British composer and BBC Radio 3 broadcaster Stephen Dodgson (1924–2013) taught at the Royal College of Music from 1956 until his retirement in 1982.
Stephen Dodgson
As a composer, he wrote across many different genres, from opera and large-scale orchestral music to chamber and instrumental music, as well as choral works and song. It is this last that we’re focusing on. SOMM Recordings has issued the third volume of Dodgson’s songs, Turn Ye to Me, and in it we explore his settings of poems ranging from Bush Ballads from Australia to 17th-century poet Andrew Marvell and the 19th-century poet George Meredith.
The recording opens with a first release of Three Songs, setting three poems by the English poet, dramatist, and physician Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–1849). He was fascinated by death, and his medical studies that focused on it got him expelled from medical school in Göttingen. He died by his own hand in 1849. His most famous work is Death’s Jest Book, a drama that was published posthumously, and Dodgson chose the text for his songs ‘Dirge’ and ‘The Old Crow of Cairo’ from the play. The ‘Old Crow of Cairo’ is a work of nightmare where two carrion crows, Adam and his wife Eve, celebrate their feast at the gibbet.
Stephen Dodgson: Three Songs – III. The Old Crow of Cairo
Writing music was Dodgson’s whole life. One commentator summed up his life as ‘there was barely a time in his long life when he was not engaged in writing music’. Some works were commissioned, but many were written out of personal inspiration.
As a vocal composer, he paid close attention to the rise and fall of his chosen text. The poem’s natural scansion will break into music phrases, and Dodgson took those cues to heart. His musical language is rich, and when you listen to the piano accompaniment, sometimes it’s less accompaniment than commentary or a different support of the text than we’re hearing in the voice.
His song for guitar and voice, Daphne to Apollo, offers an intimate setting in which the singer and guitarist set the stage for the story of the god of music and his pursuit of the river god’s daughter. He begs her to ‘deign to hear’ his prayer, and she replies with a brisk ‘…don’t be so extremely rude’. She casts doubt on him actually being a god, as he declares, and then demands that he marry her. She’s just 17 and will only live to 64; he’s immortal, but she knows that he’ll be away half the time anyway. Her final ultimatum: ‘love or leave’, or I shall ‘sprint into a thousand trees’ before she grants any other terms than these! His reply is unrecorded.
Stephen Dodgson: Daphne to Apollo
In his Bush Ballads (Third Series), Dodgson sets texts from Australia. In All Got a Mate, our anonymous poet despairs over the single life while all around him, wildlife finds its mates. Banjo Paterson’s Song of the Squatters is about how grand life is as a farmer…if only the Lord would send some rain. The lambs die, the sheep die, the rabbits die, the farmstead is covered in sand, and he asks for rain. He also calls out the socialists for living on the government and the democrats for toadying to the mob…but that’s Banjo Paterson! The songs are an interesting appearance in England of a poetic type that rarely made it out of its native Australia.
The album closes with a set of 5 London Lyrics for tenor and guitar. This 1977 work is both humorous and haunting, setting poetry by Pierre Antoine Motteux (1660–1718) up against that of Cecil Day-Lewis (1904–1972). It’s a love song to the city that Dodgson loved best, although the first song, Motteux’s London is a Milder Curse, our poet is proposing London because he’d rather be elsewhere, avoiding the stinks and noise of the city, but, on the other hand, he’d be home with his wife…..London is a milder curse!
Wilfred Owen (1893–1918) in Shadwell Stair writes a story about the ghosts of the city, and Dodgson’s setting gives the tenor much leeway in conveying the story.
Stephen Dodgson: London Lyrics – II. Shadwell Stair
Two piano pieces are included, both from 8 Fanciful Pieces (1956). Both show Dodgson’s attention to two different 20th-century piano schools: Il Zoppo (The Cripple) is a test of rhythmic scansion and metrical accuracy, and very much in the Bartók line, while Mirage is a bow to the early 20th century’s experiments with impressionism.
SOMM’s previous Dodgson song releases include The Peasant Poet [SOMMCD 0659], and The Distances Between [SOMMCD 0673]
Stephen Dodgson: Turn Ye to Me: Songs, Vol. 3
Ailish Tynan (soprano); Katie Bray (mezzo-soprano); James Gilchrist (tenor); Roderick Williams (baritone); Mark Eden (guitar); Christopher Glynn (piano)
SOMM Recordings SOMMCD 0720
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