Written in 1946, this work established Phyllis as a ‘serious’ composer of great imagination and individuality. It is a setting of a poem by Sidney Keyes, who died at the age of 20 whilst serving in the British army in North Africa in 1943. The poem was written when Keyes was only 17. He described it as ‘a dream poem … in a way an attempt at abstract (that is “musical”) poetry’. It is permeated by the atmosphere of foreboding common to the works of young war poets.

 

The piece is scored for a typically idiosyncratic combination of four voices (soprano, tenor, baritone and bass), string quartet, double bass, bass clarinet, and celesta. The first performance was conducted by Dr Mosco Carner, to whom the work is dedicated and who was a close personal friend.

 

The reviews were enthusiastic:

 

‘Her touch is remarkably sure, her resource never fails – after hearing it several times, it strangely haunts the mind’ (Gramophone).

 

‘A remarkable work … its theme is youth and death and the composer has pierced through the dialogue of the four voices to the poet’s vision. She has matched his imagery with striking musical figuration … The opening grips the hearer and the grip is never relaxed’ (The Times).

 

‘In this, her finest work to date, the composer has clothed with tenderness the justifiable despair of a seventeen-year-old poet in 1939. The four voices are soprano, who sings a young widow’s plaint, and tenor, baritone and bass, who represent her counsels of despair. That the work does not pall is due both to the delicately picturesque score, with the celesta softening its edges, and to the great beauty of much of the music, particularly the first soprano solo and the invocation of death by the unaccompanied voices at the end’ (Music and Letters).

 

‘This was the most purely musical work in all the Festival programmes, a composition in which the poet’s imagination is not merely transmuted into music but is completed by it. For Keyes designed his poem for musical setting … trusting to the musician to make the significance of his ideas clear. It is nothing short of genius in the composer to have realized the poet’s idea and to have clothed it in such beautiful and luminous music’ (Dyneley Hussey, writing about the Fifth Cheltenham Music Festival of British Contemporary Music).

The Nocturne for Four Voices

Scores available:

○ Vocal and instrumental scores on hire from Oxford University Press

 

Audio clip performers: Jean Temperley (soprano), Wynford Evans (tenor), Raimund Herincx (bass), John Barrow (baritone) and instrumental ensemble conducted by Roy Wales.

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Songs of Sundrie Kindes

This was written for Carl Shavitz (lute) and Wynford Evans (tenor) and was first performed by them on September 24th 1976 at Wigmore Hall, London. It consists of four songs, all based on seventeenth-century poems. The settings of these are in the nature of a dialogue between the two performers, each part being equally important. The four songs are  ‘A Description of Love' by Raleigh, ‘The Bell Man’ by Herrick, ‘A Love Sonnet’ by Wither, and ‘A Religious Use of Taking Tobacco‘ Anon. Phyllis and her husband Alan Frank formed a friendship with Carl Shavitz, who performed the piece regularly throughout the world over the following decade. Although the tenor part has been performed by different singers, the lute player has remained the same. The 92nd performance was given in the Semperoper, Dresden, on June 1st 1986, as part of the Dresden Festival, followed by a final performance at the Memorial Concert for Phyllis Tate on September 19th 1987.  Songs Of Sundrie Kindes was recorded many times worldwide including by the BBC.

 

Carl Shavitz now runs The Artisan Bread School in Cambridgeshire. He recalls … ‘I can't remember how I first met Phyllis Tate. I must have heard one of her works and thought she'd be a perfect composer to write a piece for tenor and lute. When I approached her with the proposal, Phyllis was incredibly modest and charming. I clearly remember that discussing the commissioning fee with her seemed almost painful, and she only asked for a tiny amount, something like £50! It was so little I paid out of my own pocket rather than seeking outside funding. The OUP printed edition has a lute player and singer on the cover. The original hangs in my home to this day, and it reminds me of my dear friend Phyllis.’

 

Scores available:

○ Available from archive supplier Banks, email info@banksmusicpublications.co.uk  Tel: 01653 628545

 

Audio clip performers: Carl Shavitz (lute) and Wynford Evans (tenor)

First song ‘A Description of Love‘, words by Sir Walter Raleigh

Postcard sent to Phyllis from Carl Shavitz

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One of Phyllis’s later works, Apparitions is a setting of four traditional ballads and an instrumental ‘envoi’ for tenor, harmonica, string quartet and piano. The words, evocative and moving, together with Phyllis’s typically succinct and pithy comments on each song, are reproduced here from a programme of her music which was performed by the Noh Oratorio Society in San Francisco in 1988. Also in the programme was a setting by Phyllis of a poem by Charles Causley, ‘Mary, Mary Magdalene’, as well as her Sonata for Clarinet and Cello.

 

It is vintage Phyllis Tate in its use of traditional words with a theme of death, and the imaginative use of an unusual instrument, the harmonica. Phyllis worked closely with the original performer, Douglas Tate  (no relation!) to fully exploit the potential of the instrument. As Malcolm Rayment noted in the Glasgow Herald, this was no mean feat: ‘To write well for the harmonica requires specialised knowledge: it is easy to get into difficulties and call for something that is unplayable. I remember Larry Adler complaining to Vaughan Williams that a passage he had written was “all blow and no suck” ... Phyllis Tate has written brilliantly for this instrument, nowhere more so than in “The Suffolk Miracle”, where most of the time it provides the sole accompaniment to the voice.’

 

Other critics were no less enthusiastic: ‘One of the most memorable works of last year’s Cheltenham Festival was Phyllis Tate’s song cycle Apparitions ... Its originality of invention and word-setting is an astonishing achievement. Combined with the imaginatively ghostly instrumentation it makes a unique minor masterpiece’ (Colin Mason, the Daily Telegraph).

 

‘Phyllis Tate is a genuine original. Without having any resource to gimmicks, she presents odd, unexpected angles of experience in odd, unexpected ways. Her strong feelings for popular music - whether folksong, urban industrial or pop - lead her to texts and some areas of experience in which perennially popular subjects are treated with a sly sophistication that is both poetic and realistic, ghosts for example, and her Apparitions … are characteristically dry-witted and ingenious’ (Martin Cooper in Record Review).

 

For the Radio 3 programme Music Magazine, Stephen Dodgson said ‘The ambitious cycle Apparitions has a kind of Tam O’ Shanter wit, with nonchalantly bizarre settings of the words, and the brilliantly fanciful idea of a solo harmonica to partner the lovelorn ghost in The Suffolk Miracle.’

Apparitions

Scores available:

○ Vocal score available from archive supplier Banks, email info@banksmusicpublications.co.uk  Tel: 01653 628545.

Accompaniment available on hire from Oxford University Press


Audio clip performers: Douglas Tate (harmonica), Philip Langridge (tenor), Valerie Tryon (piano) and the Cardiff Festival Players directed by James Lockhart. Excerpts from 1972 Argo record ZRG 691

(Roman Dream by Alun Hoddinott and Apparitions by Phyllis Tate).

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Programme from first performance in America

Programme notes

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This composition was written in 1966 and first performed in a BBC broadcast. It is a song cycle (15 minutes’ duration) based on three poems by Matthew Arnold, which Phyllis set for soprano and contralto voices, horn and piano. Matthew Arnold was not the first Victorian poet in whom she had shown interest: her earlier work The Lady of Shalott was a setting of a Tennyson poem for tenor and instrumental group. On a different level, the attraction for her of the Victorian era shows itself in her choice of subject for her only full-length opera The Lodger, based on Marie Belloc Lowndes’ novel about the ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders of the 1880s.

 

Phyllis said of this composition ‘Using the poems as a kind of silhouette and preserving the medium of the vocal duet popular in Victorian times, I have tried to reflect in today’s musical terms the differing moods of the words: the first song fervent yet controlled, the second lyrical, the third evanescent and volatile.’

 

Alan Blyth wrote in The Listener (7 April 1966) following the BBC broadcast:  ‘Phyllis Tate’s new vocal work demonstrated her consummate craftsmanship and fastidious attention to detail. Although they bear passing resemblances to Britten’s song-writing technique, these songs have a very individual flavour that gives the poems more than the “face-lift” the composer has modestly suggested. The music mirrors very exactly the moods of the poems and at the same time adds something positive and original to them. Here too is graceful and fascinating writing for the voice. Eschewing fashionably awkward fragmented writing for the singers, Miss Tate has written gently lyrical and, in the third song, quizzical music for her chosen group, carefully entwining the voices, horn and piano into a cohesive whole. Indeed, in the second, several lines are ingeniously and seamlessly split between the soprano and contralto. In the opening song “Morality” the shifting harmonies and minor thirds aptly suit its mood of dark uncertainty. In the more light-hearted but slightly melancholic “Lines written in Kensington Gardens” the texture is lighter, with many lines split between the singers. The third song “A Memory Picture” is still more economically set with the repeated words “Quick, thy tablets, Memory” ingeniously handled. This work is full of felicities that several hearings have not dimmed.’

A Victorian Garland

Scores available:

○ Available from archive supplier Banks

 

Audio clip performers: Performers unknown

Victorian Garland cover

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Phyllis Tate had a lifelong interest in both popular and traditional music. She arranged many folk songs and the melodic threads that run through much of her music were often derived from these sources. Scenes from Tyneside, written in 1978, was one such work.

This composition is based on six British folk songs and was written for mezzo-soprano, clarinet and piano.

 

The composer wrote these notes as a preface for the sheet music: ‘This cycle was commissioned by the Syrinx Trio with funds provided by Northern Arts, and was first performed at the Newcastle Festival on 23rd June 1978. It is based on some lesser-known Northumbrian folk songs. Though the actual tunes are used in each song, they are very freely treated, with other melodic material introduced. Harmonically they are almost completely transformed from the standard settings.

 

‘A few points may be of interest: “Elsie Marley” (No.3) was the innkeeper’s wife at the Barley Mow Inn in Pictree, Chester-le-Street. This setting is a dialogue between singer and clarinettist (who introduces the traditional Sailor’s Hornpipe at an appropriate moment) while the pianist changes his role to that of tambourine player. “Of all the youths” (No.4) is accompanied by piano alone, featuring special pedal effects, and in “The Quayside Shaver” (No.6), which dates from about 1690, the tune is shared between voice and clarinet, with the piano supplying a concertina-like background.’

 

At the time of writing this, there is a greater awareness of Northumbrian songs due to the work of The Unthanks. ’Gan to the kye wi’ me’, for example, has also been arranged and recorded by them.

Scenes from Tyneside

Scores available:

June Emerson Wind Music

 

Audio clip performers:  The Syrinx Trio

Front cover

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To Words by Joseph Beaumont (duration 9 minutes) was written in 1970 in response to an American commission from Wheelock College, Boston, Massachusetts. Phyllis set three poems by seventeenth-century poet Joseph Beaumont for female choir and piano.

 

The poems are: 1. ‘When Love had Strove us to Subdue’; 2. ‘The Gnat’; 3.  ‘House and Home’. Phyllis said of the poems, ‘The words appealed to me because of their rather melancholy and disillusioned character, though both these emotions are treated with a light touch. In the first song, “Love” (verse 1, rebellious; verse 2, passionate; verse 3, resigned), the vocal line is broken up between the three parts, and the last verse makes use of indefinite pitches. Secondly, “The Gnat”  - here the unfortunate sufferer [is] trying to sleep, but tormented by the maddening buzzing - only in the last verse do man and gnat stand (or fly) on equal ground. The third song in the group, “House and Home”, is not as lightly domestic as it sounds. Its theme is that true security is to be found, not within doors and walls, but inwardly: “To thy selfe a Tenant be, And inhabit safe and free.” This setting has a gentle lilt to it, with perhaps a suggestion of madrigal style.’

 

The work was performed at a concert of Phyllis Tate’s music, ‘A Composer’s Portrait’, at the Purcell Room on May 14th 1975. Edward Greenfield reviewed the concert for The Guardian (May 15th 1975): ‘There are not many composers today who so readily shake off influences as Phyllis Tate. Here was a complete concert devoted to her music, ranging from two of her most ambitious early works written just after the war to recent settings of poems by Joseph Beaumont, and the only influence a newcomer might have divined was a touch of Britten in the angular piano-writing. Certainly this is English music to the core - even a gritty work for solo viola, Variegations of 1971 - but Miss Tate has the quality of being unselfconsciously herself whatever she does, unhampered by fashion. When she likes, she can be as uncompromising as anyone - witness the viola piece formidably tackled by Eileen Engelbrecht - but the generous breadth of her sympathies came out most strikingly in the Beaumont settings for female choir and piano. In principle the idiom in each of the three songs was inconsistent. The first, with single-foot lines slung from one side of the choir to the other, had a refreshing sharpness, entirely original, while the second, “The Gnat”, relaxed a degree with a clear melody set against a deft running accompaniment, and the third, “House and Home”, was a simple updating of the traditional community song pattern. In fact, the group worked splendidly simply because the music so vigorously flowed out of the words, in each instance matching the seventeenth-century poet’s wilful oddity.’

To Words By Joseph Beaumont

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○ Available from archive supplier Banks


Audio clip performers: The London Chorale conducted by Roy Wales, Christopher Wood (piano)

Second poem ‘The Gnat’

75th Birthday Concert at The Purcell Room

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To celebrate the Third Programme’s 10th anniversary, the BBC commissioned a series of chamber works from well-known composers of the time, including Phyllis Tate. The Lady of Shalott is her setting of Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem of the same name.

The poem, with its theme of romantic death, its attention to heraldic detail and its sentimental piety, is typically Pre-Raphaelite. It can also be read as an allegory of the conflict between art and life - another recurring Pre-Raphaelite motif. A mirror was traditionally used by weavers to show them the side of their work which was to be exposed to public view. But for the Lady of Shalott, weaving pictures from the ‘magic sights’ that she sees in reflection only, a mirror provides her sole view of the outside world. She is under a mysterious curse which dictates that she must not abandon her weaving night or day. When the reflection in the mirror of ‘bold Sir Lancelot’ riding by does prompt her to leave her work and look directly out of her window towards Camelot, she is doomed.

 

Phyllis Tate’s setting is a four-part cantata for tenor voice with two pianos, viola, celesta and percussion. She approached the challenge with characteristic skill and imagination … ‘Miss Tate not only takes the difficulties in her stride, she positively revels in them. Despite the expansive nature of music, she contrives to get through the poem at a surprising rate, yet with strict attention to its heraldic beauty of detail. Her music has great impulse; it wells up continually and forges ahead like a clear stream. She has always had a fine sense of texture and The Lady of Shalott is delightfully laid out for the crisp sound of two pianos, celesta and assorted light percussion, to which in the last section a viola is most poetically added ... The whole piece is fresh, original and totally unexpected;  I long to hear it again’ (Desmond Shawe-Taylor, The New Statesman November 1956).

 

The Lady of Shalott was written ten years after her successful Nocturne for Four Voices, a haunting setting of a poem by Sidney Keyes. Dyneley Hussey wrote in The Listener in November 1956 … ‘It is easy to understand the appeal that Tennyson’s poem would have had for the composer of “Nocturne’’ and of that beautiful setting of the Corpus Christi poem, “The Falcon”. It has the atmosphere of mystery and eeriness that evidently sets Miss Tate’s musical imagination to work ... her imagination shines through the music and she shows herself able to handle with assurance a large composition, whose unity overrides its four distinct and skillfully fashioned sections’.

The Lady of Shallot

Scores available:

○ Conductor’s score and parts on hire from Oxford University Press

 

Audio clip performers: Performers unknown

The Lady of Shalott by William Holman Hunt

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