Interview, Robert King on A Voice from Heaven

The King's Consort, under its conductor Robert King, seem to have something of a Midas Touch when it comes to interesting and original musical projects. Recent albums have included orchestrated versions of Stanford canticles, a reconstruction of a Mendelssohn-Handel hybrid work and a collection of Handel's countertenor arias.

The Consort's latest release is an a cappella choral disc that showcases pairs of anthems - the unifying factor being that they share a text. In each case a well-established 'workhorse' is coupled with a newer, less familiar companion - bringing to light different composers' responses to the same text.

It's an intriguing idea, and one that seems to have the admirable goal of expanding the horizons of those who know only the more commonly-heard half of the album. I spoke to Robert about the pairs he's selected to record, and about some of the musical changes and developments that the album encompasses…

Many of these pieces form pairs – two settings of Bring us, O Lord God, and of Take him, earth, for cherishing, for example. In many of these cases there’s one version that for most people is “the” setting of those words. Isn’t there a risk that a new setting will inevitably sit in the shadow of a well-established and well-loved musical incumbent?

One of the great joys for me in creating this programme has been to take a series of ‘classic’ settings and pair them with another composer’s less well-known response to the same text. So, for instance, you can hear Stanford’s beautiful setting of I heard a voice from heaven from 1886 and compare it with Herbert Howells’ magical, ethereal version from 1933, which drifts deliciously, as though floating through timeless space.

William Harris’s Bring us, O Lord is indeed one of the finest anthems in the entire cathedral repertory, which gives a radiant picture of heaven in glorious eight-part harmonies; James MacMillan’s response appears consciously to look back to those same Edwardian roots, and also to the Renaissance masters, yet could hardly be more contrasting. Herbert Howells’ Take him, earth, for cherishing is a true masterpiece, with waves of desolate, melancholy harmonies: John Tavener’s highly individual setting of the same text is far removed from that by Howells, and yet still gives you an ‘earworm’ from a memorable opening harmonic sequence.

Drop, drop, slow tears comes in Kenneth Leighton’s plangent, subtly dissonant setting from 1961, and a lyrical, tenderly melodious version by Thomas Hewitt Jones that is a fine continuation of the tradition set by the master, Charles Villiers Stanford. Finally, we have three quite different settings of Justorum animae: Stanford’s melodious mini-jewel, a crunchily-harmonised setting by Lennox Berkeley, and a real winner by Herbert Murrill, tender, melodious, and ultimately serene. I hope the disc will widen people’s horizons, and draw choirs towards fine works that they might not previously have known.

You observe in your notes that Stanford and Parry essentially kick-started a British musical Renaissance through their composing and teaching careers – but both were considerably influenced by the German composers of their time. Doesn’t that rather call into question the whole concept of an “British” Romantic style?

No-one would deny that German Romanticism was a central influence on both Stanford and Parry – but who could argue that being influenced by glorious Brahms could be anything but a brilliant bonus to any composer’s technical and musical armoury? Home-grown British music had been playing in the second division for nearly a century and a half, so outside influences were inevitably going to have a strong pull when standards were finally raised again (but there is good historical precedent, looking towards the influence of Italian and French music on Purcell and his contemporaries), but the British Romantic movement quickly found its own voice – no one could suggest that Howells sounds like anyone but Howells, or that John Tavener (when at his best, as he certainly is in the Song for Athene, which creates a stunning conclusion to this disc) is not a totally individual voice.

I once mapped out the composer lineage of Stanford and Parry, and the spider’s web that spins from these two brilliant composer-teachers is very impressive. British music has so much for which to thank them.

You also mention having first encountered some of this music several decades ago. Granted, Stanford and Parry are perhaps not names we’d normally associate with historically-informed re-evaluation – but have you seen changes over time in the way this Romantic repertoire is regarded and performed?

If you are lucky enough, as I was, to sing in a first-rate choir in your formative musical years (I was a chorister at St John’s Cambridge when it was widely reckoned to be pretty much at the top of the international choral tree) your musical upbringing is filled with music of the British Romantics, and it leaves a deep imprint. Luckily for me, my choirmaster leaned strongly towards the romantic, emotional aspects of this music: the floaty, clean, but untouchable style of singing that was prevalent in more than a few choirs of that era filled him with horror.

I don’t think that style of rather unemotional singing has fully gone even today, but I hope that there are more choirs who are prepared to ‘go for it’ nowadays than there were 40 years ago. For me, if you are singing Romantic music, you need a choir sound that is passionate, full-blooded, vibrant, and utterly committed, coming directly from the heart. It is also a period of music that seems to me to require an especially orchestral approach, colouring your choral sound with the wide palette of colours found in a symphony orchestra.

Leighton’s Drop, drop, slow tears and Parry’s Lord, let me know mine end are each the culmination of a larger work or set (and, it must be said, in each case a deeply moving one). Beautiful as they still are, do you think they lose something of their power by being performed in isolation?

Great music is great music, whether heard in its full context or taken outside it. Of course it is always wonderful to hear the Agnus Dei from Bach’s Mass in B minor in context, as the culmination of 90 astonishing minutes that have preceded it, but hearing the movement alone doesn’t stop it being an exquisite movement. And when we look back to the history books, Parry’s six Songs of Farewell were not first performed in one set, so hearing them apart didn’t concern the composer. In addition, the final song, Lord, let me know mine end, is the only one which sets a biblical text, so already Parry has set it slightly apart from the others.

Incidentally, the vocal writing there is perhaps the most symphonic of all the pieces on this disc: you can see exactly how Parry would have orchestrated it. Which leads me onto a project which features high up my future wish-list: to perform some of the famous anthems from the period in the composers’ orchestral versions. There’s a project and a half…