I was contacted a couple of days ago by John G saying

I thought I'd check how the website is looking - it seems to have disappeared. ... especially in view of the forthcoming carol from St John's on Sunday ... it's a bit urgent. You do this sort of thing, don't you? Can you help?

Sure enough it really had disappeared. Even Google and Bings cached pages were showing up empty, so it must have been gone for some time. The thing with the coming Sunday is that a new arrangement of a Tranchell's "People, look East" (for SATB by Peter Marchbank) is in the Advent Carol Service from St John's on Radio 3, and we expect a surge of interest.

With an evening to spare I decided to help out, and used the opportunity to have a go with Orchard CMS. We had some fun re-pointing the domain at my hosting, and I had lots of fun with Orchard (maybe some other time I'll post on the pros and cons of Orchard vs mojoPortal).

Anyway, a new site has been created, with much richer content than the original. The address hasn't changed, it's still at www.patranchell.info. John G is feeding me fantastic content, and I have wired up all the essential pages like a biography, contact form, scans of some fantastic hand-written scoring from my copy of the Mayor of Casterbridge, list of published works and recordings, and work in progress on a listing of all known works.

Dear Crispin (or other choral scholar’s name as appropriate)

With any luck, you’ve been having so far a delightful and perhaps profitable vac. May it last as long as poss. Perhaps you’ve caught sight of a book, but maybe it was a mirage. If it occurs too often, it’s best to ask someone if you’re in a library. If they say not, better take a couple of aspirins and put your feet up for a week.

Years ago we all had a laugh when a library turned out to be a mirage. They’d excavated one of those desert dunes in the infertile crescent which turn out to be the remains of large cities, and had come across a complete horde of clay tablets with cuneiform writing,- the library of some pre-diluvian monarch. Some appeared to have secondary markings in each line, immediately taken to be one of the earliest instances of musical notation. The tablets were sent to be cleaned – which should have meant very dainty dusting down with a fine soft paint-brush  of the type used for painting miniature portraits,– but the batch fell into the care of one of those buxom young helpers (female) of no archaeological training, who are better off terrorizing shire horses with a curry-comb. This enterprising young creature promptly put the clay tablets into a bucket of water and gave them a good scrub with her wire-brush normally used for scrubbing her bedroll. Very soon she had a bucket of amorphous clay dumplings & a quantity of prehistoric sludge. And so nobody will ever know what was top of the pops at Tell-Asmar in 2900 B.C. Nor indeed will we ever have to sing a P.A.T. arrangement of the same at an Annual Gathering!

When I reached my Hampshire pleasure-drome, my first chore was to train the giant hogweeds to chase the neighbours’ cats and not me. My two-stroke motor flail was useful in trimming much of my jungle down to knee or shin height. Two dozen young oaks have seeded themselves on my “lawn”, and more in the paddock-like areas. I disturbed countless frogs, voles, bees’ nests (bumble) and such-like. When at last some clearance was complete, I planted a gorgeous array of little blue campanulas. By next morning nothing of them above ground remained to be seen. I assumed it was the local magpies, which in the past I have seen pecking blue-hydrangea flowers to shreds. So I planted more of the campanulas & surrounded them with a protective wire netting covering. To no purpose. The plants had been eaten up entirely. It could not be the various beetles which abound or the larva of the cranefly, since these are carnivores. So I put on my best orange wellies (usually kept for organ-scholars to borrow for pedal-practice) and went to the garden-centre, returning with a bootful of slug-pellets. Next morning, areas of my garden looked like Ypres after an offensive. It seems the slugs had emerged from their lairs by the myriad. They evidently enjoyed the pellets, for after but a nibble they were seemingly struck by an ecstasy so intense they came to a quietus a foot or two away and awaited the next stage of their Kame or Kismet. There were two distinct types,- sleek black ones about an inch or inch-&-a-half long, and a larger tawny-coloured corrugated monster, between 5 and 6 inches in full length when streaking towards some desirable delicacy, and about the thickness of a good large courgette – an inch diameter perhaps. As with butterflies where often the same species differentiates males & females by colour & size (and scent, which we cannot detect), I took it that the black slugs were perhaps the females (“I am black, but comely” – Song of Solomon) and the brown battlers were the males. So I took to making a tour of the garden at twilight and discovered I am host to millions of these marauding molluscs. They aren’t sluggish at all, but move at a rate of knots when given incentive. One large fellow (I observed) having sampled a pellet went on several inches producing a frothy wake like a full-speed power-boat, and then suddenly he split open stem to stern like an old-fashioned sausage in the frying pan, disgorging a quantity of yellow ichor, grey mucus, and much purulent liquescence. Then he lay singularly doggo. “What a tease!” I thought. “I’ll go and get my cross-bow and see if a shot across the bows doesn’t set him on the bolt again.” But I seem to be out of bolts. So I returned with a torch & a canister of salt, and continued my rounds. Coming round a corner by the sweet-peas I suddenly came upon two of the brown fellows attempting to have sex together. “Lawks!” quoth I – what will the neighbours think if I appear to be countenancing homoeo-erotic deviancies in the animal kingdom?” So I covered their (the slugs) confusion with a dash of salt. They liked it a lot, and were still lying on their backs there next morning in blissful meditation, surrounded, alas, by a good deal of ugly lymphatic foam,- “night-soil” I suppose. So I rang up Prof Wigglesworth the redoubtable entomologist & learned that the black & brown are separate varieties, each with their own black males & females or brown males & females. Amen! So that is a relief to know.

I would like to tell you more about Hampshire’s wild-life (which doesn’t mean the juvenile-delinquency & adult-abuse,- but the rarities of the New Forest, like “Rufus’s Stone” – he only had one; or the large spiders in the woods on Old Beacon Hill which live by hunting shrew-mice and the chicks of small birds, and whose mandibles will give your bicycle-tyre a nasty puncture if it annoys them; or our two village witches of the late 17th cent, one bad, one good.) [The black hag put evil spells on people, but the white witch took them off. (Privately, I think they ran a racket. The white one paid the black one to impose the magic which she (the white one) counteracted, receiving a suitable fee from satisfied customers. Meanwhile the black one received presents to avert her possible disposition to cast a spell against you, and the white one received equal considerations to maintain her readiness to help in need, and indeed her resistance to any temptation to turn black too & do you a harm. That’s my theory.

Have you ever seen a spell cast? Well in Europe it is cast, or thrown,- usually by one hand from a position in the air at arm’s-length over the head. The hand is brought down powerfully as if throwing an object (such as an egg or squib or stone) at the feet of the person standing before you about 6-feet away from you. It is a violent gesture, sometimes done several times, counting aloud or in silence, and preceded by the relevant imprecation (or cursing prayer), and sometimes (but not always) followed by some conclusive phrase like “so mote it be”. It is very frightening to witness; and it must be devastating to be the object of the curse. You can be in no doubt at all that you have been cursed, a sensation highly demoralising for a start.]

But I must move on to the purpose of this letter which is to remind you of a few dates.

1. 30 September and 1 October 1988
2. 8 October 1988

First: 30 Sept (Friday): Extra Annual Gathering of Old Boys with Commem Service first. We’ll try to do the same programme exactly as at the last An. Gath. Could we please meet in Chapel at 3 p.m. See details on next sheet.

Next: 1 Oct (Saturday): Master’s installation preceded by Evensong, which means Responses, Mag + Nunc setting, and possibly two anthems. See next sheet.

Finally: 8 Oct (Saturday): 3 p.m. We start Marathon of practice for Term.

Friday 30 Sept 88

3.00 p.m. Rehearsal of material for the day & if possible the morrow. [Psalm 150. Smart: Te Deum. Wood: Heaven. Hymns 165, 379. Silentium. Precamini. Grace. Peace be with you. Tomkins: O yes has any seen a lad? Reger: Abshied. Pearsall: Let us all go maying. Carmen Caianum.]

6.30 p.m. Commem Service.

7.15 for 7.30 p.m. Annual Gathering Dinner & After Dinner Musics

Saturday 1 Oct 88

11.00 a.m. - 12.15 p.m. Rehearsal. [Responses: Smith SATB version. Psalm: 119 vv33-40. Chant 155. (provisionally:) Mag & Nunc: Wood in E flat no 1. Anthems: Byrd: Sing joyfully; Stanford: Ye choirs of new Jerusalem.]

6.30 p.m. Magisterial Installation Service & Ceremony

7.20 p.m. Dinner in Hall.

I hope I am expecting the attendance at the above events.

Please let me know as soon as possible if you are unable to attend. Don’t arrive out of breath (or out of practice).

The following meals if taken in Hall will be at College expense: Fri 30 Sept: Lunch,[Dinner]: Sat 1 Oct: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner; Sun 2 Oct: Breakfast.

Travel expenses from-home-&-back, if necessary, will be refunded.

There will not be reimbursement for those who having travelled to Cambridge opt to stay on right through into Term.

There will be no charge for accommodation in College for the nights 30 Sept, 1 Oct.

It cannot be guaranteed that you will be able to occupy for this week-end the room assigned to you for the ensuing Term.

University Term (the period I believe covered by your room-rent) starts on 1 Oct 88.

Dress for Annual Gathering as usual is D.J. suit + black tie, or feminine equivalent; + surplice for service; + gown for dinner.

--------~~~--------

The time-table for the ‘Marathon’ is on the next sheet; and on the sheet after that are the additional dates in which we are involved. Some of you may wonder what is supposed to be going on, on 9 Dec,- I wonder too.

The basic fact is that I reach next summer the age at which I perforce retire from my University Lectureship. It is an appropriate moment for me to relinquish my various College offices. Hence this is the last Long Vac summons any of you will get from me. The College is therefore busying itself as to finding a successor for me, and have a appointed a committee. This Committee evidently thinks (poor dears) that taking choir-practices is a salient feature of a Precentor’s duties! Whoever they get (if anyone), you yourselves will have had the experience of working with a real live composer of real live music, even if you haven’t enjoyed it as an experience or witnessed any of his more significant output!

--------~~~--------

That seems to be everything that we need to say at this stage.

À bientôt,

yours

Peter T.

Headline: Obituary of Peter Tranchell
Publication Date: September 18, 1993
Source: The Daily Telegraph London
Page: 19
Subjects:
Region: United Kingdom
Obituary: PETER TRANCHELL, the musician and teacher who has died aged 71, was a resourceful and versatile composer.
His most ambitious project was an opera, The Mayor of Casterbridge, adapted from Thomas Hardy's novel. It was originally produced at the Cambridge Arts Theatre in 1951, as part of the Festival of Britain, and revived there in 1959.
The opera was rather patronisingly received, and never attracted further attention from professional companies. Disappointment did not embitter Tranchell. It did, however, cause him to concentrate his energies on teaching.
Peter Andrew Tranchell was born at Cuddalore, India, on July 14, 1922, and educated at Clifton and King's College, Cambridge.
After serving in the Army during the Second World War he resumed his Cambridge studies, and then took up a teaching post at Eastbourne College.
From 1950 to 1989 he was a lecturer in music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge; and from 1960 to 1989 Fellow and director of music at the college.
Tranchell wrote several ballets, including Falstaff (1950), Fate's Revenge, performed by Ballet Rambert at the Lyric, Hammersmith, in 1951, and Images of Love, which was produced at Covent Garden in 1964 with choreography by Kenneth MacMillan. Between 1952 and 1961 he composed nine ballets for the Theatre Royal, Windsor.
He also wrote six musical comedies, including Zuleika, an adaptation of Max Beerbohm's Oxford novel Zuleika Dobson, which was first produced at Cambridge in 1954.
Three years later, after reorchestration, the piece appeared at the Saville Theatre in London, with Mildred Mayne in the title role and scenery and costumes by Osbert Lancaster. But the long and successful run forecast by W A Darlington, The Daily Telegraph's theatre critic, did not materialise.
Tranchell also wrote the music, which was played on pre-recorded tapes, for the Cambridge Latin and Greek plays in 1956, 1957 and 1959. He composed an organ sonata, several choral works including the cantatas This Sorry Scheme of Things (1953) and The Joyous Year (1961), and much church music, including settings of psalms.
He made many arrangements of well-known pieces of English church music for the male voices of the Caius choir. His friends also cherish the many scurrilous, blasphemous and heretical songs he composed for their private consumption, set to beautiful melodies. But these pieces hardly lend themselves to public performance.
Tranchell contributed book reviews to periodicals. In 1952 he wrote a savage polemic for Music and Letters, in which he attacked the contributors to a volume on Benjamin Britten for their jargon and tortuous prose.
Tranchell will be remembered as an outstanding teacher and college man. His genuine concern for the welfare of his charges often led him to dissuade people from going into music because he knew that failure and hurt would be inevitable.
Though he could fly off the handle when his high standards were not achieved, Tranchell was better known for his extraordinary generosity.
Among his pupils was Martin Neary, now organist of Westminster Abbey, and among his closest friends the conductor Raymond Leppard.
Tranchell and Leppard once played Grieg's concerto on two pianos in the college. Tranchell asked: "How old were you when you first played that?" Leppard said he was 10. "You bastard," Tranchell said, "I was 11".
He was a superb pianist. A discriminating colleague who heard him play Liszt's B minor sonata declared it the best performance he had ever heard.
Music was far from being Tranchell's only interest. His knowledge of botany made him a splendid director of gardens at Caius.
His wit and repartee were ever at the ready. Recently he noted that an umpire had been struck dead by lightning during a cricket match. This, he observed, was proof that God was a man.
Tranchell was unmarried.

Intrigued, I quickly found that published details about PAT are sketchy, and there's almost nothing in the way of recordings of his music. I remember singing some of his work at Caius, and that it was entrancing but difficult. YouTube provides this King's College version of "If ye would hear the angels sing", from their 2010 Festival of Nine Thingies:

Mmmm, lovely, but where's the rest? Then I spotted the "Commemoration CD" on the website which promised to include numbers called "Seven Bullocks Escaped" & "The Dog That Sat". That alone was sufficient to persuade me to fork out the £15.

The CD arrived a couple of days ago, and I've played it about 12 times already. It's a bizarre and wonderful mix, being recorded live at first a concert and then a mattins, plus the organ sonata. It's straight in at the upper reaches of my "to be played after much beer" chart.

The concert material is secular (very), including the Thackeray Ditties (complex barbershop expertly performed by the Caius Choir), a moving slab of the Mayor of Casterbridge opera featuring Alan Opie, parts of a cheeky May Week revue (no pyjamas? no toothbrush?), plus the aforementioned bullock titles/dog titles, which turn out to be newspaper cuttings set to psalm or song (and with a nicely sacrilegious "Gloria".. "Story be from the Guardian: And from the Sun, and from the Morning Post" etc). These are performed by "Chorus Caianorum" - presumably ex-choir - not bad apart from one yelping tenor who leaps in slightly early on most entries.

The mattins content, again recorded live, this time featuring a reasonable (though perhaps hung-over?) choir, pianos, violins, and the shocking wheezebox that Caius pass for an organ, consists of a truly surprising setting of Psalm 126 (Lois says it sounds like a rugby song, which is not a criticism when you live in Wales), then the Te Deum in E which could have produced the theme music for Star Wars. Both had me a little baffled on first listen, and subsequently hooked. I'm no liturgical music expert, but to me they just sound engaging, original and moving, and without the irritating or suicidal tendencies that characterize much modern classical stuff.

The CD finishes with the organ sonata, which is apparently a tonal plus Morse code rendition of the letters of the name of Peter Le Huray, organist and presumably buddy of PAT; this kind of thing always raises suspicions that the result may be a victory of clever over good, and I'm not sure whether it isn't. But best not forget this was written about 50 years before the "Endeavour" business. The first movement and third movements at least are growing on me by stealth, especially the demented fairground themes in the third. If only that organ wasn't so peeky - I knew there was a reason I'd bailed out of Cambridge early.

This short note does the composer and the CD no justice, so at the bottom of this post you can play one of the Thackeray Ditties, "A Credo" - easy listening and beautifully made, and with a strapping top C for the sops at the end - if you like it, fork out for the CD and spread the word.

The lyrics:

I.

For the sole edification

Of this decent congregation,

Goodly people, by your grant

I will sing a holy chant -

I will sing a holy chant.

If the ditty sound but oddly,

'Twas a father wise and godly,

Sang it so long ago -

Then sing as Martin Luther sang,

As Doctor Martin Luther sang:

"Who loves not wine, woman and song,

He is a fool his whole life long!"

II.

He, by custom patriarchal,

Loved to see the beaker sparkle;

And he thought the wine improved,

Tasted by the lips he loved -

By the kindly lips he loved.

Friends, I wish this custom pious

Duly were observed by us,

To combine love, song, wine,

And sing as Martin Luther sang,

As Doctor Martin Luther sang:

"Who loves not wine, woman and song,

He is a fool his whole life long!"

III.

Who refuses this our Credo,

And who will not sing as we do,

Were he holy as John Knox,

I'd pronounce him heterodox!

I'd pronounce him heterodox,

And from out this congregation,

With a solemn commination,

Banish quick the heretic,

Who will not sing as Luther sang,

As Doctor Martin Luther sang:

"Who loves not wine, woman and song,

He is a fool his whole life long!"