François André Philidor: chess master and composer

 

François André Philidor had an unusual claim to fame in that he was both a chess master and a musician and composer. He lived during the 18^th century.

The Philidor family

There were three generations of musical Philidors, covering the period from around 1600 to 1800. They were largely instrumentalists at the courts of the French kings Louis XIV and XV, with their favourite instruments being the cromorne (a sort of oboe) and the tromba marina (a large single-stringed bowed instrument), although it is known that there were Philidor drummers, violinists and fife players.

As many as 14 Philidors have been identified by name, but it is probable that several others had musical talents.

François André Philidor

François André Philidor was the most renowned member of the family. He was born at Dreux (in the Eure-et-Loire region west of Paris) in 1726.  

He first came to public attention as a highly talented chess player, and toured as a virtuoso at the game before he was 20. As a young man he once played a game against the American ambassador to France, one Benjamin Franklin.

He often visited London, where the Chess Club eventually gave him a regular pension. He took on all sorts of challenges, including simultaneous matches against three opponents, Philidor being blindfolded.

His musical ability was not inconsiderable, and for a time he earned a living as a music teacher and copyist. When in London he heard the oratorios of Handel and began to compose similar works of his own.

He later turned to comic opera and produced a series of highly successful works in Paris. His place in the history of opera stems from his innovative use of dramatic ensembles. 

The French Revolution forced Philidor to flee Paris for London, which is where he died in 1795.

© John Welford

The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols

For many people in Great Britain and elsewhere, Christmas really begins at 3pm on Christmas Eve with the BBC’s live radio broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from the magnificent chapel of King’s College, Cambridge.  For about an hour and a half, the chapel choir sings carols old and new, interspersed with Bible readings that tell the Christmas story.

The tradition dates back to 1918 when the College Dean, Rev Eric Milner-White, first modified an idea that originated in 1880 at Truro Cathedral. The format has been virtually unchanged since the 1919 service, when the order of lessons was established, as well as the custom of beginning with “Once in Royal David’s City” with the first verse sung by an unaccompanied boy treble.

The Festival was first broadcast by the BBC in 1928 and it has been heard every year since then, with only one exception (1930). Even during the war years, when the stained glass windows had been removed from the unheated chapel, listeners to the BBC and its World Service were able to hear the Festival.

Many great ideas are simple ones, and the “Nine Lessons” format is one such idea. It has therefore been copied in churches of all denominations throughout the Christian world, with many such services being held at Christmas time, the chosen carols being ones that suit particular choirs and congregations. It is an occasion on which a church or cathedral choir can show off its skills, and many choirmasters work long and hard to achieve perfection on the day, especially when introducing carols that may be new to the choir in question.

The nine lessons, at King’s College and elsewhere, are each read by different people, including lay people and clergy. It is traditional for the first lesson to be read by a young person, such as a treble from the choir, and for the ninth to be read by the priest or minister in charge, with the congregation standing.

Each lesson is introduced by a standard line (the first being “God announces in the Garden of Eden that the seed of woman shall bruise the serpent’s head”) and concluded with “Thanks be to God”.

Although the first three lessons and the last three are virtually sacrosanct, for the middle three there are alternative readings that can be given. For example, the Annunciation (from Luke’s Gospel) can be substituted by “Arise, shine, for thy light is come” from the Book of Isaiah. The readings are always from the 1611 Authorised (or “King James”) Bible.

The purpose of the lessons is not only to tell the familiar story of the Nativity from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, but to set it in its full context, beginning with the Fall of Man in Genesis and including the prophecies of Isaiah that foretell the coming of the Messiah. The ninth lesson is always the opening of the Gospel of John that explains how “In the beginning was the Word” and “the Word was made flesh”.

As mentioned above, the service begins with “Once in Royal David’s City” that (at King’s College and elsewhere) is used as a processional hymn, begun in candlelight, as the voice of the boy treble breaks the silence. It is traditional at King’s for the boy chosen to sing the opening verse not to be told this until shortly before the service, so that he does not become unduly nervous.

The rest of the opening hymn is sung by the full choir and congregation, at the conclusion of which the Bidding Prayer is given, followed by the Lord’s Prayer, after which the first choir carol is sung.

It should be pointed out that “Nine” refers to the lessons and not the carols, of which somewhat more than nine can be expected. At King’s College it is usual for there to be one carol before the first lesson and two between each of the next lessons, with “O Come All Ye Faithful” following the ninth lesson and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” concluding the service after the final Collect and Blessing. At least two of the carols will in fact be hymns for the full congregation to sing, as well as the two final hymns mentioned above.

The carols are usually a good mixture of traditional ones and those that are less familiar, and it has been customary at King’s College to include a completely new carol that has been specially commissioned.  These brand new carols are often challenging for both the choir and listeners, and it has to be said that many are heard once during the service and almost never again!

The Director of Music at King’s College from 1982 to 2018 was Stephen Cleobury, who arranged a number of traditional carols for performance at the Festival. Other arrangements have been by David Willcocks, who held the Director of Music post from 1957 to 1974. These two master musicians have ensured that the music heard at the Festival is ideally suited to both the choir and the remarkable acoustics of the Chapel.

The Christmas Eve Festival at King’s College is extremely popular with the local population in Cambridge, and people have been known to camp overnight in hope of getting one of the 650 seats in the Chapel, which are always allocated on the basis of first come, first served.

As well as the Christmas Eve broadcast, which is recorded and repeated on Christmas Day and on other networks, including in the United States, a televised programme called “Carols from King’s” is recorded earlier in December and broadcast on BBC 2, but this is not the full “Nine Lessons and Carols”.

The tradition of presenting the Christmas story in this format has now become deeply entrenched among choirs and churches all over the world, and looks set to continue for many years into the future.

© John Welford 

Some classic Christmas carols

It is essential to define what is meant by a Christmas carol, because the term has been misused so often that virtually any piece of sung music associated with Christmas could be called a carol.

A carol must be religious in content, and celebratory. It is also usually joyful in tone, although this is not always the case (e.g. the Coventry Carol below). It has become common practice for any hymn sung at Christmas time to be called a carol, but that is not particularly appropriate, as a hymn is defined as being suitable for singing by a congregation in church, and that is certainly not true of all carols.

If we take the term “carol” to exclude all non-religious Christmas songs, as well as all hymns that are designed primarily for congregational singing, there are still many “classic” carols that choirs will sing at Christmas, as will carol-singers going from door to door. Here are a few examples:

The Coventry Carol

This dates from the 15^th century and was part of the Coventry cycle of mystery plays . A series of short plays on Biblical themes, each presented by a merchant’s guild or other local group, would be performed in sequence to the townspeople, possibly staged on wagons that would be drawn from place to place so that the audience would see each play as it came along and the actors would give as many performances as there were places where the audiences had gathered.

Only two Coventry plays have survived, one being the Nativity play of the Shearmen and Tailors, of which the carol was part. It concerns the “Massacre of the Innocents” by the soldiers of King Herod after the birth of Jesus. The carol is sung by the women of Bethlehem in the play, just before the soldiers enter. It is partly a lullaby, with the refrain “Lully lulla, thou little tiny child, by by lully lullay” and partly a lament for the children who are about to die: “That woe is me, Poor child for thee!” It can therefore be seen as foreseeing the death of Christ as well as celebrating his birth and commenting on the immediate event of the massacre.

The tune normally sung to the carol is based on one that dates back to 1591.

We Wish You a Merry Christmas

This is the carol most often performed on British doorsteps! It is a traditional carol from the West of England, and it breaks the rule about carols being religious, because it quite plainly is not. Most modern carol singers get as far as “Good tidings we bring , to you and your kin, We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year” and then bash on the door to demand money. However, the full version is an extended threat, with “figgy pudding” being very much on the carollers’ minds.

Having sung “Now bring us some figgy pudding, And bring some out here” in the second verse, and explaining that “We all like figgy pudding” in the third, the singers make their demand explicit in the final verse with the rousing chorus of “We won’t go till we’ve got some, So bring some out here!”

The Sussex Carol

This carol appears to go back to at least the 17^th century, but is known today thanks to the efforts of Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams, who were both interested in collecting English folk songs that they heard sung by rural villagers in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Cecil Sharp collected this carol from Gloucestershire, but Vaughan Williams heard it sung in a village near Horsham in Sussex, which is why it has the title of the Sussex Carol. Vaughan Williams included it in his “Fantasia on Christmas Carols” which was first performed at the Three Choirs Festival in 1912, and it was later arranged by David Willcocks for the annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s College, Cambridge, where it is regularly performed to this day.

It is a bright, lively carol that has a simple tune and easily memorised words, beginning: “On Christmas night all Christians sing, To hear the news the angels bring, News of great joy, news of great mirth, News of our merciful King’s birth.” Whatever arrangement is sung, the four short verses, ending with “Glory to God and peace to men, Now and for evermore. Amen” do not take long to sing, but it makes an excellent impression when sung well, and certainly counts as a classic English carol.

The Three Kings

This 19^th century carol has become a “standard” with choirs that boast a decent tenor or baritone soloist. It was composed by Peter Cornelius (1824-74), a German composer of lieder and operas who was a friend of Wagner and Liszt. However, the carol in question is his only piece that is heard regularly today, in translation and usually in the arrangement by Ivor Atkins.

The most unusual feature of the carol, which, not surprisingly, tells the story of the visit of the Magi to the birthplace of Jesus at Bethlehem, is the fact that you get two carols for the price of one. The soloist sings two verses to the same tune, giving the basic story, followed by an extended conclusion, to a different tune and with varied rhythm, that exhorts the hearer to also travel with the Kings and “offer thy heart”.

However, at the same time that the soloist is singing the above, a four-part choir sings a stately chorale to a different tune and with different words. Their carol begins “How brightly shines the morning star, With grace and truth from heaven afar” and ends with “Inly feeds us, rightly leads us, life bestowing. Praise, o praise such love o’erflowing”. It therefore complements the words being sung by the soloist as well as dovetailing perfectly with the music as a piece of counterpoint to a different rhythm.

As described, it may sound as though it would be difficult for an average church choir to perform, but that is not the case. As long as everyone keeps the beat perfectly, and the dynamics of the choir do not overpower the soloist, who should stand at some distance from the choir, it should work very well. When sung as intended, The Three Kings is extremely effective.

Ding Dong Merrily on High

This carol ticks all the boxes as a classic carol, and is part of the Christmas repertoire of just about every church choir.

The words are by George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848-1934), an Anglican priest who had a passion for bell-ringing as well as poetry.  He had a very good ear for music and sometimes produced tunes for his own words, but more often left this to his younger friend, the Irish composer Charles Wood (1866-1926). They collaborated on a number of carols, for all seasons, and produced three books of them. Wood often adapted traditional tunes for use as carols, and the tune of “Ding Dong Merrily” is one such, having been a 16^th century French tune.

It is a carol all about bells, comprising three short verses and a “peal” of a chorus to the words “Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis” with the different voices tumbling over each other just as church bells would do. The chorus is repeated, being sung once fortissimo and once piano; the dynamics are reversed for the final chorus so that the carol ends on a blast of sound.

There is no Christmas carol that is brighter or more joyful, making “Ding Dong Merrily” about as classic as you can get!

© John Welford

The British National Anthem

The British national anthem was the first in the world to be adopted as such, with every other country in the world subsequently following suit, sometimes even using the same tune. Like many British institutions it was a matter of evolution rather than deliberate creation, coming about almost by accident.

  

The historical background

It was first heard in anything like its current form in September 1745 at Drury Lane Theatre in London, where it was enthusiastically received and encored several times. Its use then spread to other theatres and was soon used on occasions when the King was present or some expression of patriotism was called for.

These were troublesome times. The British monarchy, under King George II, was threatened by an uprising led by “Bonnie Prince Charlie”, the grandson of King James II who had been deposed in 1688. Although King George was not universally popular and was himself a foreigner in the eyes of most of his British subjects, the prospect of a revolution led by a Catholic prince was even less welcome, and the English (as opposed to the Scottish) people were keen to rally behind their Hanoverian king.

At the time of the first performance of “God Save the King”, Charles Edward Stuart’s army of Highlanders had reached Edinburgh and was gathering support as it prepared to venture south into England. It was to advance as far as Derby, in the English Midlands, by early December, but then turned back when the “Young Pretender’s” supporters got cold feet.

The patriotic song was therefore written at a time of great national distress, with its words focussed on the person of the King who stood in opposition to the threat from the North. The author of the words is unknown, as is the composer of the tune, although it is possible that Dr Thomas Arne arranged it for its original performance. Neither the words nor the music were completely original, and there is evidence that versions of both were in use long before 1745. One ironic possibility, given its use in 1745, is that the tune was based on an old Scottish carol.

The text

The original first verse was as follows:

God save our noble King!

God save Great George our King!

God save the King!

Send him victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us,

God save the King.

(The first two lines have since been changed to meet later circumstances, to:

           

God save our gracious King/Queen

            Long live our noble King/Queen)

Some of the words, including “God save the King” and “long to reign over us” can be traced back to common use in the 16^th century, and versions of the song had also been sung in praise of previous monarchs, including James II. The 1745 version, however, had a specific aim in mind, which was to offer a prayer for the safety of the King, and hence the nation, from a very present threat.

An ironic anthem

It is somewhat ironic that this should have become the national anthem of the whole of Great Britain, which it did from the early 1800s as a matter of general acceptance rather than as the result of any decree or law. The irony lies in the fact that it was written to support one side of what was, in effect, a civil war. Indeed, as new verses were written to supplement the original one, some were so partisan and specific as to be completely unacceptable within a British anthem. For example:

Lord, grant that Marshal Wade,

May by thy mighty aid,

Victory bring.

May he sedition hush,

and like a torrent rush,

Rebellious Scots to crush,

God save the King.

Needless to say, this verse is not used today, even in the fullest version of the anthem, and it was never part of the “official” version. Even so, the anthem is much less popular in the non-English parts of Great Britain, with the Welsh and Scots being content to express their Welshness and Scottishness with their own anthems.

The saving grace of “God Save the Queen” (which it has been since 1952 and was also during the reign of Queen Victoria) as a national anthem for the whole country is that it is a prayer for the safety of the monarch and makes no mention of the country in any of the verses. It can therefore be sung in any part of the country that recognises the Queen as monarch, and that is something that also applies to countries of the British Commonwealth that are independent but still regard the Queen as their figurative head of government.

Some strange features of the National Anthem

As mentioned above, Wales and Scotland have their own anthems, which are used at such events as sporting events between the individual countries of Great Britain, but England as such does not have one, leading to the somewhat bizarre consequence of England teams having to use the national anthem for the whole country when playing other parts of the same country!

It is usual for only one verse of God Save the Queen to be played, but when an extended version is required the third “official” verse is commonly preferred to the second, which includes the lines:

Scatter her enemies

And make them fall.

Confound their politics

Frustrate their knavish tricks

The preferred third verse is much more politically correct:

Thy choicest gifts in store

On her be pleased to pour

Long may she reign.

May she defend our laws

And ever give us cause

To sing with heart and voice,

God Save the Queen.

 The British national anthem is unusual in being neither a paean of praise about the country in question nor, in its current version, a reference to military power, with the sole exception of the line “Send her victorious”. It could be said that it is only a national anthem because the monarch is the titular head of the nation; should the country ever become a republic the national anthem would clearly have to be changed.

It is also of interest that the tune used for God Save the Queen is by no means limited to the United Kingdom. Americans will recognise it as “My Country Tis of Thee” and it is still used for the national anthem of Liechtenstein (Switzerland also used the tune until 1961). On the rare occasions when an English football team plays Liechtenstein, the same tune is played twice!

Another odd feature of this national anthem is that the head of state never sings it. On occasions when the Queen is present everyone will stand to attention (no heart-crossing here!) and sing the anthem, including other members of the royal family, but the Queen herself stays tight-lipped and silent. Given the lyrics, how could she do otherwise?

Whether the citizens of Great Britain and Northern Ireland like it or not, they are probably stuck with God Save the Queen for the foreseeable future, the only likely change being the switch back to “King” when the next monarch takes over.

© John Welford

A beginner's guide to opera

Here’s a good tip to begin with. If you have never been to an opera performance before, don’t start with Wagner’s Ring Cycle! At a total stage time of 15 hours, plus intermissions, that represents a major commitment not only of your time but your concentration, not to mention the possession of excellent bladder control. Wagner is not to everyone’s taste and, as Rossini once famously remarked, he has some sublime moments but also some terrible quarters of an hour.

Indeed, the best introduction to opera is probably not to attend a performance at all but to listen to CDs or downloads of great performances. Some of the most sublime music of all time comes from opera, such as the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi’s Nabucco, the aria Nesun Dorma from Puccini’s Turandot or the duet Au Fond du Temple Saint from Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers. All of these are instantly recognisable and greatly loved.

However, attenders of opera performances are often disappointed to discover that numbers such as these are only small sections of considerably longer works that are much less tuneful or interesting. The Pearl Fishers is a case in point; without that one duet the opera would rarely get staged, as its plot is particularly feeble and the rest of the music of much lower quality.

On the other hand, Bizet’s Carmen is full of musical life and invention, as well as erotic intensity and violence. One’s attention is unlikely to flag and, for the raw beginner, a ticket to Carmen would be well worth the money. The opera has, indeed, much in common with the modern musical, and the progression between Carmen and, say, Bernstein’s West Side Story is not difficult to detect, although the latter had Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet as its inspiration.

Opera is a musical form with a very long history, and there is a world of difference between the operas of Handel, Puccini and Benjamin Britten, for example.

Early opera

Early operas were relatively short and consisted of a set of arias (solos), duets and ensemble pieces strung together with passages of “recitative”, by which is meant text sung in a speech rhythm with little attempt at melody. These passages are only there to hold the plot together and provide links between the more melodic elements, but they can be lengthy and, for the beginner, are more likely to be endured than enjoyed. Recitative is also a feature of operas of much later periods.

Most early operas made little attempt to convey dramatic realism, with the performers being required to sing rather than act. The same could also be said of many later operas! If you want to see great acting, the theatre is often a more promising venue than the opera house.

That said, many great operas are also great dramas, and audiences are often spellbound at performances of Tosca or Madame Butterfly, where Puccini’s music has a dramatic intensity that demands a certain amount of acting talent from the performers.

The language problem

One aspect of opera that can be off-putting for the beginner is the fact that relatively few great operas were written in English. Italian is the language of choice for opera libretti. This might have been expected with those by Verdi, Donizetti and Puccini, but the operas of Handel and Mozart, for example, were also written to be sung in Italian. If you do not understand Italian (or German or French, etc) the great European operas might be thought to be unintelligible, but this is not necessarily the case.

For one thing, the drama is often conveyed via actions as well as words. This is a good reason for seeing an opera live as opposed to hearing a recording, much as viewing a ballet makes more sense than listening to it if one wants to know what is going on.

Another point to make is that operas can be regarded as music first and drama second. In other words one goes to an opera for a musical experience rather than to see a play. This is, however, a debatable point.

Many modern opera houses have got round the language problem by displaying translated “surtitles” on a screen above the stage. This has been a controversial move in some quarters, with many people regarding the constantly moving words as an unwelcome distraction. Others regard this as preferable to performing operas in English translation, as the translations do not always match the music as perfectly as the original. It is also the case that many opera singers are better at singing notes than words and it is often difficult to make out what they are singing, whatever the language!

Strange plots

Another aspect of opera to bear in mind is that the plots are sometimes strange in the extreme. Characters are able to fall into the most remarkable predicaments for very peculiar reasons, and likewise escape from them in ways that don’t seem to make a lot of sense. Audiences are required to suspend their disbelief to very great measure, such as when a clearly very healthy and well-built soprano is starving in a garret and dying of tuberculosis in La Boheme, or the Rhine Maidens in Das Rheingold are able to sing when at the bottom of the river!

What to see?

So, what would be a good introductory opera for a beginner to see on stage? Several have already been mentioned, but a good tip might be to go for something shorter rather than longer. The operas of Mozart are a good bet, partly because the music is always a delight, and you can’t have too much Mozart! A performance of The Marriage of Figaro, for example, is worth considering, as is the charming and tuneful Cosi Fan Tutte.

These two operas fall into the category of “opera buffa” or comic opera, as opposed to “opera seria”. The beginner might indeed prefer to start with comedy, as the onstage antics, involving such things as characters assuming disguises or seeking to perform practical jokes on each other, will entertain even if the music does not.

The world of the comic opera can play to very different rules from that of “grand opera”. For one thing, amateur opera companies are far more likely to tackle the works of Gilbert and Sullivan or Offenbach than they are Verdi or Wagner! Amateur performances have the huge advantage of considerably cheaper ticket prices than those of the top professional companies, whose productions can be prohibitively expensive for most people.

That said, a night at the opera at one of the world’s great opera houses is certainly a night to remember. People make a real effort to dress in their finery, possibly combining the event with dinner at a top restaurant. Audience members can usually be assured of a brilliant evening’s entertainment, especially if the company on stage includes some of the world’s great operatic stars.

Whatever the choice, listening to opera, and seeing it on stage, can be an extremely rewarding and memorable experience. A little homework done in advance into the plot might be a good idea, though.

© John Welford

Women in The Pirates of Penzance, by Gilbert and Sullivan

The female characters in the Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan fall into three groups. There is a female chorus, the composition of which may or may not be believable; there is the female love interest, sung by a soprano; and there is an older woman, sung by a contralto. There are usually other female “semi-principals” who may be friends or close relations of the female lead; and occasionally there is a minor role for another contralto, this normally being played by a chorus member for a single scene.

Ladies of the Chorus

The Pirates of Penzance fits this pattern as neatly as any of the Savoy operas. The nature of the chorus is as absurd as one could wish, as all the women (there are supposed to be 24 of them) are the daughters of Major-General Stanley. Given that in most productions the chorus members all appear to be of roughly the same age, as is desired by the plot, the audience must start to wonder at the prevalence of multiple births in 19^th century Cornwall!

The chorus in G&S does not just comment on proceedings but has an integral part to play in the plot. This is certainly the case in “Pirates”, where the whole action devolves on the seizing by force of the female chorus by the male chorus (the pirates) in Act I and their rescue by the chorus basses (the policemen) in Act II.

One of the best comic scenes in the opera involves the interplay of the daughters and the policemen in Act II when the former persuade the latter to go and fight the pirates. The girls are convinced that nothing is more glorious than meeting one’s death fighting a terrible foe, and the policemen will live forever in their hearts should this happen, but the policemen would much prefer to carry on living in the real world for as long as possible!

The daughters are also essential to the plot because of their beauty. They have to present an obvious contrast to the older woman character, Ruth, so that the joke can be made about Ruth persuading the male lead, Frederic, that she is beautiful, simply because she is the only woman that Frederic has ever seen.

Mabel

Mabel is the principal daughter, supported by three semi-principals in Edith, Kate and Isabel. Mabel is one of the most difficult roles to cast in any production of Pirates, mainly because it is essential that she can carry off one of the most beautiful but difficult numbers in all of G&S, namely “Poor wandering one”.

It is with this song that she is introduced to the opera. Frederic, the apprentice pirate, has called on the chorus of beautiful maidens to say if there is not just one of them who could love somebody like him, and it is Mabel who responds to the call. 

Were we to attempt to analyse the motivations of the characters in terms of normal behaviour, we could only condemn Mabel as being revoltingly forward in offering herself to a man whom she has never seen before, although she does lay down a few conditions, namely that he must forswear his previous life of evil. Even so, we need to apply a considerable “suspension of disbelief” before this makes sense to us. On the other hand, if we can believe that Major-General Stanley has all those daughters of marriageable age …

Mabel is a typical Gilbertian heroine in that she is not only beautiful but resilient, with a mind of her own. She is not there just as the girl to be got by the guy. She is the one who is not afraid to stand out from the crowd, and she also shows courage when the pirates seize the daughters, warning them that their father is a major-general. In Act II she steels herself to the prospect of a long separation from Frederic (some 79 years in fact), and also takes the lead in sending the policemen off to do battle.

Ruth

The other main female character in “Pirates” is Ruth, the “pirate maid-of-all-work”, without whose initial mistake, many years ago, none of this would have happened. To modern sensibilities, this older woman role in G&S is somewhat embarrassing. Gilbert intends us to laugh at these old maids who are clearly past their prime but in whom there is still a strong sexual desire. Of course, we are supposed to think, you cannot be satisfied in love, the reason being that you are too old. You, whatever role you play, must make do with the worst outcome in love, and we will make fun of you for your presumption. Hence we have Katisha (“The Mikado”) Little Buttercup (“Pinafore”) and the Fairie Queen (“Iolanthe”) among others.

Ruth’s mistake was to be hard of hearing, even in her youth, and to have apprenticed young Frederic, at the age of eight, to a pirate instead of a pilot. Gilbert likes us to laugh at physical infirmities as well as increasing female age. A point is also made about Ruth’s loss of physical attractiveness, as Frederic exclaims in disgust that she is not at all beautiful in contrast to Mabel and her sisters.

However, there is more to Ruth than an embittered old maid (a la Katisha) and she emerges as one of the strongest characters in the opera. It is she (along with the Pirate King) who points out to Frederic that his apprenticeship is far from over, due to his having been born on 29^th February in a leap year, and that his 21^st birthday is therefore many years away. Having been his nursemaid all his life, she is the only person who would have known that fact.

It is also Ruth who delivers the final piece of Gilbertian “business”, namely that the pirates are all “noblemen who have gone wrong”, and therefore, as peers of the realm, are fully qualified to marry the daughters of Major-General Stanley. We can assume that Ruth ends up married to the Pirate King, although this is not actually stated.

Better characters than the men?

Although there are not many named women characters in the opera, their roles are essential to the plot. The male characters are a pretty insipid lot when it comes to taking action, with the possible exception of the Pirate King, and even he needs Ruth as his lieutenant. The Major-General fears for his life, the police sergeant is a coward, and Frederic is such a “slave to duty” (which is the subtitle of the opera) that he can take no action on his own initiative. The roles of the female characters are therefore central to “Pirates”, giving huge potential to women actors to have a great time playing the parts in question.

© John Welford

Thomas Arne, English composer

Thomas Arne was at one time regarded as second only to Handel among English composers (if Handel’s German birth is disregarded). However, he is only remembered today for one relatively short piece that was the finale of a much longer work that is now ignored.

Thomas Augustine Arne was born on 12^th March 1710, the son of a successful upholsterer in London’s Covent Garden. Thomas was educated at Eton and intended by his father for a career in law. However, Thomas was far more interested in music and the theatre, and secretly practiced on the spinet (a variety of harpsichord) in his bedroom, muffling the strings to escape parental detection when he should have been concentrating on his law books.

He also became proficient on the violin and led a small chamber band, again without his father’s knowledge. When his father eventually found out he was forgiven because he played so well.

Thomas must have been disconcerted by the fact that his sister Susanna was able to have a stage career as a noted contralto. However, this was the key to opening his own association with the theatre because he felt inspired to compose music for the stage after Susanna’s success in an opera in 1732.

His first operas were clearly well received, because he went on to write music to accompany a performance of Milton’s masque “Comus” in 1740. This was followed in the same year by “Alfred”, a masque written to celebrate the Royal House of Hanover and performed for the Prince of Wales at Cliveden, the Prince’s country residence. Frederick Prince of Wales was the eldest son of King George II and the father of the future King George III. He was a noted patron of the arts and Thomas Arne became his favourite composer.

The best remembered part of “Alfred” was the finale, which set the words of “Rule Britannia” (by James Thomson) to the tune that is still sung to this day every year at the Last Night of the Proms. Indeed, were it not for that particular piece of patriotic enthusiasm it is probable that the name of Thomas Arne would not be remembered at all.

Arne spent some time in Dublin during the 1750s and 1760s, a period that is notable for the oratorio “Abel” and the fact that he returned from his second visit after separating from his second wife, whom he left behind in Ireland.

One of Arne’s innovations was to present operas in the Italian style, with sung recitative instead of spoken dialogue. This proved to be a success, but his experiment of presenting operas in the original Italian of their source texts did not prove popular.

Apart from operas and oratorios, Arne wrote a large amount of incidental music, including noted settings of Shakespeare songs, catches, glees and instrumental pieces.

Thomas Arne died on 8th March 1778 at the age of nearly 68.

© John Welford