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[NORFOLK AND NORWICH FESTIVAL.]
THE thirty-third Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Music Festival will be remembered for three things above others : first, for the versatility and achievement of the chorus ; second, the success of the two works that were specially written for the event ; third, the continued vitality and beneficent influence of Sir Henry Wood's conducting.
It is a pleasure to record the first of these features. The two hundred and fifty singers who have been trained by Dr. Haydon Hare in music ranging from the B minor Mass to Janacek's Slavonic Mass, from Delius' Sea Drift to Handel's Solomon, are drawn from the city and all parts of the county. For three years they have worked at the motley programme, through the weather of all seasons, some having to travel long distances and all willing to pay their own expenses. The natural endowment of this chorus is not great, not as rich, for example, as that of the Leeds Chorus. Nevertheless, what can be achieved in performance by zeal, good average voices, and improving musicianship, with a seasoning of local pride, these singers and their trainer have accomplished.
The new works were Morning Heroes, by Mr. Arthur Bliss, and Job, a pageant for dancing by Dr. Vaughan Williams. The first, which is a symphony for orchestra, chorus and orator, was acclaimed by a very distinguished and representative audience. The five movements are these : (1) An orchestral prelude opens the work. At length, the orator is heard declaiming above the music a passage from the sixth book of the Iliad. (W. Leaf's prose translation.) The episode is Hector's farewell to Andromache. (2) This is a choral setting of Walt Whitman's poem at the beginning of the set called Drum Taps. The picture here called up is that of a great city preparing for war, a number of seemingly unrelated forces suddenly pouring in to form a single force. (8) After all the unreasoning excitement of the great preparation, we are here brought face to face with the loneliness of man and of woman. The music is tense and sorrowful. Words from Li-Tai-Po are used for the first part and Whitman again for the second part. Whereas the preceding movement reveals humanity as a corporate and organized body, this shows Man and Woman as individuals, suffering alone and out of touch. (4) The Scherzo of the symphony follows here, a setting of a passage from the XIXth book of the Iliad, Chapman's verse translation this time. This is the passage describing the wrath of Achilles and his setting forth to avenge the death of Patroclus. (5) The orator speaks some verse by Mr. Wilfred Owen. Save for occasional drum-rolls, there is silence now in orchestra and chorus. It is the silence of a solemn preparation. Then begin the last rites, a full voiced tribute to Heroes. The words are Mr. Robert Nichols' Dawn on the Somme. These are set in the manner of a chorale. Although the work is dedicated to the composer's brother and other comrades who fell in the Great War, this poem and that by Mr. Owen are the only references to that event. The symphony is conceived as an objective treatment of war, without regard for period and with no concern for the one side or the other.
It was inevitable that official criticism of the work should labour the point of the impossibility of combining the spoken word with music, especially with symphonic music. The theory is too good to be discarded even in favour of a direct experience. The complaint was that the attention was divided whenever the orator declaimed his lines. That is a judgment upon critics. In all aesthetic experience there must be a preparatory period of divided attention, in pure symphony, between content, and form, in opera, between stage-action and its counterpart in music, in ballet, among niise-an-scene, choregraphy and music's rhythm, and in all music, between conception and performance. What matters is not how and how much the attention is divided, but the quality of the resulting synthesis. For my part I consider that Mr. Bliss has brought about not only a reconciliation of declamation and developing music but also a synthesis of varying qualities and idioms of poetic thought in this very remarkable work.
Dr. Vaughan Williams' Job was originally intended for stage representation. The concert version was specially prepared for the Festival. The absence of dancing and pageantry was no loss as it happened. Thereby the fine austerity of the con- ception was the more directly experienced. The work, in nine movements which are nine scenes, is in itself a pageant of sober colour and decorous movement. In Elihu's dance of youth and beauty and the Pavane of the Heavenly Host the composer has imagined music that strikes awe into the heart by its mingled calm and intensity.
Sir Henry Wood worked for this Festival as if he were intent upon preserving its continuity. If one man could do this, it would be he. But there can be no doubt that reforms are urgently called for, if this great tradition—Leeds and Norwich are the only two Festivals of their kind now left—is to persist. The tradition as it stands is essentially aristocratic. The Festival is attended chiefly by the important county and city families and a few others who for one week in three years are willing to ignore the limitations of their income. The development of music in the twentieth century has brought democratic forces into play. Broadcasting, the gramophone and competition festivals are educating the musical taste of ordinary people. It is here, I am sure, that the Festival Committee may turn menace (for there was a scare in the box- office just before the beginning of the Festival week) into opportunity. The special problem will be to retain the dignity of the tradition and at the same time to broaden its influences. A solution I think will be found in adopting all or some of these suggestions : (a) An extension of the Festival to eight or ten days. (b) Repetitions of some of the programmes at cheaper prices. (c) Performing the oratorios in the Cathedral where more people can assemble than in St. Andrew's hall. (d) An earlier date : perhaps in the middle of September before American and Continental visitors return. (e) The inclusion of chamber music and, with Mr. Nugent Monek and the Norwich Players, pageantry and drama.
I am aware of the difficulties involved in such a scheme, but with men like Mr. Walter Hansen and Mr. Edmund Reeve still interested in the preservation of this important Festival. I am confident that they can be overcome.
BASIL MAINI„
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