Monthly Archives: May 2016

Music

Hubert Parry and John Leaf Whittier’s Dear Lord and Father of Mankind (1888)

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Are hymns capa­ble of being a sub­lime art-form? Or does the Dev­il have the best tunes? Well, cer­tain­ly, we might dis­miss the arche­type of the mod­ern folk-derived “wor­ship song”, fee­bly crooned to the accom­pa­ni­ment of a strummed gui­tar, but how about the con­tents of the clas­sic Hymns Ancient & Mod­ern from the hey­day of Vic­to­ri­an hymnody?

Many of these paeans come across to mod­ern ears as some­what plod­ding and, pep­pered as they so often are with that staunch­ly God-fear­ing lyri­cism laid down by the likes of Charles Wes­ley, strict­ly for die-hard Methodists.

How­ev­er, most peo­ple tend to con­nect with at least one hymn from their youth that stirs their spir­it, be it Abide With Me, I Vow To Thee My Coun­try, or that oth­er hardy peren­ni­al, Amaz­ing Grace. One such hymn that I con­tend is capa­ble of sub­lime heights is Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, the won­der­ful mar­riage of Hubert Parry’s 1888 music writ­ten for Rep­ton School in Der­byshire and words tak­en from John Leaf Whittier’s 1872 poem, The Brew­ing of Soma.

The title of that poem may appear odd; the “soma” of the title was a sacred drink in the Vedic reli­gion with hal­lu­cino­genic prop­er­ties and which was used by devo­tees in an attempt to expe­ri­ence divin­i­ty (cf. the “ide­al plea­sure drug”, soma, of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World). Whit­tier’s point is that one doesn’t need an exter­nal agent to expe­ri­ence divin­i­ty; all one needs is to lis­ten to the “small, still voice” inside and to live the sober, self­less lives as prac­tised by the Quak­ers to whom he was aligned.

Be that as it may, it’s when words and music com­bine in the hands (or throats) of a decent choir that the music comes alive. Joe Wright’s film, Atone­ment, has an acclaimed five-minute track­ing shot depict­ing war-torn Dunkirk dur­ing which we begin to hear a choir of sol­diers, in a bat­tered band­stand, singing Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. An effec­tive and iron­ic poignan­cy aris­es from the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the bleak and des­per­ate scene with the rous­ing majesty of the hymn.

In that spir­it I present a love­ly ver­sion of the hymn, sung excel­lent­ly by the choir of the Abbey School, Tewkes­bury, set, in sim­i­lar jux­ta­po­si­tion, to footage from the Great War.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
for­give our fool­ish ways;
reclothe us in our right­ful mind,
in pur­er lives thy ser­vice find,
in deep­er rev­er­ence, praise.

In sim­ple trust like theirs who heard,
beside the Syr­i­an sea,
the gra­cious call­ing of the Lord,
let us, like them, with­out a word,
rise up and fol­low thee.

O Sab­bath rest by Galilee,
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eter­ni­ty,
inter­pret­ed by love!

Drop thy still dews of quiet­ness,
till all our striv­ings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives con­fess
the beau­ty of thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy cool­ness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earth­quake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

Art

Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (1432)

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Jan and Hubert van Eyck’s Ado­ra­tion of the Mys­tic Lamb of 1432, bet­ter known as the Ghent Altar­piece, ranks among the most sig­nif­i­cant works of art in Europe. Housed at Saint Bavo’s Cathe­dral in Ghent, Bel­gium, this large and com­plex altar­piece has suf­fered a var­ied his­to­ry over the cen­turies, hav­ing been dis­man­tled, stolen, dam­aged, reassem­bled, recov­ered, cleaned, and restored sev­er­al times over. Thank good­ness that it is cur­rent­ly in good and safe con­di­tion, and open for view­ing by the pub­lic, at St Bavo’s.

I stum­bled across this great work of art on a TV pro­gramme just days before I was due to take a week­end break in Brus­sels. It seemed too serendip­i­tous not to arrange the short side-trip to Ghent, and thus I have been for­tu­nate to view this piece up close and per­son­al.

The van Eyck broth­ers, and Jan in par­tic­u­lar, were sig­nif­i­cant artists of the North­ern Renais­sance, oper­at­ing out of Bruges and leav­ing to pos­ter­i­ty such var­ied works as the Arnolfi­ni por­trait, the illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­script known as the Turin-Milan Hours, and this great altar­piece in Ghent.

Jan van Eyck, the younger and more famous of the two broth­ers, was a mas­ter of nat­u­ral­is­tic detail. He pays as much atten­tion to earth­ly beau­ty as he does to the reli­gious themes in the altar­piece. The folds of the clothes, the jew­els, the foun­tain, the flow­ers and veg­e­ta­tion, the church­es and land­scape in the back­ground – all reveal a sys­tem­at­ic and dis­crim­i­nat­ing study of the nat­ur­al world.

Com­pare with the ear­li­er, “flat­ter” Inter­na­tion­al Goth­ic art of the 14th cen­tu­ry. Although artists like Duc­cio and Simone Mar­ti­ni had begun to explore depth, per­spec­tive, and space, van Eyck takes it to a whole new lev­el and we recog­nise, for the first time, an unques­tion­able real­ism in the fin­ished art­work.

See here for the whole altar­piece and below that for a selec­tion of some of the won­der­ful details.

 

 

Music

Dame Janet Baker performs Dido’s Lament, Glyndebourne (1966)

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Dido and Aeneas is a Baroque opera by Eng­lish com­pos­er Hen­ry Pur­cell, com­posed around 1688, and based on Book IV of the Aeneid, the Latin epic poem writ­ten by Vir­gil in the sec­ond decade BCE, that tells the leg­endary sto­ry of Aeneas, a Tro­jan who trav­elled to Italy to found a city and become the ances­tor of the Romans.

Book IV recounts how his ship, en route from Epirus to Sici­ly, is blown off course and lands on the shores of Carthage in North Africa, where Aeneas falls in love with their queen, Dido, and she with him. How­ev­er, Aeneas is remind­ed by the gods of his des­tiny and he must duti­ful­ly depart for Italy, leav­ing Dido in despair at her aban­don­ment.

The opera cul­mi­nates with its most famous aria, When I Am Laid In Earth, pop­u­lar­ly known as Dido’s Lament, where­in Dido slow­ly dies of a bro­ken heart.

Here, we will enjoy Dame Janet Bak­er per­form­ing the role of Dido at Glyn­de­bourne in 1966. It is wide­ly con­sid­ered to be one of the great­est expo­si­tions of tragedy in mod­ern oper­at­ic his­to­ry. The lament is divid­ed into two parts: the “recita­tive” which sets the scene, and the aria which fol­lows and leads us to Dido’s death. Here we will cut to the aria. Dido’s sis­ter, Belin­da, her face radi­at­ing a deeply-felt empa­thy, springs for­ward to sup­port Dido both moral­ly and phys­i­cal­ly. Now watch Dido begin her lament. Here’s the libret­to by Nahum Tate:

When I am laid, am laid in earth, may my wrongs cre­ate
No trou­ble, no trou­ble in thy breast;
Remem­ber me, remem­ber me, but ah! for­get my fate.
Remem­ber me, but ah! for­get my fate.

The music is in G Minor, the ulti­mate key for express­ing sad­ness and tragedy, and the bassline (pas­sacaglia) repeats as if in waves of despair, descend­ing, like Dido, toward the grave. Janet Bak­er has been quot­ed as say­ing: “if the Fates are with you, the mag­ic will descend”; they must have been with her here: her manip­u­la­tion of the vibra­to and lega­to, her bear­ing, the gen­uine pathos – the scene is mes­meris­ing.

With superb silent sup­port from Sheila Arm­strong as Belin­da, Bak­er’s immer­sion in the role is absolute and all-con­sum­ing. Take a look at 1:49 and again at 1:56, at the end of the words “Remem­ber me”, and note her head and throat momen­tar­i­ly sag with anguish. Her legs give way at 4:12 and the ladies-in-wait­ing, in uni­son, take a fear­ful step for­ward. The lament now descends chro­mat­i­cal­ly, semi­tone by semi­tone, as Dido descends inch by inch, dead, to the ground.

The repeat­ed phrase “Remem­ber me” is wring­ing with sen­ti­ment; it is no sur­prise to find Purcell’s music to the lament used at Remem­brance Day ser­vices around the coun­try, to poignant effect.

Dame Janet Bak­er in Dido’s Lament