Our correspondent Tony Sanderson attended a recording session with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales under Martyn Brabbins in which a lost score of Havergal Brian's setting of Psalm 137 was brought back to life by the composer Rodney Newton.
Fires at Chappell & Co during the Blitz and in 1964 caused extensive damage. Many English composers' scores were lost including the full score of a setting of Psalm 137 by Havergal Brian. The work had been composed in 1905 and reorchestrated by the composer in 1909 for a larger orchestra. The vocal score survived and has now been reorchestrated by Rodney Newton. Martyn Brabbins has just recorded the work with the BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales.
The setting of Psalm 137's famous lines "By the waters of Babylon" were sung both at the beginning and the end of the setting. The composer Rodney Newton orchestrated the vocal score in a very idiomatic style of early Brian. Havergal Brian conveyed the pain of the exiled Israelites exiled from their homeland most eloquently.
The most striking moment for me was towards the end of the setting where menacing staccato orchestral chords gave a doom-laden sense of finality, the mirror image of the positive and uplifting orchestral chords that close out Sibelius' fifth symphony. After these chords are played the choir return to sing the heart-rending "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept".
An ideal contrast is Brian's setting of Psalm 23 as it is about a sense of home and security. There is no sense of want in this Psalm. So, it was a great surprise to hear militaristic themes in the introduction which was at odds with the famous hymn set to the tune Crimond. Verse 4 of the psalm talks about walking through the shadow of the valley of death. The verse in the hymn about a table being prepared in the midst of the psalmists' enemies is often omitted when the hymn is sung. That verse is in verse 5 of the psalm and Brian's orchestration, which was written in 1944-45, therefore accentuates that peace and the sense of security that can be found can be a hard-won peace.