THE CHIVALRY OF THE SEA SIR HUBERT PARRY (1848-1918)

In its concert on 19 March 2005, Woking Choral Society offers a second revival of an outstanding but rarely heard work by Sir Hubert Parry, the distinguished composer and teacher who did so much to raise musical standards in Britain in the half century leading up to the first World War. Our previous performance was 10 years ago, marking the 50^th anniversary of VE Day and the end of the Second World War. This revival, besides marking the 60^th anniversary, also commemorates (if a few months early) the bicentenary of the Nelson’s victory at Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

A notable event of the First World War was the major sea battle at Jutland in June 1916, in which both the German and British fleets suffered heavy losses. The battle prompted Sir Hugh Allen, conductor of the Bach Choir, to organise a concert to commemorate all those seafarers who had died in the war, 'and to celebrate the achievements of the Empire at sea'. For a new work he turned to Parry and the poet laureate, Robert Bridges, old friends who had collaborated before. Bridges responded rapidly with a poem (subtitled 'A Naval Ode'). Parry's music was completed somewhat later and perilously close to the concert, which was also to include Stanford's Songs of the Fleet and Vaughan Williams' Sea Symphony, the second of which we also perform tonight.

The first performance of The Chivalry took place on 12 December 1916 and was a near disaster. The Bach Choir was under strength and short of rehearsal and the orchestra lost their place towards the end. Parry was very dejected and Sir Hugh had to write to re-assure him: '. . . I found it to stand the best of all tests, intimate knowledge . . .' But although the work had two further performances during 1917 it has since been almost totally forgotten.

Parry himself foresaw one reason for this: audiences at the end of 1916, shocked by the appalling losses of the war, wanted rousing patriotism from their music, not grieving and desolation. But Parry, greatly opposed to jingoism and devastated by the death in France of many of his best Royal College of Music students, had little stomach for this. The piece duly celebrates 'the heart of Britain . . . staunch and valiant-hearted, to whom our toil were play', but the overall tone is deeply elegiac, full of the grief of personal loss and yearning admiration for seamen going selflessly to 'unvisited graves' in 'the wide-warring waters under the starry skies'. The result is the very best of Parry, wide in its emotional range but succinct in expression - in every way a noble culmination of his long career. (He died in 1918 and apart from one hymn, The Chivalry of the Sea was his last choral work.) The piece is in one 15-minute movement and is scored for 5-part chorus and orchestra.

Robert Bridges dedicated his poem to the memory of a friend, Charles Fisher. Charles was described by his brother, the historian Herbert Fisher, as 'a widely beloved Oxford don [he was "censor" of Christ Church (equivalent to Dean in other colleges)], a distinguished Latinist, and an Oxford and Sussex cricketer . . . an outstanding figure in his generation'. He volunteered for the navy though much over age, and died when his ship, the battle-cruiser Invincible (where a fellow gunnery officer was the son of Parry’s much-loved teacher Edward Dannreuther), exploded and sank at Jutland with the loss of over a thousand lives.

 

(Fisher’s distinguished family provides an interesting digression: besides his brother Herbert Fisher (Warden of New College, Oxford, and at one time a cabinet minister as well as a leading historian), another brother was Admiral Sir William Fisher, later C-in-C of the Mediterranean Fleet (and who also fought at Jutland), yet another brother became chairman of Barclay’s Bank, while another (Edmund), an architect who designed the Hall of Somerville College and the Protestant Church in Rome, was also killed in the Great War. Fisher’s sisters married, respectively, Professor FWM Maitland (a famous constitutional historian), Sir Francis Darwin, RO Morris (author of a famous and long-standard work on harmony and composition) and the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. Fisher aunts or great-aunts included Julia Margaret Cameron (legendary Victorian pioneer photographer), Mrs Prinsep, and Julia Stephen, mother of Virginia Woolf and Vanessa Bell.)

 

THE CHIVALRY OF THE SEA

Over the warring waters, beneath the wandering skies
The heart of Britain roameth, the Chivalry of the sea,
Where Spring never bringeth a flower, nor bird singeth in a tree;
Far, afar, O beloved, beyond the sight of our eyes,
Over the warring waters, beneath the stormy skies.

Staunch and valiant-hearted, to whom our toil were play,
Ye man with armour'd patience the bulwarks night and day,
Or on your iron coursers plough shuddering through the Bay,
Or neath the deluge drive the skirmishing sharks of war:
Venturous boys who leapt on the pinnace and row'd from shore,
A mother's tear in the eye, a swift farewell to say.
And a great glory at heart that none can take away.

Seldom is your home-coming; for aye your pennon flies
In unrecorded exploits on the tumultuous wave;
Till, in the storm of battle, fast-thundering upon the foe,
Ye add your kindred names to the heroes of long-ago,
And mid the blasting wrack, in the glad sudden death of the brave,
Ye are gone to return no more.-Idly our tears arise;
Too proud for praise as ye lie in your unvisited grave,
The wide-warring water, under the starry skies.