The music of Grace Williams

The day before Memorial Day I went to Dearborn Music wanting to see where in the store the Tiger Stadium Postcard album was placed, and perhaps find out a little more about Lee Noble. I had also decided to buy an album of the music of Grace Williams, obscure whether as a Welsh composer or as a woman composer. I also bought Hindemith conducting Bruckner's Symphony No. 7.

At this point I should admit that there are very few women composers in my CD collection. I used to have chamber music by Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn, but chamber music doesn't appeal to me as strongly as orchestral music. And Clara Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor is not different enough from her husband Robert's, which I don't like too much either. I kind of like Florestan by Elisabetta Brusa, at least on those days when it doesn't seem feverishly over-emotional. The rest of Brusa's music which has been recorded by Naxos so far seems to me to be inhabited by an excessive uniformity of mood (which is wonderment at everything). Diatonicism in modern music has the danger of being too cloying, as British composer Robert Simpson points out in connection to Nielsen's music (which doesn't fall into that trap).

How refreshing then is the objectivity of Grace Williams. If the stereotype is that women composers write hysterically emotional music, then Grace Williams does not fit the stereotype. Sure there are tinges of Mahler in her music, but Mahler comes across way more hysterical.

I'm only beginning to get to know her music. Inevitably at this point there will be comparisons to composers with whom I'm more familiar. Grace Williams studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams (presumably no relation) and it is natural for commentators to hear bits of Ralph in Grace's music. I've already mentioned Mahler and liner note writer Malcolm Boyd also mentions Richard Strauß and of course Sir Edward Elgar. I hear Shostakovich, but I don't know how familiar Brits were with the Soviet in the 20th Century.

And I also hear Robert Simpson, a British composer about 15 years her junior, who, coincidentally wrote his Symphony No. 2 the same year she did (1956). I'm not saying the younger composer influenced the older one (though that's sometimes the case, e.g., Haydn and Mozart) but since I'm more familiar with Simpson at this point, I will of course hear Grace Williams that way. But I am also becoming aware of individual traits which will become more apparent as I familiarize myself with her music.