Pitfield composed more than 150 songs, many written for and dedicated to friends and musical colleagues, particularly singers, including several who hailed from the north of England or who taught at the Royal Manchester College of Music.
The songs vary in mood, from the haunting and powerful to gentler and even humorous. A volume of his songs, chosen by himself, spanning the period from 1934 to 1989, was published in 1989, and most of the songs on this album were included in that.
Gilchrist worked as a craft and cabinet-work teacher but music was his main focus and as more of his works were performed and published, his reputation as a composer grew. From 1947 to 1973 he taught composition one day a week at the RMCM, where his pupils included David Ellis, Christopher Littlewood, John McCabe, John Ogdon, Max Paddison and Ronald Stevenson.
Pitfield was largely self-taught and considered himself to be one working in and allied to the community. His music was often written for specific occasions or performers, much of it for friends, amateurs or children. So, while in places, this wanders towards the more operatic, on the whole it is more intimate and very listenable.
“The Sands of Dee” (based on a poem by Charles Kingsley) opens and is not a good guide to the more tranquil work that follows, a dramatic (ish) piano giving way to singing that threatens to turn into operatic rather than more domestic, although as the main character drowns while rounding up cows, some drama can perhaps be forgiven.
“By the Dee at Night”, based on a poem by the composer, follows, and is slower.
The Wagon of Life “Winter Evening, Dunham Park” is where it gets gentler, the song evocative of an evening in a country park and there’s a run of more gentle songs.
The CD ends with four brief songs, one about a slow tortoise and the closer “King Nebshazzerod”, who is so mean he doesn’t feed his dog: “The dog bit off his master’s leg / He ordered one of wood / And said, ‘Get out, you naughty dog / I’d kick you if I could!’”
Out on Divine Art, DDX 21119.
JMC
