‘A happy style […] yours and individual

without subscribing to the exaggeration and obscurity of so much contemporary writing’

~ Elizabeth Poston1~

***

Composer, organist, pianist, harpsichordist and conductor, Richard Lambert was born in Bath in 1951. He began composing in his early teens – initially for piano and brass band, then, enticed by Anglican church music, for choir. Coincident with studying organ under Dudley Holroyd (Bath Abbey), a pupil of Francis Jackson, he read music and education at Bristol University, graduating in 1973. Subsequently he gained an MA at UCL Institute of Education (1985) with further tertiary training at Surrey University (1993–94) under Sebastian Forbes, and at the University of West London (2015–16) with Francis Pott. Independently, he pursued composition studies with Elizabeth Poston (1980–86) and Malcolm Williamson (1982–96). A committed educationalist, he spent a thirty-plus-year career in secondary-school music-teaching, culminating as Director of Music at St Helen’s School, Northwood, Middlesex (1997–2007). From 1989 to 2023 he was a Senior Examiner, Trainer and Moderator at London College of Music Examinations, travelling the world and absorbing diverse cultural influences. In 1977 he established the Chanticleer Chamber Choir, conducting it until 1983. Five years later he founded and directed the (still current) Royston Arts Festival. For some years Lambert lived a stone’s throw from Cambridge, with fens, college chapels and cathedrals on his doorstep. Later he settled in Northamptonshire, in the Welland Valley, crossed by the 82 arches of the Harringworth Viaduct – old Mercia. These days, he and his wife Rachel, having exchanged the East Midlands for Worcestershire, have made their home in Malvern, within the ‘Elgar’ triangle delineated by the cathedrals of the Three Choirs Festival – composing, playing the organ, enjoying his vintage Steinway, recording, spurning retirement.

In 2013 he attempted to define himself through a series of quotations and allusions, among them one from Peter Ackroyd: ‘If Englishness in music can be encapsulated in words at all, those words would probably be: ostensibly familiar and commonplace, yet deep and mystical as well as lyrical, melodic, melancholic, and nostalgic yet timeless’.2 Another from Benjamin Britten: ‘Accept [your] loneliness and refuse all refuges, whether of tribal nationalism or airtight intellectual systems’.3 Lambert’s style and musical language embrace dance, song, melody, mellifluous harmonies, the tang of mild dissonance, and the acidity and bite of chord-clusters and overtones. Here and there echoes of Britten and Tippett resonate. Britten’s sentiments expressed in Aspen in 1964, one senses, are very much his: ‘It is a good thing to please people, even if only for today. That is what we should aim at – pleasing people today as seriously as we can, and letting the future look after itself ’.4

Choral music is an abiding passion, his output ranging from partsongs to the Anglican tradition, from traditional SATB settings to experimental soundscapes. Traversing, he suggests, ‘a range of moods and styles – from the sardonic humour of The Jackdaw of Rheims to the poignant simplicity of Away in a Manger; from the impressionistic word-painting of The Wind among the Reeds to the stark and menacing world of the concluding cantata …a plague o’ your houses’5 - the medium, he believes, is his ‘strongest compositional skill’. ‘My catalogue is unapologetically eclectic in its mixture of styles, and yet, despite cosmopolitan, European influences, I think of my compositional language as intrinsically English, yielding both a kapellmeister repertory serving school, church and the wider community, and more personal works of greater expressive freedom.’6

The Composer Speaks7

I’ve spent a lifetime immersed in the worlds of brass and organ – as player, composer and listener. These days, however, my playing is largely as an organist. My father and grandfather were both bandmasters in Bath, responsible for a Free Church silver band.8 When I was a small boy in the 1950s, it was an eighteen-piece, full-quorum group, formed primarily for church services, but there would also be concerts, fêtes and carnivals. My father, himself a very good cornet-player, taught me to play the instrument – although I later came to prefer the trumpet, with its bolder sound. I was in the band from about the age of nine. By sixteen I was writing pieces for everyone to play. From about fifteen I also played organ for services, funerals and weddings – and not only in my parents’ church: I was quite a regular at the local crematorium! Carolling on Christmas morning and the evenings running up to Christmas Day may not always have been pleasant in the cold, but as a youngster I relished the whole teamwork experience.

It was my secondary-school music director, Allan Bennett, who encouraged me, when I was eleven, to swap cornet for the more versatile trumpet. I readily played with different ensembles, soaking up new styles and techniques. I was principal trumpet of the school brass ensemble, touring places like Norway, where we performed Giovanni Gabrieli, Matthew Locke and others. The school additionally had an excellent symphony orchestra in which I was also principal trumpet. There was also a school trad jazz band which I found very helpful, because it gave me the confidence to improvise. I can’t say jazz is fully in my bloodstream: I enjoy jazz rhythms, but I’m not a natural jazz man. At Bristol University, struggling with embouchure and higher notes, my lip tiring easily, I went onto the lower-bore trombone, only to find that, while improved in the upper register, I couldn’t get the fundamentals. I play neither instrument these days but my enthusiasm for brass has never waned. I know the workings and limitations of the medium from the inside.

I studied organ with Dudley Holroyd, Organist and Master of the Choristers at Bath Abbey. A pupil of Francis Jackson in York, he was a superb musician, and very demanding – he didn’t take any prisoners. He was just what I needed at the time. He made me listen to my playing. I learnt a huge amount about phrasing and organ colour. Under his guidance, I initially began studying English eighteenth-century manual music (English organs, unlike their German counterparts, were slow to have pedal-boards added). I played composers such as John Stanley, William Boyce, Maurice Greene and William Walond; I still enjoy and programme their music to this day. Sadly, the lessons terminated after a couple of years, and consequently my pedalling technique is not as good as it perhaps should be. I couldn’t play all of Bach, but I was unquestionably motivated to listen to such iconic repertoire.

I was attracted to the symphonic medium, and several works had an impact on me at a formative stage. Britten’s Serenade for tenor, horn and strings knocked me over – especially the ‘Dirge’. With the school orchestra we played his comparatively new Courtly Dances from Gloriana – influential stylistically. Then there was Nielsen’s Second Symphony, The Four Temperaments; Janáček, too, especially the clamorous brass and percussion of his marvellous Sinfonietta. The Romantic gamut, the big concertos, drew me. My preference for the Baroque came later. Through playing in the Bath Symphony Orchestra and the Bath Youth Orchestra, I experienced a wide range of contemporary idioms – Stravinsky’s Russian ballets and Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Bartók, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Poulenc, occasionally Maxwell Davies. The annual May-time Bath International Festivals – Yehudi Menuhin was then artistic director – provided yet more encounters. I’d frequently steward to get free admission. Discovering BBC Radio 3 during the William Glock/Boulez years exposed me to uncompromising alternative dimensions and high-end performances – though the need to be ‘contemporary’ or else not be heard I found very limiting. Why, I asked myself, should a democratic society be dictated to by somebody’s whim or wishes?

I knew from around thirteen that I wanted to be a composer. I absorbed music however I could. I’d spend hours at the piano improvising. I listened avidly to records. My passion, though, had in fact been seeded very early on. From the age of four I’d watch my father conducting his band – I’m told I would stand up in the services next to him, copying his conducting and actions. It felt very natural, it wasn’t something I grew into, it was something I grew up with. A decisive turning-point came when I was about sixteen. The most prominent brass-group at the time, the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, was giving a concert in Bath Abbey, with an open-air recital beforehand in the resonant churchyard area just outside. They played the ‘fanfare’ Toccata from the Prologue to Monteverdi’s Orfeo. It’s largely a repeated D major chord but the sheer brilliance and precision astounded me – brought up on the mellow cornet tones and light vibrato of a silver band, living through this vibrant alfresco sound blew me away. I knew then that this was a world I wanted to inhabit and compose for rather than simply playing marches or hymn-tunes for the rest of my life.Although I’ll improvise at an instrument, I write most of my music away from the piano, though very occasionally I’ll check out a chord if I think I’m not hearing it properly. (It’s relevant that my Steinway – a Hamburg Model C ‘Parlour Concert Grand’ from 1886 – isn’t in my composing room, but a two-manual Viscount organ is.) I sometimes generalise myself as an English composer. My formative influences were certainly a mix of core post-war English values. Initially I was very much a Vaughan Williams and Holst man, the latter’s Military-Band Suites leaving their mark; likewise the mysticism of The Planets – though I’ve evolved since. I remember once conducting his Vedic Hymns: his interest in the East and Hinduism didn’t particularly grab me at the time. On the other hand, like the repetitions of Ravel’s Boléro, that minimal, hypnotic Algerian riff in the finale of the Holst Beni Mora suite – used over 160 times – never bores in its cleverness, colour or ornament: he had all the mastery and technique to sustain interest and avoid monotony. I love Britten’s folksong settings, often accompanying them. I much admire the instrumental output of Elgar. And how could anyone, any brass-player, ignore Malcolm Arnold? He’ll always be an influence. Like Britten he was a serious craftsman with facility and the light touch. That he composed too easily shouldn’t be a reason to suspect his worth. I like the outspoken, slightly outrageous nature of his imagination. The Brass Quintets and Symphony for Brass rank high in my estimation.

Living and working in Royston, Hertfordshire, during the 1980s and ’90s I valued regular contact with Elizabeth Poston and Malcolm Williamson, who lived locally: I introduced them to each other in May 1985 at a Royston Arts Festival concert which premiered my choral Prayer and Supplication [qv infra]. Over the years I’ve conducted many of their works (including a couple of Williamson premieres) and benefited enormously from their musical experience and compositional techniques. With Elizabeth, I respected her use of the miniature: for a very long time (in part determined by the fact that I didn’t have time to write extensive pieces, preferring to turn out a carol that would be performed regularly than spend a year writing a big work that might never secure a performance), I wrote cameos of little more than five to ten minutes each. Malcolm, then Master of the Queen’s Music, was very much an eclectic figure. Needing to earn an income, he’d write in whatever style was required of him. I wouldn’t say I emulated him, but I certainly learnt from watching. We didn’t have strict lessons, but I watched the way he worked. I’d sit at his desk while he was scoring, and he’d ask me what I’d do in a particular instance. It was a case often of two-way chatting more than formalised ‘teaching’. He was an abundantly informative, larger-than-life character – and yet a man fearful of being critically shunted, to the point of writing at times in a Messiaenic sort of way, currying favour as it were with the Establishment. His Mass of Christ the King fascinates me. In the years since, I’ve absorbed contrasting twentieth-century idioms from studying such composers as Einar Englund and Benjamin Frankel. In later life Frankel [1906–73] evolved his own style of serialism which retained elements of tonality; with Englund [1916–99], likewise, I was attracted to his sound-world and his particular use of tonality – notably where Romantic melody is employed alongside colourful dissonance. My regard for Sibelius led me on to explore more of his compatriots – in particular Einojuhani Rautavaara [1928–2016], another who combined a mixture of styles within individual works.

Much of my professional life has been spent in music education, enjoyably so. Needing quick practical arrangements, resorting to straightforward tonal writing, transiently spiced, which young people will readily understand, repeats and da capos woven into the canvas, I resorted early on to what I call my kapellmeister style. Writing to commission or independently, however, seeking a language that’s intrinsically personal, my tonal choices (occasionally mixed with selective elements of serialism) are expressively more complex and sophisticated.

Largely, I’m a tonalist, certainly in the sense that some notes are more dominant than others. I think in a key, without necessarily having a desire to return ultimately to that key. If anything, my music is closer to the idea of early-twentieth-century progressive tonality, as in Mahler and Nielsen. Like any tonalist, I’m interested in the relationship one key has to another. But I don’t think ‘I’m now major, I’m now minor … now E flat major’. The sound leads me where it wants to go. (Maybe it has something to do with my performer’s hat. Sitting in the back row as a trumpeter, I, like Malcolm Arnold, had a ‘back of the orchestra’ sound-world around and in front of me. As a conductor the impact is different – I have a whole orchestra pointing towards me.) Some composers, architect-like, will plot a blueprint. I rarely do. I love the symphonies of Sibelius. But, undertaking the journey to get there, he will often work backwards, knowing exactly where he’s heading. I don’t work that way. Apart from my choral Folk Song Suite [1975/2008], basically a glorified arrangement, I don’t resort to intrinsically English folksongs or modes per se in my music. Folk-like tunes, yes, often pseudo-Irish or -Scottish. Jigs are second nature to me. For me, choice of key is generated by structure, lyrics and mood. If I’m writing for choir, it’s pragmatic to be tonal. In student days, I soon discovered that a chromatically challenging work like Schoenberg’s Friede auf Erden is extremely difficult to perform accurately in tune. More often than not, you’ll find a choir tensing (negatively) because they’re simply unrelaxed about getting the right notes or harmonies. Depending on context, some keys are preferable to others. I won’t say I’m inspired by the colour of keys (Scriabin’s synaesthesia isn’t my penchant), but their reflection and shading, their light emission, if you like, has an impact. A major, for instance, is brighter than A flat. Comparably, D flat major is much warmer and softer shaded than D major. I can’t imagine Beethoven Five being in any key other than C minor. I cannot feel a piece like ‘Nimrod’ in anything but E flat major. It absolutely has to be that key. Of course, it would still work in E major, we know that – but, straightaway, I would feel a different mood, a different reflection, a different shade coming from it.

In the past ten years or so – swayed maybe by Frankel’s later symphonies – selective serialisation has occasionally surfaced: generally dodecaphonic, though I’ve also used eight- and ten-note rows. Essentially the intention is to create a deliberately ‘other worldly’ feeling. … a plague o’ your houses [2021] includes interjected passages of serial writing. Similarly, my cantata The Returning [2014] has recurring passages organised serially, enhancing the mystical elements of George Szirtes’ text. In my Piano Concerto (2012–16) serialism and modal tonality offset each other. Characteristically, though, the tone-rows I evolve – diatonically or chromatically – are fundamentally tonally governed. My Yeats triptych, The Wind among the Reeds [2016–17], is typical in so far as its row – F–A–C–B–G#–C#–D–D#–F#–B♭–G–E – consciously alludes to F major and F minor triads along with an implied C dominant-seventh minus the root. The choral writing is diatonic; the piano part is largely serial. My serial patterns are pitch-determined, not rhythmically or dynamically governed. I never wanted to follow the rigour of Schoenberg, Webern or the Darmstädter, any more than Messiaen or his modes of limited transposition, much as I revere him. Drawn to using motifs in my writing, I find it useful to impose familiarity in my serial excursions through recurrence or paraphrase, resisting exact repetition. Loosely, I use serialism as a way of modulation. A series is a starting point that must be flexible when required. Some commentators contest that one is either a serialist or a tonalist but not both. I don’t buy this. You can be both.

Very much a mannerism of mine, especially in my later works, is to contrast regular and irregular metres. It’s something I cannot get out of my system. The organ piece I’m working on at the moment9 is in 5/8 – 3/4 – 5/8. Why have I chosen 5? Because I love that feeling; it’s instinctive. Why the 3/4 bar? Because I need that to give the music a rhythmic twist. That’s just me. I got the idea of flexible time-signatures early on from one of Lennox Berkeley’s 1945 piano Preludes. The fifth of that set begins in 7/8, to which one soon becomes accustomed, but the second section reverts to a more familiar 6/8. That new 6/8 material sounds pleasantly ‘incorrect’ at first – rhythmically unsettling, since you don’t expect it; I really got something from that. As a young student, I thought it was a masterstroke.

In contrast with my youth, this is a pluralistic age. Anything goes. Come the end, irrespective of style or language, I just want people to respond to the music I write – even love it, as Poulenc might have said.10

Dulcis concordia11

~ I ~

Organ

Gloria, laus et honor

‘This exuberant, virtuosic toccata [2015] is centred around the early 9th century Palm Sunday hymn, “All glory, laud, and honour/To Thee, Redeemer, King!/To Whom the lips of children/Made sweet Hosannas ring”.12 The melody is presented in the pedals initially in free and augmented rhythm, modulating widely. The jubilant, bravura manual work opening the piece continues inexorably between the lines of the hymn and is presented canonically as many as fourteen times – in a variety of keys and dynamic levels. Several lines of the hymn are presented chordally in chorale prelude style, harmonised idiomatically to reinforce the triumphant mood. The final four bars conclude in affirming C major with astringent added [eleventh-partial] F#s.’13 ‘In conceiving Gloria, laus et honor, I didn’t compromise on what might be possible. People have claimed it’s too difficult to play, but in practice this hasn’t proved the case. Philip Rushforth dispatched his recording in two takes, each complete. If we’re looking for influences, then Tippett would have to be the main one. I heard his Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in Bath Abbey around 1970: it knocked me off my seat. Those brilliant, florid organ figures he used, with the trumpet stop counterpointed against the vocal writing – that was the feeling, the imagery, the association I was trying to emulate more than forty years later!’14 Composed at the request of and dedicated to Peter Hallam,15 Gloria, laus et honor was premiered in February 2017 by Jung-A Lee at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Newport Beach, Los Angeles.

… the festal trumpet sounds

‘A trilogy of separately written pieces for trumpet and organ (1974, 2009) rather than a purposed suite.

‘Voluntary in B flat (2009). This short voluntary rondo exploits rhythmic interplay between the two soloists. The brief first episode is primarily for organ; the second episode is considerably longer and more relaxed in character. The main theme returns to conclude stirringly, nobly highlighting the trumpet’s upper register. There’s not a trace in this piece of anything other than 19th-century resonances, or even earlier yet, in ways I can’t explain, it’s idiomatically me.

‘Elaboration on Thornbury (2009), “O Jesus I Have Promised”, transpired as a latter-day companion piece to my Elaboration on Hyfrydol penned thirty-five years earlier. The organ part comprises two reiterated verses of the eponymous hymn by the composer-organist Basil Harwood (1859–1949). Above this the trumpet elaborates two counterpointed melodies of increasing complexity, ringingly exploiting the upper range of the instrument.15

‘Elaboration on Hyfrydol (1974), “Come, thou long expected Jesus,/born to set thy people free”, was composed for an induction service in St Martin’s Church, Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire. The organ part draws on two consecutive verses of the early Victorian Welsh hymn tune Hyfrydol by Rowland Hugh Prichard (1811–87). The trumpet elaborates two contrasting melodies above this – the first a legato descant, the second more clamorous and fluid.'16

Music for Organ Volume 1

‘Bringing together thirteen independent numbers intended for weddings, funerals or general church services, my first two organ volumes [a third is underway] were written for myself to play. Reflecting my own technical facility, some of the pieces were initially more simplified. But on publication in 2020 I revisited the scores, making them a little more sophisticated as well as user-friendly for general application. The organ isn’t an instrument without limitations, particularly in terms of expressiveness. Cathedral reverberation, especially, can often blur the musical texture. Contrapuntal writing and textural voicing are natural procedures to me but every now and again they can get lost in the registration. I generally prefer quieter pieces, because of the increased clarity that’s possible. I’m rarely impressed by sustained fortissimo playing.’17

An elegiac voluntary, the Paraphrase on Rockingham (2015) was premiered in Beverley Minster by Ian Seddon in March 2017 and repeated the following month by its dedicatee, Hugo Agius Muscat,18 at the Good Friday Service in St Paul’s Anglican Pro-Cathedral, Valletta. In chorale-prelude style, it’s based on the Lenten communion hymn Rockingham (arranged by Edward Miller in 1790 from an earlier source): ‘When I survey the wondrous cross/on which the Prince of glory died,/my richest gain I count but loss,/ and pour contempt on all my pride’.

Lambert feels that his Passacaglia brevis (2011) is less Purcellian in ancestry than Bachian (the C minor Passacaglia and Fugue proving a lasting influence). It is a general-purpose voluntary based on two seven-note ground-bass figures. The first is in the A Aeolian mode, underpinned by the ground notes A–B–C–B–D–E–B, repeated seven times. The second, in E major, follows the notes E–G#–C#–D#–A–F#–B five times before the reprise of the first – this time ‘transmoded’ to A Lydian, ‘which has the effect of raising the opening minor ambience to the major’19. The coda references the pitch sequence and key of the second ground. The first performance was given by the composer in Singapore in April 2012,  Kampong Kapor Methodist Church.

Written for an autumn wedding, Intermezzo (2009) is a voluntary in A major with two main ideas: a lilting subject in 12/8 based on running quavers, and a 10/8 one based on semiquaver rising thirds. The themes are varied each time they are presented, with a central reprise in the remote key of A flat major. The piece is dedicated to Christopher Tutin.20

The March in D (2008), a short Neo-Baroque rondo pastiche intended for a wedding, offsets D major with a contrasting section in B flat.

Recessional March in G (2008) is a ceremonial voluntary in rondo form, with a recurring hymn-like main theme, dedicated to Robert Marsh.21 The recurring refrain has a different two-bar ending for each of its three repetitions. The first episode is in E minor, set largely above a tonic pedal. Presented twice, the second episode, in C major, gently parodies Elgar with its nobilmente repeat an octave higher.

In memoriam (2008) subjects a solemn D minor theme to continual variation, succumbing to two noble D major statements. ‘Behind this, emotionally, was the death of an uncle, my mother’s elder brother, John W Davis MBE (1920–2008), at one time a cornettist in my father’s People’s Mission band. I wrote the piece (which John saw in his final days) for his funeral service. Since then I’ve played it at my mother’s funeral and also at Rachel’s mother’s funeral. A signature melody to play on solemn occasions, it ends joyously: having mourned a passing, it celebrates a life well lived. I later rearranged it, definitively, for concert band, in which form it was played at the 2009 Bath and West Agricultural Show by the Band of the Brigade of Gurkhas during a memorial service for my uncle. John was for many years Secretary of the Show.’22

Intrada (1978, rev 2008) - suitable as entry or exit music for a bride, or alternatively a lively general-purpose voluntary - was written for the wedding of Richard Lambert’s sister, Hilary. It featured later in his own wedding (his second), to Rachel in September 2007. Originally, the opening A section was complete in itself, centred around a confident D major but showcasing Lambert’s ‘remote’ chording-within-a-key technique. Featuring a walking bass and developing rhythmic ideas from the opening, the central B minor episode, added in 2008, works its way back to a reprise of the first section.

Music for Organ Volume 2

Preludio burlesco (2017) was conceived as a short recital piece rather than church voluntary. It develops short motifs within a tonally ambiguous framework. A sardonic essay.

Caledonian March (2012) was composed for a Scottish wedding, dedicated to the Singaporean organist Linda Fang. The refrains and episodes of this short rondo-structure in D major each use a suggestive short-long ‘Scotch-snap’ figure. The refrain is in Neo-Purcellian trumpet style.

Elegy (2009), dedicated to Hugh Sutton,23 is a flowing 6/8 number with occasional two-against-three hemiolae. A variant of the main material – mildly varied reprises being something of a Lambert trait – closes the piece in a mood of resignation and repose.

March in F (2008) is entry or exit music for a bride, applicable also as a general-purpose voluntary. Pivoting on the A and C of F major, the more restrained central section commences in A modal minor. The triumphal closing bars climax in an individualised ‘English’ cadence of High Renaissance/Restoration association.

Pastorale in F (2008), dedicated to Peter J Williams,24 is a Neo-Baroque voluntary in 6/8, with crotchet hemiolae cutting across the pulse. The piece was intended as a pastiche trio sonata, suitable for playing before the bride’s entrance or during the signing of the register.

The main section of the jubilant March in C (2008) – a march-voluntary – is contrasted with two episodes in related keys; an extended final statement leads into a grandiose coda celebrating ‘white-key’ C major in fulsome blaze and glory. The piece is dedicated to Ian Seddon.25

~ II ~ 

Brass

Little Suite No 2

In its abbreviated form, omitting the opening and closing movements,26 Little Suite No 2 for two trumpets (2016) uses Shakespearean stage-direction brass terms as titles. Signal (second movement, C major) has the trumpets initially calling and responding to each other antiphonally – the first trumpet muted to give the impression of distance. Alarum (third movement, G minor), largely imitative, is faster and more agitated, requiring both instruments to be muted throughout. ‘At one of my teaching appointments, the headmaster was passionate about Shakespeare, directing a new production almost every year. It gave me the opportunity to write incidental music for several of the plays, inevitably involving off-stage signals and fanfares. Even as a boy at school I remember composing group fanfares for Hamlet, playing live in the wings. I came later, from long experience, to really enjoy writing all those theatrical sennets, tuckets and anfars. It’s hard to avoid fanfares, even when composing larger works for brass.’27

Little Suite No 3

A spin-off from his Second Suite for two trumpets, Lambert’s Third (2016), in similar style, is for three. Flourish, the first movement, is a fanfare opening with a mixture of triadic writing and imitation. Cortège – a gravely melancholic, masterly funeral march – is a slow, restrained processional in modal (distantly Phrygian) C minor, again combining homophonic chording with imitative work. ‘It deliberately exploits the trumpet’s lower register, which you rarely hear. I wanted to explore that sombre timbre.’28 Solitude, as the title suggests, is a reflective movement where the dynamics do not rise above mezzopiano. Skipping the Beat makes for a buoyant, positive jig-finale in typically Lambert-esque 6/8 time – a skipping game, Malcolm Arnold around the corner.

Partita

A divertimento-like compilation (2015) of earlier material for alternatively scored forces, recomposed idiomatically for standard quintet formation (two trumpets, horn, trombone, tuba). Changing combinations of instruments lend textural variety, and frequent use of mutes adds contrast. In the composer’s recording, omitting the second and third movements (transcribed from choral originals29), the suite opens with a Proclamation, contrasting initially traditional fanfare material with agitated imitative interpolations. Several of the movements allude to Elizabethan stage directions: a ‘sennet’ indicates a ceremonial entrance or exit; a ‘tucket’ is a flourish, sometimes from afar; a ‘clarion’ signals an announcement; and ‘anfar’ – source of the word ‘fanfare’ – may be derived from the Arabic for ‘trumpets’. Sennet and Tucket Antiphon, Clarion Call and Anfar comprise the fourth, fifth and sixth movements respectively.

... mov’d with concord of sweet sounds

'For brass septet (2011) this takes its title from Lorenzo’s speech in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice (V:i): “The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not mov’d with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils”. Consisting of a single movement divided into contrasting sections, with a tightly knit development of various germinal motifs, it’s a tour de force for all the players [three trumpets, horn, three trombones]. Reinforcing the rhythmic nature of the music, time-signatures change frequently. And while ostensibly tonal overall, several passages leave the key unclear, with edges sometimes blurred by deliberately ‘phasing’ doubled notes to introduce new timbres. Instrumental effects add to the range of colours created – sometimes, as at the end, involving a mixture of open and muted playing. An expressive coda section substantially reworks a withdrawn early part-song, When the Spring comes (1973), concluding with an air of quiet resignation and wry humour.’30 Commissioned by Deryck and Gwen Thornley on the occasion of their 60th wedding anniversary, ... mov’d with concord of sweet sounds was premiered in March 2017 in the church of St James the Great, Cupar, Fife, by the St Andrews Brass Septet directed by Bede Williams. Its recurrent, distinctive circling of motifs, as in several other works on this album, remind the listener that Lambert resorts to the device abstractly: ‘I don’t attach a motif to an object or a thing as, say, Wagner would do. Motifs are just a way of binding my music together’.31

~ III ~ 

Choral

… a plague o’ your houses

A cantata for narrator, eight-part choir, piano, string quartet and percussion (2021), … a plague o’ your houses is a boldly imagined canvas journeying the road of human tragedy from the Middle Ages to the Covid-19 disaster of modern times. It sets ‘Five Baroque Plague Sonnets’32 by the Hungarian-born British poet George Szirtes – if ‘sets’ is the right word, since they are spoken by a narrator (a first such resource in Lambert’s output), who in the composer’s 2023 recording is the poet himself. The work is scored for eight vocal parts (doubled), piano (providing mainly motivic accompaniment but with occasional solo excursions), percussion and string quartet. The sonnets are introduced each time by the surreptitious rustle of a mark-tree (chimes) and the omen of distant kettledrums – just two of many potent examples of word-painting and dramatised expression. Offsetting the sonnets the choir intersperses four satirical Covid poems – also by Szirtes – in a more sustained, tonal style. The work concludes with a wistful reiteration of the words ‘The world continued’. The composer writes: ‘… a plague o’ your houses was written as a satirical response to the continuing, life-changing Covid-19 pandemic and the uncertain state of knowledge, information, and publicity during lockdown. Its themes are taken partly from televised press conferences, partly from reports, partly from local conditions, partly from dream imagery. All taking the same form of three haiku plus a five-syllable line, the first four sonnets are an attempt to place Covid-19 in perspective through conjuring significant historical precedents: Smallpox (c 1500–1980), Black Death (1346ff), Cholera (1817ff), Spanish Flu (1918ff). In each a narrator introduces the situation to a potentate, addressed as "Your Highness"’.33

The Wind among the Reeds

This through-composed triptych - for eight-part choir and piano (2016–17) - sets three Yeats poems from 1899: He Gives his Beloved Certain Rhymes, He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven and He Hears the Cry of the Sedge. ‘Centring on Irish mythology and legend,’ Lambert writes, ‘the influence of the ‘Celtic Renaissance’ on W B Yeats’ early poetry is evident. This trilogy opens with a wordless choral suggestion of a gentle breeze. The poems run without a break, chord clusterings highlighting certain key words: sleep, dreams, golden, silver, softly. Generating continuity through motivic cross references, the piano provides more than an accompaniment. It is largely generated by a serialised twelve-note row, albeit a diatonically “tonal” one: F–A–C–B–G#–C#–D–D#–F#–B♭–G–E. Notes 1–5 deliberately suggest a major and minor F triad; notes 10–12 imply its dominant seventh without the root. Balancing the opening, the concluding major/minor ambiguity and the underpinning of keyless serialism mirrors the poet’s vulnerability in revealing his hopes and dreams to the beloved.’34

The Jackdaw of Rheims

For four-part choir and piano (1995/2018) The Jackdaw of Rheims sets a text by Thomas Ingoldsby, the nom de plume of the Anglican cleric Richard Harris Barham (1788–1845), Priest in Ordinary to the Chapels Royal and a prolific writer. The Ingoldsby Legends, or Mirth and Marvels were first published separately in the late 1830s, first in Bentley’s Miscellany, under the editorship of Charles Dickens from 1836 to 1839, and later in The New Monthly Magazine and Humorist; they then appeared in several collected editions in the 1840s. Best-known among its fifty-odd myths, legends, ghost stories and poems, The Jackdaw of Rheims – ‘a version of an old Roman Catholic legend “picked up” out of a High Dutch author’35 – is about a jackdaw that steals the ring of a cardinal and is subsequently made a saint. ‘This tonal setting uses all but 25 lines of the lengthy poem, yet the narrative remains uncompromised, its satire about greed still contemporary. Although the words may be somewhat dated in style, they still offer a humorous and relevant comment on today’s church. In Trollop-ian manner, the poem debunks the power and wealth of organised religion, uncovering the potential for corruption within its higher echelons. Indeed, the Cardinal is so outraged at the loss of his turquoise ring that he “solemnly cursed” the “rascally thief”, showing little forgiveness or charity. While creatively enjoying the rhythmic possibilities of this literary nonsense, the opportunity to parody the excesses of established religion was not to be missed. Besides reducing the length of the poem, I decided to excise the final three lines in silent respect for racial harmony: originally the conclusion referred to the eponymous Jackdaw being “canonized by the name of Jim Crow” – “Jim Crow” being a pejorative term for Afro-Americans. From the late 19th century until 1965, the Jim Crow Laws enforced racial segregation across the southern United States.’36

Lord, Make us Instruments of Thy Peace

Setting a text by St Francis of Assisi, this short, prayerful a cappella anthem for four-part choir (1993) was commissioned by and dedicated to David and Louise Atkins on the occasion of their wedding, 21 August 1993, in St George’s Church, Shirley, Croydon. ‘Framed in B flat major, the music setting modulates freely and is extensively chromatic, with appropriate keys and dissonance to “paint” the words.’37

Prayer and Supplication

Dedicated to Elizabeth Poston, Lambert’s Prayer and Supplication (1979, rev 2020), a motet for soprano descant and mixed seven-part choir, was commissioned by Adrian Pitts for the Bristol University Chamber Choir. ‘Though seemingly disparate in style and content, the religious pieces comprising this diptych borrow from monastic plainchant, each closing with similar cadential Amens. The first is a Latin setting of the Marian hymn Ave maris stella (“Hail, star of the sea”), a prayer for safe travel used at Vespers from around the 8th or 9th centuries. Chord clusters and gentle dissonances combine with tonal harmony. The second is an English setting of verses 1–12 from Psalm 102 from the Revised Standard Version (“Hear my prayer, O Lord let my cry come to thee!”), with a concluding “Gloria”. It combines pastiche monodic plainchant with cyclically developed references to the first movement in the upper voices. The extended coda reverts to the style of Ave maris stella.’38

A Christmas Sequence

The seven works of this ‘Christmas Sequence’, written independently over a 25-year period, give a conspectus of Lambert’s contribution to the tradition of English composers writing Christmas music. There are numerous new settings in his catalogue of traditional Christmas texts.

All was for an Apple, for four-part choir (2020). This anonymous, early-fifteenth-century macaronic carol, better known as Adam lay ybounden (Sloane MS 2593, British Library39). Its starting point is Genesis, chapter 3 – which presents the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, the ‘forbidden fruit’ and the ‘fall’. Gently tonal, centred around G modal minor, the setting concludes with bell-like imitative entries joyfully declaiming ‘Deo gracias!’.

There was Sweet Music, for four-part choir (2019). This anonymous fifteenth-century carol is more widely known as ‘I saw a maiden sitting and sing’ (Sloane MS 2593, British Library). Lambert comments: ‘While continuing the tradition of a gentle mother’s lullaby, this setting focuses further on the “sweet music” of the angels celebrating the Holy Birth’.40

The Holly and the Ivy, carol for four-part choir and piano (2012) This traditional text (Roud Folk Song Index 514) is probably mediaeval in origin. Lambert’s setting is inscribed to Ivy Alexandra Lambert, his granddaughter. ‘The music commences in G modal minor, in lively 6 8 ‘jig’ style [a manner favoured by Lambert in several other, mostly instrumental, works]. The first four verses are given to different voice parts in turn – the prevailing mood of each verse-setting painting the words. Each is interpolated by a homophonic refrain, “The rising of the sun”. The final verse, sung by full choir, word-paints plaintively, a single instance of 5/8 time highlighting the holly bark being “as bitter as any gall”. This leads to a slower, softer setting of the line “And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ, for to redeem us all”. An abrupt rise to A minor brings a lively return of the opening verse, shared this time by sopranos and tenors. The final refrain, with a busier piano part, confirms the triumphant mood. It’s extended into a fortissimo augmentation of “sweet singing in the choir” before a quiet finish with an even softer restatement of “And Mary bore…”.41

Hodie Christus natus est, Christmas motet for five-part choir. The first of two 2012 Christmas motets, from the liturgy of the Vespers Service, Christmas Day, was premiered by Clare College Choir, Cambridge, directed by Graham Ross, 23 January 2014. The text is taken from Luke 2: 11, 13–14, paraphrased. Set in differently pitched Lydian modes (F, G, A, with prominent sharpened fourths), the setting is both declamatory and antiphonal in style, with Poulenc somewhere in its ancestry.

O Magnum Mysterium, Christmas motet for five-part choir. Second of the two 2012 Christmas motets, this sets a responsorial chant from the Matins of Christmas. It was premiered by Worcester Cathedral Choir, directed by Samuel Hudson, 8 January 2023. The outer sections are centred around the E Lydian mode, ‘semitonal chord clusters and hushed, motivic echoes evoking an other-worldly ambience’, in the words of the composer.

The text of Away in a Manger, among the best-known of Christmas carols, is based on Luke 2: 4–7; it was formerly attributed to Martin Luther, but the author is currently held to be the ubiquitous ‘Anon’. Lambert’s four-part choir version (2009), dedicated to Jacob Jull, born on Boxing Day 2009, begins in A modal minor but closes on a G major chord. Encouraged by Elizabeth Poston, perennially associated with this genre, Lambert modelled his setting after her Jesus Christ the Apple Tree, with its comparable simplicity and absence of resolution.

Herrick’s Carol, for four-part choir (1995). This homophonically chordal strophic anthem, to a text from Robert Herrick’s Hesperides (1648), was premiered in Southwark Cathedral by Royston Church Choir under the composer, 13 December 1995. ‘The four verses, loosely in G minor, freely vary the opening melody throughout, with textural, dynamic and rhythmic elaboration providing contrast. The verses are each interspersed with a more legato F minor refrain, identical each time, ending in a gentle tierce de Picardie.’42

***

‘Music that would feel gratifying in the voice to sing, 

coming from years of working with voices and understanding what they enjoy doing and how they work together’

~ Yshani Perinpanayagam43 ~

© Ateş Orga, Richard Lambert 

2023-24 adapted 

1 Letter to the composer, 25 July 1982, quoted in John S Alabaster (ed), Elizabeth Poston Centenary, 2005: Contributed Articles and Personal Letters, The Friends of the Forster County, Stevenage 2006, p 66.

2 ‘English Music’, Albion: The Origins of the English Imagination, Chatto & Windus, London 2002.

3 ‘England and the Folk-Art Problem’, Modern Music, New York January/February 1941, p 75; reprinted in Paul Kildea (ed), Britten on Music, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2003, p 35.

4 On Receiving the First Aspen Award. A Speech, Faber & Faber, London 1964, p 17.

5 Communication with Ateş Orga, 4 October 2023.

6 Composer’s website https://www.richardlambertmusic.com, elaborated September 2023.

7 In conversation with Ateş Orga, Malvern, 12 November 2023.

8 People’s Mission, Corn Street, disbanded in 1998. Home today to the Mission Theatre, Grade II listed, opened in 2005.

9 As of January2024.

10 ‘Above all, don’t analyse my music – love it!’, quoted in Pierre Bernac, Francis Poulenc: The Man and his Songs, trans Winifred Radford, W W Norton, New York, 1977, p 13.

11 Chronologically sequenced in preference to published or recorded ordering of works, latest first.

12 Theodulf of Orléans, trans John Mason Neale, after Matthew 21:1–11.

13 Composer’s note.

14 In conversation, ibid.

15 Organist, former examiner London College of Music Examinations.

16 Composer’s note.

17 In conversation, ibid.

18 Since 1983 Titular Organist at St Paul’s Anglican Pro-Cathedral, Valletta, Malta.

19 Composer’s note.

20 Senior Examiner London College of Music Examinations, formerly editor at Novello & Company.

21 Organist at Christ Church, Skipton, Senior Examiner London College of Music Examinations.

22 In conversation, ibid.

 23 Organist, former lay clerk at Norwich Cathedral, former Chief Music Examiner London College of Music Examinations.

24 Organist at Ickenham United Reformed Church, conductor since 1980 of the Hillingdon Choral Society, Examiner London College of Music Examinations.

25 Assistant organist at Selby Abbey, until May 2023 Acting Director of Music and Cathedral Organist at Sheffield, Examiner London College of Music Examinations.

26 Initially linked, the omitted movements – ‘Sennet’ and ‘Tucket Antiphon’ – originally constituted the fourth movement of the brass Partita completed a year earlier [qv supra].

27 In conversation, ibid.

28 Op cit.

29 Hodie Christus natus est, O magnum mysterium [qv supra].

30 Composer’s note.

31 In conversation, ibid.

32 K Satchidanandan and Nishi Chawla (eds), Singing in the Dark: A Global Anthology of Poetry under Lockdown, Penguin, London 2020. 

33 Richard Lambert in conversation with George Szirtes, communicated to the author.

34 Composer’s note.

35 The Ingoldsby Legends, introductory memoir, 1889 edition, Richard Bentley & Sons, London.

36 Composer’s note.

37 Composer, communication with the author, 4 October 2023.

38 Composer’s note.

39 Collection of songs and carols  written in Middle English and Latin and in Gothic cursive, believed to have been compiled in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. 

40 Composer’s note.

41 Composer’s note.

42 Composer’s note.

43 BBC Radio 3, 30 December 2023.

special thanks to Rachel Lambert