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Home , Arnold Bax

THE MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT OF ARNOLD BAX

BY R. L. E. FOREMAN

ONE of the most enjoyable of musical autobiographies is Arnold Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021 Bax's.1 Written in Scotland during the Second War, when he felt himself more or less unable to compose, it brilliantly evokes the composer's life up to the outbreak of the Great War, through a series of closely observed anecdotes. These include portraits of major figures of the time—Elgar, Parry, Mackenzie, Sibelius—making it an important source. Yet curiously enough, though it is the only extended account of any portion of Bax's life that we have, it is not very informative about the composer's musical development, although dealing very amusingly with individual episodes, such as the first performance of 'Christmas Eve on the Mountains'.* Until the majority of Bax's manuscripts were bequeathed to the British Museum by ,' it was difficult to make even a full catalogue of his music. Now it is possible to trace much of his surviving juvenilia and early work and place it in the framework of the autobiography. In following the evolution of what was a very complex musical style during its developing years it is necessary to take into account both musical and non-musical influences. Bax's early musical influences were Wagner, Elgar, Strauss and Liszt—the latter he referred to as "the master of us all".* Later an important influence was the Russian National School, while other minor influences are noticeable in specific works, including Dvorak (particularly in the first string quartet) and Grieg (in the 'Symphonic Variations'). Irish life and literature was very important to Bax all his life and it had a very profound effect on him. It seems to have acted as a catalyst, together with Irish folksong, in producing his own very personal style from these varied influences. Folksong was of im- portance, though not in the overt way in which English folksong affected Vaughan Williams and those composers who created a conscious national folksong style early in this century. Indeed, apart from one youthful work, the 'Irish ', Bax only once uses a folksong in his mature music—in the Phantasy for viola and orchestra of 1920.

1 'Farewell my Youth1 (Longmans, 1943). • Ibid., pp. 80-88. * Bax's manuscript music in the British Museum will be found at Add. 50,173-81; 53.735! 54.395; 54.724-fi'. Quoted by Mrs. X. Fleiichmann in her unpublished memo 59 Of the major figures that were produced by the at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, all students of Corder, including Bantock and Holbrooke, the only one to have really gained even a foothold in the repertory is Bax, who was also the only one to have anything really serious to do with folksong.' This musical development is closely tied to his social background. He was born in Streatham, at Heath Villas (at one corner of Clapham Common), in 1883—an area which, even

late in the century, retained a few surviving features of its former Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021 village character. Brought up in a comfortable middle-class atmos- phere—money was never one of Bax's worries, as it was a crippling one to a composer like Holbrooke—he was more influenced by his sensitive and cultured mother than by his father, whose professional interests and passion for the family genealogy kept him preoccupied. His early introduction to music was through playing the piano. He tells us: "I cannot remember the long-lost day when I was unable to play the piano—inaccurately."* Orchestral music was first savoured at August Mann's Saturday afternoon concerts at the Crystal Palace, and subsequent browsing through bound volumes of past programmes further widened his musical horizon. When he was ten the family moved to : Bax has recorded how im- portant the large garden of this house, 'Ivybank', was to him at the time: It has always been a matter of great regret to me, that I was not brought up in the country. But failing that, my boyhood's home could be counted the next best thing. We had a large and beautiful garden.' The move was a good one as far as Bax's musical development was concerned; he made his first encounter with , took some violin and piano lessons, and at the age of twelve or so made his first tentative attempts at composition. These youthful attempts prompted his father after a year or so to seek professional advice as to whether a musical career was possible for his son, and on being advised that it was, sent him to study at the Hampstead Conservat- oire, "an institution ruled with considerable personal pomp by the afterwards celebrated ".* Bax's earnest surviving compositions date from this period, in a note book containing 'Clavierstiike by A. E. T. Bax 1897-8'.* Its 28 pages of music contain: Minuet in E minor (p. 1) • Bantock't most successful music dates from his discovery of Scottish folksong during the First War. • 'Farewell ray Youth', p. 11. He very quickly became a brilliant sight-reader and improviser. Eleanor Farjeon in her 'Edward Thomas: the last four years' (1958) wrote (p. 243): "Arnold improvised gloriously—no other musician has given me so much pleasure on a piano played in a room". • From Bax's radio talk, 6 May 1949, preserved in the BBC archives on disc X 13,389. • 'Farewell my Youth', p. 16. » British Museum, Add. 54,768.

60 Two Hungarian Dances: (1) B(? minor, 'Ra's dance' (pp. 2-3) (2) A minor, 'On the mountains' (pp. 4-5) Three Mazurkas: A minor (p. 6) (2) B minor (P-7) (3) C minor (p. 8) Two scherzi: (1) A major (p. 9) (2) E major (pp.. 10-11) Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021 Prelude in G major (p. 12) in B major (pp. 13-16) Menuet in E minor (pp. 17-21) (written out for small orchestra, flute, oboe, clarinet, basoon, strings) Sonata in D minor: No. 5 (pp. 22-28) (unfinished) Of these pieces the Nocturne in B major is probably the most assured: Andante etpreuivo

but the two Hungarian Dances show even at this early stage in the composer's development that he was already thinking in terms of programme music. The opening of'On the Mountains' demonstrates his technical limitations, immediately prior to his first formal tuition:

Allegro vivmce fkriao quasi ecfto

II basso xtacmto, smpn In September 1900 he went to the Royal Academy of Music, then still in Tenterden Street. Here he came under the influence of , of whom he wrote: A man of emotional and somewhat melancholy temperament . . . still living in the exciting period of his own youth, the late seventies 61 and eighties. The pre-Raphaelites were then at the height of their reputation and influence and Wagner's empire was at last fully established throughout the world of music. These masters—together with William Morris, of whose Kehnscott books he possessed a fine collection—were the aesthetic gods of Frederick Corder. I fancy that after Wagner his choice among composers would have fallen upon Dvorak ... he was ever eager to point out the Czech composer's piquant rhythmical ingenuities ... and the picturesqueness of his harmonic devices.10

Corder did little to stem his growing Wagner-worship, as Bax Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021 admitted at the end of his life: For a dozen years of my youth I wallowed in Wagner's music to the almost total exclusion—until I became aware of — of any other.11 A number of songs, written in 1900 immediately before Bax started at the Royal Academy of Music, have recently come to light among the papers left to the British Museum11 by Harriet Cohen. These show a considerable advance over his previous attempts at composition, and we can see the gathering complexity of the piano parts as his technique grew. Indeed overwritten piano parts mar many of his early and otherwise successful songs. A typical example of these early songs is a setting of Browning's 'Wanting is what', dated 25 March 1900. It opens with a 20-bar introduction:

The vocal line when it appears is a little obvious and naive:

ft u tf. 1 1 i Wint - ing whit Sum - mer re - dun - dint Blue - tun a - rt u tf, £ J J r - bnn - dam Where is the bleu? Where i» the blotW? However, in his setting of Hans Christian Andersen's 'I love thee!', dated 13 May 1900, the young composer produced his most con- vincing early piece (see p. 63). The apparent metrical inequalities in the piano part are possibly carelessness rather than experimen- tation with voice and piano in different metres. Also dating from 1900 is a 'Marcia trionfale', a violin sonata and doubtless other works. It is possible to add very considerably to the catalogue of Bax's works in the fifth edition of 'Grove', as regards 10 , 27 August 1932, p. 12. u The National and English Review, exxxviii, March 1952, p. 173. "Add. 54,776. 62 [An euct trxnjcrifrt of Bax't MS.] Moderate con pauione

My pre - tent joy mjr fii - ture'j hope in thee Ji J..J

PP i r »jr Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021

Q u

ibou of my hc»rt the fint fond thought shill be

P r r P f both juvenilia and mature work. The short score of an orchestral 'Love Song' survives from 1902. It was in the following year that Bax had his first performance—at an Academy student concert at the end of his third year as a student there. The work was an Irish dialect song called "The Grand Match'. Later the same year, in the autumn term of 1903, an Andante in A for string quartet, a movement from one of his two early quartets, was played. 1904 was a good year for Bax. His writing was growing in fluency and self-confidence. The songs written that year still exhibit the overwritten accompaniments that rather spoil them, although in the 'Celtic Song Cycle' he produced the very earliest piece that is still worth performance today: it was his first approach to a personal characteristic style, although still marred by the faults that beset other early songs. Overwritten accompaniments celebrated his achievement of real fluency, though not necessarily the achieve- ment of a personal style. His writing for orchestra during this year, his last complete one at the Academy, begins to show the germs that will eventually flower in his mature work, particularly in 'Cathaleen ni Houlihan', a short tone-poem after Yeats (not actually finished until 1905), which appears to have been performed for the first time by the R.C.M. Students' Association Orchestra last October. The typically Baxian textures are apparent, and the melodic writing, which celebrates its composer's discovery of things Irish:

Lento ma non troppo ^_ „ VioUj , AM -ft M. +- j though perhaps somewhat characterless, indicates the way in which he was growing as an artist; most important of all perhaps is the subject matter. In 1904 Bax had two performances: three songs from the 'Celtic Song Cycle' were given in November, and in December the '' for viola and piano was played at the Aeolian Hall—Bax's earliest association with , with whom he was later to record his .1* In 1905 an orchestral work at last achieved performance. The composer has recounted in 'Farewell my Youth'1* how he won the Medal with a set of 'Symphonic

Variations' and subsequently conducted them at a Patron's Fund Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021 public rehearsal—an event that was to result in his eschewing conducting for the rest of his life. Another short orchestral piece, 'A Connemara Revel', was played under the baton of Alexander Mackenzie later the same year—Bax's first orchestral work to achieve a public performance. One review—in the Musical Times— described it as "a neatly written overture".1' Bax was one of the founders of the Society of British Composers, and his association with this body during its early days brought him into contact with Edwin Evans, who became one of his most con- vincing propagandists—a debt which Bax repaid with the dedication of his . In 1906 he went to Dresden, widening his musical experience at opera and concerts. Back in England at the end of that year he broke his resolve never to conduct (for the first and last time), when he introduced his 'Irish Overture' at a Municipal Orchestra concert. The music was described as: Allegro vivace in E minor. A brilliant and lighthearted representation of several sides of Irish character, this Overture has much in it that is interesting. The composer is already favourably known as the writer of several Celtic pieces . . . only two actually Irish tunes are used: the well known Emer's Farewell to Cuchullin and one of the traditional Caiones . . . The Overture is intended to represent for the most part the lighter side of Irish life." He returned to Dresden in January 1907, and it was at about this time that the more experimental of his works—works that remained unfinished—were attempted. A symphony in F is dated 3 April 1907." Only two movements were actually finished, and these only in short score; they are Intermezzo (based on a programme after Hofmansthaal's 'Der Tor und der Tod') and Finale. The writing is very Straussian: in one place a figuration reminiscent of 'Don Quixote' appears. Yet even on this manuscript, on some spare staves at the end, Bax jotted down some Irish folksongs. It has often been remarked upon that he might well have been

u In 1929 Bax and Tertii recorded the viola sonata for Columbia. The records were never issued, although the original test-pressings are preserved at Yale University (WAX 4949/54) > the British Institute of Recorded Sound owns a tape, No. 198 W I. "pp. 15-18. " May 1905, p. 330. " Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra, programme note, 13 December 1906. " The short score is preserved in the Bax Memorial Room, . 64 successful as a composer of opera. Later in life he himself was adamant. However, in his 1949 radio talk he mentioned two which he had attempted early in his career, though one progressed no further than the libretto and the other only to a few sketches. The first was an Irish folk comedy, the second a five-act drama called 'Deidre', from which two short fragments of orchestral music survive in short score.1' It is curious to contrast these rather tentative grapplings with really large-scale musical construction—something Bax had not previously attempted—with a choral work finished in Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021 March 1907. The ballad cantata 'Fatherland', for tenor, chorus and orchestra, was his first attempt at choral music. Again the writing is assured, if melodically somewhat banal; however, the work was a great success as a patriotic piece during the First War, and it achieved performance and print relatively quickly, being first played in September 1908 and published by Novello the following year. After leaving the Academy it was a good five years before Bax even began to establish himself, and nearly twenty before he became an accepted major figure on the musical scene. He was lucky to have a private income and could devote himself to travel and composition. He continued to compose, gradually building up a body of work behind him, as the lists in the Society of British Composers Year- books show.1' In 1907 his first work was published, again under the auspices of the Society of British Composers, whose Avison Edition issued his trio for violin, viola and piano and some songs. During Bax's life there were several concerts devoted to his music, the most celebrated of which was the one which the publishers of his mature work, Murdoch, promoted in 1922. The first of these took place in the Aeolian Hall on 16 July 1908 and consisted of the early and overlong (of which only one movement survives today in the form of the charming 'Lyrical Interlude') and some songs. The notice of this concert in The Times is of considerable interest, and as it appeared only in an early edition which is not available from either The Times' office or the British Museum, it is quoted fully, by courtesy of the City Librarian of Exeter, where a file of this particular edition is maintained: The concert given at Aeolian-hall on Thursday evening showed Mr. Arnold Bax as a composer of great inventive power. In a quintet for strings, using two violoncellos, which was played by the Wesserley Quartet with Mr. R. W. Tabb as second Violoncello, his facility of invention keeps the interest alive, though it leads him to spin out the work to extreme length. Its four movements are built upon themes which in themselves are simple, and yet have strong character; but the innumerable subsidiary figures with which he continually adorns them sometimes give a rather overloaded effect. The ensemble is 1§ They were shown at the Bax Exhibition at the Central Music library, Westminster, in October 1968. lf The Society of British Composers published two yearbooks, the first for 1907-8, the second for 1912.

65 difficult, and might, surely, be simplified in many places without musical loss, and, indeed, some moments of repose, especially in the slow movement, would be a gain to the listener. Mr. Bax's inventive power is apt to become a serious hindrance to the success of his songs, a large number of which were cleverly sung by Miss Ethel Lister. Many of them are settings of poems by "Fiona McLeod", and bear the stamp of sincerity of thought and aim. They are generally, however, over-elaborated, especially in the piano accompaniments. Even such a simple lyric as "Thy dark eyes to mine" was full of devices to give colour which were not needed, and the

"Celtic Lullaby" made use of a kind of vocal declamation as well as Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021 ornamental piano passages which were quite out of keeping with the feeling of the poem." In 1908 Bax started to write the cycle of tone poems which he called 'Eire', and which are the beginning of his truly mature style as we know it today. The first of these, 'Into the Twilight', was introduced by and the New Symphony Orchestra in April 1909, and the following year , at Elgar's instigation, asked Bax for a work for the Promenade Concerts and gave the first performance of the second poem of the cycle, 'In the Faery Hills'. The diird, 'Ros-Catha', would appear never to have been performed, although it still survives" and deserves to have at least an airing. 1910 was the year of the composer's journey to Russia." Russian opera and ballet had a much greater influence on his musical style than has been generally realized. His first encounter with the Russian Imperial Ballet had an almost physical impact: "I was so headily excited that I came near to casting myself from the dress circle into the stalls". •• Out of this came sonatas for piano, and violin and piano, and also several piano miniatures. It is surprising that he did not write a ballet score that achieved any lasting success, for his talents were admirably suited to such a task. In his early twenties he must have been interested, since there survives an undated short score of two movements of a Ballet Suite" which from the handwriting and style obviously pre-date the Russian trip. After his return from Russia Bax wrote a full length ballet 'Tamara' or 'King Kojata', which however, was never orchestrated or produced. Aloys Fleischmann wrote of this work: This is a piano score of ninety-two closely-written pages, consisting of a Prelude and Two Acts, in thirty numbers, based on a Litde- Russian fairy tale, and dedicated to "the divine dancer Madame Karsavina, whose wonderful art inspired this work". The score is a newly-conceived and elaborately wrought stage work, and though its occasional blend of rich neo-romantic colour with a modal idiom may show the influence of the Russian school, especially of Rimsky-Korsakov, it is an individual creation, full of typically

10 The Timts, Monday, 20 July 1908, early edition, p. 6. 11 British Museum, Add. 54,734. 11 See 'Farewell my Youth', pp. 63-79. n Ibid., p. 70. 11 Britiih Museum, Add. 54,732. 66 Baxian fingerprints, the movements clear-cut and sharply differ- entiated, with a big Waltz (foreshadowing Mediterranean), a Polka, a Polonaise, a Buffoon's Dance, A Galop and a crowning Apotheosis." In this light the authenticity and brilliance of 'The Truth about the Russian Dancers', written after the First War, comes as no surprise, especially when one remembers that during 1917, 1918 and 1919 Bax had also written the ballets 'The Frogskin' and 'Between Twelve and Three' as well as the 'Russian Suite' for Diaghilev and the piano interlude 'Slave Girl' for Tamara Karsavina. At about the time of the Russian trip Bax wrote 'Enchanted Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021 Summer' for two sopranos, chorus and orchestra, his largest work up to that time, which was published by Riorden in vocal score in 1911 and played for the first time in March 1912. Also in 1912 he orchestrated a work that had been in short score for three years, and might well have achieved lasting popularity but for the war: a 'Festival Overture', justifiably described at the time as being the work of "an Irish Dvorak". It was written in 1909, orchestrated in Ireland in 1911, and finally given in March 1912. It was played several times during the next two years and became quite popular. Bax wrote that it was intended to evoke the festival spirit in a riotous mood, somewhat akin to that of a Continental carnival. There is no 'realism' in the piece, however, the composer being content to suggest the atmosphere of Bohemian revel in terms of absolute music." Bax was married in 1911, and began to write the colourful and complex orchestral music by which he is remembered today, mainly tone poems for large orchestras. 'Christmas Eve on the Mountains' achieved one performance, in 1913; the 'Four Pieces for Orchestra' came before the public gradually, two in 1913, the complete set in 1914. 'Spring Fire'," a large-scale tone poem that Bax called "a freely worked symphony in four connected sections", was first per- formed by the Kensington Symphony Orchestra last December, and another beautiful work, 'Nympholept', had to wait until 1961 for a performance. We may wonder with The Times critic: Why such a pleasing piece should have to wait over 45 years for a concert performance is a mystery ... in Bax's strong point—colour— it excels. In a letter written to Philip Heseltine early in the First War Bax spoke of his hopes for his recently finished work: I have done a good deal since the Autumn, including some settings for voice and orchestra of poems from The Bard of the Dimbovitza. (Do you know this book? It is wonderful stuff.) I have also written a

" Rtcordtd Sound, Jan.-April 1968, Nos. 29-30, pp. 275-6. " Programme note to fint performance, Queen's Hall, 27 March 1912. 17 The score of this worlc was destroyed in Chappcll's fire in 1964. However, another previously unknown manuscript copy of the score has recently been discovered and n now in the British Museum, Add. 54,739.

67 piano quintet and finished off a Symphonic work called Nympholept both of which pieces I believe to be representative of the best I can do at present*' By the time the War loomed, and Bax passed the milestone of 30 years old, he was still not fully accepted as a major figure, although recognized as an important rising star in British music. It was not until after the War when the large number of major works he created during the conflict were played and he started on his symphonies that he was at last recognized as the important, though isolated, figure we can now see him to be. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/LII/1/59/1326778 by guest on 30 September 2021

[Thanks are due to Miss Pamela Willetts of the Department of Manu- scripts, British Museum, and to Professor Aloys Fleischmann of University College, Cork, for giving information about manuscripts in their care, and to Professor Fleischmann for providing copies of some manuscripts. Thanks are also due to the Borough Librarian of Bournemouth and the City Librarian of Exeter for providing copies of material reproduced in this article.]

11 British Museum, Add. 53,809, I.

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