Walford Davies is a local composer for me and he is probably only slightly better known than Capel Bond. . . . A group of us has been trying to get a bust of him made and put in the local library but it's a slow process.
Let us tabulate the more important pieces written by Walford Davies between the age of twenty and the age of thirty:
1889. A sonata for violin and pianoforte; and a piece for chorus and orchestra, named "The Future."
1890. A string quartet in D minor; and a set of variations for piano solo.
1891. A set of variations for orchestra; a sonata for horn and piano; and the madrigal, "Weep ye no more, sad fountains."
1892. A piece for chorus and orchestra, "The Nativity"; a string quartet in D major; and a piano sonata.
1893. An overture for orchestra; the choral ode "To Music"; two quartets for piano and strings, one in E flat, the other in D minor; two violin sonatas, in E flat and A respectively; and a fantasia for pianoforte solo.
1894. A symphony; the cantata, "Hervé Riel"; a violin sonata in E minor; and a piece of chamber music for voices and strings to Browning's "Prospice."
1895. A string quartet in C; a pianoforte quartet, also in C; a set of "Village Scenes" for piano; and a quantity of violin pieces.
1896. A violin sonata in D minor; and two Psalms (the 23rd and 29th) for tenor singer and strings, with harp.
1897. A piano trio in C; the six "Pastorals" for vocal quartet, string quartet, and piano; and "Days of Man," a work for chorus and orchestra.
1898. A setting of the 13th Psalm; some important part-songs to Blake poems; the glee-madrigal "The Sturdy Rock"; and a set of variations on a "ground" for solo pianoforte.
1899. The overture, "A Welshman in London."
Young music students, when not "feeling well enough" to do harmony exercises, may contemplate this list, and recollect that during those ten years the writer of the works was engaged further as teacher, church organist, concert performer, and student of general subjects.
Fame was brought to him as composer in the year 1904, by the cantata "Everyman," performed at the Leeds Festival.
For ten years thereafter Walford Davies was occupied in the writing of many large choral works for festival use, the last of which was "The Song of St. Francis" (1912). By the year 1920 he had written ninety-nine songs for solo voice. His Second Symphony dates from 1911; in 1912 he wrote a "Wordsworth Suite" for orchestra. The "Solemn Melody," known in many arrangements, and mentioned by Mr. Watson, was first published in 1908.
After the performance of "St. Francis" at Birmingham Festival, Dr. Davies wrote mostly in the smaller forms. In 1920 he wrote a short Fantasy (for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra) to passages taken from Dante. Preceding this in the year 1917 was a short cantata based on Blake's "Jerusalem."
Walford Davies was drawn chiefly to poetry of a mystical nature. He was a lover of spiritual beauty, and seemed always to be striving to evoke moral goodness. Many of his works propound a lofty patriotism, the grand note of national pride and love of country being natural in him. Thus in one of his works he used John of Gaunt's famous eulogy of England, and in many others he sang with the poets of the beauty and sweetness of our country.
We conclude with two of his pithier mots:
"Music generally flourishes in places where life is hard," he once said. "It really flourishes there. Where life is easy, it degenerates into pretty but insincere drawing-room ballads with little children going to heaven on top notes and a touch of swank in the singer."
And:
"Use the gramophone! It is a thing of splendid prospects, but of appalling possibilities. Do get
pianissimo needles. If you use a loud needle it can be an instrument of torture. I say that every Sunday School should be allowed to have its own gramophone."
