Some Unpublished Works of
Arnold Bax
by Colin Scott-Sutherland
THE SIR ARNOLD BAX WEB SITE
Last Modified May 18, 1997
Note: Musicologist Colin
Scott-Sutherland is well known and loved to all Baxians. He wrote
the pioneering study on Bax's life and music titled simply, Bax,
which was published in 1972. He is currently working on a book that
will explore the creative productions of Bax's teenage years. The
article below was written back in 1963 for the Bax Society and it is
as pertinent today was it was 34 years ago. I greatly appreciate
Colin allowing me to post it here.
With the exception of those kenspeckle figures, Charles Ives and
Khaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji, I can think of few composers who
deliberately hide their light under a bushel. The death of most
creative artists who reach any status during their lifetime, and the
subsequent bringing to light of unpublished sketches and MSS.,
seldom alter materially previous critical assessment of their work
(This of course does not take into account such tremendous fragments
as Doktor Faust, Lulu or Moses und Aron.). To the musicologist and
biographer such discoveries are rare treasures - but the resultant
illumination cast upon the music is, with few exceptions, a
sidelight rather than a floodlight.
It is, however, disturbing to encounter amongst the unpublished
compositions of a composer of such eminence as Arnold Bax, no less
than five of his most significant major works, to say nothing of a
very considerable handful of original and interesting scores of
lesser dimensions. There is not room here to enter into the
economics of the case. Whether the mere publication of these scores
would greatly alter Bax's position today (November 1963) is open to
argument. All his symphonies, with the lamentable exception of the
Seventh, are at the present time available in full scores, admirable
models of music printing. Yet amongst those MSS. lie such important
compositions as Symphonic Variations for piano and orchestra, Winter
Legends, for piano and orchestra, the violin Concerto - although
issued in piano reduction - the Concertante for piano (LH) and
orchestra, the Concertante for three solo instruments, and the great
final seventh Symphony, all but the first, which is dated 1918,
works of his maturity. Surely this indicates appalling neglect of
one who, by virtue of his position as Master of the Royal Music
alone ought, however strongly he would have repudiated such a
suggestion, to have become a national institution.
Closer study of these relatively inaccessible scores reveals much
that is not generally known, and helps greatly toward a correct
critical assessment of Bax's work, putting into proper focus his
creative inclinations. The first broadcast performance in this
country of the seventh Symphony was damned with the faintest of
praise by a journalist, in absentia, presumably without a score.
Another writing of the first performance of the Concertante for
three solo instruments (at a Concert in memory of Sir Henry Wood in
1949) remarked upon its unusual structure - a novel but only
incidental feature of the work - adding almost as an afterthought,
that it was in the "usual Celtic vein" - a totally
unjustifiable assertion. To one who has some knowledge of the first
six symphonies, closer study of the Seventh will reveal that work
for what it is, a score of remarkable vigour, of great beauty, and
the crowning achievement of Bax's symphonic testament. The score of
the slighter Concertante shows indications, even to the cursory
reader, of a mind of tremendous originality. This is particularly
noticeable in the last movement whose joyous surging melodies bear
no relationship to the darkened mise-en-scene of Celtic twilights.
The scores of lesser dimensions are without exception compositions
of great beauty. Besides the early Nympholept (Nympholept - based on
the poem of that name by Swinburne in Astrophel and other poems -
was first performed in May, 1961 at the RAM under Terence Lovett)
and the modest, yet no less poetic Three Pieces for small orchestra,
there is the early Spring Fire, a fascinating failure which was
eventually withdrawn from rehearsal. By no means jejune, it is a
Bacchanalian orgy of symphonic proportions (vide the prefacing
quotations from the first chorus of Atalanta in Calydon), the whole
intricate manuscript a labour of love written in a delicate
copperplate. Much of the material of this work was later
incorporated in the Lento of the cello Sonata (This, a typically
Baxian, so called "Celtic" movement, with its origin in
Swinburne!), the Fanfares for the Royal Wedding, and in the piano
piece Apple Blossom Time. The exuberant overture Work in Progress,
written during the war years for Walter Legge, London Pageantry and
Rogues Comedy Overture would rapidly find their own place in the
repertoire if they were more widely known. The three major chamber
works (A two-movement work for flute, harp and strings, of delicate
and truly Celtic beauty, rescored from a Sonata for flute and harp
written in the first instance for the late Count Benckendorff and
his wife Maria Korchinska: A Threnody and Scherzo for bassoon,
strings and harp inscribed to Patrick Hadley - thus entitled by the
composer although listed in Grove as a concerto: and the ravishing
and dark-hued Octet for horn, piano and strings written for Harriet
Cohen and Aubrey Brain and dedicated to Mrs. Sprague Coolidge, the
MS. of which is now in U.S.A.) have perhaps more chance of survival
since the literature of the chamber group (and of the harp in
particular, an instrument for which Bax wrote several original and
important works) is slight enough to encourage enquiring search in
odd corners. A recent hearing in Edinburgh of the lovely Quintet for
harp and strings encourages the view that such a search would yield
great and welcome treasure.
Two important orchestral scores, the two Northern Ballads (the first
recently performed in Network Three under Basil Cameron to whom it
is dedicated), if now more widely known would set quickly into true
perspective the last three symphonies and perhaps finally achieve
the eradication - from his later works at any rate - of that
ubiquitous and totally misunderstood epithet "Celtic"
which has dogged the fortunes of Bax from days prior to 1914. The
first of these Ballads dates from the days of the fifth Symphony;
the second, dedicated to Adam Carse, was completed at Morar in
January, 1934, immediately prior to the sixth Symphony. Of the
creation of these two symphonies, his greatest work, these two
scores are an integral part. The Allegro Moderato: and the ensuing
poco Lento Lamentuoso of the first, pre-echo similar patterns in the
fifth (first and last movements) and the sixth (second movement)
Symphonies. The "Scotch snap" in this Ballad re-appears in
the second movement of the sixth Symphony, second subject, the whole
passage exhibiting an interesting parallel. There are moments as
ravishing as anything in Delius, and passages of uncompromising
Sibelian severity that are the raison d etre of such pages as those
of the opening of the sixth Symphony. The transfer of his affections
from Western Eire to Morar is a strong indication that Bax s
creative powers were veering for inspiration from magnetic to true
North. It was in Morar, amidst the beautiful yet stark grandeur of
the Western Highlands of Scotland that Bax the Symphonist was
nourished. No one who has heard the sixth Symphony can fail to
experience the tremendous power which drives the work, an experience
that is very different from that encountered in In the Faery Hills,
or in The Garden of Fand.
The second of the two Northern Ballads is a dark score which might
preface the seventh Symphony; in which we may discern the seeds that
flower majestically in the later work. This is doubly important
since the work provides a link between Sixth and Seventh without
which the Seventh stands supremely alone. For after the tremendous
and poignant triumph of the pages preceding the Epilogue of the
sixth Symphony, and the desolate peace of the Epilogue itself, the
vigorous Seventh sets out on an entirely new path-although amidst
the same scenery.
In order to trace the source of this vein of richness which
overflows in the symphonic works, we may go as far back as 1910 to
the first piano Sonata, and the important first and second sonatas
for violin and piano. The first large-scale works in which this
barbaric Nordic element is darkly resplendent - the fons et origo of
the work - are the Symphonic Variations and Winter Legends, both for
piano and orchestra. The first, a complex and romantic work (of
which Sorabji writes in Around Music: "It occasionally reaches
a pitch of fantastic and imaginative beauty that Bax touches nowhere
else except in The Garden of Fand. It is incontestably one of the
finest concerted works of the present day "), was partially
destroyed by fire but is not beyond restoration. These are the roots
from which the symphonies are sprung. An interval of ten years,
during the course of which Bax embarked upon the creation of his
seven symphonies, elapsed before the pattern was repeated in another
vast and complex score for piano and orchestra entitled Winter
Legends. It is worth devoting much consideration to the fact that
both these works were written for, and are inseparably associated
with Harriet Cohen. Her personality, her artistry, and the fact that
she has an unduly small hand played a vital part in their
composition. This and its predecessor in Variation form ought to be
judged as music with the seven symphonies of whose spacious
architecture they are essentially a part.
The final works of Bax s life free themselves almost entirely from
the idiomatic tags that are used to "describe" his earlier
compositions. The last movement of the Concertante for three solo
instruments cannot be happily catalogued under the headings Celtic
or Nordic. The music bubbles with an almost youthful exuberance in
entirely Baxian melodic patterns that show how essentially the Irish
and Northern elements have become a part of Bax's musical
personality without ever stifling his originality. Here and there,
however appear touches of colour that remind us of their ancestry.
For instance, in "The Well of Tears" from The Bard of the
Dimbovitza, a setting for voice and orchestra (MS. but published in
piano score and dated 1941) of poems from the Roumanian peasantry,
collected by Helene Vacaresco, a nostalgic pattern is heard, which,
in spite of the fact that the mood of the poem might have been
evoked by Yeats, links us directly to the "Rimskyesque"
colours of the earlier sonatas and similarly, in "My Girdle I
hung from the treetop tall" from the same set.
Passages, too, from the Concertante for piano (LH) and orchestra
might have stepped straight from Borodin. But these have become, as
have the Celtic curves of his melodic invention, so much a part of
his musical nature that they no longer indicate personal allegiance.
The serenity of Morning Song-Maytime in Sussex, is typical of the
mood of Bax s last works. Coupled with this, the leprechaun-like
cavorting of the clarinet in the Concertante for three solo
instruments although embalmed in a haunting Spring-like fragrance
that is unusual in a mature artist of approaching seventy, leaves us
with the impression that the truest Celtic side of Bax s nature is
expressed in the discovery of these isles to which he had in the
beginning travelled with Niamh and Usheen - that land of eternal
youth where "God is joy and joy is God, and all things that
have grown sad are wicked":
"O Usheen mount by me now and ride To shores by the wash of the
tremulous tide Where men have heaped no burial mounds And the days
pass by like a wayward tune".
This text is copyrighted by Colin Scott-Sutherland
|
|
Score Information