Sir Arnold Bax Website

www.arnoldbax.net

The story begins in 1981 when my cousin, Violet Powell, neé Alder, was thinking of moving from her beautiful house on the hillside at Malvern Wells into Great Malvern. Well aware of my passion for collecting elderly 78 r.p.m. gramophone records, she told me that about 250 mainly operatic records were awaiting collection. In the 1930s, her parents Evelyn and George Alder used to review the latest releases.  

After having a palatable ‘high tea’, almost as an after thought, ‘Vi’ wondered if I would like to take home a pile of music. I am the sort of person who never refuses a gift. The pile was about 30 mm high and seemed to be all hand written manuscripts. A deceased spider with its partly demolished home plus the dust of forty years adorned the loose sheets and a couple of envelopes. Ever a person to create an enigma, she insisted that I must not part with it and to keep it all with care. Naturally I agreed but could hardly wait to examine my gifts in detail once I had motored back to Kingsbury.  

Tony Dutton

Most of the manuscripts were on 16-stave sheets or in booklets and were compositions and arrangements by my cousin’s father, George Allaby Alder. He came from an illustrious and musical family.  His father had been Dean of Worcester Cathedral. Sadly, he died somewhat prematurely in the late 1930s.  

However several 16-stave pages were written by a different, hand.  My excitement rose to a peak when I saw a heading on one of the sheets that stated in a very neat calligraphy.  

   “Sonata for Piano and Horn”  

    “Dedicated to G. Allaby Alder Esq.”

   “Jan 30   1901”    

    “Arnold E. Trevor Bax”  

This begins, with tempo marked “Allegro molto moderato”, in 2/4 time with four bars introduction by the piano trilling in semiquavers and the horn coming in at the end of the fourth bar with a quaver middle C. There are twelve MS pages but the separate horn part is missing. It reads as an exciting work.  

It took quite a while to sort out and assemble the pages into their ‘running order’. While doing so, I discovered the following autographed similarly by Bax:-  

               “Clarinet Sonata in E Major”    

In this case there was a separate clarinet part. The latter had been transposed.  

There was also a piece titled “Romance for Clarinet and Piano” complete with clarinet part and a single page entitled “Intermezzo” -- clarinet part only.  This appeared to be part of the “Sonata” in a slightly different version.  These pieces had not been autographed but to me they were clearly by the same hand.  

At this point in the narrative I must go back to George Alder’s early days. The family lived in Worcester but moved to Malvern towards the end of the nineteenth century. Shortly afterwards, in 1893, a patriarchal decision was made that the daughter, Mary Beatrice, should be taught the violin. On enquiry, the best tutor to be found was a local man by the name of Edward Elgar. (Mary recounted this experience in an interview on BBC Radio 3 in 1973). (Ref.1) He soon became a close friend of the family and may have encouraged George in his musical career.  

We must now move on to September 1900. The Royal Academy of Music, (in London ) was starting its new term. Amongst the intake of pupils were George Alder and Arnold Bax.  They were drawn together by various interests in common, not least a love of the arts, good food and a similar taste in music. In December that year, as has been noted above, one could conjecture that Bax for his Christmas ‘homework’ composed the Horn Sonata for George. It is a very advanced composition for a 17-year old.  

For a summer holiday in 1901, the Bax family went to Malvern so during that August, Arnold and George saw much of each other. One day Arnold was “perturbed” by a suggestion from George that they should walk over to Birchwood to visit his friend Elgar.  An amusing account of this can be found in Bax’s Autobiography “Farewell my Youth”. (Refs. 2 & 3)  

There is not much more to say about George Alder except that he became a well known local musician and conductor as well as a competent artist.  My mother (who later became a well known artist in Cheshire ) was of the Joyner family that has been based in Malvern for centuries. She was very fond of him and most upset when her much older sister, Evelyn, beat her to the altar.  Evelyn’s daughter Violet was born later.  Sadly, due to the ensuing family feud, there was little communication between us until after my mother left this world in 1974.  

So to return to the more recent course of events: While respecting my cousins’ wishes, I took the MS scores to show to Colin Mawby, while he was still Master of Music at Westminster Cathedral.  I had known him since 1972 after I had applied for (and passed) a strict audition for the newly formed New Westminster Chorus. I believe at that time that he was an adviser to the music publishers Chappell(now Warner Chappell Music Ltd.) and an authority on Bax.  He was excited to see the works and positively identified and authenticated the calligraphy on all of the pages.  

Apart from ensuring the safety of the MS such as enclosing the pages in acid free paper, nothing more was done until after my cousin Violet passed away in 2003.  

To cut a circuitous story short, via the Bax web site I got in touch with three wonderful people: Lewis Foreman, Chairman of the Bax Trust; Richard Adams, who runs the Bax web site and Graham Parlett who, among other musically associated works has compiled a complete catalogue of all Bax’s music  -  complete that is until mine came along!!.  

I invited Graham to my house in Kingsbury to view the scores and he was naturally amazed to see and to add the three (or four) new additions to his list of known Bax works.   The Horn Sonata is now the earliest known dated work by Bax. The earliest prior to it had been an “Intermezzo” for clarinet and piano dated April 1901.  

Lewis Foreman was similarly very pleased to see the MS and said that he would find a good clarinetist to perform the “Sonata” and “Romance”.  Robert Plane, the Principal Clarinet of the BBC Symphony Orchestra of Wales, was invited and agreed. (Robert has extensive experience and is a much sought-after soloist and chamber musician and broadcasts regularly on BBC Radio 3. In addition he has made several recordings.)  

I was even more pleased to hear that Robert, in December 2004, would be making a recording for Naxos of Bax’s early chamber works after Lewis Foreman was able to sort out the legalities of copyright issues and so forth. Robert had a preview of the works at my house well beforehand.  

On my own initiative, I made an appointment with the Librarian of the Royal Academy of Music to show her the scores.   Together with _____ the resident Bax authority of the Academy, a very rewarding hour was spent going through the scores almost bar by bar.  

With written permission from the Sir Arnold Bax Trust, I went ahead to make copies of the MS.   Obviously the local shops’ photocopying services were out of the question for valuable rarities so being in possession of a high quality Epson Printer and scanner attached to an Apple Mac computer, I was able to make the copies myself.  

The 16-stave sheets were somewhere between A3 and A4 in size.   Thus by copying the sheets in a photographic mode, at maximum resolution and printing on 120 gsm paper I got exact reproductions.    My reasonably good knowledge of music enabled me to chop up the A4 pages and join them together without turning semiquavers into quavers and thus without unintentional editing!  Arnold Bax, certainly in these newly discovered works, makes great use of ledger lines above and below the staves. The clarinet part of the piece entitled “Romance” , unlike the other pages, has several markings in both black and red pencil. These pages were copied accurately in a colour mode.  

A complete set of the clarinet pieces was handed over to Robert Plane. The Horn Sonata copies were, later, given to Lewis Foreman who intends to find a suitable horn player and occasion for a first performance.  

The next academically rewarding experience came in December 2004 when Lewis Foreman, Graham Parlett and I were invited to the Royal Academy of Music to hear a first, private performance by Robert Plane and Benjamin Frith. To actually hear the lovely melodies for the first time, so perfectly performed, was a most moving experience.  

Without doubt the two clarinet works will have an impact on the musical world for their sheer beauty of poetic form. The Sonata soon establishes a firm style before developing a searching and lilting melody which builds up to a climax rather in the style of Tchaikovsky.  The sonata form mellows somewhat as the coda approaches but rises to a dramatic finish with the piano almost in competition with the clarinet.  To my mind this was written as a duet and was equally demanding on these two gifted instrumentalists who played to perfection.  

After the recital there was some discussion about a few notes. Fortunately I had brought a magnifying glass which helped to decide that a blotch on the paper was actually a double sharp.   Ben confirmed this in playing the corrected version.   Later in December, a recording was made and these two works will be included together with other chamber pieces by Bax and will be released in 2006.  

A few months ago I contacted the British Library, a major repository of many of Bax’s scores.  They were represented by Dr, Nicolas Bell, Curator of the Music Collections, who was delighted to arrange for their purchase. As my financial situation had recently made a dramatic improvement, I was happy to receive a fraction of the (maybe somewhat ambitious) valuation from a leading auction house. I am more concerned with sharing my discoveries with the rest of the musical world than assisting some miser in salting away the scores as an investment!  

This saga is not quite over. The next thrill will be the first public performance of the Horn Sonata when this can be organised. I feel sure that the shade of my Uncle, which may still visit his old haunts at the Royal Academy of Music, would be delighted.

 References:

 1. Northrop Moore, Jerrold [1984] - Edward Elgar, A Creative Life, p.

172  Oxford University Press.  

2. Ibid.   p. 353

 3. Bax, Arnold, [1943] - Farewell, My Youth. p. 29-31, Longmans,

Green and Co.

                © TONY DUTTON

               Kingsbury, London .

               7th September 2005