The Penguin Book of English Song

by Richard Stokes

  1. The title is Maconchy’s. The passage comes from Traherne’s Centuries, III, 2, and ‘News’.

  1. The title is Maconchy’s. The poem, which is in four parts, comes from Traherne’s Poems from a Notebook, the manuscript of which was acquired by the Bodleian from Bertram Dobell’s son.

  1. Adapted from paragraphs 29 and 30 of The First Century.

  1. The lines are a translation of Ronsard’s poem that begins ‘Vulcan! En faveur de moi […]’, which is itself based on two Anacreon Odes (XVII and XVIII).

  2. In the Iliad, XI, 631–6 (translated by Richard Lattimore), Nestor’s cup was described as ‘beautifully wrought […] set with golden nails’. Nestor was the grandson of Neptune.

  3. Rochester refers to the capture of Maastricht, capital of the province of Limburg in Holland, by the French after a siege that lasted almost a month. ‘Yarmouth Leaguer’ (a leaguer in the seventeenth century was a military camp) refers to another operation against the Dutch in 1673, during which Prince Rupert decided to disembark the English sailors on board his ship at Yarmouth, and go on to tackle the Dutch fleet without them.

  4. Sir Sidrophel was the silly astrologer in Butler’s Hudibras, Part II, canto 3 (1664).

  1. Most of Cibber’s verse was published in literary miscellanies, and ‘The blind boy’ appeared in The British Musical Miscellany in 1734; it was also printed as a broadside. Haydn’s setting is the second of his Twelve Sentimental Catches and Glees for three voices (Hoboken XXXIc: 16).

  1. John Wesley changed the opening word of Watts’s hymn from ‘Our’ to ‘O’ when he published it in his Collection of Psalms and Hymns, a change that has been almost universally accepted in subsequent hymn books. Watts’s poem, a paraphrase of Psalm 90, was written in 1714 shortly before the death of Queen Anne. The tune ‘St Anne’, almost certainly by Dr William Croft (1678–1727), was only attached to the poem in 1861, when it was published in Hymns Ancient and Modern. The tune had previously appeared in the 1708 edition of Tate and Brady’s book of psalm tunes as the accompaniment to Psalm 42 (‘As pants the hart for cooling streams’). The hymn has been sung on numerous occasions of national importance, including on BBC radio immediately before the declaration of the Second World War. It was also sung at Winston Churchill’s funeral, and is performed regularly at Remembrance Day services.

  1. The tune ‘Rockingham’, to which the hymn is usually sung, was named after the Marquis of Rockingham, who was three times Prime Minister. He was the patron of Dr Edward Miller, the organist of Doncaster Parish Church from 1756 to 1807, who composed the melody.

  2. Matthew Arnold, who heard ‘When I survey the wondrous cross’ sung in Sefton Park Presbyterian Church on the last Sunday of his life, was overheard singing the third verse several hours before his death a few days later.

  1. Gay’s authorship of Acis and Galatea was first acknowledged in Handel’s London libretto of 1739 – posthumously in other words. The libretto, however, also contains contributions from other writers, especially Pope and Dryden. Pope’s description of the enraged Neptune in his translation of the Iliad inspired Gay’s chorus, ‘Wretched lovers’; and the trio is adapted from Pope’s Pastorals (‘Autumn’, lines 40–46). Dryden’s translation of the Metamorphoses was used, with one small alteration, for the dying recitative.

  1. Her real name was Sarah Priddon – a notorious woman who led a debauched life.

  2. The lunatic asylum situated in Moorfields on the site now occupied by Liverpool Street station. The name is a contraction of St Mary’s of Bethlehem. Until 1770 the public could pay twopence to see the lunatics. Caius Gabriel Cibber, the father of Colley Cibber, carved two huge statues in Portland stone for the gates of Bedlam.

  3. Joseph Addison (1672–1719), poet, moralist, essayist and politician.

  1. The tune of ‘God save the King’ has frequently been attributed to Dr John Bull (1562 or 1563–1628), organist at Hereford and Antwerp Cathedrals, and also Thomas Arne, without foundation.

  2. The history of the poem is obscure. According to Percy Scholes, it may have been sung by Stuart loyalists on the eve of William of Orange’s invasion; but there is also a French song (‘Grand Dieu, sauvez le roi’), startlingly similar in rhythm, language and syntax to the British National Anthem, that was sung at the court of Louis XIV in 1686. Carey’s authorship is disputed. The above poem appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine for October 1745, with words and music printed, both anonymously. The melody and two of the stanzas had appeared previously, also anonymously, in Thesaurus Musicus (c.1740), and Carey is mentioned as a contributor to the volume – one piece only bearing his name. Carey’s son, George Savile Carey, claimed that J. C. Smith, a friend and collaborator of the elder Carey, maintained that Carey senior was the author; and a correspondent of the Gentleman’s Magazine declared that he had heard Carey sing the song in a tavern in Cornhill in 1740, in celebration of Admiral Vernon’s victory over the Spaniards at Portobello.

  1. From Pastorals: ‘Summer’, lines 73–6.

  1. Although the libretto of Jephtha is by Thomas Morell, Handel borrowed freely from other sources, in particular from Milton and Pope. Most memorable of some dozen borrowings is the devastating final line of the chorus from the end of Act II from Pope’s An Essay on Man (Epistle 1, 289). Handel began the composition of Jephtha on 21 January 1751, but on 13 February he wrote in his score: ‘biss hierher kommen den 13 Febr. 1751 verhindert worden wegen relaxation des gesichts meines linken auges’ (‘reached here on 13 Feb. 1751, unable to continue due to weakening of the sight of my left eye’). Ten days later he resumed composition (on his sixty-sixth birthday), and wrote in the score: ‘den 23 dieses etwas besser worden wird angegangen’ (‘23rd of this month things have improved, began work again’). By the 27th he had reached the end of Act II, but was unable to continue since he had now completely lost the sight of his left eye. He wrote nothing for the next four months and did little more than travel to Bath and Cheltenham to take the waters. He resumed work on Jephtha on 18 June and finally finished on 30 August. Just as Morell quoted other authors, so Handel borrowed from several of his own works, including Agrippina, Ariodante, Acis and Galatea and Theodora.

  1. The success of ‘Rule, Britannia!’ was phenomenal. When Alfred was revived in 1745, ‘Rule, Britannia!’ featured as the grand finale. It was sold on the streets in broadsides, sung in theatres by both actors and audience and bawled by Nelson’s sailors on board battleships. It formed part of Sir Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs, arranged by him in 1905 to mark the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. The other movements included ‘Tom Bowling’, ‘The anchor’s weigh’d’, ‘The saucy Arethusa’, ‘Jack’s the lad’ (‘The sailor’s hornpipe’), ‘Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies’, Bishop’s ‘Home, sweet home’ and Handel’s ‘See, the conquering hero comes’. ‘Rule, Britannia!’ was performed – not as today – by the orchestra alone, with the organ joining in towards the end, with no solo voice and no chorus.

  1. Thomson enjoyed the patronage of the Countess of Hertford (1699–1754) after the publication of ‘Winter’ (1726); part of ‘Spring’ was written as her guest at Marlborough Castle, Wiltshire.

  2. dreary, cf. Deut. xxxii. 10.

  3. Thomson imagines that the bittern puts its head under water, and then produces its booming sound by a violent blowing.

  4. the Ram, the first sign of the zodiac, into which the sun enters at the vernal equinox.

  5. Taurus, the second sign of the zodiac; cf. Virgil, Georgics, I, 217–18.

  6. high.

  1. As Napoleon’s troops threatened Vienna, Graf von Sarau commissioned an Austrian National Anthem to rival the ‘Marseillaise’ that was inspiring the French troops. Lorenz Leopold Haschka, a Professor of Theology, was entrusted with the task and Haydn wrote the music, which received its first performance on 12 February 1797 at the Hoftheater, during the first interval in Dittersdorf’s Doktor und Apotheker. ‘Gott, erhalte Franz den Kaiser’ was sung as the Empero
r entered his box, after which the entire audience, who had received copies of it in advance, reprised it with enormous enthusiasm – to the visible discomfort of Kaiser Franz, who hated such demonstrations. It was not until 1805 that the melody was used as a hymn tune in England. It was later chosen as the tune for the German national anthem to accompany Hoffmann von Fallersleben’s poem ‘Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles’, written in 1841. The Weimar Republic adopted it as the National Anthem in 1922, and the Nazis played it alongside their party anthem. Fallersleben’s first verse was eventually banned because of its supremacist connotations, and since 1952 the anthem has been sung only to the verse beginning ‘Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit’. Kaiser Wilhelm II was allegedly nonplussed when he heard his godmother, Queen Victoria, singing the melody at Windsor Castle to the words of Newton’s hymn. Haydn used the famous melody in the poco adagio second movement of his String Quartet in C, Op. 76/3, the so-called ‘Emperor’ Quartet.

  2. A few hymn books have changed the first line of the final verse to: ‘Saviour, since of Zion’s city’ – thus altering the meaning.

  1. The tune, known as ‘Dundee’, was published in the 1615 edition of the Scottish Psalter. The hymn is also sung to ‘London New’, from the 1635 edition.

  1. ‘Caithness’ is a melody published in the Scottish Psalter (1635). The hymn is also sung to ‘Stracathro’, composed by Charles Hutcheson (1792–1860), and ‘Orlington’, by John Campbell.

  2. Gen. v. 24.

  1. Anne Hunter also used the same poem as the text for an Andante melody from one of Pleyel’s Sonatas; Haydn, with her consent, reversed the original order of the verses.

  1. ‘Tom Bowling’ was said to have been inspired by Dibdin’s brother Tom, captain of a ship in the Indian service, who died in 1780, having been struck by lightning. The song formed part of Sir Henry Wood’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs, arranged by him in 1905 to mark the centenary of the Battle of Trafalgar.

  2. to summon all hands.

  3. sailors – cf. ‘tarpaulin’ and ‘Jack-tar’.

  1. A phrase that the librettist, Montagu Slater, used in Act II, as the tension mounts and the crowd begins to hunt its prey.

  1. Five Flower Songs was dedicated to Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst on the occasion of their silver wedding. Both had a love of botany and had contributed generously to the cost of setting up Britten’s English Opera Group.

  2. The song is made up of ten lines from Letter XVIII from The Borough (1–4, 7–10, 13–14), interspersed with four lines from ‘Tale X’ (‘The Lover’s Journey’) from Tales in Verse (1812).

  3. having the form of a globe.

  1. Blake’s poem has no title; it appears at the end of his prose Introduction to Milton. Robert Bridges, the Poet Laureate, included these verses in The Spirit of Man (1915), and thus popularized the poem. Parry was requested to compose a melody so that it could be performed as a hymn at meetings of the ‘Fight for Right’ charity, which aimed to help soldiers rehabilitate themselves. The premiere of Parry’s setting was sung by a choir of 300 and conducted by Walford Davies at a ‘Fight for Right’ meeting in the Queen’s Hall on 28 March 1916. The hymn has since been adopted by many causes and its secular nature is reflected in the fact that it has been omitted from several Anglican hymn books. In 1918 it was sung at a rally at the Royal Albert Hall to celebrate female suffrage; it is performed at the Last Night of the Proms, and often at Labour Party conferences; and the triumphant 2005 Ashes team actually recorded it!

  2. There was a tradition, popular in the eighteenth century, that Jesus was brought to England by Joseph of Arimathea, visiting Cornwall.

  3. ‘Satanic Mills’ refers to the mills built for the new industries, and Blake recognized the devastating effect the Industrial Revolution had on the poor.

  4. the chariot in which Elijah was carried to heaven (2 Kings ii. 11).

  1. The title is Brian’s. Blake’s poem has no title and appears in Poems from the Notebook (c.1791–2).

  2. The imagery is overtly sexual: the temple of love is defiled by perversion. The theme of the poem is also that of false religion.

  1. Britten composed A Charm of Lullabies for the voice of Nancy Evans, who created the role of Nancy (a name chosen deliberately by the librettist, Eric Crozier, in Albert Herring). The songs are ‘A Cradle Song’ (William Blake), ‘The Highland balou’ (Robert Burns), ‘Sephestia’s lullaby’ (Robert Greene), ‘A charm’ (Thomas Randolph) and ‘The nurse’s song’ (John Phillip). The title of the cycle puns on the word ‘charm’, which also means ‘to put to sleep’. It derives from the Latin ‘carmen’ = ‘song’.

  2. The poem appears in Blake’s Notebook and was written as a ‘contrary’ to ‘A Cradle Song’ in Songs of Innocence; Blake, however, decided to use ‘Infant Sorrow’ instead in the Songs of Experience.

  3. This verse, omitted from A Charm of Lullabies, was set by Britten in his duet version of the poem (1938).

  1. An abstract noun – Joy was not a common name for girls in the eighteenth century.

  2. Coleridge criticized the poem for its inaccuracy, stating that an infant two days old cannot smile. Nor can an infant speak – it seems odd that Coleridge should object to Blake’s poetic licence.

  1. Blake’s original and ironic title in Poems from the Notebook was ‘Christian Forbearance’.

  2. sky or, perhaps, pole star.

  1. Child and lamb are meant as symbols for Christ. The decorations on either side of the text are inspired by a medieval manuscript illustrating the Tree of Jesse.

  1. The use of the word is ironic: a charter (as in Magna Carta) was the written acceptance of rights or privileges – a potential source of freedom for the citizens of London; but Blake’s political poem is concerned with the restricting effects of these charters and corporations, and the social evils condoned by the Church. It is perhaps his most withering poem about the evil effect of industrialization on the ordinary individual.

  2. ‘man’ (Vaughan Williams). ‘Ban’ is a curse or a swear-word that Blake would have heard in the streets of London; it is also, of course, any state or Church prohibition.

  3. In other words the fetters, the chains, are not inevitable but are forged in the minds of the oppressors and perhaps also of the oppressed.

  4. The idea is that the church is blackened with the pall (cloth) of death or soot. ‘Appall’ can mean either to ‘horrify’ or ‘drape with a pall’ (OED under ‘pall’).

  5. unfortunate: Blake depicts the soldier’s blood running down the walls of the state.

  6. infects. Venereal disease can be contracted by both marriage partner and child.

  1. Isaiah xliii. 7.

  1. The poem echoes the story in Metamorphoses where Ovid describes how the virgin Clytie was in love with Hyperion, who, however, loved Leucothoe and visited her in disguise. Spurned, Clytie revealed the relationship to Leucothoe’s father, who had his daughter killed. Hyperion’s scorn meant that she now pined for him in vain: she was changed into a sunflower, which always turns its head towards the sun in its course across the sky – a pledge of her undying love.

  2. her desires frozen.

  1. The poem appears in Blake’s Notebook, where it is called ‘A Divine Image’. It was meant for inclusion in Songs of Experience but Blake replaced it with ‘The Human Abstract’. Both poems are ‘contrary’ to ‘The Divine Image’ in Songs of Innocence. The violence of the text is reflected in Blake’s illustration, which shows Los, the craftsman, forging the sun with blows from his sledgehammer on the anvil.

  1. body.

  1. The poem is a conflation of three independent but consecutive stanzas in the Notebook, called ‘Several questions answered’, of which the first only was called ‘Eternity’.

  1. A Song for the Lord Mayor’s Table was commissioned for the 1962 City of London Music Festival. The six poems, chosen by Christopher Hassall, depict various scenes and aspects of London. The work was first performed by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Gerald Moore in July of t
hat year.

  2. Annual services for the Charity Schools in London – schools for the poor and destitute funded by the rich – had been held since 1704, and from 1782 were celebrated in St Paul’s. ‘Holy Thursday’ was always held on a Thursday, usually in May, though never on Ascension Day itself. The singing of anything up to 6,000 children was experienced by Haydn during one of his visits to London, and he jotted down the tune of their Gloria in one of his notebooks. Blake’s poem, apart from appearing in the Songs of Innocence (another poem with the same title appears in the Songs of Experience), also forms part of An Island in the Moon (c.1784).

  3. The wands are both the signs of the beadle’s office and also the instruments of the punishment they inflicted on the boys to curb their high spirits.

  4. the children.