To be lost in me...

Free Be-a-Maestro Newsletter 50 - 01 February 2016 - Be a maestro!

by Reinier Maliepaard

The English composer Roger Quilter (1877-1953) - musical trained in Germany (1) - is well known for a variety of compositions, especially for his romantic songs. In 1904, he set two stanzas of a poem of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2), 'Now sleeps the crimson petal' to a vocal melody that once heard is remembered forever (3). 'Melody must have an unbroken line' was Quilter's view on melody. Indeed, in case of 'Now sleeps the crimson petal', verbal accents, phrasing and word-painting all fit the fluid, vocal line (4). The piano-accompaniment has a subordinate role: it supports mood and movement, often doubling the vocal line. The harmony is relatively simple, the texture clear and thin.

I could spent a lot of words on the erotic text. However, you can find much interesting information on the web (5). So I only pay some attention to the vocal melody of Quilter's song.

The song has a strophic form (6) with two stanzas or verses. As can be expected in a strophic form, the vocal line of the first stanza is similar to the line of the second stanza (7). Hence you could describe this binary form as A and A' (8).

The vocal lines are easy and resemble a speech-like improvisation. However, a really intriguing melodic planning seems to underlie the melody. To make it clear in a simple way, let's have a quick look at two types of poetry rhymes: end rhyme and head rhyme (note that these types of rhyme are not relevant for Tennyson's poem structure!).

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Sugar is sweet
And so are you.

The last words 'blue' and 'you' share the same sound: end rhyme. Head rhyme has rhyme between syllables at the beginning of lines, e.g. 'sung' and 'flung' in the following:

Sung is the song
flung upon the air

This rhyme technique is an easy way to create a sense of unity, regardless the meaning of words. I do not know if Roger Quilter has been inspired by rhyme schemes when composing a melody. I only know the saying of biographers that Quilter loved poetry more than music (sic!). Nevertheless, the melody of section A (and A' of course) consists of four phrases, that have melodic motifs in common, resembling the idea of rhyme schemes.

1: ............ motif a
2: motif b ............
3: ........... motif a'
4: motif b' ...........

Motif a and a' are a tail-motif and motif b and b' are a head-motif (9). So the song has a highly unified motivic structure (10). In addition, the motifs are closely connected, more or less like rhyme:

- Motif a and a' can be described by the descending line Eb-D-C-Bb.
- Motif b and b' are permutations of the triad tones Eb-G-Bb.

So motif a and b have two tones in common: Eb and Bb. In addition, the phrases 1 and 3 that only have motif b, play with another tone: tone C, that is part of motif a. In both motifs is tone C longing for tone Bb, the last tone of the song, that gives the song an open end. Could this be a musical translation of the last words of the poem?

"So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip Into my bosom and be lost in me."

Listen on YouTube to Quilter's song in a -for me- excellent performance by Ian Bostridge: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0vkU6Epk6M

Do you like to read the score, while listening to the music, watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk3lO3qYecM

Notes
(1) Composers in 19th century England often studied in Germany, the country that determined the 19th century European musical taste. Quilter studied at the Frankfurt Conservatory. Quilter and his fellow students Cyril Scott, Balfour Gardiner, Norman O'Neill and Percy Grainger were known as the Frankfurt Group or Frankfurt Five: friends who did not have much in common, except their dislike of Beethoven...
7 (2) The poem has originally five stanzas.
(3) Three Songs, Op. 3,2 for voice and piano.
(4) 'Fluid' due to rhythm (mainly equal quavers/eight notes) and quality of interval (mainly small intervals like seconds and thirds). The melody has some irregularity, that is most unusual for the time: the melody alternates 3/4 and 5/4.
(5) e.g. https://hokku.wordpress.com/2013/03/12/now-sleeps-the-crimson-petal-idealized-romance-in-tennyson/ and http://kellyrfineman.livejournal.com/366592.html
(6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strophic_form and also: http://www.bestmusicteacher.com/music-history/mindmap-terms/mindmap-schubert-song-types.php
(7) There are some minor melodic differences between the lines of the first and second stanza -probably to fit the words-.
(8) A' means a modified repetition of A. The description of the form can be more precise. The song starts with a prelude, ends with a short postlude by the piano. And an interlude for piano connects the two sections. So the form can be described as: prelude-A-interlude-A'-postlude.
(9) The tail- and head-motifs can already be found in Renaissance church music, e.g. in the Great Service of William Byrd, in the Missa 'Se la face ay pale' of Guillaume Du Fay and in the Missa 'Pange lingua' of Josquin Des Prez.
(10) Motif a' and b' are slight modifications of motif a respectively motif b.