This Sorry Scheme of Things

Peter Tranchell's cantata for ladies’ voices (sopranos and altos), a mixed semi-chorus and baritone solo, accompanied by amplified harpsichord and piano

Typeset score

in preparation.

Texts

The poems set in the cantata are:

1. Insanae et vanae curae - anon (semi-chorus and chorus)
2. No coward soul is mine - Emily Brontë (baritone solo, semi-chorus and chorus)
3. The shadow of Dawn - W. E. Henley (semi-chorus and chorus)
4. Once to every man & nation - J. Russell Lowell (baritone solo, semi-chorus and chorus)
5. Hast Thou Chosen, O my People - J. Russell Lowell (baritone solo)
6. Our Village - after Thomas Hood (semi-chorus and chorus)
7. Thou Hast Chosen - after J. Russell Lowell (baritone solo)
8. Tomorrow, & tomorrow, & tomorrow - William Shakespeare (baritone solo)
9. Ah Love! - Omar Khayyam (baritone solo, semi-chorus and chorus)

Review

See Philip Radcliffe's review of the première performance on 21st February 1953.

Peter Marchbank's analysis

In June 1952, Peter was invited by the Homerton College Madrigal Society to compose a choral work for their next Spring concert. At that time, the College was a Ladies’ Teacher Training College with a lively musical tradition under Allen Percival, later to be Principal of Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In response, Peter composed This Sorry Scheme of Things, a Cantata for ladies’ voices (sopranos and altos), a mixed semi-chorus and baritone solo accompanied by amplified harpsichord and piano. It may have been his original intention to orchestrate the accompaniment since the title-page mentions orchestra and states that “the accompaniment is arranged for piano, electric harpsichord (and percussion, if desired).” However, the orchestration appears never to have been undertaken. At this first performance, the baritone soloist was Norman Platt (later to be the Founder-Director of Kent Opera) with Thurston Dart at the harpsichord and Peter himself at the piano. From comments he made, it seems that Peter may have originally conceived the work in nine separate sections. The existing score, though, shows a through-composed work that must have been revised for the broadcast in 1957.

The Cantata is a setting of nine texts by a wide variety of writers and gives a partial insight into Peter’s political thinking during those years. Shortly before its broadcast in the first week of December 1957, he wrote:

“Mr Gaitskell said on the 2nd October 1957 when considering the future policy of the Labour Party: “We have to convince ordinary decent people who don’t think a great deal about politics. They are concerned about prices, jobs, rents, pensions and schools for their children. We are putting forward proposals on all these heads.” This echoes the attitude of Thomas Hood in his poem “Our Village”: parochial concerns. But concern about prices and jobs leads to the international race for markets and raw materials and thus to international conflict. But those that live in “Their Village” call this distantly “Foreign Affairs”.
It is a far cry from the dream Tennyson embodied in his poem “Locksley Hall” of “The Parliament of Man”, “The Federation of the World” and of “Universal Law”.
Is there a solution? Can Tennyson’s dream ever be realised?”

Alan Frank (then Editor of the Music Department of Oxford University Press) introduced the work in the Radio Times, describing Peter as one of the most versatile and refreshingly unacademic among the post-war group of young musicians at Cambridge. He considered that This Sorry Scheme of Things set an ambitious theme and that the composer had clothed his texts in straightforward music so that their argument may be readily understood. The cantata opens with a brisk setting of the anonymous text, Insanae et vanae curae, for women’s voices and semi-chorus. The marking is Allegro barbaro and the tonality is centred around B. This leads into a contemplative setting of No Coward Soul is Mine by Emily Bronte in Peter’s seemingly favourite key of D flat. The first verse is sung by the solo baritone who is joined by the gentlemen of the semi-chorus and the women’s choir for verse 2. In the last verse, the baritone is accompanied by the chorus and instrumentalists. Then comes The Shadow of Dawn by the Victorian poet, William Ernest Henley. The music is introduced by the harpsichord and the semi-chorus sing mainly in unison. This leads into the most substantial section, a setting of Once to every man and nation by the American Romantic poet and hymn-writer, J. Russell Lowell. The first verse is written for the full complement of singers, while the baritone is accompanied by the semi-chorus in verse 2. The third verse is scored for the baritone soloist and the women’s voices, with the semi-chorus interjecting the words “vanae” and “insanae”. The final verse is sung by the baritone soloist after which the music leads into “Hast thou chosen, O my people”, also by J.Russell Lowell, which is declaimed by the baritone soloist. The music subsides into the key of A minor for a setting of Thomas Hood’s poem “Our Village” in which the music is marked Quasi presto, scherzando. It is, in fact, a huge choral scherzo in which the refrain introducing the village is sung by the women’s voices and the non-human inhabitants are listed by the semi-chorus. The seventh section mirrors the fifth, being a declaimed setting by the baritone of J.Russell Lowell’s text “Thou hast chosen, O my people”. The music moves straight into “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”, a setting for the baritone soloist of words from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. From this, the music leads into the final section, taken from Omar Khayyam, “Ah love, could Thou and I with Fate conspire to grasp this sorry scheme of things entire”. The baritone sings the first verse with music similar to that of the Emily Bronte setting. In the second verse, the choruses join the baritone before the music ends quietly in D flat major.

Many considered this to be one of Peter’s most important works and it received some favourable reviews. The BBC’s New Music Panel was quick to accept the work for broadcasting in a letter from Frank Wade dated 15th June 1953. Eric Blom, writing in The Observer, noted that “Mr Tranchell’s musical idiom is often enterprising without ever going to extremes and it has a decided personal flavour.” The Times’s anonymous critic – could it have been William Mann, an old adversary of Peter’s from undergraduate days? – commented that “Peter Tranchell is a composer with something to say even if he is a little erratic in his way of saying it.” He noted its similarity with “….other modern extended choral works in being founded on an anthology of poems linked together by a somewhat tenuous line of thought epitomised in the title. The ethical core of this latest instance of the anthology-cantata is provided by verses of James Russell Lowell, but the best music is to be found in the setting of a poem by Emily Bronte, in a choral scherzo after Thomas Hood, and in a final verse of Omar Khayyam that embodies the title. He also noted the colourful contribution of the instrumentalists: “Tranchell writes for the harpsichord figuration that will not blend with the piano or with the voices, uses it sometimes as colour, but more often avails himself of its silver stridency to add momentum by its sheer impact on the more solid textures.”

For the broadcast in December 1957, the baritone soloist was Hervey Alan, the harpsichordist Raymond Leppard, and the pianist was Joseph Cooper. The BBC Singers were conducted by Leslie Woodgate. Peter was not happy with the performance and wrote to his parents: “… the BBC broadcast of my cantata ‘This Sorry Scheme of Things’ was lamentable. For a start, the BBC’s economy does not permit more than one ensemble rehearsal. It was under-rehearsed, nobody suggested that I should play it through to the conductor or attend a chorus rehearsal, the pianist played no end of wrong notes, the harpsichord was miked too close, the tempos were all wrong, none of the continuity passages I had written was used, and the words were of course inaudible.  When I heard the broadcast I was so angry that words failed me.” An unhappy ending to a work in which Peter had invested so much of himself.