#2 Review: Under the Greenwood Tree: Mellstock Band performs Carols of Thomas Hardy's Time and Place
by Ray Rojas
Updated on Jan. 29, 2020 for broken links.
This 1986 issues by the Mellstock Band on Saydiscs explores
Thomas Hardy’s Under the Greewood Tree with recordings of carols and dances
played on authentic instruments of the period.
An interesting recording with some seldom heard
interpretations of tradition carols. The dances bring to light the fun it was
to dance in those times. The Mellstock band mixes what would have been heard by
church bands as well as by folk choirs of the time.
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| Dorset, England |
Hardy set most of his books in south and south west England,
an area he termed Wessex. The Hardys, noted musicians, lived in Puddletown in Dorset and
Bockhampton, and this recording recreates what music would have been like in
Hardy’s time with dance pieces and four-part carols representing music from
around 1820 to 1840. Note that liner notes are by Dave Townsend. Among the
Christmas carols played are:
“Arise and hail the joyful day” – mentioned in the novel in
which “the tenors sing he air.
“Hail the happy morn” – from Puddletown origins.
“Awake and join the cheerful choir” – from Puddletown
manuscripts. The editors of the New Oxford Book of Carols have extensive notes
on this carol (#90) and point to it being included in “George Hanford Book,
1830” in the Dorset County Museum, in the carol books in the Thomas Hardy
Memorial Collection (more information on his collection below), and in the Anell
manuscript in the Dorset County Records Office. The setting in the New Oxford Book of Carols is from
the Collection of Dorset Carols (1926)
from W.A. Pickard-Cambridge. The editors of NOBC state a very similar version
is found in the Wiltshire Folk Songs and
Carols 1904.
“See Heaven’s High Portals” – from Puddletown manuscripts - “The
6 time signature and ‘fugueing” passage in the second half of the verse are
characteristics found together in many of the carols in these collections.
“Awake, awake ye mortals all” – from Puddletown manuscripts
song by female voices with violins, flute, and cello. The liner notes state:
Original key D, sung here in C. The
curious harmonic texture of this carol, full of parallel movement and unusual
discords, marks it out from all the three upper parts packed closely, as here,
as well separate from the bass, which is not sung to avoid overemphasizing the
harmonic clashes.”
“While Shepherds Watched” – from an Hardy manuscript. A
well-known carol by that time, in this manuscript, “lacks the tenor line” but
is reconstructed for this recording. Furthermore, the “splitting of words in
the ‘fugueing’ passage was characteristic of west galley music, to the disgust
of Victorian church reformers.”
“Behold the morning star” – from Hardy and Pubbletown
manuscripts, “The Carol that rouses Farmer Shiner to wrath in Under the Greenwood Tree. As in the
novel, and in the Stinsford choir.”
“Arise and Hail the Sacred Day” – from the Hook manuscript
entitled “Christmas Piece,” according to the liner notes “represents a
transitional stage between the carols of the church bands and the folk carols
such as those sung by the Copper family in Sussex. It is sung here as a duet,
like the folk carols, but accompanied, like the church band carols.” Note that
this carol is #87 in the New Oxford Book of Carols, whose editors say is also
found in the carol book in the Thomas Hardy Collection in Dorset County Museum,
Dorchester. The editors have more extensive notes on the roots of this carol.
“Rejoice this glorious day is come” from the Puddletown
manuscript, “An elaborate setting, with solos and instrumental interludes or ‘symphonies.’
The instrumentation is close to that of the large church band at Puddletown.”
The liner notes state:
As
interpreted by the Puddletown and Stinsford choirs, the carols usually have a
bass which rarely goes lower than baritone range, a high tenor, trebles
carrying the tune , and a very high descant part called the “counter”. It was
not a counter-tenor part nor were the “viols” and “bass-viols” of the
Mellstocke Quire anything but violins and cello of the usual kind.”
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| Phil Humphrie with The Serpent, http://www.davetownsendmusic.com |
Period instruments used are the boxwood clarinet and the
serpent. The boxwood clarinet has 8 keys. The serpent has 3 keys and is a
wing instrument of conical bore, made of wood covered with leader, blow with cupped
mouthpiece like that of a trombone but with finger holes and keys like a bassoon.
The eight-foot tube is curved in a snake –like series of s-bends, whence the
name.
The rest of the recordings are instrumental reels and dances
found in Puddletown manuscripts named “Tunes s for Violin.” The liner notes
state, “The carols on this album, and others from the same manuscripts can be
found in The Mellsock Carols, ed A.D.
Townsend, published by The Serpent Press. Many of the manuscripts mention here
as well as others, can be found at www.davetownsendmusic.com
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