Spem with Tippett(John Amis)The programme note for the Chapelle du Roy concert that included Spem in
Alium, along with the English-text version Sing and glorify drew attention to
the performance by Michael Tippett in the 1940s. John Amis was sitting just in
front of me. I knew he had links with Morley College, so I asked him whether he
had taken part in it. He had, and agreed to write something about it for us. It
arrived by fax the next day - would that all contributors were so prompt! In the late forties I was a member of the Morley College choir directed by Michael Tippett. Having sung Spem in alium in concert, we were asked by HMV to record it and we did so, I think, in 1949. Michael agreed as a way of helping the finances of the choir; aesthetically he wavered because we were asked to make the recording in the dry acoustic of the Abbey Road Studios whereas the piece cries out for the spacious resonance of a large church. The duration of the Motet also created a compromise, because it was too long for one 12 inch record; so the proposal was to chop it up and issue the work on 4 sides of two 10 inch discs. Now a whole chapter could be written about Michael's conducting. but certainly it was the spirit rather than the letter that concerned him. His beat was frequently all over the shop and his ear at the time was not as sharp as it became later; but if Michael was convinced about the music then so were we, and that feeling communicated itself to any audience. Usually a conductor can only communicate properly with forces that are good. I wouldn't say that Morley was a good choir but there were enough musicians of sensibility, if not actually good singers, to be able to grasp what Michael was concerned about. We had a superb soprano in Alison Purves who eventually married Antony Hopkins, himself a force in the baritones. Anthony Milner sang with us, Peter Racine Fricker, Michael Tillett (who prepared Tippett's scores for publication and did the piano reductions); there were also some professional stiffeners from the Cathedral at St Paul's - like Donald Lee - and there were some semi-pros like the tenor Stanley Etherington. Walter Bergmann was our choir pianist, a tower of strength with a good ear for notes and style. Added to which all the women in the choir were potty about Michael, which helped. We started at Abbey Road and it was ghastly, dry and all over the place. Michael's beat was a wide and wavy affair and the result was like fragmented blancmange. In the coffee break Michael called some of us together to discuss tactics. I counselled a traffic-cop-like four beats in the bar. After the break he tried it for a few minutes. Suddenly the entries came punctually and clearly, but woodenly and lifelessly. Michael went back to his wavy beat. Somehow we completed the session. Maybe our recording helped to make the work known. I shall never forget the exciting experience of singing in the Forty part. I was tenor in the fifth choir. Hearing it coming to life gradually as the choirs make their entries and with that amazing polyphony all round you is a thrill never obtained by hearing it in an audience. And the big A major crunch is as powerful as anything in the Requiems of Berlioz and Verdi. It was fascinating at St John's to hear it for the first time (for me) in English ... and then in Latin. The French Connection. In 1973 1 made a film about Poulenc and included was an interview with Darius Milhaud. When I said goodbye to him I thanked him for his cooperation and asked him if there was anything I could get for him in London. He said, yes, there was, he had heard about an extraordinary work in 40 parts by your English composer Thomas Tallis (pronounced in the French manner). So I got a copy of the Motet in the OUP edition and sent it to him. He sent me a nice carte postale saying he had received it and was completely fascinated by the music. He died a few months later. HMV issued the recording in 1949 (DA 1921-22). 1 remember listening to it (luring the 1950s but getting nothing from it. Only when I sang it with the Cambridge university Music Society under David Willcocks (in the academic year 1960-61) did I realise how marvellous a piece it was. That was in the days of performances by big choirs: the singers were assembled round the walls of the antechapel of King's College, Cambridge, with the conductor standing in the middle beating time with a torch. (The recording from King's was from later in the 1960s). Subsequently, I've more often played the organ part than sung it. The most memorable performance I've heard was at a recording session in the BBC's Maida Vale Studio 1, with the English text (adapted slightly for the marriage of Charles and Diana) sung under Andrew Parrott by a carefully-picked set of singers. That may have been a somewhat clinical ambience, but it was flattering to sit virtually alone in the auditorium and feel that they were singing it just for me. It is, however, quite likely that it would have been originally performed, not in a large church, but in the long gallery of Nonesuch House. When I took out my copy of the OUP score to check the number of the recording, I was intrigued to see that I had slipped inside it a photocopy of a few pages of an edition by A. H. Mann (David Willcocks's predecessor but one at King's College) published in 1888. The introduction mentions two performances by The Madrigal Society in the 1830s, one at the Freemasons' Hall on Jan 15 1835 (with 100 singers and 40 non-singing visitors) and another on l7 January 1836. Hugh Keyte, who produced the BBC performance mentioned above, tells me that he once came across a poem about one of these performances. CB |
