{"id":27595,"date":"2026-02-26T16:30:35","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ensemble.cymru\/?page_id=27595"},"modified":"2026-03-16T14:29:44","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T14:29:44","slug":"if-music-be-the-food-of-love-play-on","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/ensemble.cymru\/en\/discover-chamber-music\/if-music-be-the-food-of-love-play-on\/","title":{"rendered":"If music be the food of love, play on"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Jonathan Lyness
Programme Curator<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf music be the food of love, play on\u201d <\/strong><\/em>(Shakespeare, from Twelfth Night)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musical gifts, from composers to their loved ones, are a bit of a thing. Grieg, Strauss, Mahler and Schumann all created them, as did Elgar whose \u201cSalut d\u2019Amour\u201d<\/em> (performed a year ago as part of this music series) was given as an engagement present for his wife Alice. Brahms\u2019s Zwei Ges\u00e4nge [two songs] Op 91 were written for his friends, the violinist\/violist Joseph Joachim and the mezzo Amalie Schneeweiss; the first song for their wedding (and later revised for the christening of their first child); the second much later in an effort to reconcile the couple\u2019s twenty years of stormy marriage! It didn\u2019t work \u2013 Joseph and Amalie later divorced!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Joseph and Amalie Joachim, 1873<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For their publication in 1884, Brahms reversed their chronological order, so that the first song (the later \u2018act of reconciliation\u2019), with its gentle tranquillity, precedes the earlier song, which is best described as a cradle lullaby. The mellowness of the viola, the richness of the mezzo voice, and Brahms\u2019s dark hued piano writing create a unique sound world not lost on a scattering of later composers, two of whom were Frank Bridge, who wrote his highly expressive Three Songs in 1908, and the English composer and organist Benjamin Dale, whose story is quite remarkable!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Benjamin Dale<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Frank Bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 1914, Dale travelled to Germany for a season of Wagner opera, starting in Munich. When war was declared, Dale was detained, but his admiration for Wagner played well for him and in November he was sent to the civilian internment camp at Ruhleben, near Berlin. Ruhleben became a hive of cultural activity, and Dale was there for the rest of the war. It was there, in February 1918, that Dale wrote his two songs from Shakespeare\u2019s Twelfth Night – \u201cO Mistress Mine\u201d<\/em>, a graceful Elizabethan pastiche song; and \u201cCome away, Death\u201d,<\/em> a sombre Sarabande for which, no doubt influenced by Brahms, Dale added a viola, already a favourite instrument of his.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Scene from Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’ by Daniel Maclise, 1840<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The following month, March 1918, he was exchanged in a prisoner swap, ending up in the Hague, before being repatriated to England just before the Armistice. Incredibly, the two Shakespeare Songs survived and were published by Novello in 1919 in two keys. The low-key original versions are not currently available, and it\u2019s thanks to the archive libraries of both the RAM and the RCM that Ensemble Cymru has copies for these performances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Louis Vierne (1870-1937)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Rebecca Clarke c.1908<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The composer and organist Louis Vierne, blind from birth, composed two short pictorial pieces for viola and piano as a young man, but is perhaps best remembered today for enduring one of music\u2019s most spectacular deaths! In 1937 he was giving his 1,750th organ recital to a packed-out Notre Dame in Paris when he suddenly lost consciousness, his foot hitting the low \u2018E\u2019 pedal which continued to resonate around the cathedral after he\u2019d died. He\u2019d always dreamed of dying at the organ of Notre-Dame; and so it came to pass, with the composer Maurice Durufl\u00e9, who had been page-turning, sitting next to him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musicians<\/h2>\n\n\n\n