the LIVE recording as Chandos will be at the Albert HAll to record on Sunday (so you will get to hear the first recording in 81 years!) The CD is due for release (I have on good authority) late January 2008.
I think this is a masterpiece and that my Grandfathers revival will be quite a "revelation" to the music world in general. The only person I know who can remember singing the Requiem (he was 9 years old) is my uncle Patrick Foulds - Johns son and my Father's half-brother- who hopes to attend this Sunday. He's 93 and the BBC are applying loving care for his visit from Devon to London!!
Otherwise - my wife, my Brother Ian and my daughter Hannah will be there and, apparently loads of Foulds's from everywhere!
I think you'll enjoy the LIVE recording as Chandos will be at the Albert HAll to record on Sunday (so you will get to hear the first recording in 81 years!) The CD is due for release (I have on good authority) late January 2008
[pumps fist in air like after Everton score a goal] Yes! That's great news.
On one of my trips to England, I went to the CBSO to hear Nicholas Maw's glorious Odyssey. He was there and I asked him to sign my CD of the piece. He said in a slightly irritated voice "What is it with you Americans and CD's"? I shot right back "Well, when Odyssey and Rising of The Moon are performed as often as the Beethoven 5th and La Boheme then I won't need CD's". For some reason, this didn't go over too well! :-)
I listened to the Foulds stuff I downloaded again last night and I simply love it. Now, when is the Royal Opera House or ENO going to do a production of Atavara? :-)
Best of luck on Sunday, Mr. Foulds, may your grandfather's music find the audience it deserves.
Our friend Pliable, who loves to dismiss many of my articles with his usual ineffable charm (especially those in the Indy, for some reason), seems to have decided to accept a well-worn received opinion that the World Requiem is 'an unremarkable and commonplace work' - without hearing it.
Now, I've come across critics who review concerts they haven't attended, books they haven't read and CDs they haven't played, but this takes the cake.
Pliable, darling, you are free to stop reading my work at any time you like.
Jessica, I actually quoted a view expressed by Peter J Pirie, and cited my source.
Check Pirie's dates.
He is probably the only person out of everyone writing about this work, including you and me, who has actually heard a performance of the World Requiem.
Surely that makes his view at least worth considering?
Regards,
Pliable
Yes, Pliable, I'm sure that's true. He's entitled to his viewpoint, as is each person. But since the work hasn't been heard for 81 years, surely it's worth waiting to explore it for oneself before accepting anybody else's notion as incontrovertible fact? Opinions are formed by a range of influences and those brought to bear on today's ears will inevitably be different from those of the 1920s. Just imagine if we accepted Hanslick's view of Wagner without hearing a note of the music, or Julius Korngold's opinion of Schoenberg...
Btw, I did hear a little of it today, on the strength of which I'd say that Mr Pirie's description is potentially misleading. 'Unremarkable' and 'commonplace' suggest that it contains nothing that makes it stand out from the crowd. OK, it's not on the level of Brahms or Verdi - but also I've never heard anything quite like it before. Vaughan Williams on some substance strange and strong, perhaps. My guess is that people will love it or hate it... The proof will be in tomorrow's pudding.
Other articles on the pending performance are from Ivan Hewett in the Telegraph here and from Richard Morrison in The Times here. Morrison's article addresses covers both positive and negative voices fair-mindedly, I thought.
Mr. Foulds, that's great news that Chandos will release this performance on CD. It's also great to see from Morrison's article that 27 members of the Foulds extended family will be in attendance.
One would have thought that Sakari Oramo would have been an appropriate choice as conductor, given his championship of Foulds with the CBSO and his recordings. But then I saw Oramo's comments in the Morrison article, so now it all makes sense. Plus, with Leon Botstein's well known predilection for offbeat repertoire for his American Symphony Orchestra concerts, it's no surprise to see him willing to take on this conducting job.
From this side of the pond, I literally have no idea what the work will be like. It may be marvelous, terrible, or somewhere in between. Probably the last, as with a lot of things in life. I'll obviously have to wait at least a year to find out, barring the end of civilization as we know it. But with Chandos releasing the CD, I have no doubt that with Brian Couzens in charge, the recording job will be in good hands.
Thanks, George - the articles are both interesting (the Times one is by Geoff Brown, though, not Richard Morrison, and I think his point about the 'chinawomen' is quite silly because that was the early 1920s and that's how people were - even if the second Mrs F would have disapproved!).
How interesting that sentimentality is considered a sin in a Requiem (and everywhere else) but melodrama like Verdi's Dies Irae is generally accepted as OK. I've had to deal with several bereavements, in the light of which I find Verdi's hellfires positively offensive.
Oops, my bad; yes, it is indeed Geoff Brown as author of the Times article. Richard Morrison had his "top five classical" events list in The Times where the Foulds event was listed, and obviously I mixed the two authors up.
Jessica and Pliable,
Though I haven't got his book to hand, Peter J Pirie (whom I knew slightly, and corresponded with a bit) doesn't in that extract actually say that he HEARD the World Requiem, and he was prone to making (frequently rather strange) judgements on the look of a score. I've suspected for 30 years that the score of the World Requiem, especially the vocal score, simply doesn't hint at the physical sound and aura of the piece, and having yesterday heard the final rehearsal and the performance I know my suspicions were right. The work surprised even me! I'm quite sure it will polarize opinions, but that's good: as for me, my head is ringing with it this morning. It was great to be there and meet or re-encounter so many of the Foulds family in one place - it was an unforgettable occasion.
Cheers,
Malcolm
Hello,
Can't say a lot as my head is as full ... if not more.. than Malcolm's... of yesterday's performance... I'm floating in a mental sea of sound!
Seen a nice review in the Telegraph this morning but nothing else as yet.
THE unforgettable concert of my lifetime,
Paul.
On the biographical front, can anyone confirm that John Foulds in fact married a DORA Woodcock in 1902 (not 1909), in Chorlton? This information comes from the BMD index, Vol 8c Page 1385, and has left me a litle puzzled...
A wonderful blog, Jessica!
Sarah Spalding
To Paul Foulds
I have been trying to get information on John H Foulds and his marriage to Maud MacCarthy to put in my family tree
Can you contact me at Shawfamilytree at gmail.com (substitute at with @ and no spaces to get past the spammers)
Maggi
Perth Australia
To Sarah Spalding
I have only the information from Free BDM which gave 1902. Nor I have not been able to find the exact date or the whereabouts of his marriage to Maud MacCarthy. If anyone can help and tell where Maud was buried in 1967 on the Isle of Mann, I can order the death certificate and back track from there
Maggi
Perth Australia
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