Alan Rawsthorne: Elegiac Rhapsody (1964)

The Elegiac Rhapsody (originally titled Rhapsody for String Instruments, Elegiac Fragments) was written “In Memoriam Louis MacNeice,” who had died on 3 September 1963. The Irish poet and playwright was a long-standing friend of the composer. John M Belcher (Liner Notes 8.553567) explains that it consists “of two elegiac statements stated at the outset, the first expressing sorrow and resignation, the second vehement protest.” The progress of the Rhapsody is an “exploration of their contrasting relationships and gives the work its rondo-like structure of alternating slow and quick sections, with the slow sections becoming slower as the work progresses, patterning the ebb and flow of grief.”

Rawsthorne’s other compositions around this time, included the Symphony No.3, String Quartet No.3, a Suite for Brass Band, and the film score for Messenger of the Mountains.

The Elegiac Rhapsody was premiered at the Victoria and Albert Museum on 26 January 1964. The Hirsch Chamber Players were conducted by their leader Leonard Hirsch. Other music heard included Grieg’s Holberg Suite and Sibelius’s Romance in C. There was also a performance of Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor, and extracts from Bach’s Art of the Fugue arranged by Robert Simpson.

Donald Mitchell from the Daily Telegraph (27 January 1964, p.14) noted that Rawsthorne was in the audience at the previous evening’s concert. An important observation explained that the as the work progressed, the two ideas presented at the start are “gradually blurred” and that what “was fragmentary at the outset has achieved a quite impressive degree of unification.”  A common thread in criticism of the Elegiac Rhapsody was that there were “a few passages which seemed mechanically, rather than naturally extended.” This was odd for such a short work. The critic heard the influence of Bartok.

Colin Mason, writing in the Manchester Guardian (27 January 1964, p.9) was impressed with the concert’s “eclectic programme.” About the Rhapsody he states: “Belying its title [Elegiac Fragments] it is a continuous piece in several sections, which cling fairly closely to the thematic material expounded in the first two of them, expressive respectively of ‘sorrow and resignation’ and ‘vehement protest.’  Mason thinks that “both musical ideas are quite striking, and [that] Rawsthorne develops them with characteristic skill, though without making them yield a higher emotional temperature than at their first statement and not without sometimes lapsing into merely decorative flourishes.” It was given an outstanding performance by the ensemble.

The Times reviewer (27 January 1964, p.5) notices the contrasting sections. He considers that it is the “sorrowful resignation” mood that predominates, rather than that of “vehement protest.” He spots various Bartokian elements including the “almost rhythmless imitative treatment of three note figures” in the works opening pages. Negatively, the faster sections that “one senses a certain flagging in the music’s impulse.” Perhaps Rawsthorne adopted “routine” development processes. A highlight is “a passage of uncommon beauty, where four solo instruments have sustained notes against groups of throbbing chords.”

Donald Mitchell’s colleague, John Warrack at the Sunday Telegraph (1 February 1964, p.13) felt that the Rhapsody “mourns Louis MacNeice, in a tone of voice whose quiet grace of utterance he would have appreciated.” Top of his praise was the “beautiful craftsmanship” of the piece with Rawsthorne demonstrating “the really skilled composer’s ability to move at the right pace and with the right means between the different sections s that the listener is carried with the composer’s thought, here coming to share the double mood of mourning.”

The score of the Elegiac Rhapsody was published by Oxford University Press during 1964. In an assessment by E.R. (Music and Letters, July 1965, p.283), he states that “…one [is] conscious of a really musical mind shaping the somewhat Bartokian material to personal ends…the mood is, therefore, in spite of changes of tempi, consistently sombre. It is, nevertheless, sensitively varied in texture, and is nowhere less than interesting.”

In 1999, Naxos Records issued the only recording of the Elegiac Rhapsody to date (8.553567). The work was played by the Northern Chamber Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd-Jones. Other numbers on the disc include Rawsthorne’s Concerto for Orchestra, the Concertante pastorale for flute, horn and strings, Light Music for strings (based on Catalan tunes), the Divertimento for chamber orchestra, as well as John McCabe’s orchestration of the Suite for recorder. This version of the Rhapsody has been uploaded to YouTube, here. Also online, here, is Raymond Leppard and the English Chamber Orchestra recorded in Gloucester Cathedral. No date is given.