Murder at the Towers

Murder at the Towers is a concert entertainment lasting about 40 minutes, composed for the 1955 Fitzwilliam House Music Society May Week Concert held on 6^th June in the Concert Room of the University Music School in Downing Place. It was based on the short story of the same name, taken from This Other Eden, by E.V.Knox, adapted by kind permission of E.V. Knox and Methuen & Co. Ltd. He was one of four distinguished brothers and was himself a well-known poet and satirist, who had been the Editor of Punch from 1932 to 1949. It was stipulated that the author’s and publisher’s kind permission should always be acknowledged in all publicity.

Free typeset score PDF (1986 revised edition)

In the first version, the parts of Bletherby Marge and Inspector Blowhard were for soprano and tenor respectively. For the 1986 performance, Peter had recast the roles (and the plot to accommodate the change of sex) as tenor and baritone. Maybe he no longer saw his detective as a Miss Marple figure but more of a Sherlock Holmes. In a letter to his parents, Peter described the story as very cynical and, in a letter to Christopher Dearnley, then Organist and Master of the Choristers at Salisbury Cathedral, who hoped to programme the work at the Southern Three Choirs Festival, he wrote: “The audience is not necessarily convinced by the solution, especially when it turns out the dead man was not murdered but had committed suicide and the detective is the sole legatee of the deceased.” Before and after this nub of story is a choral prelude and a conclusion uttering a rather wry philosophy. Since Peter had compiled his own text, which was greatly appreciated by E. V. Knox when he attended the performance at the Salisbury Festival, can we perhaps glimpse some of his own political attitudes – just as we can in his choice of texts for This sorry scheme of things? Or was he attempting to show his youthful performers and audience that there was a harsher world outside Cambridge? These two couplets from the final philosophical chorus give us an example of the sentiments being uttered:

……peace means a slump
so that war is an essential to commerce!

when national economy
kills international bonhomie,
it doesn’t leave the world much hope!

The revised work is written for three principal soloists: a narrator, the Police Inspector and the detective. Peter described his ideal chorus – 24 singers (if there were no slackers) made up of 8 sopranos (who divide in one scene), 6 mezzo-sopranos and 5 each of tenors and basses – from which are drawn a large number of small solo parts making up the country house-party and the servants. In a letter to Peter le Huray in April 1976, Peter emphasised the need for the chorus to enunciate (a favourite word of his when dealing with choruses) very carefully so that not a word is lost. Of the two pianists (he invariably played Piano 1 in most of the performances) he asked that they should be capable of the lightest of touch. An awful lot of delicacy is required. "The effect (as you doubtless recall)..." (since le Huray had played Piano 2 in several performances) "...should be overall witty and soufflé-esque!".

Including the opening and closing philosophical choruses, the work comprises eighteen numbers, made up of recitatives, arias and choruses, each of which is given a title:

No.1       Chorus – Philosophical Introduction
“some people are well liked, while others are liked less”

No.2       Recitative (arioso) The Narrator describes The Likely Victim,
“Mr Ponderby Wilkins, a man so rich, so ugly, so cross and so old that even the stupidest member of an amateur chorus could not expect him to survive beyond the Second Recitative.”

No.3       Chorus – Motives for Murder
All the members of the house-party and the staff – the Step-sister, the Mayor, the Niece, the Cook, the House-maids, the Secretary, the Butler and the Gardener – step forward to explain why they might have killed the victim.

No.4       Recitative – The Crime is discovered
The body of Mr Ponderby Wilkins is discovered in the shrubbery by Mr Porlock who phones Inspector Blowhard. He decides that this is a case for Sir Bletherby Marge, the famous amateur detective, who lives nearby. He jumps into his car “and reached The Towers within an ace of his life (and several other people’s as well)”.

No.5       Aria – The Detective’s Musings
Marge describes several of his previous successful cases.

No.6       Recitative - Police Consultation
Marge and Blowhard consider the evidence.

No.7       Aria – The Alibis
Blowhard admits that every member of the house-party and the household has an alibi which is supported by witnesses.

No.8       Recitative – The Detective’s First Ploy
Marge organises a picnic for everybody with champagne and lots of different sandwiches.

No.9       Chorus – Agrestic Comestibles
all the different sandwiches at the picnic are listed

No.10     Recitative – The Detective’s Second Ploy
Marge leaves the company on the pretext of fetching his pipe. On his return, he finds that the party has started on the champagne.

No.11     Chorus – Picnic Potables
This begins with a fugue on words associated with the opening of a bottle. There follows a section, marked Amoroso, in the rhythm of a Habanera di Brindisi, listing the various makers of champagne. Finally, as the party becomes more and more drunk, the Fugue and the Habanera combine.

No.12     Recitative – The Detective’s Discoveries
Marge reveals that he has found footprints by the body.

No.13     Aria – The Detective’s Theory
Having examined all the household’s shoes while they were at the picnic, Marge declares that they all fitted the footprints. Moreover, everybody’s gloves had on them woollen hairs from the muffler by which the body was suspended. In short, he declares, everybody was involved in the murder.

No.14     Recitative – Decision to make an arrest
Blowhard arrests everybody and, because his Black Maria only holds four people, has to take them off to prison in a charabanc.

No.15     Chorus – Departure to Prison
The Chorus departs happily confident that justice will set them free.

No.16     Recitative – Denouement
We learn that the house-party and the servants have been tried, found guilty and hanged. Not long afterwards, Marge and Blowhard revisit The Towers, now empty, to look for Marge’s favourite pipe which this time he has really lost. Behind a hollow panel, they find a letter from Ponderby Wilkins: “I am the most unpopular man in England! I am about to commit suicide by hanging myself in the shrubbery!  If Sir Bletherby Marge can prove it a murder, committed by the whole houseparty that I intend to invite, I bequeath him all my possessions!” “How extraordinary!” exclaims Inspector Blowhard. But Sir Bletherby Marge just smiled.

No.17     Chorus – Philosophical Chorus
“It’s a small world, with too many people in it!
Half a dozen less won’t matter
For when they’re in their tomb
There’ll be more room
For the other people left to grow fatter!”

No.18     Chorus – Finale (in Canon)
In which the entire company bids farewell.

Known performances

6 June 1955 Fitzwilliam House Music Society May Week Concert
Narrator: Maurice Armsby. Inspector Blowhard: Kenneth Bowen. Miss Bletherby Marge: Gwen Honeychurch. Pianos (not stated on the programme): Peter Tranchell(?), Allan Percival(?). Conductor: John Martyn.

26 November 1955 Homerton College Music Society Concert
Narrator: Maurice Armsby. Inspector Blowhard: Kenneth Bowen. Miss Bletherby Marge: Gwen Honeychurch. Pianos (not stated on the programme): Peter Tranchell(?), Peter Le Huray(?). Conductor: John Martyn(?).

9 June 1960 St. Catharine's College May Week Concert
Narrator: Alan Armstrong. Inspector Blowhard: John Buttrey. Miss Bletherby Marge: Sheila Amit. Pianos: Peter Tranchell, Peter Le Huray. Conductor: John Westcombe.

3 July 1962 Crown Woods Choral Society (Crown Woods Staff Choir and Senior Children)
Narrator: Stephen Farrand. Inspector Blowhard: Kenneth Bowen. Miss Bletherby Marge: Gwen Honeychurch. Pianos: Peter Tranchell, Derek Holman. Conductor: John Martyn.

27-29 July 1967 Salisbury

From "The Diapason", September 1967 (accessed 28/06/2019):

SALISBURY IS HOST TO 1967 SO. CATHEDRALS FESTIVAL Reports from Salisbury indicate another successful Southern Cathedrals Festival July 27-29. At evensong Thursday, John Birch conducted the choir of the Chichester Cathedral in works of Tomkins, Watson and Rubbra. Richard Lloyd's recital preceded a performance of Peter Tranchell's light-hearted secular "who-dun-it" cantata, Murder at the Towers, sung at the Guild Hall.

12 March 1977 Eltham Palace (Chorus from Eltham Parish Church Choir, Eltham Evening Institute, Avery Hill College)
Narrator: Ryder Whalley. Inspector Blowhard: Roderick Tutt. Miss Bletherby Marge: Mary Noble. Pianos: Peter Tranchell, Edward Moore. Conductor: John Martyn.

15 June 1986 Gonville and Caius College May Week Concert
Narrator: Nathan Hodges. Inspector Blowhard: David Bailey. Sir Bletherby Marge: Peter Fellows. Pianos: Peter Tranchell, James Thomas. Conductor: Peter Bennett.

About the music

Peter was usually reticent about his compositional methods but he was invited to give a pre-concert talk before the performances in Salisbury in 1967. As a result, he jotted down some thoughts pertaining to the composition of this work. He claimed that by inflecting one or more notes of the major scale, he could illustrate the deviousness of destiny as did Wagner with his Zaubermotif in Parsifal:

F  Gflat  A  Bflat;  C  Dflat  E  F

In fact, the four note motif F  Gflat  A  Aflat is the seed of all the music in Murder at the Towers.

In addition, there are a number of musical quotations that may be noticed during the course of the work. When the body is found in the shrubbery, there are references to Johann Strauss’s waltz, Tales from the Vienna Woods and the plainsong Dies Irae melody; when the Niece gives her alibi as rowing on the lake you can hear a reference to the Eton Boating Song; and as the arrested people are taken away, Peter quotes from Elgar’s Dream of Gerontius: I go before my judge.  He also relished the opportunity for some descriptive word-painting and referred to Marge’s car changing gear, to a tennis service, the chugging of the Black Maria and the pig-food machine.

Murder at the Towers is witty, singable and thoroughly enjoyable; an example of Peter’s creative musical and literary talent at its best. It is well within the scope of most amateur choirs who can muster three soloists and two grand pianos.