THE London Blitz,
commemorated in a thrilling new choral work by the organist and
composer David Goode, spanned some nine months, from early
September 1940 to May 1941. The bombing of Coventry and other
cities such as Birmingham, Plymouth, and Bristol was fitted in
between. The iconic photo of St Paul's bestriding London burning
dates from December 1940.
But the raids did not stop
after that: Salford, Manchester, and Liverpool were attacked, as
were Scotland's cities and the southern ports. London had a second
and then a third drubbing, from Wernher von Braun's V1s,
"doodlebugs", and then the V2s, rockets that pre-empted the NASA
and Soviet space progammes.
Now David Hill has directed
the 180-plus-strong Bach Choir, nearing its 140th year, in a work
by an exemplary musician. Goode (born 1971) is a celebrated
recitalist and a former organ scholar, under Nicholas Cleobury, of
King's College, Cambridge. He is currently director of organ
teaching at Eton College, which, under Ralph Allwood, is top of the
league for music-teaching.
This work is exemplary: it
has a warmly conceived, well-mapped score - all the link passages
delivered by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra were shiveringly
expressive - and a profoundly evocative text by Francis Warner (b.
1937). Blitz Requiem does more than shiver the timbers: it
melts the heart.
Let me cite an example.
Warner, like many others who were boys and girls at the time,
recalls living in terror of being wiped out overnight. In the poem
and his introduction, he cites two instances when the Luftwaffe
bombed - by design or accident, possibly disposing of a redundant
bomb-load - schools in Petworth and Catford. The latter, in
south-east London, was also machine-gunned, like the retreating
combatants at Dunkirk. At the sites, some 76 staff and children
were left dead, including the Petworth school's headmaster.
Goering's pilots were also
victims in their way. Like ours, they were little more than boys,
young men fresh out of the sixth form. "And small boys look up in
wonder As one youth explodes in fire, And another flying higher
Mushrooms down from funeral pyre." This is pure Wilfred Owen. Our
killers might have been our friends. Had not fate accorded them a
fiery end, they might have lived to be respected seniors in Angela
Merkel's Germany.
Warner's words are not as
perfected as Owen's or Seamus Heaney's, or as finessed as those of
a similar nostalgic elegy, The Bargee's Wife, introduced
at Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester this year. But his imagery
hits the nail on the head.
It takes quite some music to
match and convey this. With perhaps two exceptions, David Goode's
music is wholly up to the task. He incorporates the requiem mass,
or part of it, as other recent composers have done, to salient
effect.
The richness of this score
is too extensive to encapsulate here. All of Hill's soloists - Emma
Tring, Susanna Spicer, Matthew Long, and Robert Davies - were well
up to the mark at filling the vast space of St Paul's.
Goode's score, by design or
not, echoed aspects of the first half: the descending bells of Arvo
Pärt's 1977 lament for Britten; the wonderful instrumental
semichoruses of Vaughan Williams's Phrygian-imbued Tallis
Fantasia, with staggering viola solo from the small ensemble,
and leader's violin solo from the main orchestra; or the Sibelian
mystery and haunting pizzicati of Vaughan Williams's Towards
the Unknown Region - there's something of all this in Goode's
music, and the range here gives an idea of the rich variety and
huge intelligence of his writing.
So there is isolated
yearning (Warner's Absolve - Deliver us - appeal preceding
the Kyrie, and yielding to Gerontius-like passion); a
splendid battering, not overdone, to emphasise the Dies Irae's
rat-a-tat effect ("What fresh terror sirens' moaning Heralds?":
this echoes both Dvořak and Verdi); and a mother's agony (she gives
birth under a table, just as Warner's mother gave birth to his
younger brother Martin: evidence of how well autobiography sits
here with universality).
There was also the musical
teasing out of an almost Dantean terza rima: "On the
playground; pencils scattered, Homework, little things that
mattered Like these bodies shrapnel-shattered."
I found the rather dutiful
scherzo (Sanctus) that followed less apt, despite lovely hints of
Copland and something that sounded fabulously like soft organ
bombarde (the excellent Philip Scriven, formerly of
Lichfield Cathedral); and the ensuing, slightly "pi" Responsorium
felt a little functional and hasty.
But there were parallels
with Whitman in the verse, and not so much French as Brittenesque
Impressionism (Les Illuminations) later on. With whispers
of Duruflé or Frank Martin to boot, and some exquisite paired
flutes from Emer McDonough and Helen Keen (just one of countless
instrumental touches - violas and cellos followed - in this
beautifully turned music), to the final "Shine and deliver", this
was a rich hinterland of intense warmth.
Blitz Requiem could have been sentimental,
crowd-pleasing, and trite. It is no such thing. This is a major
work from an exciting composer.