The second in a new concert series put on by the University of Southampton Music Department, in conjunction with Chawton House Library, Vivian Montgomery’s lecture recital brought Chawton’s Great Hall and its recently restored 1828 Stodart grand piano to life. The evening began with drinks and canapés in the Old Kitchen before moving to the Hall, where Montgomery transported her audience back to a time when music regularly echoed throughout the grand manor house.
Montgomery, DMA, an award-winning harpsichordist and fortepianist who is currently in residence at Southampton as a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, was joined by Janet Youngdahl, a soprano and Professor of Music at the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, Canada, who specializes in Medieval and Baroque-era music.
The program comprised seven sets of songs—each of which included an original melody and one or more variations on it—along with Montgomery’s fascinating and often humorous contextual explanations. While the compositions displayed some musical conventions of the Classical period, the repertoire was taken from a canon of popular melodies. The songs ranged from a sacred hymn, “Come Christians, Join to Sing,” to a melancholy Irish tune about lost love, to Stephen Foster’s wildly popular minstrel song, “Oh! Susanna.”
Focusing on adaptations and arrangements for piano of songs from both the United Kingdom and the United States, Montgomery sought to accomplish two goals. First, she called attention to the “peripatetic life” of beloved songs at the turn of the century, focusing on the years 1790-1850. The first song on the program, for example, a traditional Scottish melody, was adapted for the piano in 1803 by Alexander Reinagle (1756-1809), a German composer living in the UK. The adaptation first became popular in the UK, but was quickly picked up by publishers in the States. In this sense, Montgomery noted, songs proved themselves capable of bridging a cultural divide across the Atlantic.
Secondly, in her archival research and performance alike, Montgomery worked to highlight and recreate the culture of improvisation that would have filled music rooms like the one at Chawton House at the turn of the nineteenth century. By adapting and reworking the most popular melodies of their day, accomplished pianists—many of them women—were able to extend the life of these songs and, in some cases, make a name for themselves as musicians and composers. With a virtuosity of her own, Montgomery demonstrated the range of techniques and creative liberties these composers explored: variations in rhythm, tempo, dynamics, and key; arpeggiated passages and ornamental filigree; shifts in melodic line from voice to voice. Even a song that was inherently “melancholy” could become “perky” in a set of variations, she explained, playing by way of example an Irish air-turned-Polonaise.
While it was thrilling to hear these songs performed on an instrument built contemporaneously to their composition, the piano evidently posed some challenges to the performer. The action was light and the tone rather thin (particularly in the treble clef range), in contrast to the warm, rich tones that more modern pianos can produce. The instrument’s imperfections highlighted Montgomery’s meticulous and controlled technique, as well as her extensive training on early instruments.
The biographical information Montgomery shared about various composers was illuminating. For example, one composer, Martha Greatorex (1759-1829), took up a post as organist at Leicester Cathedral at the age of 13. Thanks to connections made through her brother, who was choral master at Westminster, Greatorex held regular “benefit concerts” to earn money (for herself, Montgomery noted, not for charity!). After retiring as organist at a relatively young age, Greatorex composed and published three works, two of which are extant and which Montgomery discovered in the Southampton archives: a set of variations on a song from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and a set that includes the piece Montgomery played: “Pray Goody: a popular air from the celebrated burletta of Midas, arranged with variations for the piano forte” (London, 1826). To the original air Greatorex added her own, extensive prelude—expertly executed by Montgomery—that showed off her talent and creativity as a pianist-composer.
My favourite performance of the evening was Montgomery’s and Youngdahl’s rendition of an 1807 Irish melody, “‘Tis the Last Rose of Summer,” alongside Alicia Bennett’s 1840 variation of it. Youngdahl began by singing the simple but poignant, even haunting, melody. Montgomery followed by playing Bennett’s set of “slow movement renderings,” which were designed not for a flashy display of pianistic technique but for a musical meditation. This style of composition, Montgomery explained, allowed the composer to expand, stretch out, and prolong the beauty of a song. She quoted a line from the popular nineteenth-century American magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book, to illustrate how such music would have been received: “I could listen forever to my favorite song well sung.” Indeed, at Montgomery’s touch, the piano picked up where Youngdahl left off, ‘singing’ the luscious melodic line as it transformed itself—now in a minor key, now broadening out in a stately return to the original.
Moving, as she put it, “from the sublime to the ridiculous,” Montgomery followed this with a foot-stomping rendition of “Oh! Susanna” (Baltimore, 1848). The playful arrangement, which included a slower variation in a minor key that elicited laughs from the audience, demonstrated once again how the desire to enjoy beloved songs anew catalyzed creative liberties that first emerged in informal music-room improvisation amongst amateur musicians and their appreciative audiences. Through such improvisation, favourite songs could be extended indefinitely, even if their talented adaptors remained obscure or, in some cases—as with Montgomery’s concluding rendition of a polka whose Texan composer we know only through a set of initials—unidentified and unknown.
The combination of excellent musicianship, impeccably researched anecdotes and contextual material, the grandeur of Chawton’s Great Hall, and the delicate tones of the historic instrument made for a delightful and memorable evening.
The recital took place on 13th May 2014 and formed part of the concert series, Music at Chawton House Library.