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Peter Warlock arranged by Tony Turrill 2 Flutes, 2 Oboes, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons
This setting was described by CASS magazine as a welcome addition to the repertoire which will give performers considerable pleasure Peter Warlock’s published oeuvre consists mainly of solo songs with piano accompaniment, some choral pieces and a handful of works for piano or orchestra. He also edited and transcribed early music, wrote books, articles and music reviews. His work was eclectic being influenced by music and musicians from the Elizabethans to Bartok via his friend and mentor, Delius. He is best known for two works, his song cycle “The Curlew” and this “Capriol Suite”. Peter Warlock, the pseudonym under which Philip Heseltine chose to compose, was born in London on Oct. 30th 1894 and died of gas poisoning on 17 Dec. 17th 1930, probably having committed suicide. He no doubt chose the name “Warlock” because of his undoubted interest in the occult. Having failed academically at three institutes in succession, first in Cologne, then Oxford and finally at London University, he followed a career path which can only be described as chaotic. In 1915 he became the music critic of the Daily Mail, a job which lasted all of four months. In 1917, after a period editing early music, Heseltine, a conscientious objector worried about conscription, departed for Dublin where he wrote some of his best songs - later published under the name Warlock. After the war, in 1920/21, he edited a music magazine, the Sackbut, but was then himself sacked and took refuge for the next three years in Wales, at the family home. Here he wrote a book on Delius, a composer he had long known and admired, arranged some of Delius’ works, transcribed a vast amount of early music and composed many of his songs - including his undoubted masterpiece “The Curlew”. In 1925, Warlock moved to Eynsford where for the next three years he wrote, composed and caroused. The compositions were less prolific, nevertheless it was during these years that he produced his best known work, the Capriol Suite, firstly for piano, then for strings and finally in 1928 for full orchestra. It was inspired by melodies from a discourse on dancing, Orchésographie, written in the 16th century by a French priest named Arbeau. Capriol is a fictitious lawyer who wishes to learn to dance. The book records the subsequent dialogue between Capriol and Arbeau. His last major venture was to edit a magazine for Sir Thomas Beecham as part of the 1929 Delius festival , an artistic success but a financial failure. The collapse of this enterprise in 1930 left him again unemployed and not long afterwards led to his untimely death. Tony Turrill writes of this arrangement:- “I first came across the Capriol Suite in its String Version. Its mediaeval character seemed so well suited to wind instruments that I set about arranging it for a standard wind octet. When finalising this, I discovered that in 1928 he had orchestrated a version for Full Orchestra - Strings, Woodwind and full Brass. I obtained the score from the British Library, whose staff I thank for their usual unfailing courtesy and help in making it available. My intention was to compare my arrangement with his, especially to see how he had deployed the wind resources. Although I have made some changes to the octet as a result, I was pleasantly surprised at the measure of agreement. Perhaps some allocations are intrinsically obvious in the music or perhaps I have heard it in the past and my subconscious was unwittingly in play. Movement 5, Pieds en l’air, marks the most significant departure from the original score. Warlock repeats the gorgeous theme virtually unchanged but in the full orchestral version of the repeat he sets countermelodies for each of the solo wind instruments in turn. I have set the theme first for two clarinets and two bassoons and the repetition for a wind quartet of the second instruments. This allows the firsts to play the counter melodies in turn. Warlock obviously wanted his snatches of countermelodies to be heard but feared, or knew from performance, they might not be. The score is marked “*N.B. The wind instruments must stand out as soli against the strings”. Each individual part is then marked not just solo but “Solo(to stand out”). I have chosen to reallocate these fragments so that they are placed on instruments in registers where the soloists will have no difficulty in achieving Warlock’s aims. However, I have, for belt and braces, marked them en dehors. Interestingly, the full orchestral ending differs from both the piano and string versions in that the three penultimate chords are placed much more straightforwardly within the triplet marking. I have no information as to how this came about perhaps it proved difficult to muster the forces of the whole orchestra to deliver the three eccentric beats of the piano/string versions with sufficient precision. Who knows? I have chosen to use this somewhat simpler version in the octet.” The Suite is in six short movements:
If you have been counting the extracts that have been playing, the seventh is the conclusion of movement 6 which was included to give you a brief sample of the deliciously discordant ending. |
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