JEREMY DALE ROBERTS (1934–2017)Spoken to a Bronze Head (2008)

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-55
Author(s):  
Jane Manning
Keyword(s):  
Object Lesson ◽  
Vaughan Williams

This chapter describes British composer Jeremy Dale Roberts’s Spoken to a Bronze Head (2008). This moving song is commissioned for a special celebratory album of settings of poems by Ursula Vaughan Williams. It is an object lesson in skill and economy, and subtly captures the rarefied atmosphere of ancient culture implicit in the text, while demonstrating an assured expressive range. The flexible musical idiom is an attractive mix of the old and the new. Carefully moulded vocal phrases, glowing with natural colours, mirror the stresses of the words and are complemented and supported by a resonant piano part, with slow, full chords redolent of ritual. Meticulous attention to balance and the tiniest nuances of accent and dynamic ensure verbal clarity throughout. The piece will suit a warm-toned singer, possessing a secure low B flat, yet able to pare down vibrato to achieve some clean-edged parlando.

Vaughan Williams and the Soundscapes of Scott of the Antarctic

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carolyn Philpott ◽  
Elizabeth Leane ◽  
Douglas Quin
Keyword(s):  
The Antarctic ◽  
Vaughan Williams

Arthur Benjamin's Operas

Tempo ◽  
1950 ◽  
pp. 15-18
Author(s):  
Dennis Arundell
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Royal College ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Good Work ◽  
National Opera ◽  
School Girls ◽  
First Time ◽  
The Devil ◽  
English Opera ◽  
Vaughan Williams

Ever since the seventeenth century composers of English operas have been handicapped by the snob-preference for foreign works irrespective of their merits. In Purcell's day a second-rate French composer, whose past is still shrouded in Continental mystery, was so boosted in London even by Dryden that it was only through an open-air performance by Mr. Priest's school-girls at Chelsea that Dido and Aeneas convinced both London theatre managers and eventually Dryden himself that Purcell was “equal with the best abroad.” In this century, when the usual opera favourites were established, it has been even more difficult for English opera-composers to get a showing (at one time it had not been unheard of for English operas to be translated into Italian or German for production in this country): but twenty-five years ago the Royal College of Music followed the example of Mr. Priest by producing for the first time Vaughan Williams' Hugh the Drover, which was afterwards given publicly by the British National Opera Company, and in 1931 under the auspices of the Ernest Palmer Opera Fund, introduced The Devil Take Her, the first opera by the Australian composer Arthur Benjamin. The enthusiasm of the singers, headed by Sarah Fischer and Trefor Jones, the cunning skill of the conductor, Sir Thomas Beecham and the practical knowledge of the producer, John B. Gordon, who had had so much experience at Cologne and who was at the time doing such good work for opera at the Old Vic, all combined to make the performance outstanding.

Hungary: the Uncompromising Compromise

1967 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 234-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Barany
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
European Community ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Object Lesson ◽  
Annus Mirabilis

A little more than one thousand and ten years ago, the annus mirabilis of Otto I taught the unruly Magyars that “nomadism in one country” was not a workable proposition2 and that they had to make adjustments if they wished to belong to the nascent European community. A little less than ten years ago, the Hungarians received another object lesson suggesting that too much emphasis on western civilization might become another source of danger. Since they were separated by a whole millennium, the meaning of the two events is certainly very different. But both were results of a mis judgment of domestic forces and international relations—a phenomenon which was far from uncommon in the history of Hungary.

Object Lesson

2014 ◽  
pp. 163-176
Author(s):  
James Bucanek
Keyword(s):  
Object Lesson
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