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Spencer the Rover
2016

SATB chorus
3 cornets 3º doubling flugelhorn
4 horns
3 trombones
euphonium
tuba
2 percussion
  1: cymbals, sandpaper blocks, washboard
  2: sandpaper blocks, sizzle cymbal, 3 suspended cymbals, washboard, woodblock

duration 35'

commissioned by Chorus Pro Musica 
first performance:
Chorus Pro Musica , cond. Jamie Kirsch
Sanders Theater, Harvard University / March 12, 2016

SCORE

RECORDING—first performance:
n.b. this recording is of the unrevised version and, in some places, deviates from the revised score above
 

PROGRAM NOTE
Spencer the Rover is a fantasia on an English folk song, collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams, but still known in the traditional folk world in its own right. My version is, in turn, based on the recording by John Martyn which leaves out two of the verses from the "traditional" Copper Family version.

The piece tells the story in three, interwoven, ways. The opening, Prelusion, sets the stage with an agitated and complex textured brass introduction, gradually flattening out to lead into the first of the five Narrations. These Narrations are the song itself. Until the Final Narration the entire song is given to the tenors, basses supporting, and the women only join with the most salient points of the text. The two interwoven Depictions tell the story again but purely musically with the brass ensemble – these are little tone-poem versions, verse by verse. The two Sensibilities are portrayals of what might be going on inside Spencer throughout the poem. They take key words and surround them with percussive effects and non-pitched, 'environmental' sounds made by the choir; clicking, whistling, clapping, etc. The Final Narration is a harmonically simpler, slightly jauntier run-through of the entire song. 

There is, however, a subtext to this piece; while starting to compose this my 87 year old father passed away after descending deeper into dementia. A happy, peaceful passing. though. As this happened the words of Spencer took on a new resonance for me. I started to think about the actual story: how had he been "much reducèd"?, what was the "great confusion"? Also, the events began to seem less likely; would his family (probably impoverished after his departure) be just waiting for his return and entirely happy to see him? I began to think of his being reduced, his rambling, and his roaming as parallel to my father's gradual withdrawal from the everyday world. Spencer's "return" to his family might instead be a vision of his own, not an actual event, and his return to his prittle-prattling children might be something akin to my father's own confusion about the current age of my sister and me; he sometimes thought there were two of each of us: an old one and a young one. 

So, Spencer became, for me, about this journey too: a ramble with a different kind of arrival and a different kind of return.

A 1977 performance by John Martyn



TEXT
Prelusion 

1st Narration
This tune was composèd by Spencer the Rover
As valiant a man as ever left home
He had been much reducèd
And had been caused great confusion
And that was the reason he started to roam 

In Yorkshire near Rotherham, he had been on theramble
Weary of traveling, he sat down to rest
By the foot of yon' mountain
Lays a clear flowing fountain
With bread and cold water he himself did refresh 

1st Depiction 

2nd Narration
With the night fast approaching, to the woods he resorted
With woodbine and ivy his bed for to make
But he dreamt about sighing
Lamenting and crying
Go home to your family and rambling forsake 

1st Sensibility
This tune
Spencer
Left home
Reducèd
Confusion
Roam 

Ramble
Weary
Refresh 

Night
Woods
Crying
Go home 

3rd Narration
'Twas the fifth day of November, I've reason to remember
When first he arrived home to his family and friends
They did stand so astounded
Surprised and dumbfounded
To see such a stranger once more in their sight 

2nd Depiction 

4th Narration
And his children come around him with their prittle prattling stories
Their prittle prattling stories to drive care away
And he's as happy as those
As have thousands of riches
Contented he'll remain and not ramble away 

2nd Sensibility
Home
Astounded
Dumbfounded 

Children
Prittle prattling
Happy
He’ll remain 

Final Narration
This tune was composèd by Spencer the Rover
As valiant a man as ever left home
He had been much reducèd
And had been caused great confusion
And that was the reason he started to roam 

In Yorkshire near Rotherham, he had been on theramble
Weary of traveling, he sat down to rest
By the foot of yon' mountain
Lays a clear flowing fountain
With bread and cold water he himself did refresh 

With the night fast approaching, to the woods he resorted
With woodbine and ivy his bed for to make
But he dreamt about sighing
Lamenting and crying
Go home to your family and rambling forsake 

'Twas the fifth day of November, I've reason to remember
When first he arrived home to his family and friends
They did stand so astounded
Surprised and dumbfounded
To see such a stranger once more in their sight 

And his children come around him with their prittle prattling stories
Their prittle prattling stories to drive care away
And he's as happy as those
As have thousands of riches
Contented he'll remain and not ramble away 

This tune was composèd by Spencer the Rover
As valiant a man as ever left home
He had been much reducèd
And caused great confusion
And that was the reason he started to roam