Quilter: Folk-song Arrangements / Part-songs For Women's Voices

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Cat No: 8557495

Release Date: 02 January 2005

Label: Naxos - Ex Select Products / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 747313249527

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: QUILTER

Description
Roger Quilter (1877-1953)Complete Folk-Song ArrangementsComplete Part-Songs for Women's VoicesThree Songs from 'Love at the Inn'In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries itseemed that every English composer wrote songs, andthe result was a particularly rich musical legacy. Parry,Stanford, M.V. White, Elgar, Woodforde-Finden,Lehmann, Somervell, Vaughan Williams, Quilter,Ireland, Bax, Butterworth, Gurney, Howells, andWarlock were but a handful of those who, whether ornot song-writing was their normal metier, madememorable contributions to the art-song repertoire.There are those who disparage the composer who onlywrites songs, and does not attempt large-scale works,but this ignores the special gift of writing theminiature, a form in which everything is exposed andin which every detail matters. It was a form in whichRoger Quilter excelled and for which he is best known:his songs, rooted in the sound of the Victoriandrawing-room ballad, are elegant, refined, oftenprivate, always exquisite.Quilter was born in 1877 into a wealthy upperclassfamily. His father, Sir Cuthbert Quilter, had an8,000 acre estate at Bawdsey in Suffolk, and took theattitude, usual for the time, of regarding music asmerely a fashionable accomplishment. As a youngman, Quilter himself to an extent lived the life of atypical Edwardian gentleman, visiting friends andsocial acquaintances at their country houses, andsightseeing around Europe. In spite of his father'sdisapproval, however, he determined to go his ownway, and a year or so after leaving Eton, he went to theFrankfurt Conservatory to study the piano. He alsobegan to study composition privately with Ivan Knorr,who taught many of the English-speaking students,amongst them Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner, NormanO'Neill and Percy Grainger; the five together becameknown as the Frankfurt Group, an informal group oflike-minded composers. Quilter found Knorr a hardtask-master, but was grateful for the rigorous training,and his earliest songs were published in 1897, whilestill at Frankfurt.Quilter did not draw on English folk-song as amusical resource in the way that Vaughan Williamsand others did, but he was very well aware of theheritage, and said, of setting folk-songs, that it is 'oneof the most delicate and dangerous undertakings: butoccasionally people have a genius for it, such as PercyGrainger': he had great admiration for his friend'sability to do so. Despite the danger, he himselfarranged a variety of songs, calling them 'old popularsongs' or just 'old songs'; he had a way of presentingthem simply and without undue embellishment, butwith inimitably Quilter-esque accompaniments. Five,dedicated to singers and friends, were published in1921, Drink to me only, Over the Mountains, BarbaraAllen, Three Poor Mariners and The Jolly Miller.Many years later he began working on morearrangements for his favourite nephew, Arnold Vivian,his sister Norah's son, who often sang his songs andwhose gentle personality was much in sympat
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