Bishop: Shakespeare Songs
Susan Gritton, Julia Gooding, sopranos; Roderick Williams, Mark Tucker, et al.; Musicians of the Globe; Philip Pickett, conductor.
Decca 470 381–2. Recorded All Saints, Tooting. CD, 67:09.
There’s something wonderfully perverse about Henry Bishop’s relationship with Shakespeare. Here was a composer who knew his Morley and Ravenscroft intimately enough to pilfer from them—scrupulously acknowledging the theft, mind you—yet felt no compunction about setting corrupt texts that would make a modern editor blanch. The practice ought to irritate. Instead, listening to this generously populated disc, originally released as Shakespeare at Covent Garden and now repackaged with establishment pomp (complete with royal crest), I find myself utterly charmed by Bishop’s magpie eclecticism.
The “English Mozart” tag that followed him—and it did follow him, like a hopeful puppy—isn’t entirely misplaced, though it reveals more about early nineteenth-century English musical aspirations than about Bishop’s actual idiom. His harmonic language looks backward more than forward; while Beethoven was wrestling with the Missa Solemnis and Schubert spinning out song cycles, Bishop was contentedly mining madrigalian textures and late-Classical decorative habits. But populist intent shouldn’t be confused with artistic failure. These settings possess real theatrical vitality—they were, after all, conceived for Covent Garden and Drury Lane, not the drawing room.
Susan Gritton and Julia Gooding carry the lion’s share of the solo work, and they’re magnificent. Gritton’s “Lo! Here the gentle lark” shows exactly why she’s become indispensable in this repertoire: the runs don’t rush (a constant temptation), the trills arrive with purpose rather than reflexive decoration, and her dynamic shading—particularly the diminuendo into the final cadential flourish—shows a singer thinking dramatically, not merely executing notes. Philip Pickett’s flute obbligato dances around her line without ever obscuring it; the All Saints, Tooting acoustic gives just enough resonance without blurring detail.
“Should he upbraid” proves more problematic. Bishop’s setting breaks the vocal line at infelicitous moments—there’s a phrase in the second verse where the text wants to flow but the music insists on punctuation—and even Gritton’s formidable craft can’t entirely disguise the awkwardness. The virtuoso flute writing is attractive on its own terms, but it fights the voice rather than supporting it. One suspects Bishop was thinking more about variety of effect than textual integrity.
The madrigalian impulse surfaces most successfully in the first “Who is Sylvia?” The opening maestoso has genuine conviction—those unison horns!—and when the consort breaks into individual contrapuntal traceries, you hear Bishop’s real affection for earlier English glories. It’s not profound music, but it’s theatrically astute and harmonically alive. The second setting, oddly, feels less successful; Bishop seems to have run out of ideas and fallen back on formulaic galant gestures.
Julia Gooding brings her own brand of athletic grace to “It was a lover and his lass,” twisting and coiling the operatic flourishes with real artfulness. She understands that these songs need a certain archness—not camp, exactly, but an awareness of their own theatrical artifice. The jog-trot accompaniment in “Under the greenwood tree” could sound merely routine; instead, Pickett’s rustic flute playing and the consort’s precise articulation make it genuinely beguiling. That clarinet line in the middle section—piping, pastoral, perfectly weighted—shows musicians engaged with the material rather than condescending to it.
Mark Tucker’s robust elegance in “Flower of this purple dye” deserves mention, as does the genuinely earthy brass roar that opens “Now the hungry lions roar.” When Gooding and Gritton join forces in “Orpheus with his lute,” the plangent central section reveals Bishop at his most harmonically adventurous—those chromatic inner voices create real expressive weight.
The disc concludes with what I can only describe as a magnificently theatrical multiple fake ending, complete with fortepiano appearance and orchestral peroration. It’s shameless showmanship, and it works brilliantly. Michael Pilkington’s edition, prepared from Bishop’s own conducting score, gives us these pieces in their full theatrical splendor rather than the bowdlerized versions that usually circulate.
This reissue performs genuine service. Bishop’s limitations are real enough—he’s not going to displace Schubert or Brahms in your affections—but within his own theatrical idiom, he wrote with craft, charm, and genuine melodic invention. The performances here are consistently superb, the recorded sound generous without being soupy, and the sheer pleasure the musicians take in this material is infectious.
Highly recommended for anyone who thinks they know what early nineteenth-century English music sounds like. You may be pleasantly surprised.
