For over a thousand years, England has enjoyed an extremely rich musical culture. Among composers it has boasted many exceptional ones that were native born, as well as imports from abroad. During the Renaissance and Baroque eras, England derived a great deal of its musical culture from continental Europe. Composers and performers crossed paths traveling in both directions. Italian violinists and harpsichordists, for example, often made a brief stop in London while on tour; going the other way, English lutenists were eager to ensconce themselves in the latest developments in instrumental virtuosity practiced in Catholic regions. Among popular forms taken over from Italy were the madrigal and eventually, with Purcell and Handel’s assistance, opera. Fast forward 200 years and the “British Invasion” of the 1960s radically transformed pop music forever after.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1874-1953) composed some of the 20th century’s most beloved symphonic works, including The Lark Ascending and Fantasia on a Theme of Tallis. His most famous work is not entirely by him, however. The Fantasia on Greensleeves is beautiful and simple, perhaps beautiful because of its simplicity. It is based on a melody that first appeared in song books from the late-16th century. Shakespeare referred to the “Greensleeves” tune in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602) in a passage that attests to its popular recognition. Today’s listener may know it, too, as the Christmas carol What Child is This?

The four-minute piece follows a simple ABA form, with the “Greensleeves” melody used as foundation for section A and a secondary theme borrowed from the folksong “Lovely Joan.” It begins with a high solo flute that falls slowly through two octaves. Its gentle descent, with all the grace and languor of a falling leaf, is balanced by rising arpeggios in the harp. The main tune enters as a lovely violin-viola duet, but with increased familiarity, one begins to pick out the composer’s subtle counterpoint in the other parts. After the contrasting middle section, a brief flute cadenza leads seamlessly to the reprise of section A. The reprise contains a subtle but significant alteration in scoring, as the “Greensleeves” tune is played by viola and cello. This darker and warmer treatment contrasts beautifully with high violins, which take the theme’s second half and lead to an unadorned finish. Vaughan Williams originally composed the music for a now-forgotten light opera, Sir John in Love (1928), based on the Falstaff stories. Five years later Ralph Greaves made an arrangement of the material for string, harp, and flute. It is this version that went on to achieve such fame and that opens tonight’s program.

Speaking of light opera, it would be hard to overlook the impact of that genre’s most famous duo: Gilbert and Sullivan. In this monumental partnership, W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911) wielded the dramatist’s pen and Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) provided glittering musical scores. The pair met in 1870 by which time Sullivan – six years Gilbert’s junior – had already achieved minor fame for incidental music to Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In 1875 Gilbert and Sullivan tasted their first success with Trial by Jury, and over the next decade they reached the pinnacle of British musical theater: H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), and The Mikado (1885).

Set in an inauthentic Japan, The Mikado used a timely interest in the Far East to satirize aspects of the British government. Sullivan initially refused to take part in the project; he had tired of the comic opera world and sought more serious projects. The story centers on Ko-Ko, a poor tailor comically elevated to the post of Lord High Executioner. In this world, the Mikado or Emperor has forbidden flirting. Ko-Ko’s young female ward, Yum-Yum, is in love with a musician. Along with her fellow wards, the three women sing “Three Little Maids from School are We.” Tonight we enjoy a new arrangement made by Zachary Wadsworth. In addition to the requisite three sparkling sopranos, Wadsworth added a surprise: “To amp up the inherent silliness in the song, I have re-orchestrated it for harp, bassoon, and percussion, an unusual trio to pair with the song’s three energetic singers.”

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) was no Anglophile. Yet something inspired him to compose two variations sets on British themes, including God Save the King and Rule, Britannia. The former tune was much better known at the time, but it’s unlikely that many people in Beethoven’s Vienna would have been familiar with Rule, Britannia. He wrote the piece during a productive period, which started around 1802 with the search for a new direction (the so-called “heroic” period). Beethoven had already composed over a dozen variation sets on original themes, folksongs, and famous melodies from operas. Considering such later examples as 32 Variations in C Minor and the famous Diabelli collection, it is clear that Beethoven’s variation sets exist on two different planes. Some engrossed all of the composer’s energies for an extended period, whereas others were tossed off rather quickly. The Five Variations on Rule, Britannia are certainly of the latter variety. Listeners may not recognize the tune at first, but by the middle of the opening theme we hear the familiar strains. The first variation is already quite abstract in comparison to the theme, the second becomes more rhythmically interesting, and third downright virtuosic. Variation IV makes the requisite turn to minor, followed by the fifth variation and improvisatory coda back in major. Such variations amount to fashionable parlor games, subjecting a popular melody to all manner of textural and stylistic changes.

Arguably England’s first great composer was John Dunstaple or Dunstable (ca. 1390-1453). Dunstable worked at the crossroads of musical styles. The year of his death coincides with significant changes in European history, including the Fall of Constantinople and the end of the Hundred Years’ War. Going back that far, it is not surprising that much of his music has been lost. The survival of most pieces in collections prepared in Germany and France shows Dunstable’s wide acclaim. He was credited with fundamentally changing harmony, writing in a way that featured fuller triads (three-note chords) and particularly favoring the poetic sound of the chordal third. Both advances would be important in the newer “renaissance” sound. With the three–voice motet, Quam pulchra es,medieval elements still abound. Some of its gestures sound tonal, but more notable are the modal devices that later composers gradually abandoned, including doubled leading-tone cadences, rising/falling intervals immediately after the cadence, and the pure open-fifth harmony at the end (C-G-c).

Italian composer Luciano Berio (1925-2003) came from a musical family and began studying with his father and grandfather, both professional musicians. The defining experience of Berio’s early compositional career occurred in 1951 at Tanglewood, summer home of the Boston Symphony. It was there that he met Luigi Dallapiccola, one the century’s most eloquent proponents of serialism. Personal contact with Dallapiccola inspired Berio’s own adoption of serialism. In the late 1950s Berio began to direct an electronic music studio in Milan under the auspices of Italian radio. This work gave him access to advanced technological resources for the creation and manipulation of recorded sound.

Around the same time – seemingly worlds away – four young musicians formed a band in Liverpool, England. Combining 1950s rock-n-roll with pop, classical, and eventually world music influences, The Beatles fundamentally shaped Western music forever after. The creative duo of John Lennon and Paul McCartney produced hit after hit, and the band’s arrival in the U.S. caused literal stampedes. But despite the image of Beatlemania,Lennon and McCartney were interested in much more than popular success. Searching for inspiration, McCartney attended a series of avant-garde concerts in 1966 and briefly met Berio after one such event. The admiration was mutual.

Within the next year, Berio decided to set several Beatles tunes in new arrangements for chamber ensemble. He began with “Michelle,” written in 1965 and awarded a Grammy in 1967. For his arrangement, Berio surrounds this simple strophic melody with a pseudo-baroque ensemble of counterpointing winds and harpsichord. The set continues with “She’s Got a Ticket to Ride.” Here one definitely feels the stylistic mash-up, as the original rhythmic swing has been ironed out by a classical ethos. “Yesterday” becomes a poignant aria in Berio’s hands, though his newly-composed instrumental material dominates the voice in the overall scale. The fourth song, a reprise of “Michelle,” offers what most listeners would have expected in advance from a Beatles-Berio collaboration. The melody remains, as before, but now the accompanying ensemble seems fully up-to-date. Berio’s motifs are rhythmically diverse, the harmony highly chromatic, and the overall effect more experimental.

Perhaps the most famous composer to call England home was not English by birth. I refer, of course, to George Frederick Handel (1685-1759), born Georg Friedrich Händel in central Germany in the same year as J. S. Bach. Young Handel received only modest compositional lessons. This was very much the era of “on-the-job training”, especially for church musicians, and Handel would continue to self-instruct as he gradually came into contact with more diverse styles in Hamburg, Rome, and Venice. Even after he crossed north over the Alps in early 1710, Handel continued to think and create in the Italian style. He took a post at Hanover in Germany, but left for his first visit to London before the end of the year. He received permission from the Elector of Hanover for a second English tour, and he daringly never went back to Germany.

As fate would have it, his old employer in Hanover eventually became King George I of England in 1714. Handel smoothed the day of reckoning by writing the dazzling Water Music at the king’s request. Less than a decade later, Handel composed the anthem Zadok the Priest for a new king, George II, crowned on October 4, 1727. Zadok has been sung at every English coronation since. The text, from the Book of Kings, has been recited at coronations since the 10th century. Handel opens with a lengthy and harmonically rich instrumental prelude before the chorus enters with its powerful declamation, “Zadok the Priest . . .” The second section, written in a dance-like triple meter filled with dotted rhythms, sets the text of rejoicing. Handel injects so much animation that one can almost see people dancing to the good news. He later returns to the march topic for “God save the King!” and the kind of brilliant vocal writing we have come to expect from him.

INTERMISSION

The English composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016) enjoyed a productive career filled with both acclaim and controversy. His career began at a young age when the BBC engaged him to compose music for the Children’s Hour radio broadcasts. After school, he studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music, where he helped form a club dedicated to contemporary music. Davies’ exposure to the most recent compositional techniques intensified during a fellowship at Princeton in the early 1960s, working under the guidance of Milton Babbitt and Roger Sessions. Davies’ own pieces continued to push boundaries, and he developed a reputation as Britain’s enfant terrible. Alongside numerous works for traditional forces (symphonies, string quartets, and operas), Davies penned a radical and highly original monodrama in 1969, Eight Songs for a Mad King.

Davies was not the first to depict insanity in music. He certainly chose a rich subject, King George III, and a dramatic scenario in which to explore one man’s decline into madness. The texts of Eight Songs for a Mad King were compiled by Randolph Stow and are all based upon writings left behind by England’s maligned monarch. Even the music goes back directly to George, whose mechanical organ still exists and which contains numerous songs he tried to train birds to perform. Of course, the contours of those eight songs are sometimes hard to discern in the midst of Davies’ vocal acrobatics, which call for extremely difficult extended range techniques and dynamics from a whisper all the way to a scream. This is uncomfortable music, to say the least. It is music that crosses the threshold into monodrama, a work on the edge between concert music and realist opera.

For the original production, the onstage performers were to be placed inside large birdcages, mimicking the mad king’s vocal gestures from their respective prisons. It opens with an aberrant tick-tock of the clock before going completely off the rails, musically speaking. Behind the expressionist surface stands the form of a Baroque suite, where each movement is a different dance. The opening movement is perhaps the most difficult to embrace. Subsequent movements feature more vestiges of melody and touches of rhythmic underpinning that help us get our footing. At times Davies introduces a familiar, “mainstream” piece from the classical repertoire in order to parody it. Used in his other operas, this technique merges the composer’s formal training and interest in music history with a personal, radical style of expression. It is ideally suited as a way to reference the tunes King George himself knew and which must, during his mania, have taken on a distorted quality. Many listeners will be bothered, some will be mesmerized by the intensity and the originality of the composer’s conception. Musical depictions of madness will, by their very nature, push the boundary between music and chaos. It is undeniably a credit to Davies that he could channel that altered mindset so convincingly.

Jason Stell, © 2025