Falstaff

The concert given by the Sheffield Symphony Orchestra on the 11th November 2006 gave a rare opportunity to hear Elgar's last purely orchestral work: Falstaff named after Shakespeare's popular rogue.

This article will look at various aspects of "Falstaff"

"Falstaff is the name, but Shakespeare - the whole of human life - is the theme."

(E. Elgar)

Recordings of Elgar's Falstaff

Shakespeare's Rogue

If we look at but two descriptions of Falstaff, as mentioned in Henry IV part 1, then we meet

" A goodly portly man, i' faith, and a corpulent; of a cheerful look, a pleasing eye and a most noble carriage; and, as I think, his age some fifty, or, by'r lady, inclining to three score; and now I remember me, his name is Falstaff: if that man should be lewdly given, he deceiveth me; for, Harry, I see virtue in his looks."

Although to be fair, this is Falstaff describing himself to his friend Prince Hal (who later became King Henry the Fifth) in a scene when Prince Hal and Falstaff are acting out the forthcoming meeting between King Henry IV and the Prince. In the same scene, they change places and Prince Hal describes his friend thus:

"Thou art violently carried away from grace: there is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an old fat man; a tun of man is thy companion. Why dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in years? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and drink it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a capon and eat it? wherein cunning, but in craft? wherein crafty, but in villany? wherein villanous, but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing?"

At the end of the scene we hear Falstaff's heartfelt plea for Prince Hal's friendship, the plea of an old man fearing rejection (and with good reason, as it happens):

"If sack and sugar be a fault, God help the wicked!
if to be old and merry be a sin, then many an old host that I know is damned:
if to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine are to be loved.
No, my good lord; banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Poins:
but for sweet Jack Falstaff,
kind Jack Falstaff,
true Jack Falstaff,
valiant Jack Falstaff,
and therefore more valiant, being, as he is,
old Jack Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harry's company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.

It is widely believed that Shakespeare based the character of Falstaff on a real person. Many think his subject was apparently based on Sir John Oldcastle, historically known to be Prince Hal's companion. During the first performances of Henry IV, part 1, protests from Oldcastle's descendants — the influential Cobham family — forced Shakespeare to change the name. The new name 'Falstaff' is derived from Shakespeare's earlier play, Henry VI, part 1, in which there is a cowardly character based on the medieval knight Sir John Fastolf . Changing a few letters gave Shakespeare the name by which his invention is known today.(Wikipedia)

illustration of Falstaff on the Naxos CD

Falstaff - its place in Elgar's output

Elgar started work on Falstaff in 1901, and the work received its first performance in 1913 (at the Leeds Festival with Elgar himself conducting). In the years between these dates, many of Elgar's best loved works were written and performed. Four of his popular Pomp and Circumstance Marches were written between 1901 and 1907; In the South dates from 1903; The Introduction and Allegro comes from the middle of the decade, the two completed symphonies date from 1907 to 1911. Also in this period were the two oratorios The Apostles and The Kingdom. The Music Makers followed in 1912.

Elgar's Treatment of Falstaff

Some have likened this work to Strauss's Ein Heldenleben or Don Quixote. What is true, is that the Strauss work Don Quixote was first performed in 1898, before Elgar started thinking about Falstaff.

Elgar divided the work up into the following sections (not of equal length) to represent various moments in Falstaff's life.

Falstaff and Prince Hal 3:01
As might be expected here, we are treated to two themes to represent the two characters. A somewhat lugubrious theme to represent the old man, and a nobler theme for the young Prince Henry.
Eastcheap.
The robbery at Gadshill.
The Boar's Head again. Revelry and sleep 12:33
A busier section, suggestive of people hurrying around on their daily business. Elgar himself suggested that this episode illustrated "Women, such as the Hostess, Doll Tearsheet and a dozen or fourteen honest gentlewomen." It is here at the Boar's Head where the plot is hatched; Falstaff and his henchmen will rob some carriers, but be deprived of their booty by Hal and Poins robbing them in turn.
The action changes to Gadshill. In the play it all goes according to plan (with Falstaff showing a remarkable speed of flight at the first sign of danger) and in the music there is "the short struggle for the twice stolen booty 'got with much ease.'"
Poins and Hal return to the Inn; a passage in the orchestra suggests their sport with the boy at the inn before Falstaff appears and tells his version of the Gadshill events (bassoon prominent here). (on stage , this scene has the "arithmetical progression of rigues in buckram" to quote Tovey when Falstaff claims to have fought gallantly to save the booty, only to surrender it when overwhelmed by far more numerous forces). But too much talking can be tiring for an old man, and he soon falls asleep behind the arras.
Dream Interlude 2:29
Shakespeare gives us one line to suggest that Falstaff once was a page to the Duke of Norfolk. Elgar expands this into the first of the two dream interludes (which have a life away from the whole work in the concert hall).
Falstaff's March. The return through Gloucestershire. The new King and the hurried ride to London. 4:14
Falstaff awakes from his dreaming of "what might have been" and the third major section begins. Falstaff is now a soldier, forming an army of unsuitable recruits "fodder for cannon". The battle of Shrewsbury takes place.
Elgar compresses the action here and we jump from Henry IV part one to Henry IV part two.
News comes through of the death of the old King Henry and so Falstaff must hurry to London to be with his protegé.
Interlude - in Shallow's orchard 2:37
En route we stop at Shallow's Orchard where music is given by tabor and pipe in the second of the interludes.
King Henry V's progress.
The repudiation of Falstaff and his death 9:00
The scene switches to outside Westminster Abbey as the crowds gather for the new King's Coronation. At last the King arrives; the "Prince Hal" theme receives its grandest setting yet, "the king himself in military character"; the initial Falstaff theme is heard as if trying to muscle in on the celebrations, only to be rebuffed by the new King, "I know thee not, old man. Fall to thy prayers."
Falstaff retires from the scene and gradually slips away before dying.
Elgar himself described the work's final pages thus:
"In the distance we hear the veiled sound of a military drum; the King's stern theme is curtly thrown across the picture, the shrill drum roll again asserts itself momentarily, and with one pizzicato chord the work ends; the man of stern reality has triumphed."

Recordings

The work has been well served on recordings over the years, although some of these are not currently available.One point worth making is that some works may be represented on CD by one track per movement, several of the available recordings divide the work up. the Naxos recording breaks the music down into six sections; contrast this with the divisions on the Davis recording on Apex, this recording divides the work into 29 separate tracks.; an excerpt from their divisions is shown below:

1	I Falstaff and Prince Henry
2	II Eastcheap [fig.17] 0'26
3	[fig.19] 1'13
4	[fig.25 + 2] 2-11
5	Gadshill [fig.37] 0'37
6	[fig.41] 0'17
7	[fig.43] 2'14
8	[fig.55] 2'01
9	[fig.62] 0-35
10	[fig.63 + 3] 0-52

Elgar's own EMI recording is at the moment only represented by a brief excerpt on a sampler CD of English Music, but we can hope to see it restored to the catalogue at some stage. It was coupled with an account of the First Symphony.

At the bottom end of the market, certainly in terms of price comes Andrew Davis with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. When this was first released it was at full price, now it appears on Apex and is a bargain. Gramophone lauded it thus:

"As digital Falstaffs go, Sir Andrew Davis’s all-too-swiftly deleted 1995 account with the BBC SO remains arguably the front-runner. If both Elgar himself and Barbirolli impart the greater vulnerability and compassion to the illimitably moving closing pages, the irresistible symphonic current coursing through Davis’s meticulously observant conception provides ample compensation. The orchestral playing is splendid, the recording glowingly realistic (the experienced Keener/Faulkner production team working in one of their favourite haunts, St Augustine’s in Kilburn). ... At its new, ludicrously low price, not to be missed "

Also at this price is the Naxos recording from David Lloyd-Jones and the English Northern Philharmonia. This is another well respected recording. The Gramophone review mentioned:

David Lloyd-Jones presides over a consistently involving, honest-to-goodness account of Falstaff. Here is a more propulsive view of Elgar’s masterpiece than Andrew Davis’s outstanding (...) version, not without occasional moments of distracting bluster (for instance, Lloyd-Jones’s handling of the tremendous Gadshill double-ambush is perhaps more excitable than genuinely, coherently exciting), yet still full of engaging character, fresh-faced purpose and agreeable spontaneity. Felicities noted on first hearing (and there are quite a few) include those irresistibly physical gales of laughter which follow Falstaff’s first boastful soliloquy (try from 8'25'' into track 2), a superbly hushed and concentrated transition into the first dream interlude (from 11'06'' in the same track), to say nothing of the trenchancy of the ENP’s lower strings in the scarecrow army’s battle music (track 4, 1'22'' onwards).

I also revelled in Lloyd-Jones’s swaggering treatment of Hal’s now-regal reappearance (track 6, from 2'25'' – altogether more satisfying here than on Davis’s otherwise pretty irreproachable version), while the fat knight’s subsequent hurtful rejection generates a properly giddy thrust. The epilogue is perhaps not as poignant as on some distinguished predecessors (most notably Barbirolli, Davis and the composer himself), but Lloyd-Jones sees to it that we are not emotionally short-changed during these yearningly vulnerable measures.

Throughout, the English Northern Philharmonia respond with enthusiasm and hard-working application (excellent work in particular from principal bassoon and trombones), and the whole enterprise radiates a rude health and homely glow worlds removed from, say, the manicured brilliance of Rattle’s extraordinarily dapper (and, to my ears, frustratingly self-aware) CBSO reading.

Also available is the latest recording from the Hallé, recorded on the back of live performances (at which the various episodes were highlighted by the use of surtitles using Mark Elder's own designations)
Andrew Achenbach, writing in Gramophone described it:

Mark Elder’s stimulating exploration of Elgar on the Hallé’s own label continues with this immaculately prepared and poised account of Falstaff. Elder is a vigilant and witty storyteller, uncovering plenty of detail and counterpoint throughout. What’s missing is harder to define: behind the accomplishment is a sense of calculation that won’t suit all tastes. I don’t register the symphonic thrust behind Elgar’s intricately plotted scheme (the Grandioso return of the Prince Hal theme lacks a clinching swagger); nor do the closing pages distil the glowing humanity and lump-in-the-throat pathos you encounter on Sir John Barbirolli’s 1964 recording (the way Glorious John moulds the dying knight’s final reminiscence of Hal never fails to touch to the marrow).

To sum up his thoughts: "this Hallé CD is an attractive proposition at mid-price."

There is a new release on the Orfeo label which has three pieces inspired by Shakespeare, (Berlioz Béatrice et Bénédict Overture; ELGAR Falstaff Symphonische Study Op. 68; Dvorak Othello Overture Op. 93) - catalogue number C645061 Z played by the Munich Radio Orchestra under John Fiore.
The Falstaff is split into six tracks. These recordings date from 2003. Ordinarily this would be at a higher price, but it its one of those rare offers, whereby a full price CD is packed with a catalogue and put out at a lower price to encourage people to browse the catalogue and order something else.
Central to this new recording is Elgar's symphonic study Falstaff. Unlike Verdi's opera of the same name, it does not deal with the elderly knight's attempts to woo the wily wives of Windsor, but is based primarily on Shakespeare's historical drama Henry IV, highlighting the friendship between the young prince and Sir John Falstaff, a friendship ultimately sacrificed to royal duty by the heir to the throne. Typically Elgarian are the dream sequences in which Falstaff's youth is conjured up in a riot of orchestral colour. No less thrilling are the instrumentation and rhythms with which Elgar contrasts the amiably ambling Falstaff with Prince Hal's self-confident march. This contrast culminates in a highly effective final scene in which Falstaff confronts his young friend one final time at the latter's coronation procession.
Falstaff is framed by two overtures. The first was written by Berlioz for his final opera, Béatrice et Bénédict (1862), which he based on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. In many ways this carefree, vibrant work is untypical of its composer, and yet at the same time it reflects his lifelong engagement with the dramatist's plays. Dvorák's concert overture Othello completes this original compilation, taking as its starting point Shakespeare's tragedy of intrigue but focusing on the extreme passion that it unleashes, a theme that could serve as a motto for the present CD as a whole.

A recording by Sir Adrian Boult has been re-released on the Testament label, but I haven't heard it. His 1973 recording is available, on EMI, on a CD which also includes Paul Tortelier in the Cello Concerto as well as a couple of Elgar's orchestrations of music by Bach and Handel.

I have mentioned Elgar's own recording as being unavailable at present. A similar fate has befallen the Hallé's earlier recording with Sir John Barbirolli (also on EMI).