1914 – Musickings around the Great War

Before the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Charles Woodhouse played with me in an increasing number of works which had been inspired by Folk Songs, many of which had been recently collected by young English composers, – Ralph Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst, George Butterworth, and the Australian Percy Grainger.  It was interesting to me that I had the privilege of playing in Vaughan Williams’s ‘Norfolk Rhapsodies’ (1 & 2), which came into being after the composer had collected a number of local folk-songs from the King’s Lynn area of north Norfolk in 1905/6 – not too far distant from North Walsham and Swanton Abbot, the ancestral home region of my friend John Richardson, and his uncle Isaac.  While playing these pieces, I was immediately drawn back to that special relaxed style I discovered while accompanying those early Methodist meetings in the North Walsham Circuit during the 1830s/40s.  This is such an important tonal inheritance which has added to my individual voice.

Is it a coincidence that, while collecting these folk-songs, Vaughan Williams was busy editing the English Hymnal, which includes a rich variety of folk music to accompany some of the hymns?  I think he was fascinated by John Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ at this pre-war period, a book which had become ‘second only to the Bible’ for many dedicated Christians.

Other things resonated with this folk style at this time, linking me to earlier experiences.  One of these was Percy Grainger’s undoubted obsession with collecting folk songs in the field.  There was one song from Lincolnshire, Brigg Fair, which he introduced to our familiar friend Frederick Delius, who composed from it a beautiful piece which became very popular, both in Germany and in England.

And then, in 1914, all hell was let loose, although nobody thought a war with Germany would last very long.  Initially, my owner, Charles, was able to keep working with the LSO. He got the best tones and musical feeling from me when we played under the direction of the ‘up and coming’ maestro, Thomas Beecham.  It fascinated me that Beecham promoted the music of Frederick Delius throughout his conducting career with an extreme passion and devotion.  Of course, I had been introduced to the unusual style of this composer while I was in America with Halfdan Jebe, and I’m sure that Charles – with Beecham’s charm – was able to draw out the same unique resonances, tones and timbres from my body when we presented Delius to the concert-going public. When the War made it impossible for Frederick & Jelka Delius to remain in their home in France, south of Fontainebleau, Thomas Beecham arranged for them to stay in a property in Watford, ‘Grove Mill House’ (now The Dower House), overlooking the River Gade, which was not unlike their idyllic French home and garden in Grez-sur-Loing.  The Delius’s stayed there from December 1914 for just over a year, before moving on to Norway until the end of hostilities. 

(Grove Mill House, Watford)

It was during these war years that Delius completed his ‘Pagan Requiem’ dedicated ‘to the memory of all young artists fallen in the war’, with words put together by Heinrich Simon and Delius himself.  It was long after the end of the War that I played in a performance of this unusual work, but I mention it here because it stands as a reminder that sensitive and faithful performances of music can transcend all manner of differences – religious, cultural, ideological and linguistic.  This strange work by Delius crosses borders between Christianity and Islam, between English and German languages in ways that were (and still are) difficult for people to hear.  In some ways it reflects the nihilism and atheism which affected the soldiers from all sides of the conflict, as, gripped by fear, they heard the screams and cries of terror all around them.  At its first performance, The Pagan Requiem was greeted with resentment and pained disaffection because it appeared to negate the validity of all religion.  Although it was dedicated to those lost in the War, Delius’s sound world was heard and understood in England as a disrespectful work and profoundly damaging to the memory of cherished lives.  I know that early on, Delius wanted the original German text to be translated into English (here executed by Philip Hesletine): I have never heard if there has been a performance in Germany, in the German language.  If there has, I love to know what reception it received.

(Page from the Score of ‘A Pagan Requiem’)