On Cecilia McDowall’s ‘There is no rose’…
It’s that time of year where I try to gather my thoughts towards all things Christmas and to try and think positively about the forthcoming celebrations and festivities and not dwell too much on the continuing gloom and the desperate game of Russian roulette we play as to whether we will be able to visit family or not. I guess I managed it last year in equally difficult circumstances, so I should be able to do it again amidst the wafer-thin gaieties of Christmas 2021! And in any case, my Christmas offering this year is a little more special than usual (of course, every blog I write is special…) as for the first time, I get to preview a brand-new carol before it has even been performed! It is quite the honour!
I’ve written a few times about the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College Cambridge which has gently floated from our radios (less analogue devices are also available…) like the last rays of winter sun every Christmas Eve for the past 100 years or so. This broadcast is one of the mainstays of the festive period and is arguably as much a part of our shared cultural heritage as David Attenborough, The Beatles and Strictly Come Dancing - a signpost that Christmas is almost upon us and a moment of necessary repose amidst the celebrations and over-consumption. I’ve written about some of the new works featured in recent services (including my favourite, Harrison Birtwistle’s crowd-pleaser The Gleam from 2003) but I have never had the opportunity to write about a piece before it has actually been performed! This year is a first and I am very pleased to be able to preview Cecilia McDowall’s There is no rose of such virtue which will have its first performance this Christmas Eve at 15.00 GMT (10.00 EST, 07.00 PST).
2021 is a big year for Cecilia McDowall as it is her seventieth birthday, and she has had many accolades in a difficult COVID year. There have been celebration concerts at several festivals, a wonderful CD of her music from Trinity College Cambridge and the BBC Singers performed many of her works on BBC Radio 3 across the week of her actual birthday. And we shouldn’t forget a wonderful article that was written on her music in Cathedral Music magazine by a young composer from the Lake District (spoiler: I wrote it, and I’m not young). But perhaps the cherry on this extra-special birthday cake is the first performance of There is no rose of such virtue at the most high-profile event in the British choral calendar – something that promises to be very memorable indeed.
It is a brave decision to set this anonymous medieval text, so beloved of British contemporary composers – those who have set it is like a rollcall of prominent figures – Britten, Joubert, Tavener, Pott, Allain…Cooke, all of whom have tried to stamp their own originality on this beautiful and fragile poem. So how does McDowall bring something new to this crowded roster of existing settings? Well, the simple answer is that she does what she does in every piece she composes – a beguiling mix of sensitivity to text, exquisitely crafted lines and a real sense of place, space and history. McDowall’s setting doesn’t try to stand out from the crowd by being ostentatiously different or difficult, but rather acknowledges all those that have gone before and seeks to enhance and complement what is already there. It is a piece that is entirely aware of history (both musical and cultural) and works within that tradition to great effect and consequence.
Like much of McDowall’s work, it has one foot in the modern, one foot in the medieval and the two combine in an organic and powerful way in There is no rose. McDowall utilises a spare, almost austere harmonic language which returns again and again to the opening gesture with its prominent flattened seventh and sharpened fourth. She marks the score ‘spacious, expressive, always flowing’ and these terms are apposite as the music gently drifts from phrase to phrase, making the most of the repeated Latin refrain and the tender depiction of the Virgin Mary. Rarely does the piece become too loud or declamatory, even in the joyous outburst of ‘The angels sungen (sic.) the shepherds to: Gloria’ McDowall keeps the music within its expressive envelope and the gradual descent to the opening sonorities is both satisfying and deeply affecting. The questioning chord that fades a niente in the final bar is entirely fitting as the music, the architecture and the occasion all blend into a sonorous whole and for three minutes our eye is cast back to previous generations and modes of being as much as to our current preoccupations and travails.
So, there you go, do tune in to BBC Radio 4 or the World Service (other broadcasters may well be available) at 15.00 GMT on Friday 24 December to hear this wonderful new work in all its glory. And when it comes, have yourself a truly merry, merry Christmas.
PAC