The Blue Bird (Stanford)

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The Blue Bird
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge
MelodyCharles Villiers Stanford
Composed1910
PublisherStainer & Bell
ScoringSAATB

The Blue Bird is a

The Cambridge Singers, Oxford Camerata, Tenebrae, and the Gabrieli Consort
.

Context

Before composing "The Blue Bird", Charles Villiers Stanford had already established himself as an accomplished writer of partsongs. He began by writing three collections of them in an

choral societies.[5][6]

Song

Music and verse form

Partsongs are often strophic and written for multiple voices in a homophonic texture, with occasional rhythmic variation between the upper and lower voices.[4] They are intended to be sung in intimate settings.[7] "The Blue Bird" is in the key of G-flat major and is scored for an SAATB ensemble. A typical performance lasts around four minutes, varying for each conductor.[8][9][10]

The piece is strophic with two stanzas which have similar harmonic treatment. The first four bars are repeated at the end, acting as a short

secondary sevenths and closely-spaced intervals, such as the major second which features frequently in the piece. The final chord is a seventh based on the supertonic (A-flat), while the soprano's final "blue" is suspended.[12][13] This deliberate absence of resolution creates, in the words of Jeremy Dibble, "an inimitable version of the eternal."[14]

"The Blue Bird" uses harmonic, rhythmic and other elements of the music to depict the imagery of the poem. The soprano part plays an important role in illustrating the blue bird itself. Dibble interprets the wide range of the soprano line as illustrating "the bird's free flight across the lake", and the repeated instances of the word "blue" on an E-flat as the bird "hovering".[14] As for other imagery, Paul Rodmell writes that the slowly-moving nature of the music (larghetto tranquillo, or rather slow[7]) depicts "a perfect picture of a still, hot day".[15] He also compares the nature of the work to Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending (1914), a piece for violin and orchestra in which the music also depicts a bird in flight and natural scenery.[15][16]

Text

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge looking at the camera
"The Blue Bird" is a setting of text by Mary Elizabeth Coleridge, pictured in 1883.

Coleridge's poem was originally published in 1897 with the French title L'Oiseau Bleu.[17] It was published under the pseudonym "Anodos", which is taken from the novel Phantastes by George MacDonald and can be interpreted to mean "Wanderer".[18] "The Blue Bird" was one of many poems published posthumously under Coleridge's own name in 1908, after she died prematurely the previous year aged 45.[19][3]

The lake lay blue below the hill.
O'er it, as I looked, there flew
Across the waters, cold and still,
A bird whose wings were palest blue.

The sky above was blue at last,
The sky beneath me blue in blue.
A moment, ere the bird had passed,
It caught his image as he flew.

Reception and legacy

According to musician and writer Walter Bitner, "the poem's great beauty lies in its direct expression of natural beauty and its power to evoke a strong impression in the imagination of the reader ... The poet carefully identifies the subject of the poem as 'I' so that as each of us reads or hears it, we see this image in our mind's eye as if we ourselves are the witness of the event ... It is pure impressionism."[20] In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Dibble notes that "The Blue Bird" demonstrates Stanford's expertise in sophisticated and refined diatonic harmonic language along with a "lyrical flair".[21]

Stanford contributed to the repertoire of English choral music in the nineteenth century and the music sung within

centenary, the composer Herbert Howells remarked how "The Blue Bird" in particular was widely performed among choral societies across the country, and how it formed an "essential beauty in the hearts of unnumbered singers."[22] Musicologist Jeremy Dibble, who specialises in Stanford and his works, describes "The Blue Bird" as "perhaps one of the greatest English part-songs ever written."[23][24] In his biography of Stanford, musicologist Paul Rodmell compares "The Blue Bird" within the context of Eight Partsongs (Op. 119), remarking that while most of the Eight Partsongs are "inconsequential", "The Blue Bird" stands out as an exception and is "deserving of its renown".[15] Charles Reid, in Choral Music, describes the partsong as "a rounded a perfect miniature", which can be considered one of the best in its field.[12]

Judith Bingham's The Drowned Lovers (setting her own words, after Mary Coleridge) was intended as a partner work for "The Blue Bird", using harmonies derivied from the original. The composer stipulates that Stanford's work should always follow without a break.[25][26]

Selected discography

The Blue Bird is usually included in an album of part-songs from different composers, or a collection of Stanford's music. The piece is featured in the record There is Sweet Music (Collegium Records COLCD 104, 1986; CSCD 505, 2002), performed by the

National Chamber Choir of Ireland under Paul Hillier;[27] Sir Charles Villiers Stanford (The British Music Collection, Decca 470 384-2, 2006) performed by Choir of New College Oxford;[10] Music of the Spheres. Part Songs of the British Isles (Signum SIGCD904, 2016) performed by Tenebrae under Nigel Short;[28] Silence & Music (Signum SIGCD490, 2017) performed by the Gabrieli Consort under Paul McCreesh;[29] and In Paradisum (Aparté Music AP228, 2020) performed by Schola Cantorum of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School.[30]

References

Citations

  1. ^ a b Alwes 2016, p. 59.
  2. ^ Dibble 2002, p. 395.
  3. ^ a b Dibble 2002, p. 398.
  4. ^ a b Shrock 2009, p. 538.
  5. ^ Buchanan & Mehaffey 2007, p. 589-590.
  6. ^ Kennedy & Kennedy 2013, p. 637.
  7. ^ a b Buchanan & Mehaffey 2007, p. 591.
  8. ^ a b "There is sweet music". John Rutter Composer & Conductor. Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  9. ^ a b "Choral Music - English Madrigals and Songs from Henry VIII to the 20th Century". Naxos. Naxos Digital Services Ltd. Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  10. ^ a b "British Music Collection - Sir Charles Villiers Stanford". Royal Leamington Spa, UK: Presto Classical Limited. Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  11. ^ Buchanan & Mehaffey 2007, p. 592.
  12. ^ a b Reid 1963, p. 268.
  13. ^ Buchanan & Mehaffey 2007, p. 590.
  14. ^ a b Dibble 2002, p. 396.
  15. ^ a b c Rodmell 2017, p. 261.
  16. ^ Vaughan Williams 1964, p. 156.
  17. ^ Anodos 1897, p. 27.
  18. ^ Newbolt 1908, p. v.
  19. ^ Newbolt 1908.
  20. ^ Bitner 2020, p. 12.
  21. ^ Dibble 2001.
  22. ^ Howells 1952, pp. 26–27.
  23. ^ Dibble 2019.
  24. ^ "Staff profile". Durham University. Retrieved 7 May 2022.
  25. ^ Signum SIGCD904 (2016)
  26. ^ The Drowned Lovers, Faber Music
  27. RTÉ Lyric fm
    . 8 February 2017. Retrieved 14 May 2022.
  28. ^ "Music of the Spheres". Signum Records. Retrieved 14 May 2022.
  29. ^ "Silence & Music". Signum Records. Retrieved 14 May 2022.
  30. ^ "Recordings". Schola Cantorum of The Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School. Retrieved 19 February 2022.

Bibliography

External links
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