John Klier Event
22nd May 2008
‘White in the moon the long road lies’
Settings of A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad and other
poems, including works by
Ireland, Butterworth, Barber and Gurney
Cassandra Manning, soprano
Caroline Jaya-Ratnam, piano
Jon Shallcross, readings
John Klier
(1944 – 2007)
John Klier taught in the Hebrew and Jewish Studies Department at UCL from 1989 until his sudden
and untimely death in September 2007. He was one of the most innovative and influential
historians of East European Jewry and enjoyed an extraordinary degree of respect and affection
among his colleagues the world over. Deeply committed to his department and the college more
generally, he was well known to many colleagues right across UCL. Not least, he was a loyal
supporter of the ASCR and served for many years on its committee. In the light of John's keen
interest in various forms of music, the committee has decided to commemorate John's contribution,
and his life and achievements more generally, with an annual music event.
A. E. Housman
(1959 – 1936)
A. E. Housman was Professor of Latin at University College London at the turn of the 20th century,
and was the foremost Latin textual scholar of his time. He left Oxford with an ordinary degree,
having neglected those subjects in Greats that did not interest him, and took a humble job at the
Patents Office. In his spare time he devoted himself to classical studies and began publishing
articles that marked him out as an oustanding scholar and led ultimately to masterly editions of
Juvenal, Lucan and Mamilius, and to appointment as Professor of Latin at University College
London in 1892. He remained there until 1911, when he moved to the Chair of Latin at Cambridge,
a post he held with extreme distinction until his death in 1936. His ashes are buried against the
north wall of St Lawrence's Church, Ludlow.
It was while he as at UCL that he published a small volume of poems, A Shropshire Lad, which
made him famous throughout the English-speaking world. They are haunting lyrics of
disenchantment, remarkable for their simplicity of diction, lyric beauty and ironic pessimism. Short
and lapidary, they are of exquisite craftsmanship.
It has been said of Housman that he made despair beautiful. The despair in these poems is that of
a man facing life and death without religious belief or requited love. Though at first slow to gain
popularity, the poems caught the imagination of the nation when the Great War broke in 1914, and
many soldiers carried a copy with them into battle. The popularity of A Shropshire Lad grew so
surely that Last Poems (1922) had astonishing success for a book of verse. More Poems and
Additional Poems were published, posthumously, by his brother Laurence.
Housman’s students and colleagues were astounded by the contrast between the romanticism of A
Shropshire Lad (1896) and the outward severity of the man they knew as their Professor of Latin.
He was on the whole a solitary character, an apparently rather dry and austere man (at least to
those who did not know him well). However, he enjoyed his time at UCL and valued the friendship
of his fellows, especially his Greek colleague Arthur Platt, founder of the University College
Common Room.
Programme
To aid the smooth running of tonight’s recital, please save your applause until the end of each part. We should
also be grateful if you could read the texts supplied either before or after tonight’s performance.
Part I
Piano
‘April’ No 1. of Two Pieces
John Ireland
Reading
‘Loveliest of trees’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘This Time of Year’
C. W. Orr
Text from A Shropshire Lad
Reading
‘March’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘The Heart’s Desire’
John Ireland
Text ‘March’ from A Shropshire Lad
Reading
‘The lads in their hundreds’ from A Shropshire Lad
Piano
‘Bergomask’ No. 2 of Two Pieces
John Ireland
Song
‘Bredon Hill’ No. 1 of Bredon Hill and Other Songs from A Shropshire Lad
George Butterworth
Text from A Shropshire Lad
Reading
‘On Wenlock Edge the wood’s in trouble’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘When Smoke Stood Up From Ludlow’ No. 1 of Ludlow & Teme
Ivor Gurney
Text from A Shropshire Lad

5-minute break

Part II
Reading
‘Reveille’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘The Encounter’ No. 5 of The Land of Lost Content
John Ireland
Text from A Shropshire Lad
Reading
‘Now hollow fires burn out to black’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘Think No More, Lad; Laugh, Be Jolly’ No.4 of Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad
George Butterworth
Text from A Shropshire Lad
Reading
‘The New Mistress’ from A Shropshire Lad
Piano
‘The Scarlet Ceremonies’ No. 3 of Decorations
John Ireland
Reading
‘On your midnight pallet lying’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘On the Idle Hill of Summer’ No. 5 of Ludlow & Teme
Ivor Gurney
Text from A Shropshire Lad,
Reading
‘The Day of Battle’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘Is My Team Ploughing’ No. 6 of Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad
George Butterworth
Text from A Shropshire Lad

5-minute break

Part III
Song
‘With Rue My Heart is Laden’
Samuel Barber
Text from A Shropshire Lad
Reading
‘To An Athlete Dying Young’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘Because I Liked You Better’ No. 3 of Five Songs, Op. 14
Lennox Berkeley
Text from More Poems
Reading
‘Shake hands, we shall never be friends’ from More Poems
Song
‘White in the Moon the Long Road Lies’ No. 5 of A Shropshire Lad
Mervyn Horder
Text from A Shropshire Lad
Piano
‘A Hill Tune’ Arnold Bax
Reading
‘From far, from eve and morning’ from A Shropshire Lad
Song
‘The Lent Lily’ No. 1 of The Land of Lost Content
John Ireland
Text from A Shropshire Lad,
Reading
‘Tell me not here, it needs not saying’ from Last Poems
Song
‘Loveliest of Trees’ No. 1 of Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad
George Butterworth
Text from A Shropshire Lad
About the Artists
Forza del Destino), and Abigaille (Nabucco).
She also sang Gutrune and covered the
role of Sieglinde for Jonathan Dove’s ‘Ring
Saga’ with Longborough Festival Opera.
Cassandra Manning
Soprano
Cassandra Manning won a scholarship to
the London College of Music where she
subsequently won the John Ireland Prize,
Henry Baker Memorial Prize, Alice Vera
Smith Prize for performance, Jean Lloyd
Webber Prize for Light Music (twice) and
the LCM Medallion. She was a finalist in the
1992 Cosmopolitan ‘Woman of the Year’
award.
After college she joined the Welsh National
Opera, where she performed Ludmila (The
Bartered Bride), Young Widow (Osud) and
Slave (Salome) under the baton of Sir
Charles Mackerras. Other roles included
Lady Macbeth (Macbeth), Leonora (La
Cassandra is currently performing in Nicole
Panizza’s doctoral tour “Wrestling with the
Giant: Emily Dickinson and her Musical
Interpreters” which so far has taken in the
Royal College of Music, Edinburgh
University and the University of Surrey.
They have also performed in recital
together at the Dublin International
Concert Hall, the Victoria and Albert
Museum and at the National Gallery,
London, and will be appearing during
2008/9 at St James, Picadilly, the
University of Bonn, the Cork School of
Music, The Juilliard School in New York and
the Emily Dickinson Museum in Amherst,
New England.
Cassandra and Caroline have known each
other for many years and have worked
together in opera. They are currently
planning a series of cross-genre recitals
highlighting their flare for musical
versatility, which will bring together
elements of classical music, jazz and
musical theatre.
Masters Degree and Professional
Performance Diploma in solo piano (RNCM),
and was subsequently appointed the
Geoffrey Parsons Junior Fellow at the Royal
College of Music.
Competition successes include the John
Ireland and Sir Arthur Bliss prizes for song
accompaniment, the Sir Henry Richardson
Award for instrumental accompaniment, and
accompanists’ awards in the Great Elm Vocal
competition and the Performing Australian
Music competition.
Caroline Jaya-Ratnam
Pianist
Caroline read music at Cambridge University
where she held an Instrumental Award and
a Choral Exhibition. She went on to gain a
Caroline has also performed as a concerto
soloist, most notably in Saint-Saens' Piano
Concerto in G minor, and Mozart's Concerto
K.456, which she directed. She was recently
the featured piano soloist on the soundtrack
of the film Wer Liebe Verspricht.
Caroline is a much sought-after accompanist,
performing both nationally and
internationally. She has been broadcast on
BBC television and Radio 3 in the BBC Young
Musician of the Year and has twice
performed and been interviewed on Sean
Rafferty’s In Tune for Radio 3. She has also
been broadcast on Belgium Radio in the
Queen Elizabeth competition. Caroline has
worked with national competition winners
such as Rafal Zambrzycki-Payne (former
BBC Young Musician of the Year), and in
private lessons with the late Lord Yehudi
Menuhin. Her London appearances have
included duo recitals at the Royal Festival
Hall, St Martin-in-the-Fields and the
Wigmore Hall.
Caroline worked with English National Opera
throughout 2007 alongside conductors Ed
Gardner and Richard Hickox, and artists
Michael Ball and Alfie Boe. She is currently
on staff as a vocal coach at the Guildhall
School of Music and Drama.
book on the history of a distinguished
College society.
Jonathan subsequently worked as a
copywriter and creative director with various
leading advertising agencies during the
1980s and early 1990s; and was,
regrettably, one of the team responsible for
introducing mobile phones into the UK.
However, tiring of the pressures of
management and shortly before the birth of
his daughter in 1997, he turned freelance –
at the same time running away to live
beside the sea. The freelance life has given
him the opportunity to write poetry and
radio plays alongside his more mainstream
advertising work.
Jonathan Shallcross
Readings
Jonathan Shallcross read maths and physics
at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, but left
his scientific roots behind soon after
graduation – when he wrote and published a
Jonathan now lives in Cambridge, works in a
shed at the bottom of his garden, and
bemoans the death of traditional print
advertising. Intriguingly, AE Housman now
plays a significant role in his life, as for the
last five years he has written all the printed
promotional materials for the Shropshire
Tourist Board.
Brief notes on the composers
John Ireland (1879 – 1962)
John Ireland studied piano at the Royal College of Music from 1893 to 1897, continuing at the
College until 1901 as a composition scholar, under Sir Charles Stanford. At the age of 16 he was
awarded a fellowship at the Royal College of Organists, the youngest student ever to receive
one. His fellow students at the RCM included Vaughan Williams and Holst.
From 1904 until 1926 Ireland held the post of organist at St Luke’s, Chelsea, which allowed him
time to compose. Soon after the end of World War I he joined the staff of the RCM as Professor
of Composition, a position he held for many years; his pupils there included Benjamin Britten
and E. J. Moeran. He was also a music examiner and Inspector of Music in Schools for the
Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music.
Ireland had been composing since boyhood but, fiercely self-critical, he destroyed all his early
works; his earliest surviving work therefore dates only from 1903. His imagination was always
stimulated by images, particularly of landscapes; and his sensitive, unemphatic and meticulous
music has a peculiarly English quality of emotion expressed through reserve.
C W Orr (1893 – 1976)
Charles Wilfred Orr learnt the piano and studied music theory as a child. He developed an
interest in lieder and, determined to become a songwriter, studied song composition at the
Guildhall School of Music. He much admired the music of Delius, and, following a meeting in
1915, Delius became his mentor and helped with his early compositions. He also came to know
Peter Warlock who aided him in publishing his early songs.
His work as a composer was dominated by the composition of songs, and his life’s study was the
expressive setting of poetry to music. He was a particular admirer of A. E. Housman, whose
poetry he got to know just after World War I, going on research visits in Shropshire and
attending one of his lectures as Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge.
George Butterworth (1885 – 1916)
George Butterworth received his early lessons from his mother, who was a singer, and began
composing at an early age. On leaving university, he briefly studied at the Royal College of
Music, and began a career in music, writing criticism for The Times and composing and teaching
at Radley College. Influenced by Cecil Sharp, he collected nearly 300 folk songs between 1906
and 1913, sometimes accompanied by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Butterworth signed up for service at the outbreak of World War I. He was killed leading a raid
during the Battle of the Somme; his body was not recovered. He was awarded the Military
Cross and his name appears on the Thiepval Memorial.
Butterworth did not write a great deal of music, and during the war he destroyed many works
he did not care for. Of those that remain, his works based on A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad
are the best known. His death aged 31 was one of the greatest musical tragedies of World War
I, and his loss was sorely felt by the musical generation who had fought with him and survived.
Ivor Gurney (1890 – 1937)
Ivor Gurney’s musical education began in 1900 as a choral scholar at Gloucester Cathedral; in
1911 he won an open scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he studied composition
with Charles Stanford, who said that of all his students – Vaughan Williams, Bliss, Holst, Ireland
and dozens more – Gurney was potentially 'the biggest of them all. But the least teachable'.
Gurney joined the army in February 1915; through the war and the misery of the trenches, he
turned more and more to the writing of verse, although he did manage to compose a few songs.
Towards the end of the war depression began to haunt him, and led at the end of 1918 to a
profound mental collapse. Helped by friends he became fit enough to return to the RCM where
his composition teacher was now Vaughan Williams; and the years 1921 and 1922 were the
most productive of his life. However, his mental condition deteriorated, and he spent the last
15 years of his life in mental hospitals. He continued writing songs until 1926; and his poetry
gathered quality and strength during his asylum years. His output was prodigious – more than
300 poems and verse-pieces, several chamber and instrumental works and around 200 songs,
among the best known of which are his settings of poems by A. E. Housman.
Samuel Barber (1910 – 1981)
Samuel Barber wrote his first piece at seven years old, attempted his first opera aged 10, and at
14 entered the Curtis Insitute in Philadelphia,where he studied voice, piano and composition,
before becoming a fellow of the American Academy in Rome in 1935. The following year he
wrote his String Quartet in B minor, the second movement of which he would arrange for string
orchestra as his Adagio for Strings.
The popularity of the Adagio has somewhat overshadowed the rest of Barber's output. However,
he is seen as one of the most talented American composers of the 20th century. He avoided the
experimentalism of some other American composers of his generation, preferring relatively
traditional harmonies and forms. He was never prolific, but he wrote for the piano, completed
several operas and wrote three concertos for solo instruments and orchestra. His songs are
among the most popular 20th century songs in the classical repertoire.
Lennox Berkeley (1903 – 1989)
Lennox Berkeley was introduced to music by his father’s pianola rolls, by a godmother who had
studied singing in Paris, and by an aunt who was a salon composer, and began composing while
still at school. In 1926 he met Maurice Ravel who, impressed by Berkeley’s gift for melody and
harmony, introduced him to the great French composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. Berkeley
stayed in Paris till 1932, studying counterpoint and developing his own unique musical language.
Rejected for health reasons from war service, he joined the BBC as an orchestral programme
builder, leaving in 1946 to concentrate on writing music, and to take up a post as Professor of
Composition at the Royal Academy of Music, where he remained until 1968. Knighted in 1974,
Berkeley was president of many music organsiations, but public honours were at odds with his
essentially private nature, which was more comfortable with reticence than rhetoric. In a
creative life of about 65 years he produced no fewer than 226 works, including four symphonies;
concertos for cello, flute, guitar, piano and violin; string quartets; piano pieces; four operas, a
ballet, film and incidental music; Mass settings and other sacred music; and songs.
Mervyn Horder (1910 – 1997)
Mervyn Horder was educated at Winchester College, where he had his musical training from
George Dyson (later Head of the Royal College of Music), and was a classics scholar at Trinity
College, Cambridge. After distinguished service during World War II, he went into publishing;
and he contributed many articles to literary magazines and was the author of three books.
He also composed: song settings of Burns, Shakespeare, Dorothy Parker, Housman and
Betjeman, as well as one or two lighter vocal pieces to his own lyrics and a few instrumental
items, such as the Travelogue Suite and the Harlequin ballet.
Arnold Bax (1883 – 1953)
Arnold Bax represents the next generation of British composers after Elgar, and during the
1920s and 1930s was a major figure in British music; his seven symphonies were considered
significant works at the times of their premieres; and, like Elgar, he was knighted and awarded
the title Master of the King’s Musick. Coming from an affluent family, Bax had the financial
independence to live and work as a composer. He was very fond of Scotland and Ireland and
was fascinated by Gaelic lore and culture. Russian music was an influence too. His work
included symphonic poems, ballet music, and numerous piano and chamber works; and he was
also a poet and wrote an autobiography.
Bax's solo songs allow him to explore more Celtic ground in a variety of settings, ranging from A
Celtic Song Cycle to settings of poems by James Joyce, J.M. Synge, and by the English writers
A.E. Housman and his brother, the writer Clifford Bax.