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Erik Chisholm: Violin Concerto & Dance Suite
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目录
| # | 曲目 |
|---|---|
1 | Chisholm: Violin Concerto: I. Passacaglia telescopico (in modo Vasantee) |
| 2 | Chisholm: Violin Concerto: II. Allegro scherzando |
| 3 | Chisholm: Violin Concerto: III. Aria in modo Sohani |
| 4 | Chisholm: Violin Concerto: IV. Finale. Fuga senza tema |
| 5 | Chisholm: From the True Edge of the Great World: Prelude 9. Song of the Mavis |
| 6 | Chisholm: From the True Edge of the Great World: Prelude 1. Ossianic Lay |
| 7 | Chisholm: From the True Edge of the Great World: Prelude 8. Port a beul |
| 8 | Chisholm: Dance Suite for Orchestra and Piano: I. Allegro energico |
| 9 | Chisholm: Dance Suite for Orchestra and Piano: II. Piobaireachd |
| 10 | Chisholm: Dance Suite for Orchestra and Piano: III. March |
| 11 | Chisholm: Dance Suite for Orchestra and Piano: IV. Reel |
简介
A bracing excursion to the Indian subcontinent via the Scottish Highlands: the compelling force of Scottish Modernism that is Erik Chisholm makes a welcome reappearance on Hyperion. Matthew Trusler and Danny Driver are the committed soloists in the two large-scale concertante works.
Erik Ch... isholm was born in Glasgow in 1904 and died in Cape Town in 1965. This was the man who as a concert manager brought Bartók and Hindemith to his native city; who as a virtuoso pianist played Florent Schmitt to Florent Schmitt, Szymanowski to Szymanowski, shared the piano stool with Casella, and accompanied Hindemith; and who as a conductor gave the British premieres of such great operas as Mozart’s Idomeneo, Berlioz’s The Trojans and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle.
Not surprisingly, then, Chisholm’s own music is entirely at home in the mainstream of the great modernists of the twentieth century, of Berg and Bartók, of Hindemith and Stravinsky. Like theirs, his music is often challenging, unprecedented in idiom, and emotionally and intellectually full of adventure.
It was an adventure through many worlds, starting in Glasgow and inspired by a collection of Gaelic music given to Erik on holiday in Millport when he was just a lad. That early gift led to Chisholm’s ‘Piobaireachd’ piano concerto, first heard in Glasgow at the beginning of the Second World War—a war which took Chisholm to the India where Hindustani music inspired several works, including the ‘Hindustani’ piano concerto, the violin concerto, and his terrifying setting of Strindberg in the opera Simoon.
Neither before nor after the war was Chisholm accepted in Glasgow for a post remotely equal to his capacities. Scotland’s loss was South Africa’s gain, and there, in charge of opera at the College of Music and the Faculty of Music at the University of Cape Town, Chisholm had at last command of resources worthy of his energies. There he could compose operas and have at least some of them produced.
The works featured here give expression to the two main strands in Chisholm’s music—the Hindustani and Highland Scottish influences. Far from being remote from each other, these are related musical cultures and have been perceived as such since at least the early twentieth century. The leading English-language expert on Hindustani music, Fox Strangways, drew attention to melodic relationships between Scottish and Hindustani song melodies, the parallel in Gurkha songs to the Scotch snap, and similarities between Highland bagpipe and Indian pipe tunes. Fundamental to both musical cultures is the ever-present drone, whether literal or by implication, and the frequent structural use of grace notes. Chisholm himself, having studied Hindustani music during his placement in India in the Second World War, was profoundly conscious of the relationship, and quoted his wife Diana’s comment:
To many Continentals Scotland just seems to be the top-part of England with no particular characteristics of its own. How wrong they are! If they travel to the North of Scotland and make contact with the Gaelic-speaking population, see our tartans, Celtic Crosses, and hear our piobaireachd music, they may realize that we have certain Asiatic qualities which are not shared by the Sassenach …
But Chisholm was also aware of the limits to such parallels and well knew that underlying musical connections cannot disguise the distinctiveness of the two sound worlds, in both of which Chisholm revelled with virtuosic abandon:
I wrote three concertos, one for piano, one for violin and one for orchestra, all based on Hindustani themes and rhythms. But—let’s face it—the study of Hindustani music is a job for a life-time, and most Western musicians really don’t know a thing about it.
Violin Concerto (1950)
In terms of mood and structure, this is one of the most remarkable violin concertos ever composed. Four-movement concertos are rare enough, but Chisholm’s four-movement work blends complex counterpoint with haunting lyricism, Middle-Eastern sensuality with Western formality: its sound world is unique.
Back in 1952, when the concerto was premiered in Cape Town and at the Edinburgh International Festival (with the BBC Scottish Orchestra under Ian Whyte), this was not an easy piece to assimilate. However, the critics on both continents, though challenged, recognized its power, depth and beauty. Szymon Goldberg was the violinist in Cape Town and had ‘quite a hand in manipulating technical passages’. He would also have given it its European premiere in Edinburgh but, as Chisholm wrote:
You may know that Goldberg was offered the Edinburgh Festival date, but negotiations were so protracted that he had fixed up an American tour when the final offer reached him. I’m quite sure that [Max] Rostal will make a good job of it, for one thing Goldberg played it to him in London a month or so ago. Goldberg, by the way, is doing it in the United States in September.
The Hindustani sources for two of the movements are declared by Chisholm: the first, ‘Passacaglia telescopico (in modo Vasantee)’, and the third, ‘Aria in modo Sohani’ (based upon Rag Sohani, which also influenced his profound solo piano work, Night Song of the Bards). In addition, the concerto’s scherzo is based upon Rag Vasantee and the final ‘Fuga senza tema’ is influenced by all the preceding material.
The opening of the passacaglia, on muted cellos and basses, is derived from a version of Rag Vasantee. This is a rag of the spring, evoking the image of a woman whose hair is decorated by peacock feathers and her ears ornamented with mango blossoms.
The note sequence of the rag pervades the movement and has a hypnotic effect upon the whole: it is not only that the passacaglia theme itself is drawn from it, but that the entire melodic material is derived from its sinuous movement of semitones and augmented and diminished seconds and thirds. Even in the fast passages, the mysterious beauty of the sequence is sustained, flowing like a great, slow-moving river through the changing landscape of the variations, which themselves have strong points of contact with the slow movement of the ‘Hindustani’ piano concerto.
How this passacaglia develops is one of the most effective structural innovations of any period. A traditional passacaglia repeats the same sequence of notes in the same rhythm, sometimes at different pitches, but essentially the only variants are the other melodic lines. With Chisholm, the melodic structure of the passacaglia theme is retained but compressed. At first deeply thoughtful, the music gathers in intensity and power and the rhythmic expression is tightened, accelerating towards a massive climax and uncanny silence as the initial twelve bars are concentrated into a single chord.
From this point the passacaglia expands back to its full length, but with the theme itself in inversion, eventually pausing alluringly on an E flat minor chord before stirring itself into action with increasing rhythmic activity. The extended cadenza returns us to a more introspective—though emotionally dramatic—world, and leads to a calm ending: the evenly floating motion of the clarinet, suspended in time, the violin airborne, scarcely moving its wings.
Such complex intellectual handling of a single idea could have turned out to be dry and academic in reality: but this is powerful music with a tremendous physical presence. It is made all the more telling by the fact that the soloist and orchestra are not in combat but share a total unity of purpose.
The astonishing scherzo which follows is also dominated by Rag Vasantee. The movement might be described as a wild jig or a 6/8 march. It moves between aggression and delicacy, determination and wit. In the contrasting central section, Rag Vasantee emerges on the solo violin accompanied by side-drums played with the fingernails. This leads to an insouciant teasing dance which, after a brief cadenza, develops its rhythmic energies, becoming almost explosive in its vitality. The solo part flickers with firelight and the brilliantly managed orchestration gives rein to wild assertions without ever overwhelming the violin. There are parallels between this mood and that of the conclusion of the ‘Hindustani’ piano concerto, itself a celebration of spring, of colour and of light, joyous in its violence.
The ‘Aria in modo Sohani’, wrote Chisholm, ‘is the only occasion in the work on which a genuine Indian melody is used. It is introduced by the soloist, and when the first violins take it up the harmonies with which it is clothed are fashioned from a transposed Rag Sohani.’ Rag Sohani is associated with the night, and Chisholm has used it in the form of a Brahma Samaj hymn, attaching Upendrakishore Ray’s translation of the Tagore original:
Thy power is from all time; from all time is thy supreme radiance in the skies. Thine is the first word. Thy joy lives in each new year fresh in the heart. In the firmament of thy mind glisten the sun and the moon and the stars. The wave of life vibrates in the atmosphere. Thou art the first poet; the master of poems art thou. Thy deep-voiced utterances find voice in praise and prayer which ascend from all the world.
The aria opens with what is essentially a Platonic love duet between the flute and the solo violin over a steady pizzicato bass line. Deeply expressive, this is a meditation in which the soloist gradually encourages the orchestra to add its own colours to a world of cosmic thought. There is a spaciousness to the music which, following an orchestral climax, leads to a new theme rising towards an impassioned section, the solo violin in its highest register. Although this music is full of movement and incident, there is an underlying philosophic calm in which the mystery of Tagore’s text finds its most beautiful expression as the opening theme returns, gradually subsiding into a mysterious and ethereal conclusion.
Concerning the ‘Fuga senza tema’, Chisholm tells us that his title does not mean that the fugue is without a subject, rather that there are a number of subjects which form the basis of discussion, ‘as if each speaker gave his own personal twist of individuality to the matter in hand’. As with the scherzo, aggression and delicacy alternate and the rhythmic invention and orchestration are compelling. The opening is almost savage, but it can also be skittish. The pace throughout is relentless, gathering fragments of themes from earlier movements into a concluding whirlwind of breath-taking energy.
From the True Edge of the Great World (1943)
The world of Hindustani culture is an ancient one, but so too is that of the Celts. Since the days of Tacitus, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland have been thought of as ‘The True Edge of the Great World’. When Erik Chisholm composed his piano preludes of that title, it was to signify an exploration of musical geography—a journey into the depths of a tradition which he was especially qualified to undertake. Each of the preludes is based upon a Highland tune, but these are more than settings of traditional melodies. As the word ‘preludes’ implies, they take the form of meditations or improvisations on some aspect of a melody which may only appear in full once in the whole piece.
Such was Chisholm’s own excitement with the preludes that the Scottish pianist Agnes Walker described him arriving one Sunday morning at her home on the south side of Glasgow, dressed only in pyjamas and overcoat, and throwing a parcel of music at her father who had opened the door, saying ‘give those to Agnes. I’ve just finished them’ and dashing back to a waiting taxi. Here, for the first time, three of them are recorded in the virtuosic orchestral clothing with which Chisholm dressed them in the same year, 1944.
The Song of the mavis (Oran na Smeoraich) imitates the thrush and is well known in Gaelic tradition as a children’s song describing the parent bird calling its young to dinner with characteristic repetitions. The true original is very simple and only roughly pitched. It is not a song. Chisholm’s version has its source in a more elaborate version from Amy Murray’s Father Allan’s Island, and he has allowed fancy to carry him away, turning this homely piece into an idyllic ripple of bird-song, spring burgeoning with assertive joy.
Ossianic lay is a rhetorical piece in that its repeated notes suggest incantation—at one point it is marked ‘quasi recitative’. Ossianic lays are rooted in ancient material, and a very few, of which this is one, have survived in the tradition. It was collected by Amy Murray and the words are ascribed to Ossian who recalls heroic days with Oscar, Douglas and Fionn: ‘Latha dhuinn fhìn air Luachar Leobhar’ (‘The day we were at the hillock of rushes’). Chisholm treats the melody with simplicity and respect, maintaining a drone and scarcely developing the harmony beyond octave doublings, with just a few chords that colour rather than impel the music. But as the music rises to a climax, we are made aware of its latent and heroic power, with harmonies and textures which are both sombre and magnificent. Chisholm concludes this tantalizing echo of a heroic past with a wonderful peroration and a hushed mystical scattering of notes.
Port a beul literally means ‘mouth music’ and refers to the continuing practice of singing dance music, often using nonsensical words and tongue-twisters to emphasize the rhythmic drive of the music. On no account may the rhythm be broken for the intake of breath, which has to be managed by subtle omission of a note or two. Port a beul is often danced to, but is also sung simply for the fun of it. Chisholm’s piece is in the form of a reel and enjoys the same breathless and almost relentless drive, the test of stamina being also part of the fun. This one is a wooing song. It is occasionally necessary to remind people that there is joy as well as sorrow in Highland music and if ever there were music to set the record straight, this is it.
Dance Suite for orchestra and piano (1932)
In 1933 Chisholm as soloist premiered part of the Dance Suite for orchestra and piano with the Scottish Orchestra under Barbirolli and then the complete work at the ISCM Festival in Amsterdam, Constant Lambert conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Chisholm was only twenty-six years old, and back at home in Glasgow, his wife Diana was giving birth to their first child, Morag, on the kitchen table. Not surprising then that this work was dedicated ‘To my dear wife’.
As with the Port a beul, the first movement is a reel, music driven by dance. But its virility is not to be confused with dances emphasizing the heel that prevail in lowland countries. The Highland reel is danced on the toes and is extremely athletic—indeed traditionally commanded in Scottish regiments in order to keep men fit when not on campaign, as Kirsty Duncan comments:
… in a typical six-step Highland Fling, a dancer will jump vertically 192 times, while performing complicated and intricate footwork, and using the muscles from head to toe. Highland dancing is therefore akin to sprinting, with dancers using fast-twitch muscle, which is also required by soldiers.
Chisholm’s reel is best described as generic. Although the rhythm consists almost entirely of strings of quavers, the variety of note patterns in traditional reels is considerable, even virtuosic in pieces such as The Reel of Tulloch with its syncopations and witty sequences. Chisholm makes full use of this potential, adding a good few rhythmic tricks of his own. Asked whether melody or rhythm came first in his music, he replied:
I rather think the rhythmic impulse is strongest; a definite body stimulus which, by its continued reiteration induces a feeling of magnetic attraction …
The harmonic patterning of reels is, however, very simple, using the ‘double tonic’—shifting a phrase down a whole tone and back up again. Traces of this basic idea can be detected in this movement, notably when, towards the end, he allows the clarinets a brief quotation straight out of the tradition. But what is really striking about this music is the chromatic zest with which Chisholm flavours the whole, bringing out the essence of the reel with vivacious harmonic and orchestral colouring.
Piobaireachd literally means ‘pipe music’ but refers exclusively to the classical music of the Highland bagpipes, also known as ceòl mòr—the ‘big music’, consisting of variations on a theme or ùrlar. Chisholm was fascinated by the form, and composed many works based upon its structure, melody, and style, as well as its unique forms of embellishment, which themselves have structural significance. Indeed, from the outset, the ùrlar of this movement is embedded in filigree.
The strings join in hushed assent only at the start of the first variation, adding to the piano’s aqueous texture, and the gentle mood persists through the oboe solo of the second variation and into the subtle pulse of the chords in the third and fourth variations. But these waters are not shallow: their beauties are strange, and there is an underlying swell that breaks like a seventh wave—bringing a sense of danger to the deceptive calm of the surface.
The fifth and final variation opens with the piano providing the solo flute with glittering embellishments, echoing the opening ùrlar; but the clarinet takes over, sliding ever deeper into a world of submarine mystery.
The third movement is a 6/8 march, wholly cheerful in character, more suited to a festival than a war and full of humour, not least when brought to an apparent halt with almost derisive comment from the piccolo. Here too the tune is best described as generic, sharing a structure with The Soldier’s Joy and A Rock and a Wee Pickle Tow, but remaining essentially itself.
More obviously indebted to the tradition than the first movement reel, the concluding dance takes on a triumphant character of its own, leaping from key to key, and allowing its triumphalism to verge on the threatening—a threat made the more imposing by occasional obscure mutterings from the piano, as though something alarming were seething underneath the boisterous, indeed brash self-confidence of the orchestra. Chisholm takes this quintessential Scottish dance and transforms its energetic but homely delights into music that searches deep into the nature of energy, its sources and its intentions. The final prestissimo races to a commandingly assertive, almost imperial close. The whole epitomizes the motto of Scotland’s emblem, the thistle: ‘Whaur daur meddle wi me’ (‘Who dares meddle with me’). It is almost disconcerting to be threatened with such good humour!
Erik Ch... isholm was born in Glasgow in 1904 and died in Cape Town in 1965. This was the man who as a concert manager brought Bartók and Hindemith to his native city; who as a virtuoso pianist played Florent Schmitt to Florent Schmitt, Szymanowski to Szymanowski, shared the piano stool with Casella, and accompanied Hindemith; and who as a conductor gave the British premieres of such great operas as Mozart’s Idomeneo, Berlioz’s The Trojans and Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle.
Not surprisingly, then, Chisholm’s own music is entirely at home in the mainstream of the great modernists of the twentieth century, of Berg and Bartók, of Hindemith and Stravinsky. Like theirs, his music is often challenging, unprecedented in idiom, and emotionally and intellectually full of adventure.
It was an adventure through many worlds, starting in Glasgow and inspired by a collection of Gaelic music given to Erik on holiday in Millport when he was just a lad. That early gift led to Chisholm’s ‘Piobaireachd’ piano concerto, first heard in Glasgow at the beginning of the Second World War—a war which took Chisholm to the India where Hindustani music inspired several works, including the ‘Hindustani’ piano concerto, the violin concerto, and his terrifying setting of Strindberg in the opera Simoon.
Neither before nor after the war was Chisholm accepted in Glasgow for a post remotely equal to his capacities. Scotland’s loss was South Africa’s gain, and there, in charge of opera at the College of Music and the Faculty of Music at the University of Cape Town, Chisholm had at last command of resources worthy of his energies. There he could compose operas and have at least some of them produced.
The works featured here give expression to the two main strands in Chisholm’s music—the Hindustani and Highland Scottish influences. Far from being remote from each other, these are related musical cultures and have been perceived as such since at least the early twentieth century. The leading English-language expert on Hindustani music, Fox Strangways, drew attention to melodic relationships between Scottish and Hindustani song melodies, the parallel in Gurkha songs to the Scotch snap, and similarities between Highland bagpipe and Indian pipe tunes. Fundamental to both musical cultures is the ever-present drone, whether literal or by implication, and the frequent structural use of grace notes. Chisholm himself, having studied Hindustani music during his placement in India in the Second World War, was profoundly conscious of the relationship, and quoted his wife Diana’s comment:
To many Continentals Scotland just seems to be the top-part of England with no particular characteristics of its own. How wrong they are! If they travel to the North of Scotland and make contact with the Gaelic-speaking population, see our tartans, Celtic Crosses, and hear our piobaireachd music, they may realize that we have certain Asiatic qualities which are not shared by the Sassenach …
But Chisholm was also aware of the limits to such parallels and well knew that underlying musical connections cannot disguise the distinctiveness of the two sound worlds, in both of which Chisholm revelled with virtuosic abandon:
I wrote three concertos, one for piano, one for violin and one for orchestra, all based on Hindustani themes and rhythms. But—let’s face it—the study of Hindustani music is a job for a life-time, and most Western musicians really don’t know a thing about it.
Violin Concerto (1950)
In terms of mood and structure, this is one of the most remarkable violin concertos ever composed. Four-movement concertos are rare enough, but Chisholm’s four-movement work blends complex counterpoint with haunting lyricism, Middle-Eastern sensuality with Western formality: its sound world is unique.
Back in 1952, when the concerto was premiered in Cape Town and at the Edinburgh International Festival (with the BBC Scottish Orchestra under Ian Whyte), this was not an easy piece to assimilate. However, the critics on both continents, though challenged, recognized its power, depth and beauty. Szymon Goldberg was the violinist in Cape Town and had ‘quite a hand in manipulating technical passages’. He would also have given it its European premiere in Edinburgh but, as Chisholm wrote:
You may know that Goldberg was offered the Edinburgh Festival date, but negotiations were so protracted that he had fixed up an American tour when the final offer reached him. I’m quite sure that [Max] Rostal will make a good job of it, for one thing Goldberg played it to him in London a month or so ago. Goldberg, by the way, is doing it in the United States in September.
The Hindustani sources for two of the movements are declared by Chisholm: the first, ‘Passacaglia telescopico (in modo Vasantee)’, and the third, ‘Aria in modo Sohani’ (based upon Rag Sohani, which also influenced his profound solo piano work, Night Song of the Bards). In addition, the concerto’s scherzo is based upon Rag Vasantee and the final ‘Fuga senza tema’ is influenced by all the preceding material.
The opening of the passacaglia, on muted cellos and basses, is derived from a version of Rag Vasantee. This is a rag of the spring, evoking the image of a woman whose hair is decorated by peacock feathers and her ears ornamented with mango blossoms.
The note sequence of the rag pervades the movement and has a hypnotic effect upon the whole: it is not only that the passacaglia theme itself is drawn from it, but that the entire melodic material is derived from its sinuous movement of semitones and augmented and diminished seconds and thirds. Even in the fast passages, the mysterious beauty of the sequence is sustained, flowing like a great, slow-moving river through the changing landscape of the variations, which themselves have strong points of contact with the slow movement of the ‘Hindustani’ piano concerto.
How this passacaglia develops is one of the most effective structural innovations of any period. A traditional passacaglia repeats the same sequence of notes in the same rhythm, sometimes at different pitches, but essentially the only variants are the other melodic lines. With Chisholm, the melodic structure of the passacaglia theme is retained but compressed. At first deeply thoughtful, the music gathers in intensity and power and the rhythmic expression is tightened, accelerating towards a massive climax and uncanny silence as the initial twelve bars are concentrated into a single chord.
From this point the passacaglia expands back to its full length, but with the theme itself in inversion, eventually pausing alluringly on an E flat minor chord before stirring itself into action with increasing rhythmic activity. The extended cadenza returns us to a more introspective—though emotionally dramatic—world, and leads to a calm ending: the evenly floating motion of the clarinet, suspended in time, the violin airborne, scarcely moving its wings.
Such complex intellectual handling of a single idea could have turned out to be dry and academic in reality: but this is powerful music with a tremendous physical presence. It is made all the more telling by the fact that the soloist and orchestra are not in combat but share a total unity of purpose.
The astonishing scherzo which follows is also dominated by Rag Vasantee. The movement might be described as a wild jig or a 6/8 march. It moves between aggression and delicacy, determination and wit. In the contrasting central section, Rag Vasantee emerges on the solo violin accompanied by side-drums played with the fingernails. This leads to an insouciant teasing dance which, after a brief cadenza, develops its rhythmic energies, becoming almost explosive in its vitality. The solo part flickers with firelight and the brilliantly managed orchestration gives rein to wild assertions without ever overwhelming the violin. There are parallels between this mood and that of the conclusion of the ‘Hindustani’ piano concerto, itself a celebration of spring, of colour and of light, joyous in its violence.
The ‘Aria in modo Sohani’, wrote Chisholm, ‘is the only occasion in the work on which a genuine Indian melody is used. It is introduced by the soloist, and when the first violins take it up the harmonies with which it is clothed are fashioned from a transposed Rag Sohani.’ Rag Sohani is associated with the night, and Chisholm has used it in the form of a Brahma Samaj hymn, attaching Upendrakishore Ray’s translation of the Tagore original:
Thy power is from all time; from all time is thy supreme radiance in the skies. Thine is the first word. Thy joy lives in each new year fresh in the heart. In the firmament of thy mind glisten the sun and the moon and the stars. The wave of life vibrates in the atmosphere. Thou art the first poet; the master of poems art thou. Thy deep-voiced utterances find voice in praise and prayer which ascend from all the world.
The aria opens with what is essentially a Platonic love duet between the flute and the solo violin over a steady pizzicato bass line. Deeply expressive, this is a meditation in which the soloist gradually encourages the orchestra to add its own colours to a world of cosmic thought. There is a spaciousness to the music which, following an orchestral climax, leads to a new theme rising towards an impassioned section, the solo violin in its highest register. Although this music is full of movement and incident, there is an underlying philosophic calm in which the mystery of Tagore’s text finds its most beautiful expression as the opening theme returns, gradually subsiding into a mysterious and ethereal conclusion.
Concerning the ‘Fuga senza tema’, Chisholm tells us that his title does not mean that the fugue is without a subject, rather that there are a number of subjects which form the basis of discussion, ‘as if each speaker gave his own personal twist of individuality to the matter in hand’. As with the scherzo, aggression and delicacy alternate and the rhythmic invention and orchestration are compelling. The opening is almost savage, but it can also be skittish. The pace throughout is relentless, gathering fragments of themes from earlier movements into a concluding whirlwind of breath-taking energy.
From the True Edge of the Great World (1943)
The world of Hindustani culture is an ancient one, but so too is that of the Celts. Since the days of Tacitus, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland have been thought of as ‘The True Edge of the Great World’. When Erik Chisholm composed his piano preludes of that title, it was to signify an exploration of musical geography—a journey into the depths of a tradition which he was especially qualified to undertake. Each of the preludes is based upon a Highland tune, but these are more than settings of traditional melodies. As the word ‘preludes’ implies, they take the form of meditations or improvisations on some aspect of a melody which may only appear in full once in the whole piece.
Such was Chisholm’s own excitement with the preludes that the Scottish pianist Agnes Walker described him arriving one Sunday morning at her home on the south side of Glasgow, dressed only in pyjamas and overcoat, and throwing a parcel of music at her father who had opened the door, saying ‘give those to Agnes. I’ve just finished them’ and dashing back to a waiting taxi. Here, for the first time, three of them are recorded in the virtuosic orchestral clothing with which Chisholm dressed them in the same year, 1944.
The Song of the mavis (Oran na Smeoraich) imitates the thrush and is well known in Gaelic tradition as a children’s song describing the parent bird calling its young to dinner with characteristic repetitions. The true original is very simple and only roughly pitched. It is not a song. Chisholm’s version has its source in a more elaborate version from Amy Murray’s Father Allan’s Island, and he has allowed fancy to carry him away, turning this homely piece into an idyllic ripple of bird-song, spring burgeoning with assertive joy.
Ossianic lay is a rhetorical piece in that its repeated notes suggest incantation—at one point it is marked ‘quasi recitative’. Ossianic lays are rooted in ancient material, and a very few, of which this is one, have survived in the tradition. It was collected by Amy Murray and the words are ascribed to Ossian who recalls heroic days with Oscar, Douglas and Fionn: ‘Latha dhuinn fhìn air Luachar Leobhar’ (‘The day we were at the hillock of rushes’). Chisholm treats the melody with simplicity and respect, maintaining a drone and scarcely developing the harmony beyond octave doublings, with just a few chords that colour rather than impel the music. But as the music rises to a climax, we are made aware of its latent and heroic power, with harmonies and textures which are both sombre and magnificent. Chisholm concludes this tantalizing echo of a heroic past with a wonderful peroration and a hushed mystical scattering of notes.
Port a beul literally means ‘mouth music’ and refers to the continuing practice of singing dance music, often using nonsensical words and tongue-twisters to emphasize the rhythmic drive of the music. On no account may the rhythm be broken for the intake of breath, which has to be managed by subtle omission of a note or two. Port a beul is often danced to, but is also sung simply for the fun of it. Chisholm’s piece is in the form of a reel and enjoys the same breathless and almost relentless drive, the test of stamina being also part of the fun. This one is a wooing song. It is occasionally necessary to remind people that there is joy as well as sorrow in Highland music and if ever there were music to set the record straight, this is it.
Dance Suite for orchestra and piano (1932)
In 1933 Chisholm as soloist premiered part of the Dance Suite for orchestra and piano with the Scottish Orchestra under Barbirolli and then the complete work at the ISCM Festival in Amsterdam, Constant Lambert conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra. Chisholm was only twenty-six years old, and back at home in Glasgow, his wife Diana was giving birth to their first child, Morag, on the kitchen table. Not surprising then that this work was dedicated ‘To my dear wife’.
As with the Port a beul, the first movement is a reel, music driven by dance. But its virility is not to be confused with dances emphasizing the heel that prevail in lowland countries. The Highland reel is danced on the toes and is extremely athletic—indeed traditionally commanded in Scottish regiments in order to keep men fit when not on campaign, as Kirsty Duncan comments:
… in a typical six-step Highland Fling, a dancer will jump vertically 192 times, while performing complicated and intricate footwork, and using the muscles from head to toe. Highland dancing is therefore akin to sprinting, with dancers using fast-twitch muscle, which is also required by soldiers.
Chisholm’s reel is best described as generic. Although the rhythm consists almost entirely of strings of quavers, the variety of note patterns in traditional reels is considerable, even virtuosic in pieces such as The Reel of Tulloch with its syncopations and witty sequences. Chisholm makes full use of this potential, adding a good few rhythmic tricks of his own. Asked whether melody or rhythm came first in his music, he replied:
I rather think the rhythmic impulse is strongest; a definite body stimulus which, by its continued reiteration induces a feeling of magnetic attraction …
The harmonic patterning of reels is, however, very simple, using the ‘double tonic’—shifting a phrase down a whole tone and back up again. Traces of this basic idea can be detected in this movement, notably when, towards the end, he allows the clarinets a brief quotation straight out of the tradition. But what is really striking about this music is the chromatic zest with which Chisholm flavours the whole, bringing out the essence of the reel with vivacious harmonic and orchestral colouring.
Piobaireachd literally means ‘pipe music’ but refers exclusively to the classical music of the Highland bagpipes, also known as ceòl mòr—the ‘big music’, consisting of variations on a theme or ùrlar. Chisholm was fascinated by the form, and composed many works based upon its structure, melody, and style, as well as its unique forms of embellishment, which themselves have structural significance. Indeed, from the outset, the ùrlar of this movement is embedded in filigree.
The strings join in hushed assent only at the start of the first variation, adding to the piano’s aqueous texture, and the gentle mood persists through the oboe solo of the second variation and into the subtle pulse of the chords in the third and fourth variations. But these waters are not shallow: their beauties are strange, and there is an underlying swell that breaks like a seventh wave—bringing a sense of danger to the deceptive calm of the surface.
The fifth and final variation opens with the piano providing the solo flute with glittering embellishments, echoing the opening ùrlar; but the clarinet takes over, sliding ever deeper into a world of submarine mystery.
The third movement is a 6/8 march, wholly cheerful in character, more suited to a festival than a war and full of humour, not least when brought to an apparent halt with almost derisive comment from the piccolo. Here too the tune is best described as generic, sharing a structure with The Soldier’s Joy and A Rock and a Wee Pickle Tow, but remaining essentially itself.
More obviously indebted to the tradition than the first movement reel, the concluding dance takes on a triumphant character of its own, leaping from key to key, and allowing its triumphalism to verge on the threatening—a threat made the more imposing by occasional obscure mutterings from the piano, as though something alarming were seething underneath the boisterous, indeed brash self-confidence of the orchestra. Chisholm takes this quintessential Scottish dance and transforms its energetic but homely delights into music that searches deep into the nature of energy, its sources and its intentions. The final prestissimo races to a commandingly assertive, almost imperial close. The whole epitomizes the motto of Scotland’s emblem, the thistle: ‘Whaur daur meddle wi me’ (‘Who dares meddle with me’). It is almost disconcerting to be threatened with such good humour!
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