Writing text to be set to music has long been an important part of the writing life of the Master, and this academic year has been particularly busy, with new works premiering at Sadler’s Wells and Southwark Cathedral. Daniel Kamaluddin (Year 13) sat down with the Master to discuss his work as a librettist
A couple of years later, Cecilia came across a fragment of prose by Raymond Chandler, ‘Trench Warfare’, in which Chandler reflects on his time with the Royal Canadian forces in the First World War. She asked whether I could turn that prose into poetic prose, to fit into a larger requi- em which she was writing. That proved a lovely, amiable
DANIEL KAMALUDDIN: Could you explain what libretto is and tell me about the role of the librettist? JOSEPH SPENCE: By libretto, we mean the words that accompany music. In my view, the role of the librettist is to write in support of the music. Sometimes it can be the librettist who has an idea and carries the text to the com- poser, but more often it happens the other way around, with the music coming first, and then the commissioning of someone to write a text. DK: I imagine many people at the College will know your work with composer Cecilia McDowall. Could you outline the College’s relationship with Cecilia McDowall in the Visiting Composer role? JS: On becoming Master back in 2009, I was pleased to discover that we had Cecilia as our Visiting Composer, coming in annually to talk to our A-level musicians, and that we had already commissioned a work from her. Around the time when we were beginning to look at the long 400th, Cecilia got in touch with me. I had previously written two pieces at my last school, Oakham: ‘A Rutland Carol’, which I wrote with our Director of Music, and a piece by a composer called Paul Spicer for the rededica- tion of the chapel there. Cecilia said she had come across a poem by PG Wodehouse’s brother, Ernest Armine Wo- dehouse, who like PG was an Old Alleynian, and who had written poetry in the midst of the First World War. Cecilia had the piece, but she didn’t quite feel that she could set it as it stood, so she asked me to work on it, and to try to emphasise certain things so that she could set it to music. That was the genesis of Some Corner of A Foreign Field , and it marked the start of our working relationship.
Photo by Ida Guldbæk Arentsen
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THE ALLEYNIAN 712
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