The Sunday Listen: 'Farewell to Stromness' by Peter Maxwell Davies
One of my students, Nigel, introduced me to this week’s gem of a Sunday Listen.
‘Farewell to Stromness’ is a lovely, folk-tinged, neoclassical pastoral by Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016). Don’t be fooled by its calm, sweet—sounding exterior, because underneath belies a more complex story.
This piece was originally composed as a short simple interlude for the composer’s ‘Yellow Cake Revue’, a sequence of cabaret-style numbers protesting against uranium mining in the Orkney Islands, where the composer lived at the time. The title of the piece refers specifically to the town of Stromness, and the main melodic refrain is inspired by traditional Scottish folk music.
‘Farewell to Stromness’ isn’t particularly indicative of Maxwell Davies’ creative output, which is often noticeable both for its visceral sound-world and for its avant-gardism. ‘Farewell to Stromness’ is certainly among his most immediately accessible and most enchantingly simple melodies. So simple and accessible, in fact, it has the immediate resonance of one of those tunes that’s been around forever, passed on from field to field over the generations, and subsequently has become perhaps his most performed work.
Davies noted in an interview: 'My little piano piece Farewell to Stromness has almost become a folk tune. People just say, ‘I like that piece,’ and they don’t know who wrote it. And that’s very unusual, for a so-called serious composer, to write a piece that people like so much, and they don’t care who it’s by.'
The landscape and history ‘Farewell to Stromness’ evokes by way of its subtle referencing to traditional folk culture (what Ralph Vaughan Williams called “the individual flowering on a common stem”) gives it a powerful sense of nostalgia and mass appeal, perhaps bringing the composer’s true intention into focus. When you’re struggling to be heard, sometimes the simplest message cuts through most powerfully.
Only ever meant as an interlude, the piece feels like a cool, clear draught of water, something beautiful, and simple, and ever so vital, like much of native natural landscape the composer was concerned was becoming increasingly despoiled by modern life.