Harry Plunket Greene - Gerontius and After

Gerontius and After

Plunket Greene was a friend of Elgar's, and appeared in his Malvern Concert Club events. He was the original baritone in the first (October 1900) performance (Birmingham Festival) of Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, alongside Marie Brema (angel) and Edward Lloyd (soul), under Hans Richter. In June 1900 Elgar had written to Jaeger, 'he sings both bass bits and won't they suit him. Gosh.' Although his recordings, and some commentators, suggest the voice was not a large one, it must have been capable of sustaining and projecting a considerable tone at this time, for both the Gerontius baritone solos require this. Moreover, for this most personal of his works, Elgar must have felt some real aptness in the choice.

Arthur Somervell's song-cyle, on Tennyson's 'Maud' was originally produced (with twelve songs) in 1898 and was championed by Plunket Greene. In 1899 he married Gwendolen Maud, the youngest daughter of Hubert Parry, and their first son was born in 1901. He also gave the first performance of Somervell's 'A Shropshire Lad' cycle, at the Aeolian Hall on 3 February 1904, and so had the distinction of being the first to sing settings of A. E. Housman's lyrics, which afterwards became so fundamental an inspiration to the composers associated with the English song revival of that period.

Plunket Greene included a selection from the Songs of Travel by Ralph Vaughan Williams in recital in February 1905. Then (or soon afterwards) the composer heard him and dedicated the songs to him, and Greene afterwards quoted from them, and from Silent Noon (from the House of Life cycle), in his work on Interpretation in Song. Greene was responsible for establishing these songs in the English concert repertoire, where he was constantly attempting to raise the standard and quality of appreciation of English song through his programming.

He supported Gervase Elwes from the start of his professional career and was his lifelong friend. At Elwes' audition for the Royal College of Music in 1903 Greene wrote to encourage him with the favourable reactions of Parry and Stanford, and soon afterwards put him up for the Savile Club in London. In 1906, he joined the party at Brigg to sing in the second festival there organized by Elwes and Percy Grainger, and declared his wish to be in many more of them. When Elwes died in 1921, Greene wrote 'I always felt he was the man I most looked up to.' 'In the St Matthew Passion, (he) made us feel that he of all men was best fitted to tell us the greatest story in the world.'

Plunkett Greene's recordings were made first for the Gramophone Company, in 1904-1906. He included folk-songs in his recitals, according to them the same values of diction, phrasing, rhythm, and interpretative sincerity which he brought to art-songs. In later years, as he moved into the field of song-lecturing, he did great service to the cause of British folk-music. His last recordings were made by the electric process for Columbia Records: his late recording of 'Poor old horse' is an affecting example.

On January 24, 1910 he appeared in the memorial concert at Queen's Hall for August Jaeger (Elgar's 'Nimrod'), singing a group of songs by Walford Davies, and Hans Sachs's monologue from Die Meistersinger. He made his first appearance in Henry Wood's Promenade Concerts at the Queen's Hall in October 1914 singing Stanford's Songs of the Sea with the Alexandra Palace Choral Society. He had declined to fulfil an engagement to sing them there for the Stock Exchange Orchestral Society in 1907 on hearing that they still used the high English Concert pitch.