The Bridge Singers’ summer concerts in 2022, which were postponed from 2020, had the theme of Queens in my mind and in the planning, although not in the advertising (we didn’t want to be jumping on the Jubilee bandwagon)! I had always wanted to do Come Ye Sons Of Art by Purcell with this choir, as I’ve always loved it since we sang it with Mr. Holmes when I was at high school. If we’d done this concert in 2020 as originally planned, it would have been with piano accompaniment, and it would have been splendid, of course. However, in these intervening two years, I have made the acquaintance of members of the Westfield Brass Quintet who reside around these parts. I had the thought that Come Ye Sons Of Art would be very good indeed accompanied by brass quintet, so we hired them and I set to with the arranging. I loved this task, and the end result was very pleasing indeed. The choir and the audience loved the presence of the brass quintet, who also performed some of their own arrangements.

Here are the programme notes for the choir parts of the concert and some snippets of the music:

Come Ye Sons Of Art is the last of six Odes for Queen Mary’s birthday, composed by Henry Purcell in the late 17th century. It was first performed in April of 1694, and was the last because both the Queen and Purcell himself died within a year of its composition. Purcell was employed in various roles in the courts of King Charles II, King James II and William and Mary during his short life. He also composed music for several London theatre productions, including Dido and Aeneas – you may have heard The Bridge Singers perform When I Am Laid In Earth from this opera – we sang it in 2018 as part of our WW1 Remembrance Concert and also made a very popular lockdown video  of it, which you can see here!

The original version of Come Ye Sons Of Art is scored for choir, vocal soloists and a small orchestra (strings, recorders, trumpets, oboes, timpani and harpsichord [or other keyboard]). Our arrangement has no vocal soloists, and we are singing all the solos as a choir, or as sections of the choir. The orchestra has been replaced with a brass quintet (two trumpets, horn, trombone and tuba).

In the 7^th Movement, Bid The Virtues, there will be no singing. The lyrics will be read out by a member of the choir and all the music will be played by the quintet. Purcell’s original features a soprano soloist and oboe duet. We are performing it this way in memory of our friend and soprano colleague Kate Ferguson, who died in early 2020, and who read the lyrics as part of a similar performance of this work by Bailiffgate Singers in Alnwick in 2015. Several of our members were also part of that performance in Alnwick.

Come ye sons of art away. Tune all your voices and instruments play, to celebrate this triumphant day. Sound the trumpet, till around you make the listening shore rebound. Oh the sprightly hauboy [oboe], all the instruments of joy that skilful numbers can employ, to celebrate the glories of this day. Strike the viol, touch the lute, wake the harp. Inspire the flute. Sing your patroness’s praise, sing in in cheerful and harmonious lays. The day that such a blessing gave, no common festival should be. What it justly seems to crave, grant oh grant and let have the honour of a jubilee. These are the scared charms that shield her daring hero in the field. Thus she supports his righteous cause, to his aid immortal power she draws. See nature rejoicing has shown us the way, with innocent revels to welcome the day. The tuneful grove, the talking rill, the laughing vale, replying hill with charming harmony unite, the happy season to invite. What the graces require, and the muses inspire, is at once our delight and our duty to pay.

Readings will be interspersed amongst the music from these sources:

• Music at the British Court, 1685-1715, William Gibson (2021)
• Musical Instruments, Geoffrey Hindley (1971)
• Letters From The Dead To The Living, Thomas Brown (1702) Henry Purcell to Dr. John Blow
• Bid The Virtues lyrics (1694)
• The History Of Hampton Court Palace, Volume 3. Orange and Guelph Times, Ernest Philip Alphonse Law (1891)

Australia and The Black Velvet Band are songs with tunes familiar to British and Irish listeners, but new words have been written that reflect the particular plight of convicts transported from Britain to Australia in the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Hinemoa is a Maori song from New Zealand and refers to a traditional tale in which a lad called Tutanekai catches the eye of Hinemoa at a gathering on the shores of Lake Rotorua. Tutanekai lives on Mokoia Ialand in the middle of the lake and the two are destined never to meet again. However, Hinemoa resolves to go to Tutankai’s settlement and win him over. So she swims there, guided by the sound of his flute playing. It’s a long way. He’s impressed. They live happily ever after. We are singing the song in Maori. Translation:  No woman can be likened to Hinemoa; what she dearly wished for, she finally achieved. Look to Mokoialost in the spray; It wasn’t a minute before the sweet sensations wafted here. Only by your death or by my death will this be ended: my love for you. Darling, oh darling, turn to me, smile at me. Oh darling, let your love flow so that I may cling to your breast.

Footsteps was written during the first lockdown in 2020. Gary says: “We discovered many different walks, each one well trodden over the years, so we were walking in the shadows of ghosts, enjoying the same views, with every path leading home” This has proven to be a favourite of the choir and we’ve sung it on every possible occasion in 2022! You can read more about Footsteps here!

The Stars Hand Me Their Light is the sixth of seven short songs composed in the first half of 2021 and uses some of poet Ian McMillan’s wonderfully evocative tweets. Cheryl selected tweets that included the word “silent” or “silence”. We performed all seven in our Concert of Silences in February. In this one, Cheryl was going for ‘serene’, with each line of text being given similar floating music. We’ve sung this one several times since February too, including in the gloriously resonant setting of Brinkburn Priory, which suits the music very well indeed. You can read about the Silent Early Stroll Songs here.

Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together), written by Brian May, is from Queen’s 1976 album A Day At The Races. They released it as a single in 1977, but only in Japan, as a thank-you gift  to their Japanese fans who greeted them on their 1975 tour there with huge amounts of warmth and enthusiasm. The romantic and very beautiful  song has two choruses in Japanese and two in English – a rough translation of the Japanese. Queen only ever performed the song live 17 times while Freddie Mercury was alive and only ever in Japan. The song was also used as part of the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics last year.

Love Of My Life is one of Freddie Mercury’s songs from A Night At The Opera (1975). This arrangement is by Sonny Van Der Putte and it came top of our vote of “Queen songs we want to sing”.  It was also a firm favourite in Queen’s live concerts, and often the crowd were invited to sing part of the song by Freddie Mercury, while he and the band stopped. We heard Brian May in a recent interview say that he often sings this song himself now in tribute to his friend – the sentiments of the song are of a man abandoned by the ‘love of his life’.

Somebody To Love is another song from the 1976 album “A Day At The Races”, this one by Freddie Mercury. It is influenced by soul and gospel music. It was another popular song in Queen’s live concerts and reached No. 2 in the UK charts.  The track features lots of multi-tracking of vocal lines and also one of Brian May’s trademark guitar solos – we’re doing all of that ourselves in this arrangement – and this is one we’ve saved up especially for these two concerts. We love it and hope you do too!

Westfield Brass Quintet also played some items of their own.

If you’re interested in Cheryl’s arrangement of Come Ye Sons Of Art for SATB choir and brass quintet, do contact her!