Bantock: Fifine at the Fair

Description

Granville Bantock wrote some of the largest-scale orchestral and choral works in the British repertoire, and explored non-European cultures, but he was also a practical musician, introducing many to the world of music for the first time, and to music they had probably never heard before. When he was asked for something to be played at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert in 1912 he revised Tone Poem No. 3, which he had written in 1909, based on a poem by Robert Browning, from Pippa Passes. in the event he could not agree a fee for the commission, and it was instead performed at the Birmingham Festival in October 1912, in a concert that included Richard Strauss's Don Quixote and a new work by Walford Davies, the Song of St. Francis. Bantock conducted.

Browning's poem is not considered to be among the best of his works. Over-long, it rambles far too much. But Bantock saw the thread that runs through it – an ever-present butterfly that disturbs the hero by hinting at adventure beyond his comfortable everyday life. The scene is a fairground, the adventure a dancer – Fifine – with whom the hero becomes infatuated. But Fifine offers no stability, no lasting comfort, and the hero returns to his patient wife and family. Bantock's music follows the narrative faithfully, although Bantock hints at a touch of regret in abandoning Fifine. He subtitled the work, "A defence of inconstancy"!

Phillip Brookes, 2024