THREE WORTH HEARING
The three recordings I am about to consider, ‘Unveiled’ sung by Welsh tenor Elgan Llyr Thomas, ‘Fallen to Dust’ (English baritone James Newby) and ‘Forbidden Fruit’ (German-British baritone Benjamin Appl) are all what might be called ‘Concept’ albums in that they are all concerned with a single central theme. ‘Unveiled’ considers the queer art song, ‘Fallen to Dust’ focusses on life and death in various guises, while ‘Forbidden Fruit’ is concerned with temptation, sin, the expulsion from Eden (or ‘the fortunate fall’) and redemption through God’s grace – it might seem pushing it to claim these latter subjects constitute a single theme, but the whole is underpinned by readings from the Book of Genesis, interpolated between the songs. Llyr Thomas and Newby sing entirely in English, Appl sings in English, French and German.
Llyr Thomas, who is himself gay, has been very open in a number of interviews connected with the launch of ‘Unveiled’ about his wish to sing music with which he can connect, which reflects his personal experience. He gives ‘Silent Noon’ by Vaughan Williams as an example of a song which does not stir him at a profound personal level. I obviously would not wish to question this response, but I would point out that this sublime picture of postcoital bliss and languor is not obviously heterosexual – the gender(s) of the lovers is never mentioned and the ‘close companioned, inarticulate hour’ they share seems to me to be potentially universal. Is it perhaps that Llyr Thomas knows Vaughan Williams was straight and this colours his attitude to his work (he mentions ‘On Wenlock Edge’ as another work that he feels no pressing desire to sing, even though the poetry set is by AE Housman, a queer poetry icon). A useful comparison here might be WH Auden’s ‘Lay Your Sleeping Head My Love’. The proudly homosexual Auden expresses his love for a boy, but surely these words would have resonance for any sexuality or gender. Perhaps it is also significant that Llyr Thomas has no interest in singing Roger Quilter, an unambiguously gay composer, whose many songs are, perhaps, light weight but undeniably attractive, and rewarding to sing. The problem here for Llyr Thomas seems to be that the poetry Quilter sets tends to be lacking in any sort of edge or complexity. As I contend in the main body of my review, Llyr Thomas responds best to music that sets complex, astringent poetry.
However, this is Llyr Thomas’ recording not mine and his response and thesis must be respected. He has chosen four substantial works: Britten’s ‘Michelangelo Sonnets’, Tippett’s ‘Song for Achilles’, Ruth Gipps ‘Four Songs of Youth’ – settings of poems by Rupert Brooke, fascinatingly, his own ‘Swan’, settings of poems by Andrew McMillan and a single song by William Denis Browne, his masterpiece ‘To Gratiana Dancing and Singing’. Of these composers and the poets they set, Britten, Michelangelo, Tippett (providing his own text), Llyr Williams and McMillan are certainly homosexual, Ruth Gipps was married, had a son and was mildly homophobic, Brooke was probably bi-sexual and William Denis Browne was his ‘close friend’ but I can find no evidence of a sexual relationship. With regard to the final two it is important to remember they were products of the pre WW1 Public School system and would therefore almost certainly have had homosexual experience, whether they wanted to or not. Brooke’s major biographers are of the opinion that Brooke was ambivalent, if not anguished, about sex in all its forms, considering women, for example, to be either virgins or whores. Little is known about Denis Browne’s sexuality – he was clearly close to Brooke and admired him to idolatory, but then most people who met Brooke were enchanted by his beauty. Brooke’s poetry is not queer in any palpable sense – the thought of any sort of sexual act seems to have appalled him, but he was similarly appalled by many aspects of what he considered to be a decadent and distasteful age. His poem ‘Peace 1914’ set by Gipps, anticipates war as a purification: ‘With hand made sure, clear eyeand conscious power/To turn as swimmers into cleanness leaping’. Similarly, there is nothing in Denis Browne’s choice of poems for his songs that suggests queerness, although this does not mean he wasn’t of course. Without wishing to overwork the point, it is rather a stretch to include Gipps, certainly, and Brooke or Denis Browne, arguably, in any sort of gay pantheon.
But in the larger context this is mere nit-picking. It’s the performances which count.
Llyr Williams has two redoubtable collaborators in pianist Iain Burnside and guitarist Craig Ogden. Burnside, who is also gay, is a venerable figure amongst British accompanists, he has worked with every British singer of significant reputation and Llyr Thomas readily admits Burnside’s importance in the planning of the programme and the execution of it. Craig Ogden, who accompanies Tippett’s ‘Songs for Achilles’ worked with the composer ( I heard him accompany Martyn Hill in ‘Songs for Achilles’ at Tippett’s 80th birthday concert) and Tippett wrote ‘The Man With the Blue Guitar’ for him. Llyr Thomas is far younger and less experienced, but he is building a sound reputation for himself, appearing for major British opera companies in a range of principal lyric tenor and comprimario roles, for some smaller continental houses, and singing at some prestigious concert venues.
As for the recital itself, Britten’s ‘Michelangelo Sonnets’ is the major work. Written in 1940, and dedicated ‘To Peter’ (Pears), they were singled out by Pears as one of the greatest gifts the composer gave him. It is not difficult to see why: apart from the obvious beauty and power of the settings these are very clearly love songs from Britten to his partner. They had met in 1937, and there is some evidence that Britten had started writing the songs in this year, so sexual and emotional excitement would still have been fervid. This heightened state is made manifest by these songs, the music as passionate as anything by Schubert, Schumann or Brahms. These are love songs of the most exalted kind. But the matter is not straightforward. The songs are settings of Renaissance Italian poetry and Michelangelo employs a range of elaborate conceits typical of the genre. The results are impressive and moving, but hardly direct, and there has been considerable debate as to how far they should be considered homo-erotic. To quote Wikipedia:
The homoerotic nature of the poetry has been a source of discomfort to later generations. Michelangelo's grandnephew, Michelangelo Buonarroti the Younger, published the poems in 1623 with the gender of pronouns changed, and it was not until John Addington Symonds translated them into English in 1893 that the original genders were restored. In modern times some scholars insist that, despite the restoration of the pronouns, they represent "an emotionless and elegant re-imagining of Platonic dialogue, whereby erotic poetry was seen as an expression of refined sensibilities", but others read his poems at face value, suggesting a preference by him for young men over women.
Whatever Michelangelo’s intentions, it is perfectly legitimate to read his sonnets as one man’s declaration of love for another man, and this is obviously how Britten and Pears considered them. However, the fact remains that the subtlety of the thought and the Italian language employed place a distance between the text and the audience (certainly an English one), even though the passion of the music is clear enough. The irony is that even when performed by Britten and Pears the music on its own cannot say ‘I love you’ whatever we might infer (or indeed know).
Llyr Thomas (and, I dare say Burnside) was clearly aware of this problem, and sought to solve it by commissioning an English singing translation from Jeremy Sams to help bridge the gap between singer and auditor. In the event, this is only partly successful – Sams is a formidable figure in the contemporary cultural landscape. He is probably best known as a translator of opera but is also a pianist, composer, critic, and author . What he isn’t is a poet, and his English translations are somewhat prosaic. In addition, Llyr Thomas’ enunciation of the text is not ideally clear (not helped by a rather resonant acoustic) although he is sensitive to the changing mood of the songs and displays a pleasing variety of tonal colour. Occasionally his voice spreads under pressure, which is a pity, as his instrument is an attractive one, essentially lyrical but with more than a touch of steel when required. He is at his best when singing lyrically, Sonnet XXX: Veggio co’ be’vostr’occhi un dolce lume/There is a light, a light I see with your eyes, and Sonnet XXXVIII: Rendete agli occhi mei, o fonte o fiume/Rivers and fountains, kindly give my tears back, are particularly beautiful. Despite my reservations, there is much to enjoy in these performances.
There has been a welcome increased interest in Ruth Gipps music in recent years. Once a relatively important figure she fell into obscurity after her death in 1999 but recently her work has been much recorded and performed at the Proms etc. The ‘Four Songs of Youth written in 1940 (so contemporaneous with the Britten ‘Sonnets’) are well crafted and demanding to perform but not, to my ears at least, particularly distinctive. Great songs either enhance moderate verse or offer a fresh insight into great poetry. Britten sets some the greatest poets and invariably offers stimulating new perspectives, Gipps, in her settings of Brooke, not a great poet, or even sometimes a very good one, at the time of his premature death, provides some attractive, at times impressive, illustration of poetry that varies from the resonant but empty bombast of ‘Failure’ to the frankly insulting twaddle of ‘Peace 1914’. It is, of course, unfair to blame Brooke for the banal optimism he shared with most of his generation – WW1 a just war that would be over by Christmas; the perfect opportunity for chaps to do their bit in a slightly more dangerous version of a rugby match – but Brooke’s facile dismissal of ‘all the little emptiness of love’ (speak for yourself Rupe: my loves have been neither little nor empty) and the, in retrospect, bitterly ironic Liebestod:
‘Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart’s long peace there
But only agony and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but death.
have not stood the test of time.
Perhaps Brooke was, in a sense, lucky to die, peacefully according to William Denis Brown, who was at his bed-side, of an infected mosquito bite in 1915, so he never had to experience what the agony of death was really like.
All this aside, Llyr Thomas generally does the work proud. Mention is made in the booklet notes of the wide range of the songs but Llyr Thomas copes well enough, even though, again, the voice spreads worryingly on climactic top notes. He is at his best when singing within himself at mezzo forte. His soft singing is also very gratifying. All in all, while I cannot share Llyr Williams enthusiasm for these songs, he is certainly a fine advocate for them.
If I appear to have been sometimes damning with faint praise, from now on I can be unequivocally enthusiastic. Llyr Thomas obviously finds Tippett’s ‘Songs for Achilles’ very congenial and he sings them magnificently. His voice is much steadier here and encompasses impressively the many musical and vocal demands made by these wonderful songs. His enunciation of the text is also more vivid and engaged than in the Britten and Gibbs songs. ‘Songs for Achilles’ manages to be queer but masculine at the same time, and while Achilles never states his love for Patroclus openly, homosexual passion is more clearly conveyed than in the Britten ‘Michelangelo Sonnets’. The guitar writing in ‘Songs for Achilles’ is wonderfully atmospheric (Ogden is superb throughout): a sense of steamy Mediterranean heat is suggested in the opening to ‘In the Tent’ and Llyr Thomas is excellent at conveying the languorous passion and longing of Achilles to return home to his son, whom both he and Patroclus will kiss. In ‘Across the Plain’ Llyr Thomas demonstrates the ample vocal resources required to encompass the blood curdling paganism of Achilles war cry. Perhaps most movingly, in ‘By the Sea’ Llyr Thomas suggests very sensitively the mix of resignation and brutality shown by Achilles as he vows to avenge Patroclus’ death at Hector’s hands by killing and viciously mutilating the Trojan hero, while aware that he will then die himself ‘at Paris’ hands’. Llyr Thomas ends this phrase with an exquisite pianissimo top B flat, completing a magnificent performance of one of the twentieth century’s greatest vocal works.
After this, Llyr Thomas’ own set of songs ‘Swan’ (settings of queer poet Andrew McMillan, who wrote the ‘Swan’ poems as a response to Matthew Bourne’s all male production of ‘Swan Lake’), might seemed doomed to be an anti-climax, but this is far from the case. McMillan’s poems are, as I read them anyway, meditations on what it means to be queer in an often hostile world, but this primary message is filtered through a swan persona who describes the complex world of queerdom in terms of swan stories. The final song describes some sort of compromise, or even defeat, for the swan - queer.
I plucked each feather from myself
slight resistance and then a rising-out
like pulling up a weed when I was bald
I beheld myself in the mirror of the water’s edge
my neck looked ridiculous
my eyes the only part of me that still had life
I raised each failed wing just flesh now
nothing for the wind to get up under
the mirror cracked with the tides
I reared up I jumped I watched myself
broken fall towards myself.
The poems are varied and Llyr Thomas responds well to this variety with some pastiche (quotations from Tchaikovsky and Wagner) but also some heartfelt, lyrical outpouring, often becoming anguished. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, Llyr Thomas sings his own music with heightened passion and clearer diction than shown in the rest of his recital. Interestingly, the tendency for his voice to spread on high notes is less apparent here. All in all, I enjoyed these songs very much, Roderick Williams has a rival in the ranks of singer-composers…
Adding a sensitive and restrained account of William Denis Browne’s ‘To Gratiana Dancing and Singing’ and we have a recital with much to enjoy, even though there is still some work for Llyr Thomas to do in terms of technique and interpretation. I shall await his next recording with keen anticipation; I hope he will sing more Tippett: I think ‘Boyhood’s End’ and ‘The Heart’s Assurance’ would suit him very well.
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