Percy Grainger (1882 - 1961):
BRIGG FAIR

"Brigg Fair" is an English folk song. It is best known in a choral arrangement by Percy Grainger and a subsequent set of orchestral variations by Frederick Delius.

Percy Aldridge Grainger was an Australian-born composer and pianist. Early in the 20th century, Grainger started collecting folk songs from around the world, from England, Ireland and Scandinavia to Bali, using wax cylinders to capture performances in the field as well as transcribing them. In 1905, he recorded Joseph Taylor singing Brigg Fair shortly after a music festival in Brigg, North Lincolnshire (the recording survives and is commercially available). Grainger soon made an arrangement of the song for unaccompanied five part chorus with tenor soloist. The original song was short since Taylor could only remember two stanzas; to extend the song, Grainger added three stanzas taken from two other songs ("Low down in the broom" and "The Merry King"). The tune, in the Dorian mode, is wistful, the lyric is a happy one about true love, and Grainger's setting is atmospheric and uses a creative harmonic treatment. It is no. 7 of his "British folk-music settings". It was dedicated to the memory of the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg.

The song has appeared in several different versions including one set down by Taylor and members of his family. These are the words set by Grainger:

It was on the fifth of August-er' the weather fine and fair,
Unto Brigg Fair I did repair, for love I was inclined.

I rose up with the lark in the morning, with my heart so full of glee,
Of thinking there to meet my dear, long time I'd wished to see.

I took hold of her lily-white hand, O and merrily was her heart:
"And now we're met together, I hope we ne'er shall part".

For it's meeting is a pleasure, and parting is a grief,
But an unconstant lover is worse than any thief.

The green leaves they shall wither and the branches they shall die
If ever I prove false to her, to the girl that loves me.

In 1907, Delius heard the setting and was impressed by both the tune and the arrangement. With Grainger's permission, Delius used the song as the basis of an orchestral work, which was first performed in 1908. After a pastoral introduction, the Grainger setting is replicated by the woodwinds. A succession of variations on the original tune leads to a joyous finale. Joseph Taylor was a guest at the first performance, and reputedly stood and sang along.

This is the English Rhapsody by Frederick Delius, based on Grainger's setting:
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Grainger was a composer who felt that his most important compositions were neglected and grew to hate his own most popular pieces, a pianist of rare brilliance who hated playing the piano, a racist who had many friends of many races, a vegetarian who was not particularly fond of vegetables, a man who was completely dominated by his mother until the age of forty, a man who wanted to have his skeleton displayed in a casement for public display, a human being that left documents on his sado-masochistic sexual preferences to be scientifically studied. In short, a fascinating personality...

Recorded at Guildhall, London, 3/1994

Robert (Rob) Johnston (tenor)
The Monteverdi Choir
Conducted by John Eliot Gardiner

From the same collection ("I'm seventeen come Sunday"):
[ Ссылка ]

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