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Harry Plunket Greene: An appreciation of his
contribution to British Music, 1888 - 1936
written specially for the celebration weekend by Professor Jeremy Dibble,
University of Durham,
author of biographies of Charles Villiers Stanford and Hubert Parry.
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Harry Plunket Greene was a product of that remarkable
generation of Anglo-Irishmen of the nineteenth century. Proud of his Irish
heritage, like his countryman Charles Villiers Stanford, he was nevertheless
staunchly British and, as an Irish Unionist, believed that the land of his
birth was an immutable part of Britain’s past and future. This outlook was
formed by generations of Anglo-Irishman in Dublin – the Irish capital’s
‘intellectual aristocracy’ of physicians, lawyers, soldiers and clergymen –
who considered themselves custodians not only of the nation’s body politic
but also of its culture. The son of Richard Jonas Greene, barrister, and his
wife, Louisa Lilias, fourth daughter of William Conyngham Plunket, first
Lord Plunket, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, he was born at Old Connaught
House, Bray, in County Wicklow on 24 June 1865. Like the many sons of
Dublin’s educated class, he was educated at Henry Tilney Bassett’s School
and later at Clifton College, Bristol (between 1877 and 1883). Though his
father hoped that he would follow a career at the Bar, he rejected a
traditional university career and pursued vocal training first with Hromada
in Stuttgart and Vannuccini in Florence before returning to London to work
with two vocal teachers in England. After six months of dissatisfaction with
J. B. Welsh, he moved on to Alfred Blume at Stanford’s recommendation.
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Plunket Greene made his public debut at the People’s
Palace, Stepney in January 1888 in Messiah and in March in Gounod’s
Redemption, appearances which were so successful that he was rapidly
engaged at all of London’s most important concert venues as an oratorio
soloist. Indeed, he made oratorio something of a specialism even though he
made several appearances at Covent Garden as the Commendatore in Don
Giovanni and the Duke of Verona in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette.
The same year as his first appearance at Covent Garden, in 1890, he appeared
for the first time at the Worcester Three Choirs Festival, but it was two
years later at Gloucester, as Job in Parry’s eponymous oratorio that he
achieved national renown. The exacting role of Job (especially in the
‘Lamentations’, the third part of the oratorio) had definite parallels with
the searching, self-examining Wagnerian characters Hans Sachs (in Die
Meistersinger) and Wotan (in The Ring). Plunket Greene made it
his own, and he often performed it along with other baritone choral roles in
Parry’s choral works. Furthermore, he also sang many of Parry’s songs (the
English Lyrics), the scena for baritone and orchestra, The
Soldier’s Tent, specially composed by Parry for him to sing at the 1900
Birmingham Festival, and, for the inauguration of the new organ at
Hurstbourne Priors’ Church, Parry produced a sacred song, ‘Praise God in
his holiness’ sung at Hurstbourne Priors on 19 May 1906. This sacred
miniature has remained unpublished.
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If Job helped to launch Plunket Greene’s
career as a singer, then it was the music of Stanford that provided him with
a central focus. Stanford and Plunket Greene, with their Irish background,
had much in common. Both men had made their home in England, yet they
nostalgically yearned for an Ireland of their own pasts. But political
conditions in the land of their birth were rapidly changing as the Catholic
nationalist majority lobbied for Home Rule. This did not materialise either
during Gladstone’s governments in the 1880s or in 1913 when the First World
War intervened, but at the end of 1921 the Irish Free State was formed and
both men felt an emotional severance with their roots. Expression of this
shared melancholy found voice in the series of Stanford’s Irish Rhapsodies
(especially the strident Fourth Rhapsody of 1913, composed as a musical
statement of support for the Ulster Defence movement) and Irish song cycles
which began with An Irish Idyll in Six Miniatures Op. 77 of 1901
(including exceptional individual items such as ‘A broken song’ and ‘A fairy
lough’), Cushendall Op. 118 (1910), A Fire of Turf Op. 139
(1913), A Sheaf of Songs from Leinster Op. 140 (1913) and Six
Songs from the Glens of Antrim Op. 174 (1920) which were not only
written with Plunket Greene in mind but also performed by him in his popular
recitals. Stanford also wrote other songs for his compatriot, notably the
enormously popular and patriotically British Songs of the Sea Op. 91
first sung at the Leeds Festival of 1904 (which includes the immutable
‘Drake’s Drum’) and the sequel for Leeds in 1910, the Songs of the Fleet
Op. 117. Plunket Greene always remained immensely proud to be associated
with the genesis of the Songs of the Sea. In his biography of
Stanford he recalled: |
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There were only two of them to start with – ‘Devon, O Devon’ and ‘Outward
Bound’ – for solo voice and orchestra. When he showed them to me I cried
out for more. We sat down and wrote to Newbolt [the author of the poems].
The result was ‘The Old Superb’. The moment Stanford saw it he said it
must have a male chorus. I begged for still another two and suggested
‘Drake’s Drum’ for one of them if we could get leave to use the words. Mr
Hedgecock had the right and he most kindly agreed to our using them. We
both felt it wanted one more to be complete and the obvious fifth was the
brother of ‘Outward Bound’. As usual, Newbolt produced the right thing on
the spot and ‘Homeward Bound’, one of the loveliest sea-pictures ever
painted, was the result. It would be hard to think now of any one of them
without the other. [Greene, H. Plunket, Charles Villiers Stanford
(London, 1935)]
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Although other singers such as Frederic Austin took
up the Songs of the Sea, it was Plunket Greene who remained their
most enthusiastic exponent, and so delighted was Newbolt with the settings
that a special performance of them was arranged at Clifton School (the
alma mater of both Newbolt and Plunket Greene) on 18 December 1905 under
Stanford’s direction. In addition to these two sets of stirring orchestral
songs, Stanford also arranged numerous Irish folk-songs for Plunket Greene
to sing both in the context of his recitals and also as interludes in
orchestral concerts. For the latter Stanford invariably orchestrated his
piano accompaniments with great panache, arrangements which are now sadly
much neglected. And, finally, Plunket Greene was also the dedicatee of four
of Stanford Six Bible Songs Op. 113, written in 1909. These unique
and hybrid compositions were intended for performance in church, yet they
reveal a fascinating synthesis of German lieder, English anthem and sacred
cantata.
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Although Plunket Greene owed much to Parry and
Stanford, he was also the exponent of many other composers. He took the
roles of the Priest and Angel of the Agony in Elgar’s The Dream of
Gerontius which he sang on numerous occasions including at the first
disastrous performance at Birmingham in 1900: |
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The choir, audibly dragged down by a single
tenor in the first chorus, had flattened by degrees until in the last
number of the first part there was half a tone between them and the
orchestra. I can guarantee the truth of this as I, being the bass soloist
and having to sing a part above the chorus, had to choose between them and
‘was not happy with either’. [Ibid., 74]
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In 1903 he sang the role of Judas in The Apostles
also at Birmingham at which time Elgar’s fame was rising meteorically.
There was talk of Elgar writing a song cycle for Plunket Greene though this
did not materialise; however, he had already dedicated his two songs ‘After’
and ‘Song of Flight’ to the Irish baritone in 1900, which Plunket Greene
sang regularly. And besides Elgar, he keenly supported other English
composers such as the ‘English Schumann’, Arthur Somervell (with whose song
cycles Maud and A Shropshire Lad he became closely
associated), Walford Davies (The Long Journey Op. 25), Vaughan
Williams (Songs of Travel), Quilter, Norman O’Neill and Howells.
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The alacrity of Plunket Greene to promote the song
repertoire derived from his powerful dislike of the royalty ballad and the
mixed entertainment of the ‘miscellaneous concert’. The royalty ballad took
its name from the process of the singer drawing a royalty from the
performance of a song to which the singer’s name was inextricably attached
(as well as the publisher drawing a royalty for its publication). The
standard of these songs was generally low, and though the genre remained
popular until the turn of the twentieth century, the tide began to turn in
favour of the ‘art song’ during the 1890s as the repertoire expanded with
more artistic contributions from Parry, Stanford, Somervell, Elgar, Quilter,
Maud Valérie White and others. Plunket Greene’s part in this regeneration
was to promote the unfamiliar ‘solo song recital’ in London with the
virtuoso pianist and pupil of Clara Schumann, Leonard Borwick, their first
concert taking place at St James’s Hall in December 1893. This duo, later
joined by the accompanist, Samuel Liddle, lasted ten years during which time
they developed a reputation as specialist exponents of German lieder, and in
particular the work of Schumann (whose Dichterliebe cycle they gave
complete for the first time in London on 11 January 1895) and Brahms.
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In 1899 Plunket Greene married Parry’s younger
daughter, Gwendolen Maud, at Highnam in the church built by Parry’s father
in the grounds of the family estate. The marriage, which produced two sons
and a daughter, proved incompatible and separation took place in 1920. In
later years he devoted his time more to teaching, as a professor at the
Royal Academy of Music (1911-19) and the Royal College of Music (1912-19)
and formulated his thoughts on solo song in his treatise Interpretation
in Song, published in 1912. This book was, to all intents and purposes,
Plunket Greene’s artistic testimony, enshrining those facets of his powers
as a singer - clarity of diction, a wide interpretative palette, carefully
planned programmes, as well as a compelling presence as a performer - which
made him hugely popular with audiences in Britain and in the USA (where he
was a regular visitor). In 1916 he published Pilot and other stories,
but it was not until after his retirement from the RAM and RCM in 1919 that
he turned his hand more seriously to writing, producing many articles for
Music and Letters (some of which found their way into his book From
Blue Danube to Shannon, published in 1934) and a biography of Charles
Villiers Stanford (1935).
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Like Stanford, Plunket Greene retained a lifelong
passion for fishing, no doubt instilled in him from his youthful days in
Ireland. Summer holidays were frequently spent close to rivers and he would
often join Stanford in the remote north of Scotland, or on the estate of
their mutual friend, Robert Finnie McEwen at Bardrochet (Ayrshire) or at the
George Hotel at Chollerford in Northumberland where the South Tyne
majestically flows. His love of fishing, which became a more serious focus
as he withdrew from professional music, produced a book Where bright
waters meet in 1924, which reveals a detailed active knowledge of the
subject. After giving up solo singing, he was in demand as an adjudicator in
Britain and he visited Canada on two occasions, first in 1923 with Granville
Bantock, and later in 1932 with Harold Samuel and Maurice Jacobson. He was
President of the Incorporated Society of Musicians in 1933 and, as a
cricket-lover, a member of the MCC. He died in London on 19 August 1936 and
was buried close to his Hampshire home at Hurstbourne Priors.
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© Jeremy Dibble, 2006 Specially commissioned
for the celebration of Harry Plunket Greene in Hurstbourne Priors,
8th-9th July 2006. The article is also available in booklet form for £1.50
including postage and packing from The Vicarage, St Mary Bourne, Andover,
Hants SP11 6AY (cheque payable to 'St Andrew, Hurstbourne Priors'). |
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