Hampshire Choral Society presents US debut of long-lost 'A Cambridge Mass'
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As some see it, Ralph Vaughan Williams was perhaps the greatest English composer since Henry Purcell, the Baroque master of the 17th century, and certainly one of the most significant modern English composers. Vaughan Williams, whose career spanned the close of the Victorian era and two world wars, was celebrated for his wide-ranging compositions, from symphonies and operas to music for film, stage and church.
That's why there was considerable excitement in Britain's musical world last year when conductor and musicologist Alan Tongue, backed by a full choir and orchestra, debuted a never-before-heard piece by Vaughan Williams that Tongue had discovered in manuscript form in 2007 at Cambridge University. The long-lost work, which Vaughan Williams composed in the late 1890s for his doctoral degree at Cambridge, had never been published or performed.
Now the ambitious work, "A Cambridge Mass," will have its United States premiere Sunday at Smith College in Northampton. The Hampshire Choral Society (HCS) will perform the work at John M. Greene Hall at 3 p.m., backed by a 42-piece orchestra and conducted by Tongue, who arrived in the area earlier this week. The mass has had just two performances so far, both in England.
"It's very exciting to be a part of this," said Allan Taylor, HCS' director, who has been working with Tongue - via the Internet and transatlantic phone calls - since the summer of 2010 to bring Vaughan Williams' long-lost work to the Valley. "It's a challenging piece." Plus, he added, it's a treat to hear an early work by a famous composer like Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) to try to detect the beginnings of the music he produced as a mature artist.
In that sense, "A Cambridge Mass" is not immediately recognizably as a work by Vaughan Williams, Taylor notes. The composer's style is there "in embryonic form," and the piece seems to reflect the influence of composers like Brahms and Verdi. But it's an ambitious and powerful work, Taylor adds, with eight choral parts, rather than the more typical four. It also has four soloists.
"It's a complicated piece," said Dorothy Morse of Pelham, a soprano and one of HCS' 145 singers. "It has a dense texture - we've been working hard on this since the fall. ... It's an honor to be able to bring this here."
HCS, founded 59 years ago, is New England's largest chorus outside of Boston and includes a range of amateur and professional singers from the Valley, from ages 18 to 80. For Sunday's concert, the four soloists will be Louise Fauteaux (soprano), Mary Brown Bonacci (mezzo-soprano), Marc Winer (tenor) and Peter W. Shea (baritone).
Taylor, the choral society's music director for the past 10 years, will conduct music for strings by the British composers Elgar, Britten and Holst to open Sunday's program, and he'll then be the organist for "A Cambridge Mass."
A little bit of luck
That the first U.S. performance of "A Cambridge Mass" is taking place in the Valley can be traced in large part to a fortuitous landlord-tenant relationship - and a bit of luck.
As Morse explains it, she and her husband, Anthony, a retired University of Massachusetts Amherst geosciences professor, had lived in Cambridge while Anthony Morse was on sabbatical. In the mid-1990s, they rented an apartment from none other than Tongue. Morse and her husband struck up a friendship with the British conductor, and she told him of her involvement with HCS.
The friends have stayed in touch, Morse said, and a few years ago Tongue told her that he had discovered Vaughan Williams' unpublished manuscript and was in the process of transcribing it, with the intent of performing the music for the first time.
"He kind of said in passing that perhaps our group might like to perform it, so I mentioned it to Alan, and he was interested and got in touch with [Tongue]," Morse said. "And now here we are."
It wasn't quite that direct. Taylor notes that Tongue, a freelance conductor who leads orchestras and choruses in several countries, had first offered "A Cambridge Mass" to the Atlanta Symphony and then the Minnesota Orchestra. When neither expressed interest, he turned to Dorothy Morse.
"Their loss, our gain, I'm happy to say," Taylor said, adding that the collaboration with his British counterpart has been a good one. "We're really like two birds of feather. We have similar approaches to our work."
In the summer of 2010, Tongue sent Taylor an updated manuscript of "A Cambridge Mass" - the name is actually Tongue's, because Vaughan Williams' original manuscript was untitled - and the two discussed the work over the Internet in the ensuing months.
On his website (www.alantongue.co.uk), Tongue describes his excitement at discovering the work when he was viewing a display of musical manuscripts in the Cambridge University library in 2007: "There was nothing academic about the notes on display; I thought they were fairly leaping off the page and demanding to be performed. ... I thought to myself: I want to hear this played and I want to be the one to conduct it. It was a revelation."
Tongue got permission from the Vaughan Williams Charitable Trust to transcribe and publish the work, along with exclusive rights to conduct performances of it for two years. The reviews of the two shows in Britain, in London and Bath, have been good. The Bath Chronicle called the mass "a work of pleasing contrasts, full of warmth ... a fascinating blend of orchestral sound, brisk, full-bodied. ... It is a fascinating piece which will attract choirs everywhere, but it needs serious orchestral quality to support the singers."
Taylor notes that "A Cambridge Mass," as the work of a talented but young composer, has a few "unpolished" parts. But both as a piece of history and as music, he added, "I think this should be a performance of great interest."
Tickets for preferred seating for Sunday's performance of "A Cambridge Mass" at John M. Greene Hall at Smith College are $30 (available only if purchased before the day of the concert). General admission is $20; seniors and students are $15. Advance ticket purchases are available online until Friday at www.hampshirechoral.org. with payment by check or cash presented the day of the concert (credit cards are not accepted).
Tickets will also be on sale in advance at Broadside Bookshop and State Street Fruit Store, both in Northampton; Cooper's Corner in Florence; A.J. Hastings in Amherst; and at the door.
Steve Pfarrer can be reached at spfarrer@gazettenet.com.
