English lyricism and dramatic power: the varied songs of Thomas Pitfield from James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson

The Songs of Thomas Pitfield: James Gilchrist, Nathan Williamson; Divine Art
Reviewed 3 December 2024

Nearly 30 songs by a composer whose life almost spanned the 20th century. Full of lyrical impulse and often setting his own words, these are songs that sometimes are light and sometimes have remarkable emotional power, in masterly performances from James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson

Largely self-taught, based firmly in the North-West at the Royal Manchester College of Music, and writing music very much for friends and colleagues, Thomas Pitfield (1903-1999) is a composer who is often overlooked. But if you do so, then you are missing great delights and thankfully there seems to be a resurgence of interest in his music. The Divine Art label is currently having something of a Thomas Pitfield moment, with Thomas Pitfield: String Chamber Music, Thomas Pitfield: His Friends & Contemporaries and The Songs of Thomas Pitfield. Time constraints mean that I have not been able to consider all three discs fully, but I have been listening to The Songs of Thomas Pitfield with great pleasure.

For The Songs of Thomas Pitfield, that great exponent of English song, tenor James Gilchrist is partnered by pianist Nathan Williamson and they perform a selection of 28 of Pitfield’s songs, spanning the years 1934 to 1989. Many of the songs were published in an album in 1989 [still available from Forsyths], the songs chosen by Pitfield and with his own illustrations and calligraphy.

I have always been somewhat aware of Thomas Pitfield, he stopped teaching at the Royal Manchester College of Music (RMCM) just before it morphed into the Royal Northern College of Music in 1973, the year I started studying in Manchester. His roots were always in the area, he was born in Bolton to a working-class family, and worked in a drawing-office of an engineering firm till he had enough money to study at the Royal Manchester College of Music for a year. Further study at the Bolton School of Art led to teaching posts across the Midlands, but music remained his main focus and from 1947 to 1973 combined teaching at the RMCM with composition, his pupils included John Ogden, John McCabe and Ronald Stevenson.

He composed well over 150 songs, many for friends and musical colleagues, and performers of his songs include Owen Brannigan and Peter Pears. But though music was a focus, he had a wide range of interests, was an artist [the cover of the disc, see above, features one of his watercolours], craftsman and poet. His house in Bowden, he designed himself, and the furnishings he made for it.

And early brush with the problems of copyright (involving James Joyce’s poetry) led him to concentrate mainly on setting his own poetry which perhaps has led his song output to be undervalued and he commented in later life that ‘I have perhaps patronised my own lyrics overmuch’. He wrote a great deal of verse, more than 260 poems, and was fond of lighter and nonsense verse. 

The selection on this disc gives one the ability to explore the whole range of Pitfield’s songs. They are tonal, intelligently and imaginatively constructed. Harmonies tend to be imaginative, the piano parts complementing the voice and not negligible. In terms of sound world, the composer that comes most to mind is John Ireland for the way Pitfield combines a natural lyricism with a feeling flow of the words, though his English lyrical vein has hints of Warlock and in at least one song on the disc you feel Britten is around too.

Though the recital flows naturally from beginning to end, Gilchrist and Williamson have assembled the songs into coherent groups. The opening group are serious and all variants on what one might terms a dramatic recitation, shading from recitative to arioso rather than strophic song. There is a seriousness of intent and a considered thoughtfulness here, there are several striking song including the powerful first song, The Sands of Dee. One curiosity is The Skeleton Bride a rather striking melodrama, for reciter and piano, that really needs to get out more.

The classic English lyric songs comes next, these include Pitfield’s adaptations of folk song as well as one, In an Old Country Church that almost has pre-echoes of Britten’s Hardy settings. I have to admit that a little of this English-style goes a long way and it was a relief to get to the romantic complexities of his second setting of Lingering Music. Then the Robert Louis Stevenson setting, Shadow March, seems to partake of Scottish song but push the idea to more imaginative limits.

A Christmas Lullaby follows, but then three contrasting night songs. The child hears rain at night is, in a sense, purely descriptive with the darting rain in the piano but Pitfield makes it into something more intense. Song of Compassion returns us to the English lyric style, but In the moonlight is an engaging adaptation of a French nursery song. The recital concludes with Four Short Songs, all with texts by Pitfield. This tiny songs seem to manage to encompass a lot more than one might expect.

Pitfield’s compositions are often described as light-hearted and small scale. Listening to this disc, you can clearly hear his influences from other English composers, but the selection of songs seems designed to demonstrate both the wideness of his taste but also his ability to be serious on a concentrated scale. In his Obituary of Pitfield in The Guardian (27 November 1999), John McCabe wrote that ‘There are, too, works in which Pitfield’s expression touches considerable emotional depths. The Sands Of Dee [the song that opens his recital], for voice and piano, has great dramatic power’.

The performances from James Gilchrist and Nathan Williamson are far more than admirable. Gilchrist has a way with this music, a sympathy with the essential lyric English style along with an ability to spin a line whilst promoting the words. All the time he is sympathetically partnered by Nathan Williamson.

For those interested in exploring the composer further, the book Endless Fascination: The Life and Work of Thomas Pitfield, Composer, Artist, Craftsman, Poet, issued by Forsyths, brings together most of Pitfield’s significant autobiographical writings, new critical essays reappraising his work, and the recollections of family, friends, pupils and colleagues.

The Songs of Thomas Pitfield
James Gilchrist (tenor)
Nathan Williamson (piano)

Recorded in the Menuhin Hall, Stoke d’Abernon, Surrey, 4 & 5 November 2023
DIVINE ART DDX 21119 1CD [54.57]