So conventional has the Final Night time of The Proms come to appear that one may think it has been the identical since Queen Victoria hummed ‘Rule Britannia’ to herself within the bathtub. However like many traditions it’s a rather more latest invention. Each one is aware of, as Henry Wooden knew, that you must finish with a celebration, however what sort of get together ought to finish The Proms?
What was the thought behind The Final Night time at The Proms?
Initially the Proms below Henry Wooden and Robert Newman had been rather more populist than these days. Someplace of their background there had been expertise of organising live performance sequence involving promenading audiences (standing, or quite strolling round – forbidden now), in addition to widespread ballad concert events. The latter lay behind the thought of getting the viewers take part singing, maybe rather than coughing or fainting. However the adventurousness and high-mindedness of Wooden led to an increasing repertoire of classical music together with new works by Richard Strauss, and cycles of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven symphonies. All of the extra motive to let one’s hair down on the final live performance to emphasize that work was now performed and it was time for a celebration.
What music is performed on the Final Night time of the Proms?
The primary aspect within the present Final Night time sequence was Wooden’s Fantasia on British Sea Songs of 1905. Initially, this had been written as one other piece in a sequence introducing the orchestra to new listeners: Wooden typically included an operatic fantasia initially of concert events for this goal. Every participant who performed a solo was named within the programme and newcomers to symphony concert events might discover ways to admire the fun of concert-going. By the Nineteen Thirties the Fantasia had turn out to be entrenched as the primary piece within the Final Night time. Too entrenched for some, as there was a transfer in 1953 to take away the Fantasia from the Final Night time, a transfer which was bitterly opposed by some Promenaders (prommers). Who received is historical past.
The second aspect to seem (after all other than the British Nationwide Anthem ‘God Save The Queen’ that ended the live performance and the sequence) was ‘Land of Hope and Glory’. This had been first carried out in its instrumental kind in 1901, when it was encored twice, after which carried out by Elgar in 1902 with the phrases as a part of the Coronation Ode, for which they have been written. It appeared once more in 1945 within the Final Night time as a part of the victory celebrations marking the tip of World Struggle II. But it surely nonetheless was not enshrined as a everlasting fixture on the remaining live performance.
The final piece to be a part of the ‘conventional’ Final Night time was Parry’s Jerusalem. An odd inclusion in some methods as it isn’t ‘patriotic’ in the best way ‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ are, and there may be an irony in the best way half-crazed audiences crammed with flag-waving euphoria shout the phrases ‘nor shall I stop from psychological strife’. However, then, not figuring out what Blake’s phrases imply whenever you sing them has turn out to be one other British custom not confined to the Proms.
All of the jigsaw items have been there fairly early on, however it took some time for the completed Final Night time to take form, mattress down and turn out to be a ‘custom’. Enter Sir Malcolm Sargent.
When was the Final Night time of the Proms first televised?
Sir Malcolm was invited to take over the chief conductorship of the Proms in 1947, the identical yr because the Final Night time was televised for the primary time. Geese and water have by no means been so conjoined. His flamboyant platform method, full on the Final Night time with white carnation similar to Henry Wooden, and his want and talent as an envoy for classical music made him supreme.
Musically rather more conservative than Wooden, he noticed the Final Night time as a automobile for reaching the widest viewers with him because the triumphant captain of the ship. One controller of BBC’s Gentle Programme, on which the Final Night time was broadcast, noticed how shut the admiration of Sargent’s viewers was to that of Frank Sinatra’s.
Sir Malcolm insisted on the sample of the Final Night time. The live performance should finish with the sequence of Wooden’s Fantasia with ‘Rule Britannia’, Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance No. 1 with ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, Parry’s Jerusalem, all for the viewers to sing alongside below the ‘management’ of ‘Flash Harry’ whose best conducting reward had been marshalling huge choral forces. After which the speech.
Henry Wooden had given the primary Final Night time speech in 1941 at a time when the Proms’ future was in some jeopardy. He gave one other in 1942, nearly by probability. However from 1947 with Sargent, it turned a fixture: one which survived for him till 1967 when, regardless of the terminal most cancers that prevented his conducting, he appeared on the Final Night time throughout Colin Davis’s speech. Cheered by the Prommers to the rafters, he held (if reminiscence serves me nicely) a ‘ticket’ for the 1968 season, one that everybody knew he wouldn’t have the ability to attend. It was a transferring and brave act.
The Final Night time has turn out to be a warhorse, for some the enemy throughout the gates.
Has the Final Night time on the Proms format ever modified?
Fairly early in Sargent’s tenure strikes have been made within the BBC to vary the Final Night time, however they have been seen off by the now militantly party-loving Prommers with their fancy hats and, ultimately, party-poppers and streamers. Successive controllers of the Proms despised it.
William Glock in 1969 tried to take away Elgar’s march, however howls of protest led to its last-minute reinstatement. In a spirit of ‘authenticity’ and homage, he restored Wooden’s full Fantasia, which Sargent had carried out with cuts.
On this century John Wilson has had a go at re-scoring these and in 1970 Malcolm Arnold was commissioned to compose a substitute Fantasy for Viewers and Orchestra the place a five-time model of a horn-pipe left a disgruntled viewers who couldn’t take part simply. It was by no means performed once more, simply as Malcolm Williamson’s The Stone Wall, full with composer ebulliently showing in a Scottish hat, has gone.
After Glock, Robert Ponson allegedly didn’t all the time keep for the second half of the Final Night time, and John Drummond despised it. Since then successive Proms administrators have labored on the precept: should you can’t beat ’em be part of ’em, certainly outdo ’em. The Final Night time, now acknowledged as not a part of the ‘actual’ live performance sequence, has been enlarged to incorporate the Proms within the Park.
However these for whom the Final Night time is a jingoistic, flag-waving, bad-behaving binge bought a quick second when change appeared potential.
This was the destruction of New York’s twin towers in 2001. A sober environment prevailed and British patriotism held fingers with the US. The American Nationwide Anthem, the Star-Spangled Banner, joined the British, and the live performance contained the final a part of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The American conductor of the BBC SO, Leonard Slatkin, carried out Barber’s Adagio for Strings.
However such an event couldn’t be used as an instrument for change, even when the audiences wished it, which it appears they don’t.
The Final Night time may ultimately change as Britain’s ruling of the waves or its world affect stretching ‘wider nonetheless and wider’ turn out to be extra indifferent from actuality. When psychological strife actually does come into play and the vacancy of the feelings turns into obvious, then change will come. However will or not it’s to affix forces with the remainder of the sequence? I doubt it.
This text was first printed within the Proms 2007 difficulty of BBC Music Journal
