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The Musical Development of 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 Harriet Cohen,' 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 Overture', 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 Royal Academy of Music 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 Hampstead: 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 chamber music, 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 Cecil Sharp".* 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) Nocturne 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 Frederick Corder, 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 Richard Strauss— 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 The Times, 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.
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