“Rufford Park Poachers”

The third movement of the set of folk-song settings is the longest, and has the most pitfalls for performers. In fact, for the premiere, the professional group they had lined up just skipped this one because it was too hard.

But you know, skill levels change. A piece like Le Sacre du Printemps, which was rehearsed for weeks leading up to its premiere in 1913, is now handled by volunteer orchestras with fewer hours. We even did it in a reading session once a few years ago.

But I digress.

The preface to the printed score has a wealth of wonderful information about each of them, and the singers he tracked down to perform them for his phonograph recorder. The singer of this, one Mr. Joseph Taylor, was a prosperous bailiff on an estate, member of the church choir, and a master of “graceful, birdlike ornament.” Grainer refers to his “sturdy” rhythm, but that’s all relative — on the next page he offers a transcription of one verse, where the meter goes from 2/4 to 5/8, with digressions to 6/8 and 3/4. Each note has a separate dynamic, abruptly shifting from p to f, with slides leading each phrase. “Practically all of Mr> Taylor’s variants appear in my setting,” Grainger notes, which leads us into the thickets of why this one is tough for a volunteer group like the MCB.

According to the English Folk Dance and Song Society, here’s where he was:

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The song itself is a story, about a group of hunters that went on to a private estate (there’s a long history of civil disobedience in such an act, you can look that up on your own) where the wardens came and attacked them; one of the wardens was killed, and four poachers were captured and sent into exile. Here are the lyrics to this particular setting, just the first part:

They say that forty gallant poachers
They was in a mess;
They’d often been attack-ed
When the number it was less.

Chorus (after each verse):
So poacher bold, as I unfold,
Keep up your gallant heart,
And think about those poachers bold
That night in Rufford Park.

A buck or doe, believe it so,
A pheasant or an (h)are
Was sent on earth for everyone
Quite equal for to share

The keepers they begun the fight,
With stones and with the flails,
But when the poachers started, why,
They quickly turned their tails

Another version of the song (I’m getting these texts from here, by the way) continues:

All among the gorse to settle scores
These forty gathered stones
To make a fight for poor men’s rights
And break those keeper’s bones

The keepers come with flails
Against poachers and their cause
But no man there would dare
To break the rich man’s laws

The keepers they began the fight
With stones and with their flails
When the poachers started why
They quickly turned their tails

All on the ground with a mortal wound
Head keeper Roberts lay
He never will rise up again
Till the final judgement day

Of all the band that made their stand
That set a little snare
Just four were brought before the court
And tried for murder there

The judge said “For Roberts’ death
Transported you must be
To serve a term of fourteen years
In convict slavery”

A buck or doe believe it so
A pheasant or a hare
Was put on earth for everyone
Quite equal for to share

Class warfare was alive and well in Britain. If I remember correctly, being “transported” meant you were sent to Australia. The ultimate punch line would be that one of the convicts’ descendants was now prime minister, wouldn’t it?

This is a good time to listen to one of the original 1908 recordings.

Rufford Park Poachers, as sung by Joseph Taylor

Do I hear microtones? I think so.

As you can see from the text above, Grainger recorded just three verses of Mr. Taylor’s singing (apparently all he remembered). So three verses it is, with some minor trimming of the phrases, plus an introduction and a coda.

Let’s assign some code-words to the different phrases of the tune. The first, which begins with the warbling turn around the dominant, we’ll call “A”. It usually comprises the first two lines of the verse.

The second two lines of a verse is “B”. It starts on the supertonic, rises stepwise an octave, descends through the subdominant triad, and culminates in a sixteenth-dotted eighth jump from the submediant to the tonic.

The first two lines of the chorus are a variant, “B1”, which begins on the tonic instead of the supertonic. Otherwise the melodic shape is pretty much the same as “B”.

The last two lines of the chorus are “C”. Beginning on the tonic, rising up a less-dramatic fifth, settling back around the tonic/subtonic.

With those in mind, there is one other element that Grainger adds. The chromatic slide downwards, which initially feels like a snarl, then morphs into a fanfare-like figure.

The structure of the piece plays out this way then.

Introduction: A canon at the octave. In Version A, it’s in the key of F. In Version B, it’s in C. Grainger prefers B simply because it uses the soprano sax. In my humble opinion, I like the key of F better for formal reasons which I’ll explain at the coda.

Each of the two voices is doubled at a distance of three octaves. In voice one, the solo clarinet starts on middle C doubled by a piccolo (C1 and C4); and in voice two the bass and Eb clarinet (C and C3). While they start four beats apart, the canon ultimately is ultimately two eights apart.

By the way, the tempo marking on some editions of wrong. It’s not quarter=132; that’s ridiculous. It should be eighth=132.

The unaccompanied canon across four octaves continues through the four phrase variants A, B, B1 and C.

Verse 1: The clarinets introduce the jazzy syncopated rhythm, with the dotted-16th/32nd swing, accompanying a solo by either the soprano sax (Version B) or a flugelhorn or trumpet (Version A). A pedal, or drone, covering five or six octaves (depending on which version) of the tonic continues throughout. The solo again goes through A, B, B1 and C.

The “snarl” motif first appears here. First widely spaced, then repeated over an incessant crescendoing off-beat rhythm. After this transition…

Verse 2: At this point, the two variants coalesce, and the new key is G. Tonally, that makes it either a modulation to the dominant (Version B) or the dominant-of-the-dominant (Version A). The tune is doubled in five octaves, over a raucous descending chromatic sequence in the brass. The trumpets are asked to triple-tongue their notes out-of-rhythm, as fast as they can. I’m not so sure I want to follow this direction literally, though. Not all of the group can triple tongue, and it tends to be overly loud. Maybe a false-fingering tremelo might work, for example going rapidly from an open E to a 1-2 E?

This verse is actually cut short. “A” is omitted, and there are just the three phrases B, B1 and C.

The “snarl” returns, transitioning to:

Verse 3: The new key is Bb, and the tune is carried by the horns and baritone sax in unison. The accompaniment is a new descending, though less chromatic, figure carried softly in the woodwinds. Trumpets snarl briefly, and some fluid triplet figures appear in the euphonium part. The phrasing is C-B-B-C.

Coda: Another canon, this time at the fourth. And the two voices are doubled not in octaves, but in twelfths. Voice one is Eb clarinet starting on F, and piccolo on C; Voice two is bassoon on Bb and oboe on F. The key centers wind up being Bb (F) and Eb (Bb). Underneath is a drone of Db/Ab, so the final chord is a stack of fifths, from the bottom-up Db/Ab/Eb/Bb/F.

The dominating position of the Bb here leads naturally into the next movement, which is in a extremely non-chromatic diatonic Bb major.

I looked through a lot of YouTube videos of this the other day to find a suitable one to throw at the band. This is the best of the lot, the NDSU Wind Symphony, Warren Olfert, conducting. A very transparent reading that brings out the delicacy of the counterpoint.