Contents |
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Jan 2021 Edric Cundell
Dec 2020 Gerald Finzi
Oct 2020 Rutland Boughton
Sep 2020 J. M. Barrie - playwright
Aug 2020 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - composer
John Ireland - composer
July 2020 John Galsworthy - playwright
Alan Bush - composer
June 2020 Herbert Howells - composer
May 2020 Ethel Smyth - composer
April 2020 RC Sherriff - playwright
Dec 2020 Gerald Finzi
Oct 2020 Rutland Boughton
Sep 2020 J. M. Barrie - playwright
Aug 2020 Samuel Coleridge-Taylor - composer
John Ireland - composer
July 2020 John Galsworthy - playwright
Alan Bush - composer
June 2020 Herbert Howells - composer
May 2020 Ethel Smyth - composer
April 2020 RC Sherriff - playwright
Edric Cundell: Remembering a forgotten but influential musician
Amongst the many scores by the great composers of the classical canon in the Surrey Performing Arts Library collection there are a few sets by less familiar names. For example, the small pile of 30 vocal scores of Hymn to Providence for chorus and orchestra, op. 25 by Edric Cundell, a setting of the opening section of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ode on the Departing Year.
So, who was Edric Cundell?
In May 1940 the British Government, threatened by invasion, suddenly ordered a mass internment of ‘enemy aliens’, many of whom were refugees from Nazi Germany. Churchill famously said “Collar the lot.” In August, motivated by the situation of his Dorking neighbour Robert Müller-Hartmann - many of the internees were blameless and held in very poor conditions - Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote to the prominent musician Granville Bantock to ask for his support in pressing the Government to release interned musicians, copying the letter to a group of people who it can be assumed he considered to be the leading members of the British musical establishment of the time. Along with names still well-known, such as Walford Davies, Adrian Boult and William Walton, the recipients included Edric Cundell.
Cundell was the Principal of the Guildhall School of Music, a post that he had been appointed to in 1938. A pen portrait published in the Musical Times on his retirement in 1959 describes his contribution to the development of the school, in particular the improvement in the quality of its opera productions, despite the privations of the second world war and its aftermath. Cundell’s background as a practising musician, conductor and composer is noted, as is his sympathy for amateur music-making through his work with summer schools and as an adjudicator for music festivals. He is described as a ‘very good committee man’.
The pen portrait mentioned that he had served with the Army in Serbia during the first world war. Indeed, while he was on active service in 1917 attached to the Serbian Army he had composed a symphonic poem ‘Serbia’. According to a Radio Times listing for a 1937 broadcast, the work was written ‘in a dug-out, close to the Bulgarian lines’ and was based on ‘folk songs, which the Serbian soldiers used to sing during the time of their great trial, following their tragic retreat over the Albanian mountains’. The work was first performed at Salonika by the Royal Orchestra of Prince Alexander of Serbia to whom it was dedicated. ‘Serbia’ was performed at the Proms on the 21st September 1921, conducted by Cundell himself, and would have been played again on 20th September 1940 had not the performance been cancelled because of the Blitz.
The British Army medal card of Lieutenant Cundell of the Royal Army Service Corps documents his service in Salonika from September 1916. However, it also records something else. The original surname on the card, Greiffenhagen, is crossed out and replaced with Cundell, with a note that his surname had been changed. During the First World War anti-German sentiment in Britain reached an hysterical level with rioting and attacks on those with German sounding names, many of whom followed the example of George V who changed his family name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor.
The surname Cundell came from Edric’s paternal grandmother, Helen Cundell. Edric’s paternal grandfather, Augustus Samuel Greiffenhagen, came to England in 1846 from Russia. By the 1851 census he claimed already to be a naturalised British Subject and in the 1871 census he gave his place of birth as Archangel, in the north of European Russia. In May 1851 Augustus married Helen Cundell, the daughter of Stewart Cundell, a druggist and the manufacturer of Cundell’s Balsam of Honey. Helen (or Hélène) was an operatic soprano with a career in mainland Europe and Britain, as was also her sister Elizabeth Blenkarn Cundell. Later as Madame Greiffenhagen she practised as a Professor of Singing in London. There is a detailed article about Hélène and Elizabeth in Kurt Gänzl’s ‘Victorian Vocalists’[1]. Augustus Samuel and Hélène’s eldest son was Henry Cundell Grieffenhagen who married Harriett Mary Ann Stevens in 1880. Their youngest son and fifth child Edric was born in 1893.
In the 1911 census the eighteen-year-old Henry Edric Arnold Greiffenhagen is described as a ‘Musical Student of French Horn and composition’. Edric studied the horn with Thomas Busby and, according to some accounts, Adolph Borsdorf, both of whom were founding members of the London Symphony Orchestra. A 1936 Radio Times listing states that he played at Covent Garden in 1912 under the celebrated conductor Arthur Nikisch; the involvement of the nineteen-year-old Cundell would probably been through his connection with Borsdorf and Busby. Borsdorf, originally from Hamburg but a naturalised British citizen, would himself become a victim of anti-German feeling and in 1915 he was forced to resign his membership of the LSO. Borsdorf’s sons, who were serving with the British Army, like Cundell changed their surname, in their case to Bradley.
Sadly, Cundell’s retirement was not to last long. He died in 1961 at the age of 68. His obituary, again from the Musical Times, describes his appointment to the Guildhall post as a bold one but that he had left behind him a ‘tradition of high standards and hard work happily undertaken’ which had produced a large number of successful singers. His composing career was also recognised; his String Quartet Op. 27 had won the prize in a Daily Telegraph competition in 1933[2]. He had been on the staff of Trinity College of Music, where he had previously been a student, from 1920 and was the conductor of a number of amateur orchestras and well as his own professional orchestra, which broadcast regularly between 1935 and 1939. During and after WW2 he also regularly conducted and broadcast with the major London orchestras, including the LSO, the LPO, and the BBCSO. He had served on the committees of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Royal Musical Association, the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund and the Arts Council. and had also been a director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He is summed up as a man of the utmost integrity, wide sympathies and common sense with a quiet manner concealing a strong and attractive personality. He was awarded the CBE in 1949. He married the sculptor Helena Scott in 1920 and they had one son, born in 1936.
As Principal of the Guildhall School of Music, Cundell would have influenced the careers of many hundreds of musicians. However, there was one decision that he made that was to have unusually significant consequences. In 1947 a recently demobilised young man with a natural talent but no formal training and who was lacking in self-belief was persuaded to go for an interview with Edric Cundell with a view to taking up music as a career. Cundell, after hearing him play his compositions, accepted him on a three year ‘Course for Teachers’. The young man’s name was George Martin who went on to become a rather successful record producer.
Footnotes
[1] Victorian Vocalists Kurt Ganzl (Taylor & Francis 2017) Link
[2] The competition had excited interest amongst a number of young British composers. Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams’ gossipy letters about it can be read in Music, Life, and Changing Times: Selected Correspondence Between British Composers Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams, 1927–77 ed Sophie Fuller and Jenny Doctor (Routledge 2019) Link . The semi-finalists were played for the judges without identification which led to much speculation as to who had written what. The second and third prizes behind Cundell were won by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and Maconchy with her Quintet for oboe and strings. Benjamin Britten’s Phantasy for oboe and string trio and Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s Sextet were Highly Commended. Williams’ Sextet for oboe, trumpet, violin, viola, cello and piano was unplaced. Williams tells Maconchy: ‘My dear, Benjamin once heard some Cundell … and he says it was frightful. Brahms and Elgar.”
Copies of some of Cundell’s published compositions are held by the British Library including:
String Quartet Op. 18 (1923)
Sonnet: Our Dead (1929) for tenor and orchestra. Text by Robert Nicols
String Quartet in C Op. 27 (1933)
Two pieces for Brass Quartet (1957)
As well as a number of songs and short vocal pieces, and original compositions and transcriptions for solo piano
His varied output also included a Symphony Op. 23, a Piano Concerto, two symphonic poems The Tragedy of Deirdre and Serbia, an unaccompanied Mass, a Piano Quartet and three string quartets.
Recordings on YouTube
As a composer
Symphonic Prelude: ‘Blackfriars’ written as a test piece for the 1955 National Brass Band Championships and arranged by the brass band specialist Frank Wright who was Cundell’s colleague at the Guildhall School of Music. link.
Aquarelle for piano link
As a conductor
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 Peter Katin (piano) New Symphony Orchestra of London in four parts: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Written by Roger Miller.
Amongst the many scores by the great composers of the classical canon in the Surrey Performing Arts Library collection there are a few sets by less familiar names. For example, the small pile of 30 vocal scores of Hymn to Providence for chorus and orchestra, op. 25 by Edric Cundell, a setting of the opening section of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Ode on the Departing Year.
So, who was Edric Cundell?
In May 1940 the British Government, threatened by invasion, suddenly ordered a mass internment of ‘enemy aliens’, many of whom were refugees from Nazi Germany. Churchill famously said “Collar the lot.” In August, motivated by the situation of his Dorking neighbour Robert Müller-Hartmann - many of the internees were blameless and held in very poor conditions - Ralph Vaughan Williams wrote to the prominent musician Granville Bantock to ask for his support in pressing the Government to release interned musicians, copying the letter to a group of people who it can be assumed he considered to be the leading members of the British musical establishment of the time. Along with names still well-known, such as Walford Davies, Adrian Boult and William Walton, the recipients included Edric Cundell.
Cundell was the Principal of the Guildhall School of Music, a post that he had been appointed to in 1938. A pen portrait published in the Musical Times on his retirement in 1959 describes his contribution to the development of the school, in particular the improvement in the quality of its opera productions, despite the privations of the second world war and its aftermath. Cundell’s background as a practising musician, conductor and composer is noted, as is his sympathy for amateur music-making through his work with summer schools and as an adjudicator for music festivals. He is described as a ‘very good committee man’.
The pen portrait mentioned that he had served with the Army in Serbia during the first world war. Indeed, while he was on active service in 1917 attached to the Serbian Army he had composed a symphonic poem ‘Serbia’. According to a Radio Times listing for a 1937 broadcast, the work was written ‘in a dug-out, close to the Bulgarian lines’ and was based on ‘folk songs, which the Serbian soldiers used to sing during the time of their great trial, following their tragic retreat over the Albanian mountains’. The work was first performed at Salonika by the Royal Orchestra of Prince Alexander of Serbia to whom it was dedicated. ‘Serbia’ was performed at the Proms on the 21st September 1921, conducted by Cundell himself, and would have been played again on 20th September 1940 had not the performance been cancelled because of the Blitz.
The British Army medal card of Lieutenant Cundell of the Royal Army Service Corps documents his service in Salonika from September 1916. However, it also records something else. The original surname on the card, Greiffenhagen, is crossed out and replaced with Cundell, with a note that his surname had been changed. During the First World War anti-German sentiment in Britain reached an hysterical level with rioting and attacks on those with German sounding names, many of whom followed the example of George V who changed his family name from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor.
The surname Cundell came from Edric’s paternal grandmother, Helen Cundell. Edric’s paternal grandfather, Augustus Samuel Greiffenhagen, came to England in 1846 from Russia. By the 1851 census he claimed already to be a naturalised British Subject and in the 1871 census he gave his place of birth as Archangel, in the north of European Russia. In May 1851 Augustus married Helen Cundell, the daughter of Stewart Cundell, a druggist and the manufacturer of Cundell’s Balsam of Honey. Helen (or Hélène) was an operatic soprano with a career in mainland Europe and Britain, as was also her sister Elizabeth Blenkarn Cundell. Later as Madame Greiffenhagen she practised as a Professor of Singing in London. There is a detailed article about Hélène and Elizabeth in Kurt Gänzl’s ‘Victorian Vocalists’[1]. Augustus Samuel and Hélène’s eldest son was Henry Cundell Grieffenhagen who married Harriett Mary Ann Stevens in 1880. Their youngest son and fifth child Edric was born in 1893.
In the 1911 census the eighteen-year-old Henry Edric Arnold Greiffenhagen is described as a ‘Musical Student of French Horn and composition’. Edric studied the horn with Thomas Busby and, according to some accounts, Adolph Borsdorf, both of whom were founding members of the London Symphony Orchestra. A 1936 Radio Times listing states that he played at Covent Garden in 1912 under the celebrated conductor Arthur Nikisch; the involvement of the nineteen-year-old Cundell would probably been through his connection with Borsdorf and Busby. Borsdorf, originally from Hamburg but a naturalised British citizen, would himself become a victim of anti-German feeling and in 1915 he was forced to resign his membership of the LSO. Borsdorf’s sons, who were serving with the British Army, like Cundell changed their surname, in their case to Bradley.
Sadly, Cundell’s retirement was not to last long. He died in 1961 at the age of 68. His obituary, again from the Musical Times, describes his appointment to the Guildhall post as a bold one but that he had left behind him a ‘tradition of high standards and hard work happily undertaken’ which had produced a large number of successful singers. His composing career was also recognised; his String Quartet Op. 27 had won the prize in a Daily Telegraph competition in 1933[2]. He had been on the staff of Trinity College of Music, where he had previously been a student, from 1920 and was the conductor of a number of amateur orchestras and well as his own professional orchestra, which broadcast regularly between 1935 and 1939. During and after WW2 he also regularly conducted and broadcast with the major London orchestras, including the LSO, the LPO, and the BBCSO. He had served on the committees of the Royal Philharmonic Society, the Royal Musical Association, the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund and the Arts Council. and had also been a director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He is summed up as a man of the utmost integrity, wide sympathies and common sense with a quiet manner concealing a strong and attractive personality. He was awarded the CBE in 1949. He married the sculptor Helena Scott in 1920 and they had one son, born in 1936.
As Principal of the Guildhall School of Music, Cundell would have influenced the careers of many hundreds of musicians. However, there was one decision that he made that was to have unusually significant consequences. In 1947 a recently demobilised young man with a natural talent but no formal training and who was lacking in self-belief was persuaded to go for an interview with Edric Cundell with a view to taking up music as a career. Cundell, after hearing him play his compositions, accepted him on a three year ‘Course for Teachers’. The young man’s name was George Martin who went on to become a rather successful record producer.
Footnotes
[1] Victorian Vocalists Kurt Ganzl (Taylor & Francis 2017) Link
[2] The competition had excited interest amongst a number of young British composers. Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams’ gossipy letters about it can be read in Music, Life, and Changing Times: Selected Correspondence Between British Composers Elizabeth Maconchy and Grace Williams, 1927–77 ed Sophie Fuller and Jenny Doctor (Routledge 2019) Link . The semi-finalists were played for the judges without identification which led to much speculation as to who had written what. The second and third prizes behind Cundell were won by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs and Maconchy with her Quintet for oboe and strings. Benjamin Britten’s Phantasy for oboe and string trio and Victor Hely-Hutchinson’s Sextet were Highly Commended. Williams’ Sextet for oboe, trumpet, violin, viola, cello and piano was unplaced. Williams tells Maconchy: ‘My dear, Benjamin once heard some Cundell … and he says it was frightful. Brahms and Elgar.”
Copies of some of Cundell’s published compositions are held by the British Library including:
String Quartet Op. 18 (1923)
Sonnet: Our Dead (1929) for tenor and orchestra. Text by Robert Nicols
String Quartet in C Op. 27 (1933)
Two pieces for Brass Quartet (1957)
As well as a number of songs and short vocal pieces, and original compositions and transcriptions for solo piano
His varied output also included a Symphony Op. 23, a Piano Concerto, two symphonic poems The Tragedy of Deirdre and Serbia, an unaccompanied Mass, a Piano Quartet and three string quartets.
Recordings on YouTube
As a composer
Symphonic Prelude: ‘Blackfriars’ written as a test piece for the 1955 National Brass Band Championships and arranged by the brass band specialist Frank Wright who was Cundell’s colleague at the Guildhall School of Music. link.
Aquarelle for piano link
As a conductor
Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 Peter Katin (piano) New Symphony Orchestra of London in four parts: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Written by Roger Miller.
Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
Gerald Finzi had a keen awareness of life’s transience and fragility. His own father died when Gerald was only eight, his three elder brothers predeceased him, and he was deeply upset when his music teacher was killed in 1918, shortly after going to fight in France. This sense of loss was expressed in his best music and especially in his songs, which rank as some of the finest in the English language.
Finzi’s parents were Jewish, with his paternal ancestors originating in Italy. His father was a prosperous businessman with the result that Finzi had no need to work for a living. From a young age he devoted himself to music. After a period of some private study he went to live in London where he began to move in musical and artistic circles, came to know such figures as Holst and Vaughan Williams, and tried to establish himself as a composer.
He met and married Joyce, an artist and poet, and together they designed and had built a substantial house high in the Hampshire hills. There Gerald was able to compose and to pursue his other passion, for literature. He amassed an impressive music library and also a fine collection of English literature and poetry; after his death both collections were housed in university libraries. He also created an orchard of rare apple trees, preserving many varieties from extinction in the process. From the age of fifty he lived with the knowledge that he suffered from leukaemia and had only years to live. In the event, it was shingles that actually killed him, aided by his weakened level of resistance.
With his love of literature, Finzi had a fine sensitivity to English words and he excelled in vocal music, especially song. The poetry of Thomas Hardy particularly appealed to him and he made many fine settings, gathered together in such collections as A young man’s exhortation and Earth and air and rain. Many of these songs express his sense of loss, and his awareness of time passing and the precarious nature of life. His vocal lines are never elaborate or florid, but always shaped so as to convey the meaning of the words. They are mostly syllabic, rarely decorative and often very moving. Two larger vocal works are particularly distinguished: his choral setting of Wordsworth’s ode Intimations of Immortality, and Dies Natalis, based on poems by Thomas Traherne. Both of these celebrate the innocence of childhood and the adult’s sense of loss and exclusion from this Eden.
Though Finzi was introspective and withdrawn by nature, he and Joyce had a circle of friends whom they often entertained at their house. He founded a semi-amateur string orchestra, the Newbury String Players, which he conducted, and through which he supported and encouraged young composers and performers. He undertook research into eighteenth-century English music, resulting in some editions, and he fought hard to make the music of the war-damaged Ivor Gurney better known.
Finzi had a particularly close relationship with Vaughan Williams, whose music he had admired since his early days in London. He often visited Ralph and Adeline (his first wife) at their house in Dorking, sometimes staying overnight as a break from London. They encouraged his friendship with Joyce and in fact the marriage took place at the registry office in Dorking with Ralph and Adeline as witnesses. In later years the Finzis often attended the Three Choirs Festival together with Ralph and his second wife Ursula. ‘Uncle Ralph’, as they came to refer to him, requested that Gerald should one day act as executor of his musical legacy; sadly it was the much younger composer who would die first.
Although Finzi’s output of compositions was not large, his contribution in the field of song and choral music is an important one. He also wrote a number of orchestral works, including concertos for clarinet and cello. The library holds copies of many of his vocal works, together with recordings and books on the composer.
Written by Ian Codd
Gerald Finzi had a keen awareness of life’s transience and fragility. His own father died when Gerald was only eight, his three elder brothers predeceased him, and he was deeply upset when his music teacher was killed in 1918, shortly after going to fight in France. This sense of loss was expressed in his best music and especially in his songs, which rank as some of the finest in the English language.
Finzi’s parents were Jewish, with his paternal ancestors originating in Italy. His father was a prosperous businessman with the result that Finzi had no need to work for a living. From a young age he devoted himself to music. After a period of some private study he went to live in London where he began to move in musical and artistic circles, came to know such figures as Holst and Vaughan Williams, and tried to establish himself as a composer.
He met and married Joyce, an artist and poet, and together they designed and had built a substantial house high in the Hampshire hills. There Gerald was able to compose and to pursue his other passion, for literature. He amassed an impressive music library and also a fine collection of English literature and poetry; after his death both collections were housed in university libraries. He also created an orchard of rare apple trees, preserving many varieties from extinction in the process. From the age of fifty he lived with the knowledge that he suffered from leukaemia and had only years to live. In the event, it was shingles that actually killed him, aided by his weakened level of resistance.
With his love of literature, Finzi had a fine sensitivity to English words and he excelled in vocal music, especially song. The poetry of Thomas Hardy particularly appealed to him and he made many fine settings, gathered together in such collections as A young man’s exhortation and Earth and air and rain. Many of these songs express his sense of loss, and his awareness of time passing and the precarious nature of life. His vocal lines are never elaborate or florid, but always shaped so as to convey the meaning of the words. They are mostly syllabic, rarely decorative and often very moving. Two larger vocal works are particularly distinguished: his choral setting of Wordsworth’s ode Intimations of Immortality, and Dies Natalis, based on poems by Thomas Traherne. Both of these celebrate the innocence of childhood and the adult’s sense of loss and exclusion from this Eden.
Though Finzi was introspective and withdrawn by nature, he and Joyce had a circle of friends whom they often entertained at their house. He founded a semi-amateur string orchestra, the Newbury String Players, which he conducted, and through which he supported and encouraged young composers and performers. He undertook research into eighteenth-century English music, resulting in some editions, and he fought hard to make the music of the war-damaged Ivor Gurney better known.
Finzi had a particularly close relationship with Vaughan Williams, whose music he had admired since his early days in London. He often visited Ralph and Adeline (his first wife) at their house in Dorking, sometimes staying overnight as a break from London. They encouraged his friendship with Joyce and in fact the marriage took place at the registry office in Dorking with Ralph and Adeline as witnesses. In later years the Finzis often attended the Three Choirs Festival together with Ralph and his second wife Ursula. ‘Uncle Ralph’, as they came to refer to him, requested that Gerald should one day act as executor of his musical legacy; sadly it was the much younger composer who would die first.
Although Finzi’s output of compositions was not large, his contribution in the field of song and choral music is an important one. He also wrote a number of orchestral works, including concertos for clarinet and cello. The library holds copies of many of his vocal works, together with recordings and books on the composer.
Written by Ian Codd
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Rutland Boughton – a controversial figure but an undaunted spirit
The original Glastonbury Festival, his opera ‘The Immortal Hour’ and the choral drama ‘Bethlehem’.
Writing in the Musical Times in 1978 on the centenary of Rutland Boughton’s birth, his biographer Michael Hurd noted that of the many English composers whose careers overlapped with those of Elgar and Vaughan Williams, none enjoyed greater success during his lifetime nor endured a more total subsequent eclipse, than Rutland Boughton.
He was born in Aylesbury on the 23rd January 1878 to William Rutland Boughton, a grocer and Grace, a schoolmistress who played hymns on the harmonium. Rutland became a choir boy at the local parish church and started piano lessons. The impulse to compose came from emulating his maternal grandfather Francis Bishop, a farmer and amateur composer. Leaving school at fourteen he was apprenticed to a London concert agent, Cecil Barth, who on discovering his employee’s interest in composition arranged lessons in piano and theory for him and gave him spare concert and opera tickets. He published his first song - ‘Passing Joys’ dedicated to his mother - in 1893 at the age of fifteen. Composition began to take up so much of his time that he left the agency and returned to Aylesbury where he took on piano pupils and got together a choir. Then through contact with the music critic Robin Legge he came to the attention of Sir Charles Stanford who used his influence to obtain funding to enable him to study in London at the Royal College of Music.
Boughton, with his rudimentary education and working-class background, was not comfortable at the College where his fellow students included Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. However, he did make a close friend in Edgar Bainton who guided his reading and expanded his cultural horizons. His father’s grocery business began to founder and Rutland returned to Aylesbury again. The money for his studies was used up and he left the College in early 1901. There followed a period when he existed in penury but eventually things began to improve. Notably he started to work as an accompanist for the singer and teacher David Ffrangcon-Davies who gave him voice lessons and eventually allowed him to act as his deputy when he was too busy to teach.
After a short stint as a music critic on the Daily Mail, where he left after a dispute about his freedom to express opinions that were at variance with the paper’s editorial policy, he obtained a position playing the harmonium in the pit band at the Haymarket Theatre where he stayed for two years during which time discussion and arguments between members of the orchestra turned his thoughts towards politics and socialism. In 1903 he rather recklessly embarked on a marriage, which he came to regret to Florence Hobley, the 18-year-old daughter of the Boughton’s next-door neighbour in Aylesbury.
The next step in his career came through a chance encounter with Granville Bantock, head of the Midland Institute of Music in Birmingham, who engaged him as a teacher of Piano and Rudiments. Boughton found the institute stimulating and his pupils were quick to recognize what they had gained. ‘He was’, wrote one of them, ‘a torrent of vitality. We were inspired by his integrity and sincerity’. He progressed to become a teacher of singing, his experience with Ffrangcon Davies paying dividends.
The political climate in Birmingham under the mayoralty of Joseph Chamberlain led to the further development of Boughton’s socialism. He established himself as a choral conductor and competition adjudicator and also became a contributor to various musical magazines. He became convinced of the civilising influence of music and the arts generally. With youthful temerity he approached the already famous playwright George Bernard Shaw with a request for an opera libretto. Shaw was to become one of his most prominent supporters and a significant influence on him.
Boughton conceived of the idea of a cycle of music dramas based on the Legends of King Arthur following the Wagnerian model but with more choral involvement. Meeting the journalist and poet Reginald Buckley who had coincidentally reached similar artistic conclusions encouraged him to put this dream into practice. Around this time Boughton separated from his first wife and began a relationship with an artist and stage designer, Christina Walshe. The subsequent scandal led to him leaving Birmingham in 1911 and going to Berlin for a few months.
On his return to London he set up house with Christina and his three children who his wife had handed him the responsibility for. Things were difficult until Bernard Shaw managed to obtain well-paid work for him writing about music for the Daily Citizen. However, following a disagreement about the paper’s ambivalent attitude to the suffragette movement he left and for a time wrote about music, art and politics for the Daily Herald. This wasn’t sustainable and once more he was helped by Shaw who found him a position, including accommodation for his family, assisting a wealthy musical amateur, Frederick Jackson, at his house Tarn Moor in Grayshott near Hindhead as an amanuensis.
The idea of an ‘Opera Holiday’ in Hindhead 1912 arose from a weekend house party with some of Boughton’s singing pupils. He described it to a reporter from the Daily Mirror as ’a new sort of summer school for grown-ups’. The participants would rehearse, and play in the woods, an opera. Boughton had previously had the idea of making an opera based on the play The Immortal Hour by Fiona Macleod (the alter-ego of the Scottish writer William Sharp) which the Hindhead proposal reawakened. Unfortunately, Boughton couldn’t finish the orchestration of the opera in time and the Hindhead Summer School came to nothing. However, plans were made for a similar event the following year. Looking for an appropriate setting Boughton and Buckley ended up choosing Glastonbury – appropriate for their Arthurian ambitions – and approaches were made to secure support locally.
It was proposed that the first Glastonbury Festival would take place in August 1913 and that it would feature the first of Boughton and Buckley’s Arthurian cycle, The Birth of Arthur. However, when rumours of Boughton’s martial situation came to light some of the local supporters withdrew and it was decided to postpone everything till the following year.
Buoyed by the success of a short holiday school that Boughton and Christina held in Bournemouth in August 1913 a decision was taken to go ahead at all costs in Glastonbury in 1914. The First Glastonbury Festival started on 5th August, the day after war broke out. As funds were short plans had had to be scaled back with the hoped-for orchestra replaced by a grand piano. The programme for the festival was a miscellaneous mixture of musical and dramatic items and concluded on the last three days with the first performances of The Immortal Hour. The festival was a modest success and, importantly, secured promises of future funding from a local Quaker family, Clarks the shoemakers. Boughton set up a regular School of Music and Drama for local people and their children and established a pattern of special Holiday-Schools, each culminating in a festival. The Easter Festival of 1915 saw a revival of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas which was repeated in the August Festival together with scenes from The Immortal Hour and The Birth of Arthur. Work began on a second Arthurian collaboration between Boughton and Buckley – The Round Table – but their interests had begun to diverge and Buckley left the project.
For the 1915 Christmas Festival Boughton composed Bethlehem which was a setting of the traditional Coventry Nativity Play that he described as a folk opera. His intention was that it should be a work that could be performed entirely by local players and an important feature was the inclusion of choral interludes based on familiar carols. Bethlehem proved very popular almost from the outset.
The main work of the Easter 1916 festival was Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris which was revived again with The Immortal Hour for the August Festival. At this point Boughton receiving his conscription papers requiring him to join the army. Protests from, amongst others, Bernard Shaw pointing out that the 38-year-old was better employed handling a grand piano or a baton rather than a gun were to no avail and Boughton would shortly become the bandmaster of the Suffolk Regiment. In August 1918 he was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps to become briefly the first bandmaster in the Air Force. Work at Glastonbury had continued during this hiatus with Christina carrying on by herself. After the armistice the Festival Committee convened and decided that the Festivals should be reinstated with financial support organised by the Clarks.
With the return of Boughton in 1919 Glastonbury programmes became increasing ambitious putting contemporary English music alongside that of Dowland, Byrd and Purcell. However there continued to be tensions between the incomers and local townspeople, to a significant extent because of Boughton’s unconventional domestic arrangements. This was not improved when in 1920 Boughton fell in love with Kathleen Davis, one of his students, eventually leading to a break with Christina, although this was not complete until 1923.
Amidst these crises 1923 also turned out to be the year when Boughton’s fame as an English composer came to equal or possibly even surpass for a time that of Elgar or Vaughan Williams. The impresario Barry Jackson had seen a performance of The Immortal Hour in Glastonbury and arranged for his Birmingham Repertory Theatre to try it out during July 1921. It was so successful that he decided to risk a London production. Boughton was initially reluctant to agree to this but finally gave in because the singers did not want to be denied a chance of a London run.
The first run starting in October 1922 of 216 performances at The Regent Theatre in King’s Cross lasted until April the following year, breaking the record for any serious English opera. A revival of 160 performances began in November 1923 – broken into by 36 performances of Bethlehem over the Christmas period. There were two further major revivals in 1926 and 1932. The work seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect on some people who returned to see it time and time again. The gossip columns recorded multiple visits by royalty but the record was held by a certain Miss Parker who saw it 133 times. Plaudits were received from many quarters including Boughton’s fellow composers Arnold Bax and Gustav Holst as well as Dame Ethel Smyth.
The Glastonbury Festivals continued with Boughton, now able to devote more time to composition, producing a new opera based on Thomas Hardy’s play The Queen of Cornwall for the Summer of 1924. The format of the festivals now began to change with Laurence Housman coming in to take over the dramatic aspects and Boughton setting up a separate touring company, the Glastonbury Festival Players. The summer festival of 1925 was to be the last in which Boughton took an active part; the last festival of all in August 1926 consisted entirely of plays by Housman.
From 1924 onward Boughton had become more politically engaged, conducting the Labour Party’s London Labour Choral Union which he set up with Herbert Morrison and writing polemical articles for the Daily Herald. In 1925 he joined the Communist Party having lost patience with what he saw as the Labour Party’s willingness to compromise with Socialist principles. In 1926, the year of the General Strike, Boughton decided that performances of Bethlehem by the touring Glastonbury Festival Players should be given in modern dress with Christ born in a miner’s cottage and Herod portrayed as a cigar-smoking embodiment of capitalism, supported by police and soldiers. This provoked a break with his fellow directors, who had not been consulted, and the end of the Festival Players. It also effectively brought an end any further association with Glastonbury. Coupled with a critically mauled production of The Immortal Hour in New York earlier in the year 1926 was to prove the peak of Boughton’s public career.
Following the break with Glastonbury and his nearly constant movement between temporary homes during the previous 15 year, Boughton and his family moved to a small-holding at Kilcot, between Hereford and Gloucester at the end of 1927, where he was to stay for the rest of his life. There he combined small-scale farming with writing on politics and music, and composing. He broke with the London Labour Choral Union over what he considered to be the ineffective policies of the Labour Party and campaigned on government support for English Opera, proper remuneration for composers, and what he saw as the reluctance of the BBC to broadcast his music.
Musically he continued to be productive, composing two music dramas, The Ever Young, a pendant to The Immortal Hour, and the third Arthurian music drama The Lily Maid and being involved in various festivals based on the Glastonbury model. He also composed a number of orchestral works – two Oboe Concertos, a Flute Concerto, a Concerto for String Orchestra and a Symphony in B minor. But none of this activity brought in much money and his difficult financial position was eased when a number of his friends petitioned for a Civil List pension which was awarded to him in 1938. During the war years he devoted himself to the composition of the last two parts of his life project, the Arthurian Cycle, – Galahad and Avalon – written without any hope of a production.
Rutland Boughton died on the 25th January 1960, two days after his 82nd birthday. ‘My business in life’, he wrote in 1913, ‘is to help with a few thoughts and actions towards a time when the arts are not the privilege of a minority and the boredom of the artist themselves, but the flower of life for everyone’s achievement.’
The Immortal Hour
In a Celtic fantasy land Etain, a girl of the Faery Folk wandering from the Land of the Ever-Young, encounters Eochaidh, King of Ireland, who recognises her as his heart’s desire. Twelve months later at a great feast Eochaidh celebrates his year of joy (The Immortal Hour) with Etain, but both are troubled with strange dreams and forebodings. A stranger appears. He is Midir, Prince of the Faery Folk, and he has come to fetch Etain away. He sings ‘a little echoing song’ and Etain realises that she must return to the Land of the Ever-Young, called by irresistible faery voices. Eochaidh falls stricken. The action has been presided over by the mysterious Dalua, Lord of Shadow, the agent of all dark and unknown powers. This is a recording of Midir’s ‘luring song’ beautifully sung by Stuart Burrows (ear worm alert) and this is a recording of a brutally truncated version of the work by the 1932 revival cast.
SPAL holds a copy of the modern (1995) recording on Hyperion.
Bethlehem
Bethlehem was composed specifically for Boughton’s Glastonbury Festival forces. He adapted the libretto from the fourteenth-century Coventry Nativity Play. Much of the music is folk-song like, to the extent that Vaughan Williams assumed that the tunes had been collected from the good folk of Glastonbury. The main characters are Mary and Joseph, three rustic shepherds, the three Kings and Herod. Each stage of the drama is marked off with a choral setting of a Christmas carol deployed in much the same way that Tippett was to use spirituals in A Child of Our Time and Britten familiar hymns in Noye’s Fludde. Hurd calls these ‘some of the most powerful and original carol arrangements that have ever been made’.
SPAL holds many copies of the vocal score of Bethlehem so the inclusion of some of these arrangements in carol concerts would be entirely feasible. The extended setting of ‘The Seven Joys of Mary’ would be a good example.
Bethlehem was dedicated by Boughton ‘To my children, and to all children’.
There is a modern recording (1993) from Hyperion.
Vaughan Williams and Boughton corresponded from 1914 until VW’s death in 1958. Here are the letters that mention Boughton.
The Rutland Boughton Trust has a website - rutlandboughtonmusictrust.org – but appears not to be active at present.
The original Glastonbury Festival, his opera ‘The Immortal Hour’ and the choral drama ‘Bethlehem’.
Writing in the Musical Times in 1978 on the centenary of Rutland Boughton’s birth, his biographer Michael Hurd noted that of the many English composers whose careers overlapped with those of Elgar and Vaughan Williams, none enjoyed greater success during his lifetime nor endured a more total subsequent eclipse, than Rutland Boughton.
He was born in Aylesbury on the 23rd January 1878 to William Rutland Boughton, a grocer and Grace, a schoolmistress who played hymns on the harmonium. Rutland became a choir boy at the local parish church and started piano lessons. The impulse to compose came from emulating his maternal grandfather Francis Bishop, a farmer and amateur composer. Leaving school at fourteen he was apprenticed to a London concert agent, Cecil Barth, who on discovering his employee’s interest in composition arranged lessons in piano and theory for him and gave him spare concert and opera tickets. He published his first song - ‘Passing Joys’ dedicated to his mother - in 1893 at the age of fifteen. Composition began to take up so much of his time that he left the agency and returned to Aylesbury where he took on piano pupils and got together a choir. Then through contact with the music critic Robin Legge he came to the attention of Sir Charles Stanford who used his influence to obtain funding to enable him to study in London at the Royal College of Music.
Boughton, with his rudimentary education and working-class background, was not comfortable at the College where his fellow students included Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. However, he did make a close friend in Edgar Bainton who guided his reading and expanded his cultural horizons. His father’s grocery business began to founder and Rutland returned to Aylesbury again. The money for his studies was used up and he left the College in early 1901. There followed a period when he existed in penury but eventually things began to improve. Notably he started to work as an accompanist for the singer and teacher David Ffrangcon-Davies who gave him voice lessons and eventually allowed him to act as his deputy when he was too busy to teach.
After a short stint as a music critic on the Daily Mail, where he left after a dispute about his freedom to express opinions that were at variance with the paper’s editorial policy, he obtained a position playing the harmonium in the pit band at the Haymarket Theatre where he stayed for two years during which time discussion and arguments between members of the orchestra turned his thoughts towards politics and socialism. In 1903 he rather recklessly embarked on a marriage, which he came to regret to Florence Hobley, the 18-year-old daughter of the Boughton’s next-door neighbour in Aylesbury.
The next step in his career came through a chance encounter with Granville Bantock, head of the Midland Institute of Music in Birmingham, who engaged him as a teacher of Piano and Rudiments. Boughton found the institute stimulating and his pupils were quick to recognize what they had gained. ‘He was’, wrote one of them, ‘a torrent of vitality. We were inspired by his integrity and sincerity’. He progressed to become a teacher of singing, his experience with Ffrangcon Davies paying dividends.
The political climate in Birmingham under the mayoralty of Joseph Chamberlain led to the further development of Boughton’s socialism. He established himself as a choral conductor and competition adjudicator and also became a contributor to various musical magazines. He became convinced of the civilising influence of music and the arts generally. With youthful temerity he approached the already famous playwright George Bernard Shaw with a request for an opera libretto. Shaw was to become one of his most prominent supporters and a significant influence on him.
Boughton conceived of the idea of a cycle of music dramas based on the Legends of King Arthur following the Wagnerian model but with more choral involvement. Meeting the journalist and poet Reginald Buckley who had coincidentally reached similar artistic conclusions encouraged him to put this dream into practice. Around this time Boughton separated from his first wife and began a relationship with an artist and stage designer, Christina Walshe. The subsequent scandal led to him leaving Birmingham in 1911 and going to Berlin for a few months.
On his return to London he set up house with Christina and his three children who his wife had handed him the responsibility for. Things were difficult until Bernard Shaw managed to obtain well-paid work for him writing about music for the Daily Citizen. However, following a disagreement about the paper’s ambivalent attitude to the suffragette movement he left and for a time wrote about music, art and politics for the Daily Herald. This wasn’t sustainable and once more he was helped by Shaw who found him a position, including accommodation for his family, assisting a wealthy musical amateur, Frederick Jackson, at his house Tarn Moor in Grayshott near Hindhead as an amanuensis.
The idea of an ‘Opera Holiday’ in Hindhead 1912 arose from a weekend house party with some of Boughton’s singing pupils. He described it to a reporter from the Daily Mirror as ’a new sort of summer school for grown-ups’. The participants would rehearse, and play in the woods, an opera. Boughton had previously had the idea of making an opera based on the play The Immortal Hour by Fiona Macleod (the alter-ego of the Scottish writer William Sharp) which the Hindhead proposal reawakened. Unfortunately, Boughton couldn’t finish the orchestration of the opera in time and the Hindhead Summer School came to nothing. However, plans were made for a similar event the following year. Looking for an appropriate setting Boughton and Buckley ended up choosing Glastonbury – appropriate for their Arthurian ambitions – and approaches were made to secure support locally.
It was proposed that the first Glastonbury Festival would take place in August 1913 and that it would feature the first of Boughton and Buckley’s Arthurian cycle, The Birth of Arthur. However, when rumours of Boughton’s martial situation came to light some of the local supporters withdrew and it was decided to postpone everything till the following year.
Buoyed by the success of a short holiday school that Boughton and Christina held in Bournemouth in August 1913 a decision was taken to go ahead at all costs in Glastonbury in 1914. The First Glastonbury Festival started on 5th August, the day after war broke out. As funds were short plans had had to be scaled back with the hoped-for orchestra replaced by a grand piano. The programme for the festival was a miscellaneous mixture of musical and dramatic items and concluded on the last three days with the first performances of The Immortal Hour. The festival was a modest success and, importantly, secured promises of future funding from a local Quaker family, Clarks the shoemakers. Boughton set up a regular School of Music and Drama for local people and their children and established a pattern of special Holiday-Schools, each culminating in a festival. The Easter Festival of 1915 saw a revival of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas which was repeated in the August Festival together with scenes from The Immortal Hour and The Birth of Arthur. Work began on a second Arthurian collaboration between Boughton and Buckley – The Round Table – but their interests had begun to diverge and Buckley left the project.
For the 1915 Christmas Festival Boughton composed Bethlehem which was a setting of the traditional Coventry Nativity Play that he described as a folk opera. His intention was that it should be a work that could be performed entirely by local players and an important feature was the inclusion of choral interludes based on familiar carols. Bethlehem proved very popular almost from the outset.
The main work of the Easter 1916 festival was Gluck’s Iphigenia in Tauris which was revived again with The Immortal Hour for the August Festival. At this point Boughton receiving his conscription papers requiring him to join the army. Protests from, amongst others, Bernard Shaw pointing out that the 38-year-old was better employed handling a grand piano or a baton rather than a gun were to no avail and Boughton would shortly become the bandmaster of the Suffolk Regiment. In August 1918 he was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps to become briefly the first bandmaster in the Air Force. Work at Glastonbury had continued during this hiatus with Christina carrying on by herself. After the armistice the Festival Committee convened and decided that the Festivals should be reinstated with financial support organised by the Clarks.
With the return of Boughton in 1919 Glastonbury programmes became increasing ambitious putting contemporary English music alongside that of Dowland, Byrd and Purcell. However there continued to be tensions between the incomers and local townspeople, to a significant extent because of Boughton’s unconventional domestic arrangements. This was not improved when in 1920 Boughton fell in love with Kathleen Davis, one of his students, eventually leading to a break with Christina, although this was not complete until 1923.
Amidst these crises 1923 also turned out to be the year when Boughton’s fame as an English composer came to equal or possibly even surpass for a time that of Elgar or Vaughan Williams. The impresario Barry Jackson had seen a performance of The Immortal Hour in Glastonbury and arranged for his Birmingham Repertory Theatre to try it out during July 1921. It was so successful that he decided to risk a London production. Boughton was initially reluctant to agree to this but finally gave in because the singers did not want to be denied a chance of a London run.
The first run starting in October 1922 of 216 performances at The Regent Theatre in King’s Cross lasted until April the following year, breaking the record for any serious English opera. A revival of 160 performances began in November 1923 – broken into by 36 performances of Bethlehem over the Christmas period. There were two further major revivals in 1926 and 1932. The work seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect on some people who returned to see it time and time again. The gossip columns recorded multiple visits by royalty but the record was held by a certain Miss Parker who saw it 133 times. Plaudits were received from many quarters including Boughton’s fellow composers Arnold Bax and Gustav Holst as well as Dame Ethel Smyth.
The Glastonbury Festivals continued with Boughton, now able to devote more time to composition, producing a new opera based on Thomas Hardy’s play The Queen of Cornwall for the Summer of 1924. The format of the festivals now began to change with Laurence Housman coming in to take over the dramatic aspects and Boughton setting up a separate touring company, the Glastonbury Festival Players. The summer festival of 1925 was to be the last in which Boughton took an active part; the last festival of all in August 1926 consisted entirely of plays by Housman.
From 1924 onward Boughton had become more politically engaged, conducting the Labour Party’s London Labour Choral Union which he set up with Herbert Morrison and writing polemical articles for the Daily Herald. In 1925 he joined the Communist Party having lost patience with what he saw as the Labour Party’s willingness to compromise with Socialist principles. In 1926, the year of the General Strike, Boughton decided that performances of Bethlehem by the touring Glastonbury Festival Players should be given in modern dress with Christ born in a miner’s cottage and Herod portrayed as a cigar-smoking embodiment of capitalism, supported by police and soldiers. This provoked a break with his fellow directors, who had not been consulted, and the end of the Festival Players. It also effectively brought an end any further association with Glastonbury. Coupled with a critically mauled production of The Immortal Hour in New York earlier in the year 1926 was to prove the peak of Boughton’s public career.
Following the break with Glastonbury and his nearly constant movement between temporary homes during the previous 15 year, Boughton and his family moved to a small-holding at Kilcot, between Hereford and Gloucester at the end of 1927, where he was to stay for the rest of his life. There he combined small-scale farming with writing on politics and music, and composing. He broke with the London Labour Choral Union over what he considered to be the ineffective policies of the Labour Party and campaigned on government support for English Opera, proper remuneration for composers, and what he saw as the reluctance of the BBC to broadcast his music.
Musically he continued to be productive, composing two music dramas, The Ever Young, a pendant to The Immortal Hour, and the third Arthurian music drama The Lily Maid and being involved in various festivals based on the Glastonbury model. He also composed a number of orchestral works – two Oboe Concertos, a Flute Concerto, a Concerto for String Orchestra and a Symphony in B minor. But none of this activity brought in much money and his difficult financial position was eased when a number of his friends petitioned for a Civil List pension which was awarded to him in 1938. During the war years he devoted himself to the composition of the last two parts of his life project, the Arthurian Cycle, – Galahad and Avalon – written without any hope of a production.
Rutland Boughton died on the 25th January 1960, two days after his 82nd birthday. ‘My business in life’, he wrote in 1913, ‘is to help with a few thoughts and actions towards a time when the arts are not the privilege of a minority and the boredom of the artist themselves, but the flower of life for everyone’s achievement.’
The Immortal Hour
In a Celtic fantasy land Etain, a girl of the Faery Folk wandering from the Land of the Ever-Young, encounters Eochaidh, King of Ireland, who recognises her as his heart’s desire. Twelve months later at a great feast Eochaidh celebrates his year of joy (The Immortal Hour) with Etain, but both are troubled with strange dreams and forebodings. A stranger appears. He is Midir, Prince of the Faery Folk, and he has come to fetch Etain away. He sings ‘a little echoing song’ and Etain realises that she must return to the Land of the Ever-Young, called by irresistible faery voices. Eochaidh falls stricken. The action has been presided over by the mysterious Dalua, Lord of Shadow, the agent of all dark and unknown powers. This is a recording of Midir’s ‘luring song’ beautifully sung by Stuart Burrows (ear worm alert) and this is a recording of a brutally truncated version of the work by the 1932 revival cast.
SPAL holds a copy of the modern (1995) recording on Hyperion.
Bethlehem
Bethlehem was composed specifically for Boughton’s Glastonbury Festival forces. He adapted the libretto from the fourteenth-century Coventry Nativity Play. Much of the music is folk-song like, to the extent that Vaughan Williams assumed that the tunes had been collected from the good folk of Glastonbury. The main characters are Mary and Joseph, three rustic shepherds, the three Kings and Herod. Each stage of the drama is marked off with a choral setting of a Christmas carol deployed in much the same way that Tippett was to use spirituals in A Child of Our Time and Britten familiar hymns in Noye’s Fludde. Hurd calls these ‘some of the most powerful and original carol arrangements that have ever been made’.
SPAL holds many copies of the vocal score of Bethlehem so the inclusion of some of these arrangements in carol concerts would be entirely feasible. The extended setting of ‘The Seven Joys of Mary’ would be a good example.
Bethlehem was dedicated by Boughton ‘To my children, and to all children’.
There is a modern recording (1993) from Hyperion.
Vaughan Williams and Boughton corresponded from 1914 until VW’s death in 1958. Here are the letters that mention Boughton.
The Rutland Boughton Trust has a website - rutlandboughtonmusictrust.org – but appears not to be active at present.
J.M. Barrie was born in Scotland, Kirriemuir, Angus, the youngest son of ten children. In the winter of 1867, when he was six, his older, and idolised brother David (aged 14) was killed in
an ice-skating accident. His mother was distraught, and James was the one to comfort her. He
lived in the shadow of his brother’s memory for the remainder of his life.
After graduating from Edinburgh University in 1882, Barrie worked as a journalist. He
published his first novel, Better Dead, in 1887. Barrie soon had a string of popular novels set
in Scotland, including A Window in Thrums (1889).
He moved to London and had considerable success as a playwright. In 1894 he married
actress Mary Ansell. A few years later, in Kensington Gardens, Barrie met a pair of boys,
George and Jack Llewellyn Davies, aged five and four, who walked there with their nurse.
They became the inspiration for his most successful play, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would
Never Grow Up.
Mary had bought Black Lake Cottage, adjoining Alice Holt Forest in Farnham, as a summer retreat from Kensington, and it was here that Barrie entertained the Llewellyn Davies family, who rented a cottage at Tilford to be near him. Barrie became the boys’ guardian after the death of their father in 1907 and mother in 1910.
Peter Pan, opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre, on December 27th 1904. In 1929, Barrie gave the copyright of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, and the hospital has received royalties from all Peter Pan play productions, books and products.
Barrie was a keen cricket player. He formed his own amateur cricket team while he was in Surrey, and organised an annual cricket week, practising on the cricket-sized lawn at Black Lake Cottage.
The team played at Tilford, Pasture Wood near Goddards, and on Sir Edgar Horne’s private pitch on Hall Place Estate, now Aldro School, in Shackleford. After Peter Pan, Barrie continued writing, mostly plays aimed at adults. Several of his later works had a dark element to them. The Twelve-Pound Look (1910) offers a glimpse inside an unhappy marriage and Half an Hour (1913) follows a woman who plans on leaving her husband for another man, but she decides she must stay when her husband severely injured in a bus accident. His last major play, Mary Rose, was produced in 1920 and centred on a son visited by his mother's ghost.
We have a number of J M Barrie’s plays in the library:
Full Plays
Quality Street, drama, 1901, large cast
The play that gave its name to the chocolates! - a bittersweet love story set at the time of the
Napoleonic wars, centring on two schoolmistresses.
The Admirable Crichton, comedy, 1902, medium cast (8)
An aristocratic English family who revert to the State of Nature when shipwrecked on a
desert island. A gentle dig at the concepts of class.
Peter Pan, comedy, 1904, large cast
The boy who couldn’t grow up!
What Every Woman Knows, drama, 1908, large cast
Written before women's suffrage, the play posits that "every woman knows" she is the invisible power
responsible for the successes of the men in her life
Dear Brutus, fantasy, 1917, large cast
An eccentric man invites a number of guests to his country house at midsummer. While they are there a large forest appears outside. The guests wander into the woods and undergo strange experiences.
One Act Plays:
The Twelve Pound Look, drama, 1892, cast of 3
A woman rejects the cult of success in favour of independence
The Old Lady Shows her Medals, drama, 1918, smallish cast (6)
Mrs. Downey pretends (to her neighbours) to have a son at war after seeing his name in a newspaper. Since he has no family, he agrees to spend his leave with her.
Shall we Join the Ladies, comedy, 1928, large cast.
The atmosphere at a well-to-do dinner party is shattered rather suddenly when the host announces that all thirteen guests were at Monte Carlo several years ago on the night when his brother was murdered.
an ice-skating accident. His mother was distraught, and James was the one to comfort her. He
lived in the shadow of his brother’s memory for the remainder of his life.
After graduating from Edinburgh University in 1882, Barrie worked as a journalist. He
published his first novel, Better Dead, in 1887. Barrie soon had a string of popular novels set
in Scotland, including A Window in Thrums (1889).
He moved to London and had considerable success as a playwright. In 1894 he married
actress Mary Ansell. A few years later, in Kensington Gardens, Barrie met a pair of boys,
George and Jack Llewellyn Davies, aged five and four, who walked there with their nurse.
They became the inspiration for his most successful play, Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Would
Never Grow Up.
Mary had bought Black Lake Cottage, adjoining Alice Holt Forest in Farnham, as a summer retreat from Kensington, and it was here that Barrie entertained the Llewellyn Davies family, who rented a cottage at Tilford to be near him. Barrie became the boys’ guardian after the death of their father in 1907 and mother in 1910.
Peter Pan, opened at the Duke of York’s Theatre, on December 27th 1904. In 1929, Barrie gave the copyright of Peter Pan to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, and the hospital has received royalties from all Peter Pan play productions, books and products.
Barrie was a keen cricket player. He formed his own amateur cricket team while he was in Surrey, and organised an annual cricket week, practising on the cricket-sized lawn at Black Lake Cottage.
The team played at Tilford, Pasture Wood near Goddards, and on Sir Edgar Horne’s private pitch on Hall Place Estate, now Aldro School, in Shackleford. After Peter Pan, Barrie continued writing, mostly plays aimed at adults. Several of his later works had a dark element to them. The Twelve-Pound Look (1910) offers a glimpse inside an unhappy marriage and Half an Hour (1913) follows a woman who plans on leaving her husband for another man, but she decides she must stay when her husband severely injured in a bus accident. His last major play, Mary Rose, was produced in 1920 and centred on a son visited by his mother's ghost.
We have a number of J M Barrie’s plays in the library:
Full Plays
Quality Street, drama, 1901, large cast
The play that gave its name to the chocolates! - a bittersweet love story set at the time of the
Napoleonic wars, centring on two schoolmistresses.
The Admirable Crichton, comedy, 1902, medium cast (8)
An aristocratic English family who revert to the State of Nature when shipwrecked on a
desert island. A gentle dig at the concepts of class.
Peter Pan, comedy, 1904, large cast
The boy who couldn’t grow up!
What Every Woman Knows, drama, 1908, large cast
Written before women's suffrage, the play posits that "every woman knows" she is the invisible power
responsible for the successes of the men in her life
Dear Brutus, fantasy, 1917, large cast
An eccentric man invites a number of guests to his country house at midsummer. While they are there a large forest appears outside. The guests wander into the woods and undergo strange experiences.
One Act Plays:
The Twelve Pound Look, drama, 1892, cast of 3
A woman rejects the cult of success in favour of independence
The Old Lady Shows her Medals, drama, 1918, smallish cast (6)
Mrs. Downey pretends (to her neighbours) to have a son at war after seeing his name in a newspaper. Since he has no family, he agrees to spend his leave with her.
Shall we Join the Ladies, comedy, 1928, large cast.
The atmosphere at a well-to-do dinner party is shattered rather suddenly when the host announces that all thirteen guests were at Monte Carlo several years ago on the night when his brother was murdered.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912)
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer of half-African descent who achieved an extraordinary success in Edwardian Britain and attained an international reputation with his cantata Hiawatha’s wedding feast. He was a prolific composer, an admired conductor and a respected teacher, and the musical world was shocked by his early death at the age of just 37. He died suddenly at home in Croydon, having fallen ill with pneumonia, possibly brought on by overwork. A local newspaper ran a lengthy obituary accompanying the report of his death, in which he was described as ‘a distinguished composer and one of the most famous citizens of Croydon’.
Coleridge-Taylor was born in London but some mystery surrounds his parentage. His father was Daniel Taylor, a doctor from Sierra Leone, who returned to Africa around the time of his son’s birth. His supposed mother was Alice Evans – she was never married to Dr Taylor and she later wedded a railway storeman named George Evans. Precise details were glossed over in early biographies in an attempt to conceal the composer’s illegitimacy. It has more recently been suggested that his real mother may have come from a more distinguished family (perhaps a Coleridge, thus explaining the boy’s name) and that a family friend - a Colonel Walters - arranged for the boy to be taken care of and became his unofficial guardian and protector. Perhaps the full truth will never be known.
Young Samuel displayed evident musical talents, learned the violin and sang in a church choir. Supported by Colonel Walters, he entered the Royal College of Music at the age of 15 to study the violin. While there, he wrote music and had some pieces published by Novello. On the recommendation of Sir George Grove, he switched to studying composition with Sir Charles Stanford. His name became known to Edward Elgar, and when Elgar was unable to undertake a commission for the Three Choirs Festival, he recommended Coleridge-Taylor instead. The result, his Ballade for orchestra, was very well received. Shortly afterwards, Stanford conducted the first performance of Hiawatha’s wedding feast to great acclaim. This was widely performed and made Coleridge-Taylor’s name. He was soon receiving more commissions from various music festivals.
He went on to enjoy a successful career as a composer and conductor. As well as directing many small choral and orchestral societies, he was appointed conductor of the Westmorland Festival and the Handel Society. He visited the USA several times, where the New York orchestral players, impressed by his conducting, dubbed him ‘the black Mahler’. He was also honoured to be received at the White House by President Roosevelt. His teaching activities led him to become professor of composition at Trinity College of Music in London and also
at the Guildhall School of Music. As a man he was modest, sincere and widely respected.
Owing to his youthful inexperience, Coleridge-Taylor sold Hiawatha’s wedding feast outright for 15 guineas and so failed to benefit financially from its huge success. He was attracted by Longfellow’s poem, with its unusual metres, strange names and exotic American Indian setting, and he produced a colourful cantata full of delightful melodies. It proved highly attractive to choral societies seeking some variety from the customary oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn. He later added two further parts – The death of Minnehaha and Hiawatha’s departure - to form an extended trilogy.
Coleridge-Taylor’s music was championed by Malcolm Sargent, who said of him ‘He’s a first-class composer, completely equipped technically, with a remarkable and individual chain of melodic invention’. During the late 1920s and into the 1930s, Sargent conducted ‘Hiawatha fortnights’ at the Royal Albert Hall. These proved enormously popular and ran for several years, packing the Albert Hall full every night. Hiawatha was performed by the Royal Choral Society – numbering hundreds of singers – in full costume, acting, singing and dancing amid scenery and props. In this immense spectacle, hundreds of Native Americans filled the hall’s arena, and the audience was ecstatic. (Its great popularity with choral societies may also be gauged from the fact that the Performing Arts Library has numerous vocal scores of the music!)
Besides Hiawatha, Coleridge-Taylor wrote a large amount of music in a wide range of genres – choral, orchestral, chamber music, piano works and songs. He was proud of his African heritage and sometimes made use of native African melodies in his music. Nevertheless his upbringing and training were English, and he always desired that his music should be judged by its merits and not through the colour of his skin. Although there were obstacles facing a black composer in the Britain of his time, he achieved complete professional success and was highly esteemed by his colleagues. Following his death, generous tributes came from many quarters. A memorial concert was held at the Albert Hall, which saw that large venue filled to capacity with many distinguished figures, including members of the royal family, in attendance.
Written by Ian Codd
See below for items by Coleridge-Taylor in the SPAL collection available for hire:
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer of half-African descent who achieved an extraordinary success in Edwardian Britain and attained an international reputation with his cantata Hiawatha’s wedding feast. He was a prolific composer, an admired conductor and a respected teacher, and the musical world was shocked by his early death at the age of just 37. He died suddenly at home in Croydon, having fallen ill with pneumonia, possibly brought on by overwork. A local newspaper ran a lengthy obituary accompanying the report of his death, in which he was described as ‘a distinguished composer and one of the most famous citizens of Croydon’.
Coleridge-Taylor was born in London but some mystery surrounds his parentage. His father was Daniel Taylor, a doctor from Sierra Leone, who returned to Africa around the time of his son’s birth. His supposed mother was Alice Evans – she was never married to Dr Taylor and she later wedded a railway storeman named George Evans. Precise details were glossed over in early biographies in an attempt to conceal the composer’s illegitimacy. It has more recently been suggested that his real mother may have come from a more distinguished family (perhaps a Coleridge, thus explaining the boy’s name) and that a family friend - a Colonel Walters - arranged for the boy to be taken care of and became his unofficial guardian and protector. Perhaps the full truth will never be known.
Young Samuel displayed evident musical talents, learned the violin and sang in a church choir. Supported by Colonel Walters, he entered the Royal College of Music at the age of 15 to study the violin. While there, he wrote music and had some pieces published by Novello. On the recommendation of Sir George Grove, he switched to studying composition with Sir Charles Stanford. His name became known to Edward Elgar, and when Elgar was unable to undertake a commission for the Three Choirs Festival, he recommended Coleridge-Taylor instead. The result, his Ballade for orchestra, was very well received. Shortly afterwards, Stanford conducted the first performance of Hiawatha’s wedding feast to great acclaim. This was widely performed and made Coleridge-Taylor’s name. He was soon receiving more commissions from various music festivals.
He went on to enjoy a successful career as a composer and conductor. As well as directing many small choral and orchestral societies, he was appointed conductor of the Westmorland Festival and the Handel Society. He visited the USA several times, where the New York orchestral players, impressed by his conducting, dubbed him ‘the black Mahler’. He was also honoured to be received at the White House by President Roosevelt. His teaching activities led him to become professor of composition at Trinity College of Music in London and also
at the Guildhall School of Music. As a man he was modest, sincere and widely respected.
Owing to his youthful inexperience, Coleridge-Taylor sold Hiawatha’s wedding feast outright for 15 guineas and so failed to benefit financially from its huge success. He was attracted by Longfellow’s poem, with its unusual metres, strange names and exotic American Indian setting, and he produced a colourful cantata full of delightful melodies. It proved highly attractive to choral societies seeking some variety from the customary oratorios of Handel and Mendelssohn. He later added two further parts – The death of Minnehaha and Hiawatha’s departure - to form an extended trilogy.
Coleridge-Taylor’s music was championed by Malcolm Sargent, who said of him ‘He’s a first-class composer, completely equipped technically, with a remarkable and individual chain of melodic invention’. During the late 1920s and into the 1930s, Sargent conducted ‘Hiawatha fortnights’ at the Royal Albert Hall. These proved enormously popular and ran for several years, packing the Albert Hall full every night. Hiawatha was performed by the Royal Choral Society – numbering hundreds of singers – in full costume, acting, singing and dancing amid scenery and props. In this immense spectacle, hundreds of Native Americans filled the hall’s arena, and the audience was ecstatic. (Its great popularity with choral societies may also be gauged from the fact that the Performing Arts Library has numerous vocal scores of the music!)
Besides Hiawatha, Coleridge-Taylor wrote a large amount of music in a wide range of genres – choral, orchestral, chamber music, piano works and songs. He was proud of his African heritage and sometimes made use of native African melodies in his music. Nevertheless his upbringing and training were English, and he always desired that his music should be judged by its merits and not through the colour of his skin. Although there were obstacles facing a black composer in the Britain of his time, he achieved complete professional success and was highly esteemed by his colleagues. Following his death, generous tributes came from many quarters. A memorial concert was held at the Albert Hall, which saw that large venue filled to capacity with many distinguished figures, including members of the royal family, in attendance.
Written by Ian Codd
See below for items by Coleridge-Taylor in the SPAL collection available for hire:
John Ireland (1879-1962)
John Ireland spent his last years living in a converted windmill in Sussex. Places had always been important to him and his favourite spot was Chanctonbury Ring, a prehistoric hill fort high on the Sussex Downs. Although born in Cheshire, he lived for the greater part of his life in Chelsea, before his love of the Channel Islands led him to seek peace and tranquillity in Guernsey. His stay there was cut short by the German invasion and occupation and he returned to London before settling finally in Sussex. Chelsea, the Channel Islands and especially the soft and rolling landscape of the South Downs – all these inspired him and occupied an important place in his music.
Ireland had an unhappy childhood and found his escape in music. He entered the Royal College of Music at the age of 14 with the idea of becoming a concert pianist, and later began studying composition with Sir Charles Stanford. Stanford venerated the German tradition, especially Brahms, and he attempted to pass this on to his students. From Stanford’s authoritarian teaching Ireland learned to be highly self-critical, but he turned his attention to more modern composers. He was greatly influenced by the French impressionism of Debussy and Ravel and also admired Stravinsky.
His own music is sensitive and lyrical, with harmony that can be gently dissonant or can sometimes sound quite sharp. It is always beautifully crafted and it is clear that Ireland took great care over everything he wrote. He produced around forty short pieces for the piano, plus a fine large-scale sonata, and he also wrote many songs. Literature was another source of inspiration. He was a well-read man and he set a wide range of English poets, especially Housman and Hardy, whose sometimes bleak verse clearly resonated with him. He was much affected by the supernatural tales of the Welsh writer Arthur Machen, imbued with elements of pagan mysticism, and he was attracted to prehistoric sites and the legends associated with them.
Ireland’s personality was a complex one. Throughout his life he was fundamentally lonely and unhappy, suffered from feelings of insecurity, and was prone to alcoholism and periods of depression. Nearing the age of 50, he married a 17-year-old pupil and pianist, but the marriage was a disaster and was annulled after only a year. He then became attached to the pianist Helen Perkin and dedicated his piano concerto to her, only to withdraw the dedication when she later married. In his last years, he was cared for by a devoted housekeeper.
Ireland earned his living initially as an organist and choirmaster and then taught for several years at the Royal College of Music. His students there included a number of future composers, most notably Benjamin Britten. Besides his many songs and piano music, he wrote a small number of orchestral works, some chamber music, and various choral pieces including the impressive cantata These things shall be, expressing his hopes for a world freed from the scourge of war. In his later years he wrote very little and suffered from the feeling that his
music was being neglected. He died at his home of Rock Mill, from which he could see his beloved Chanctonbury Ring, and he was buried close to that ancient site.
John Ireland’s chief gift to English music lies in his songs and piano pieces, especially those inspired by the places he loved, such as Amberley wild brooks (Sussex), Sarnia (the Channel Islands) and The island spell (Jersey). The library holds a good selection of his songs, choral music, chamber works and piano pieces, both as scores and on CDs, as well as several books about the man and his music.
Written by Ian Codd
See below for items by Ireland in the SPAL collection available for hire:
John Ireland spent his last years living in a converted windmill in Sussex. Places had always been important to him and his favourite spot was Chanctonbury Ring, a prehistoric hill fort high on the Sussex Downs. Although born in Cheshire, he lived for the greater part of his life in Chelsea, before his love of the Channel Islands led him to seek peace and tranquillity in Guernsey. His stay there was cut short by the German invasion and occupation and he returned to London before settling finally in Sussex. Chelsea, the Channel Islands and especially the soft and rolling landscape of the South Downs – all these inspired him and occupied an important place in his music.
Ireland had an unhappy childhood and found his escape in music. He entered the Royal College of Music at the age of 14 with the idea of becoming a concert pianist, and later began studying composition with Sir Charles Stanford. Stanford venerated the German tradition, especially Brahms, and he attempted to pass this on to his students. From Stanford’s authoritarian teaching Ireland learned to be highly self-critical, but he turned his attention to more modern composers. He was greatly influenced by the French impressionism of Debussy and Ravel and also admired Stravinsky.
His own music is sensitive and lyrical, with harmony that can be gently dissonant or can sometimes sound quite sharp. It is always beautifully crafted and it is clear that Ireland took great care over everything he wrote. He produced around forty short pieces for the piano, plus a fine large-scale sonata, and he also wrote many songs. Literature was another source of inspiration. He was a well-read man and he set a wide range of English poets, especially Housman and Hardy, whose sometimes bleak verse clearly resonated with him. He was much affected by the supernatural tales of the Welsh writer Arthur Machen, imbued with elements of pagan mysticism, and he was attracted to prehistoric sites and the legends associated with them.
Ireland’s personality was a complex one. Throughout his life he was fundamentally lonely and unhappy, suffered from feelings of insecurity, and was prone to alcoholism and periods of depression. Nearing the age of 50, he married a 17-year-old pupil and pianist, but the marriage was a disaster and was annulled after only a year. He then became attached to the pianist Helen Perkin and dedicated his piano concerto to her, only to withdraw the dedication when she later married. In his last years, he was cared for by a devoted housekeeper.
Ireland earned his living initially as an organist and choirmaster and then taught for several years at the Royal College of Music. His students there included a number of future composers, most notably Benjamin Britten. Besides his many songs and piano music, he wrote a small number of orchestral works, some chamber music, and various choral pieces including the impressive cantata These things shall be, expressing his hopes for a world freed from the scourge of war. In his later years he wrote very little and suffered from the feeling that his
music was being neglected. He died at his home of Rock Mill, from which he could see his beloved Chanctonbury Ring, and he was buried close to that ancient site.
John Ireland’s chief gift to English music lies in his songs and piano pieces, especially those inspired by the places he loved, such as Amberley wild brooks (Sussex), Sarnia (the Channel Islands) and The island spell (Jersey). The library holds a good selection of his songs, choral music, chamber works and piano pieces, both as scores and on CDs, as well as several books about the man and his music.
Written by Ian Codd
See below for items by Ireland in the SPAL collection available for hire:
Playwright: John Galsworthy (1867-1933)
John Galsworthy was born in Kingston-upon-Thames, in a fine house on Kingston Hill (now a care home known as Galsworthy House) into a prosperous family. He attended Harrow and New College, Oxford. trained as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1890.
He did not take up the law, instead travelling world-wide, including to Australia, where he met, and became friends with, Joseph Conrad. He began to write, at first for his own pleasure, and under a pseudonym, John Sinjohn. He is now probably best known for his novels, including The Forsyte Saga, but in his lifetime he was better known for his plays.
During the First World War Galsworthy worked in a hospital in France as an orderly, after being passed over for military service, and in 1917 turned down a knighthood, for which he was nominated by Prime Minister David Lloyd George, on the grounds that a writer's reward comes simply from writing itself.
He was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1932. He died in Hampstead, London, but was cremated at Woking, with his ashes then being scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane.
Galsworthy campaigned for a variety of causes through his writing, including prison reform, women's rights, and animal welfare, and also against censorship. He supported British involvement in the First World War calling for war on Germany to protect Belgium. Throughout his life he opposed the slaughter of animals and fought for animal rights. He was also a humanitarian and a member of the Humanitarian League.
Galsworthy’s plays available in the Performing Arts Library (all have large casts; there area good number of copies for each title, see comprehensive table below).
For a list of all Galsworthy resources in the SPAL collection for hire please see the table below. Article written by Carol Hall.
John Galsworthy was born in Kingston-upon-Thames, in a fine house on Kingston Hill (now a care home known as Galsworthy House) into a prosperous family. He attended Harrow and New College, Oxford. trained as a barrister and was called to the bar in 1890.
He did not take up the law, instead travelling world-wide, including to Australia, where he met, and became friends with, Joseph Conrad. He began to write, at first for his own pleasure, and under a pseudonym, John Sinjohn. He is now probably best known for his novels, including The Forsyte Saga, but in his lifetime he was better known for his plays.
During the First World War Galsworthy worked in a hospital in France as an orderly, after being passed over for military service, and in 1917 turned down a knighthood, for which he was nominated by Prime Minister David Lloyd George, on the grounds that a writer's reward comes simply from writing itself.
He was awarded the Nobel prize for Literature in 1932. He died in Hampstead, London, but was cremated at Woking, with his ashes then being scattered over the South Downs from an aeroplane.
Galsworthy campaigned for a variety of causes through his writing, including prison reform, women's rights, and animal welfare, and also against censorship. He supported British involvement in the First World War calling for war on Germany to protect Belgium. Throughout his life he opposed the slaughter of animals and fought for animal rights. He was also a humanitarian and a member of the Humanitarian League.
Galsworthy’s plays available in the Performing Arts Library (all have large casts; there area good number of copies for each title, see comprehensive table below).
- The Silver Box (1906) deals with the double standard of justice as applied to the upper and lower classes
- Justice (1910), probably Galsworthy’s most famous play, was instrumental in prison reform in England, securing reductions in the amount of time convicted prisoners had to spend in solitary confinement
- Strife (1909) takes the confrontation of capital and labour as its main theme
- Loyalties (1922) takes issue with caste solidarity and antisemitism
- Escape, (1926) is a study in class structure and ethos according to Galsworthy's interpretation of 1920s British society
- The Skin Game (1920) which deals with enmity between two families
For a list of all Galsworthy resources in the SPAL collection for hire please see the table below. Article written by Carol Hall.
Composer: Alan Bush (1900 - 1995)
The Winter Journey Op. 29 (1946) by Alan Bush
Cantata for soprano and baritone soli and mixed chorus, with accompaniment for string quintet and harp or pianoforte (NewSPAL holds a set of 21 copies of the vocal score.)
In his 1985 memoir Amiscellany, John Amis, writer, broadcaster, music administrator and observer from close quarters of musical life in Britain from the 1940s onwards, devoted a chapter to composers he considered his friends. Alongside Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett he included Alan Bush who he judged to be at his best the equal of those two composers. Of Bush’s works he singled out for praise ‘the quite haunting loveliness of the Christmas cantata The Winter Journey’. Bush is hardly known today partly because of what Amis delicately calls his political integrity, by which he meant Bush’s ardent support of communism during a period when that did nothing for a composer’s reputation, at least on the western side of the Iron Curtain.
Alan Bush was born in Dulwich, South London in 1900. He entered the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in 1918, studying organ, piano and composition there until 1922. He then studied piano further under Benno Moiseivitch and Mabel Lander[1] and from the mid 1920’s with Artur Schnabel in Berlin. From 1922 to 1927 he studied composition with John Ireland. He was appointed Professor of Composition at the RAM in 1925, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. In parallel with his duties at the RAM initially he continued his own studies in philosophy and musicology in Berlin, also performing there in piano and chamber music recitals. He returned to London in 1931 and that year married Nancy Head, sister of the singer and composer Michael Head.
He became involved in socialist choirs active in London and helped establish an umbrella organisation, the London Labour Choral Union. In 1936 he formed the Workers' Music Association which continues to this day. In 1934 Bush composed the music for a large theatrical pageant The Pageant of Labour held in the Crystal Palace, Sydenham to mark the centenary year of the trial of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. 1,700 performers were involved. He was assisted in conducting this by Michael Tippett, who was to acknowledge Bush as a significant musical influence. One of Bush’s most highly regarded compositions is his single movement string quartet Dialectic Op. 15 of 1929 which received its first performance in 1935 in the same concert that the original version of Tippett’s first quartet was also premiered. A fine 1947 recording of Dialectic by the Aeolian Quartet can be heard here.
In April 1939 Bush took a major role in organising a Festival of Music for the People which started with another large scale pageant with 600 performers, this time in the Royal Albert Hall. Bush wrote to a number of composers asking them for contributions, including Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams despite having reservations about who constituted ‘the People’ provided his Flourish for Brass Band to open the pageant. In addition to the pageant the wider festival included two concerts, one of which introduced Benjamin Britten’s short cantata Ballad of Heroes which set texts by Randall Swingler and W. H. Auden and was intended to honour British members of the International Brigade who had volunteered in the Spanish Civil War of 1937.
Bush, having joined the Independent Labour Party in 1924 and then the Labour Party in 1929, became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1935. Tippett joined the CPGB in the same year but resigned after a few months. Britten’s involvement on the margins of left-wing politics receded as Auden’s influence on him declined. Bush served as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW2 and was based in London where he was able to continue to be active as a conductor and pianist, though his writing was limited.
On demobilisation in 1945 he started composing again and one of his first works was a short cantata The Winter Journey for soprano and baritone soloists, representing Mary and Joseph, mixed chorus and string quintet and harp (or piano) to a text by Swingler. It was the result of a commission by The Council for the Arts, Music and Drama in Northumberland and part of post-war efforts to renew the arts under the new Labour government. The organisers had staged a performance of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols in December 1945 and proposed to Bush that he should compose a Christmas cantata. The atheist composer was uneasy about writing a work with a religious dimension but accepted Swingler’s solution of stripping down the story of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem (here called just The City) to its essentials. After a slow introduction the first movement represents the busyness of the city and the lack of regard by the inhabitants for the couple and their unborn child. In the second movement the baritone soloist recounts in a long declamation the trials of the journey in a way that is reminiscent of T. S. Eliot’s 1927 poem The Journey of the Magi. The short choral third movement describes the sleepers in the city uneasily stirring, aware that something is about to happen without knowing what it is. The fourth movement for solo soprano – Mary’s Song – asks whether the citizens of the city will accept her child ‘And when my child shall stretch out arms to me, Which shadow shall I see along the floor, The cross of death, or blossoming tree?’. The fifth and last movement starts with a solemn chorale for unaccompanied semi-chorus saying that the couple’s journey has been in vain and then the main chorus joins in with the words ‘unless we make some place to lay the child’.
The story can be seen as an allegory for the long journey through six years of war and the question of what the post-war world will bring.
The first performance of the cantata was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in December 1946 from Alnwick Parish Church, Northumberland. There were further broadcast performances in 1948 and 1951, a televised performance in a programme about Alan Bush’s music introduced by John Amis on BBC 2 in 1970 and a broadcast in 1980 of a performance by the BBC Singers on what was by now Radio 3. A recording of this performance was repeated in a 1993 radio programme described in the Radio Times as follows: “John Amis introduces music by Alan Bush (born 22 December 1900) who, despite a career that has been crippled by his espousal of communism, should some day take his rightful place as one of the most distinguished composers of his time.” Alan Bush died in 1995 at the age of 94 and the BBC Singers performance was broadcast again in a programme paying tribute to him, again involving John Amis, on 22nd December of that year. There is no commercial recording of the cantata. The most recent live performance to be found is one by the BBC Singers in January 1986. Since then it appears to have completely dropped out of the repertoire but surely would merit an occasional revival when circumstances allow.
[1] Mabel Lander (1882-1955) taught many leading pianists quite a few of whom, probably unknown to her, turned out to be members of the Communist Party. Rather surprisingly she was also piano tutor to the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret!
In response to the above article, a NewSPAL supporter contacted us to share their story:
'I was so interested to read about Alan Bush. At the first Prom I ever attended, in Sept 1956, he conducted the first London performance of his Concert Suite for cello and orchestra. Florence Hooton was the soloist with the BBC SO.
Then in 1963 at the Dartington Summer School of Music I sang in the choir when we performed "The Winter Journey". The soloists were Hazel Schmid and Joseph Ward, and the Dartington String Quartet played, with Terence Weil (cello) and Margaret Beeston (harp). Bernard Keeffe conducted.
In that programme we also sang three movements from Byrd's four-part mass. Alan Bush kept turning up to rehearsals so we had to rehearse his piece (which was difficult) and therefore didn't have time to learn the whole of the Byrd!
I've attended the Summer School many, many times and Alan Bush was sometimes there so I did meet him. He was certainly a very talented and interesting man.'
Thank you to Juliet Chaplin for allowing us to share your story.
Updated 18/08/20
Further reading/viewing/listening
For a list of all Bush resources in the SPAL collection for hire please see the table below. Article written by Roger Miller.
The Winter Journey Op. 29 (1946) by Alan Bush
Cantata for soprano and baritone soli and mixed chorus, with accompaniment for string quintet and harp or pianoforte (NewSPAL holds a set of 21 copies of the vocal score.)
In his 1985 memoir Amiscellany, John Amis, writer, broadcaster, music administrator and observer from close quarters of musical life in Britain from the 1940s onwards, devoted a chapter to composers he considered his friends. Alongside Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett he included Alan Bush who he judged to be at his best the equal of those two composers. Of Bush’s works he singled out for praise ‘the quite haunting loveliness of the Christmas cantata The Winter Journey’. Bush is hardly known today partly because of what Amis delicately calls his political integrity, by which he meant Bush’s ardent support of communism during a period when that did nothing for a composer’s reputation, at least on the western side of the Iron Curtain.
Alan Bush was born in Dulwich, South London in 1900. He entered the Royal Academy of Music (RAM) in 1918, studying organ, piano and composition there until 1922. He then studied piano further under Benno Moiseivitch and Mabel Lander[1] and from the mid 1920’s with Artur Schnabel in Berlin. From 1922 to 1927 he studied composition with John Ireland. He was appointed Professor of Composition at the RAM in 1925, a position he held until his retirement in 1978. In parallel with his duties at the RAM initially he continued his own studies in philosophy and musicology in Berlin, also performing there in piano and chamber music recitals. He returned to London in 1931 and that year married Nancy Head, sister of the singer and composer Michael Head.
He became involved in socialist choirs active in London and helped establish an umbrella organisation, the London Labour Choral Union. In 1936 he formed the Workers' Music Association which continues to this day. In 1934 Bush composed the music for a large theatrical pageant The Pageant of Labour held in the Crystal Palace, Sydenham to mark the centenary year of the trial of the Tolpuddle Martyrs. 1,700 performers were involved. He was assisted in conducting this by Michael Tippett, who was to acknowledge Bush as a significant musical influence. One of Bush’s most highly regarded compositions is his single movement string quartet Dialectic Op. 15 of 1929 which received its first performance in 1935 in the same concert that the original version of Tippett’s first quartet was also premiered. A fine 1947 recording of Dialectic by the Aeolian Quartet can be heard here.
In April 1939 Bush took a major role in organising a Festival of Music for the People which started with another large scale pageant with 600 performers, this time in the Royal Albert Hall. Bush wrote to a number of composers asking them for contributions, including Ralph Vaughan Williams. Vaughan Williams despite having reservations about who constituted ‘the People’ provided his Flourish for Brass Band to open the pageant. In addition to the pageant the wider festival included two concerts, one of which introduced Benjamin Britten’s short cantata Ballad of Heroes which set texts by Randall Swingler and W. H. Auden and was intended to honour British members of the International Brigade who had volunteered in the Spanish Civil War of 1937.
Bush, having joined the Independent Labour Party in 1924 and then the Labour Party in 1929, became a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) in 1935. Tippett joined the CPGB in the same year but resigned after a few months. Britten’s involvement on the margins of left-wing politics receded as Auden’s influence on him declined. Bush served as a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps during WW2 and was based in London where he was able to continue to be active as a conductor and pianist, though his writing was limited.
On demobilisation in 1945 he started composing again and one of his first works was a short cantata The Winter Journey for soprano and baritone soloists, representing Mary and Joseph, mixed chorus and string quintet and harp (or piano) to a text by Swingler. It was the result of a commission by The Council for the Arts, Music and Drama in Northumberland and part of post-war efforts to renew the arts under the new Labour government. The organisers had staged a performance of Britten’s Ceremony of Carols in December 1945 and proposed to Bush that he should compose a Christmas cantata. The atheist composer was uneasy about writing a work with a religious dimension but accepted Swingler’s solution of stripping down the story of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem (here called just The City) to its essentials. After a slow introduction the first movement represents the busyness of the city and the lack of regard by the inhabitants for the couple and their unborn child. In the second movement the baritone soloist recounts in a long declamation the trials of the journey in a way that is reminiscent of T. S. Eliot’s 1927 poem The Journey of the Magi. The short choral third movement describes the sleepers in the city uneasily stirring, aware that something is about to happen without knowing what it is. The fourth movement for solo soprano – Mary’s Song – asks whether the citizens of the city will accept her child ‘And when my child shall stretch out arms to me, Which shadow shall I see along the floor, The cross of death, or blossoming tree?’. The fifth and last movement starts with a solemn chorale for unaccompanied semi-chorus saying that the couple’s journey has been in vain and then the main chorus joins in with the words ‘unless we make some place to lay the child’.
The story can be seen as an allegory for the long journey through six years of war and the question of what the post-war world will bring.
The first performance of the cantata was broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in December 1946 from Alnwick Parish Church, Northumberland. There were further broadcast performances in 1948 and 1951, a televised performance in a programme about Alan Bush’s music introduced by John Amis on BBC 2 in 1970 and a broadcast in 1980 of a performance by the BBC Singers on what was by now Radio 3. A recording of this performance was repeated in a 1993 radio programme described in the Radio Times as follows: “John Amis introduces music by Alan Bush (born 22 December 1900) who, despite a career that has been crippled by his espousal of communism, should some day take his rightful place as one of the most distinguished composers of his time.” Alan Bush died in 1995 at the age of 94 and the BBC Singers performance was broadcast again in a programme paying tribute to him, again involving John Amis, on 22nd December of that year. There is no commercial recording of the cantata. The most recent live performance to be found is one by the BBC Singers in January 1986. Since then it appears to have completely dropped out of the repertoire but surely would merit an occasional revival when circumstances allow.
[1] Mabel Lander (1882-1955) taught many leading pianists quite a few of whom, probably unknown to her, turned out to be members of the Communist Party. Rather surprisingly she was also piano tutor to the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret!
In response to the above article, a NewSPAL supporter contacted us to share their story:
'I was so interested to read about Alan Bush. At the first Prom I ever attended, in Sept 1956, he conducted the first London performance of his Concert Suite for cello and orchestra. Florence Hooton was the soloist with the BBC SO.
Then in 1963 at the Dartington Summer School of Music I sang in the choir when we performed "The Winter Journey". The soloists were Hazel Schmid and Joseph Ward, and the Dartington String Quartet played, with Terence Weil (cello) and Margaret Beeston (harp). Bernard Keeffe conducted.
In that programme we also sang three movements from Byrd's four-part mass. Alan Bush kept turning up to rehearsals so we had to rehearse his piece (which was difficult) and therefore didn't have time to learn the whole of the Byrd!
I've attended the Summer School many, many times and Alan Bush was sometimes there so I did meet him. He was certainly a very talented and interesting man.'
Thank you to Juliet Chaplin for allowing us to share your story.
Updated 18/08/20
Further reading/viewing/listening
- More information about Alan Bush and his many compositions, including four symphonies and four operas, can be found at Alan Bush Musical Trust
- Alan Bush: A Life (1983) An excellent documentary film directed by Anna Ambrose with a number of performances of key works and extensive interviews with the composer and Michael Tippett.
- A Spotify playlist of music by Alan Bush.
For a list of all Bush resources in the SPAL collection for hire please see the table below. Article written by Roger Miller.
Composer: Herbert Howells (1892-1983)
The composer Herbert Howells was born, like Ralph Vaughan Williams, in Gloucestershire, where he was greatly influenced by the beautiful countryside of the region. Unlike Vaughan Williams, who was born into a distinguished family of wealth and privilege, and who spent his childhood in the grandeur of Leith Hill Place high in the Surrey hills, Howells was born into a poor family, the youngest of eight children. As a young man, he also had to suffer the indignity of his father going bankrupt, an event which brought shame on a family in a small provincial town.
His most formative musical experience was hearing the first performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis in Gloucester cathedral in 1910. He was deeply affected by the music and it was also there that he met Vaughan Williams for the first time. Later they would form a close and long-lasting friendship.
Unlike Vaughan Williams, who took years to find his own style, Howells matured early. He was a brilliant student at the Royal College of Music and he already had an assured technique by the time he was twenty. Like Vaughan Williams, he was influenced by Tudor polyphony, by folksong (largely, he said, for its use of the ancient modes), and by the beauties of the English countryside. He was always primarily a contrapuntal composer, weaving together his separate melodic lines with apparent ease.
Howells made his living as a teacher – mainly at the RCM, though he was also appointed as professor of music at London University - and he was therefore under no financial necessity to compose. He wrote music simply because he wanted to and he showed very little interest in promoting his own music.
Howells was brought up in the English cathedral tradition, beginning his career as an articled pupil to Herbert Brewer, the organist of Gloucester cathedral. He passed the difficult FRCO exam and was for a brief period assistant organist at Salisbury, where he lived in the delightful surroundings of the Cathedral Close. He was always inspired by the architecture of the great cathedrals and relished the sound of choral voices echoing in the great spaces. He was not a religious man but he turned to writing church music later in life and composed many fine pieces for the services of the Anglican church.
Howells was diagnosed with Graves’ disease at the age of 23 and given six months to live. He received a new experimental treatment, involving injections of radium for two years, and then went on to live until the ripe old age of ninety. His illness prevented him from being called up for service in the first world war and so he escaped the slaughter that was the cruel fate of so many of his contemporaries.
He suffered one great tragedy in his life – the death of his son Michael from spinal meningitis at the age of nine. Howells always felt a deep sense of loss. He said that there was never a day in the rest of his life when he did not think of Michael, and that the memory of Michael is present in much of his music. To assuage his grief, he wrote the work that is generally considered his masterpiece: the Hymnus Paradisi, a kind of requiem for Michael. Howells regarded it as a private piece and it lay unperformed for many years until Vaughan Williams urged Howells to have it performed. It is an intense and powerful work, for choir and large orchestra, displaying a wide range of emotions from deep sorrow and anger at loss, to acceptance, resignation and mourning.
Howells was closely involved with Vaughan Williams’ Leith Hill Musical Festival, based in Dorking. He served on the music committee for over forty years, adjudicated several times in the 1930s and 40s, and also presented the prizes to the winning choirs on three occasions. His music has often featured in the competitions and in the programmes of the festival concerts.
Howells wrote orchestral music (including two piano concertos), chamber music (notably the string quartet entitled In Gloucestershire), and a large amount of keyboard music (for organ, piano and clavichord). He also of course wrote a good deal of choral music; major works are the Hymnus Paradisi, the Missa sabrinensis, and the Motet on the death of President Kennedy. The library holds a wide selection of his choral works, several of his instrumental pieces, various CD recordings, and also some books on Howells and his music.
Written by Ian Codd
The composer Herbert Howells was born, like Ralph Vaughan Williams, in Gloucestershire, where he was greatly influenced by the beautiful countryside of the region. Unlike Vaughan Williams, who was born into a distinguished family of wealth and privilege, and who spent his childhood in the grandeur of Leith Hill Place high in the Surrey hills, Howells was born into a poor family, the youngest of eight children. As a young man, he also had to suffer the indignity of his father going bankrupt, an event which brought shame on a family in a small provincial town.
His most formative musical experience was hearing the first performance of Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis in Gloucester cathedral in 1910. He was deeply affected by the music and it was also there that he met Vaughan Williams for the first time. Later they would form a close and long-lasting friendship.
Unlike Vaughan Williams, who took years to find his own style, Howells matured early. He was a brilliant student at the Royal College of Music and he already had an assured technique by the time he was twenty. Like Vaughan Williams, he was influenced by Tudor polyphony, by folksong (largely, he said, for its use of the ancient modes), and by the beauties of the English countryside. He was always primarily a contrapuntal composer, weaving together his separate melodic lines with apparent ease.
Howells made his living as a teacher – mainly at the RCM, though he was also appointed as professor of music at London University - and he was therefore under no financial necessity to compose. He wrote music simply because he wanted to and he showed very little interest in promoting his own music.
Howells was brought up in the English cathedral tradition, beginning his career as an articled pupil to Herbert Brewer, the organist of Gloucester cathedral. He passed the difficult FRCO exam and was for a brief period assistant organist at Salisbury, where he lived in the delightful surroundings of the Cathedral Close. He was always inspired by the architecture of the great cathedrals and relished the sound of choral voices echoing in the great spaces. He was not a religious man but he turned to writing church music later in life and composed many fine pieces for the services of the Anglican church.
Howells was diagnosed with Graves’ disease at the age of 23 and given six months to live. He received a new experimental treatment, involving injections of radium for two years, and then went on to live until the ripe old age of ninety. His illness prevented him from being called up for service in the first world war and so he escaped the slaughter that was the cruel fate of so many of his contemporaries.
He suffered one great tragedy in his life – the death of his son Michael from spinal meningitis at the age of nine. Howells always felt a deep sense of loss. He said that there was never a day in the rest of his life when he did not think of Michael, and that the memory of Michael is present in much of his music. To assuage his grief, he wrote the work that is generally considered his masterpiece: the Hymnus Paradisi, a kind of requiem for Michael. Howells regarded it as a private piece and it lay unperformed for many years until Vaughan Williams urged Howells to have it performed. It is an intense and powerful work, for choir and large orchestra, displaying a wide range of emotions from deep sorrow and anger at loss, to acceptance, resignation and mourning.
Howells was closely involved with Vaughan Williams’ Leith Hill Musical Festival, based in Dorking. He served on the music committee for over forty years, adjudicated several times in the 1930s and 40s, and also presented the prizes to the winning choirs on three occasions. His music has often featured in the competitions and in the programmes of the festival concerts.
Howells wrote orchestral music (including two piano concertos), chamber music (notably the string quartet entitled In Gloucestershire), and a large amount of keyboard music (for organ, piano and clavichord). He also of course wrote a good deal of choral music; major works are the Hymnus Paradisi, the Missa sabrinensis, and the Motet on the death of President Kennedy. The library holds a wide selection of his choral works, several of his instrumental pieces, various CD recordings, and also some books on Howells and his music.
Written by Ian Codd
Composer: Ethel Smyth (1858 - 1944)
“One of the most remarkable people of our time”
“She was one of the most remarkable people of our time, among men or women, and there are many of us alive today who cherish her memory, and we do so with admiration, respect and a great deal of love.” This was how Sir Thomas Beecham concluded his tribute to Dame Ethel in a broadcast on the BBC Home Service in April 1958 to mark her centenary.
Ethel Smyth was the fourth of eight children – six girls and two boys - born to Major General John Hall Smyth of the Royal Artillery and his wife Emma nee Struth. Her childhood was spent in Sidcup, near Woolwich where her father commanded the Artillery Depot having recently returned from India, and then Frimley near Farnborough from 1867 when her father, promoted to General, took command of the Artillery at Aldershot. It was at this time that Ethel discovered her aptitude for music and started composing – she says mainly psalm chants and hymns – and playing the piano and singing with her sister Mary. Their duets became a feature of home dinner parties. Her mother, who was musical, albeit untrained, encouraged her. When a new governess who had studied at Leipzig Conservatorium arrived and introduced her to classical music, Ethel aged 12 became determined that she would go to Leipzig to study there.
Harmony lessons with an army officer colleague of her father who also happened to be a composer introduced her to Wagner and she conceived a desire to have an opera produced in Germany before she was forty. Her father wanted her to ‘be presented’ and to marry but Edith was determined to study to be a composer.
Edith had begun to slip away to London on her own to attend concerts – she borrowed money from local tradesmen and told them to put the sum on the General’s account. This provoked a confrontation with her father and she said that she would have to go to London to hear music if she was not allowed to go to Leipzig. She embarked on a campaign of disobedience, refusing to go to church, refusing to sing at dinner parties and refusing to talk to anyone and her father finally relented. A family friend who recognised Ethel’s talent and wanted to encourage her produced a respectable aunt who would look after her and Ethel departed for Leipzig in July 1877.
Finding the teaching at the Conservatorium unsatisfactory Ethel started to take private lessons with Heinrich von Herzogenberg whose wife Elisabeth (known as Frau Lisl) was a former pupil and close musical confidant of Brahms. Through the von Herzogenbergs Ethel gained access to the highest levels of music society in Germany and was able to observe Brahms himself from close quarters.
The story of Ethel’s childhood and teenage years illustrates three characteristics that proved to be typical of her whole life: her defiance of convention in refusing to marry and choosing to be a composer, her ambition, moreover, to compose operas, the most expensive form she could have chosen rather than the piano pieces and songs that were the typical output of most female composers at the time, and her iron determination to have her own way.
Some miscellaneous Ethel Smyth facts
Further reading/listening
Copies of many of Ethel’s books are available for reference at the Surrey History Centre which also holds manuscript and printed copies of March of the Women. Alternatively, Ronald Crichton’s abridged selection from her writings with his informative introduction and a comprehensive list of compositions complied by Jory Bennett may be found online at the Internet Archive.
Spotify has many recordings of Ethel’s music. There is also a recording of the 1958 BBC programme, broadcast to mark her centenary, which begins with Sir Thomas Beecham’s extempore tribute and concludes with a number of anecdotes recalled by people who knew her well, including her niece.
There are also many recordings available on YouTube including a remarkable one of a radio broadcast, probably dating from 1935, in which Dame Ethel gives her not wholly complimentary recollections of Johannes Brahms.
The website www.ethelsmyth.org is dedicated to celebrating the life and achievements of Dame Ethel.
The SPAL collection holds a number of items relating to Ethel Smyth including scores, recordings of her music, and 3 books about her. Notable compositions include ‘The Wreckers’ and a Mass in D major. Smyth was heavily involved with the women’s suffrage movement (causing her to serve 2 months in Holloway prison). In 1911 she wrote ‘The March of the Women’, dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, which became the anthem of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
The crowd-funded recording of Ethel's 'The Prison' mentioned in the above article is now out and there is a write-up about it in the New Your Times. The article includes a remarkable photograph of Ethel in full academic dress conducting the Metropolitan Police Band at the unveiling of the statue to Emmeline Pankhurst in 1930 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/arts/music/ethel-smyth-prison-chandos.html).
The recording is available for download from Chandos and on Spotify.
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205279
For a list of all Smyth resources in the SPAL collection for hire please see the table below and to read the extended article written by Roger Miller please download the PDF file below.
“One of the most remarkable people of our time”
“She was one of the most remarkable people of our time, among men or women, and there are many of us alive today who cherish her memory, and we do so with admiration, respect and a great deal of love.” This was how Sir Thomas Beecham concluded his tribute to Dame Ethel in a broadcast on the BBC Home Service in April 1958 to mark her centenary.
Ethel Smyth was the fourth of eight children – six girls and two boys - born to Major General John Hall Smyth of the Royal Artillery and his wife Emma nee Struth. Her childhood was spent in Sidcup, near Woolwich where her father commanded the Artillery Depot having recently returned from India, and then Frimley near Farnborough from 1867 when her father, promoted to General, took command of the Artillery at Aldershot. It was at this time that Ethel discovered her aptitude for music and started composing – she says mainly psalm chants and hymns – and playing the piano and singing with her sister Mary. Their duets became a feature of home dinner parties. Her mother, who was musical, albeit untrained, encouraged her. When a new governess who had studied at Leipzig Conservatorium arrived and introduced her to classical music, Ethel aged 12 became determined that she would go to Leipzig to study there.
Harmony lessons with an army officer colleague of her father who also happened to be a composer introduced her to Wagner and she conceived a desire to have an opera produced in Germany before she was forty. Her father wanted her to ‘be presented’ and to marry but Edith was determined to study to be a composer.
Edith had begun to slip away to London on her own to attend concerts – she borrowed money from local tradesmen and told them to put the sum on the General’s account. This provoked a confrontation with her father and she said that she would have to go to London to hear music if she was not allowed to go to Leipzig. She embarked on a campaign of disobedience, refusing to go to church, refusing to sing at dinner parties and refusing to talk to anyone and her father finally relented. A family friend who recognised Ethel’s talent and wanted to encourage her produced a respectable aunt who would look after her and Ethel departed for Leipzig in July 1877.
Finding the teaching at the Conservatorium unsatisfactory Ethel started to take private lessons with Heinrich von Herzogenberg whose wife Elisabeth (known as Frau Lisl) was a former pupil and close musical confidant of Brahms. Through the von Herzogenbergs Ethel gained access to the highest levels of music society in Germany and was able to observe Brahms himself from close quarters.
The story of Ethel’s childhood and teenage years illustrates three characteristics that proved to be typical of her whole life: her defiance of convention in refusing to marry and choosing to be a composer, her ambition, moreover, to compose operas, the most expensive form she could have chosen rather than the piano pieces and songs that were the typical output of most female composers at the time, and her iron determination to have her own way.
Some miscellaneous Ethel Smyth facts
- Dame Ethel lived in Woking at a cottage she named ‘Coign’ near Woking Golf Course in Hook Heath from 1910 until her death. The cottage, now renamed, bears a blue plaque.
- Dame Ethel owned a succession of four Old English Sheepdogs, all called Pan. She wrote movingly about the illness and death of Pan IV, the one she had loved the most, who was clearly a very good dog indeed.
- Dame Ethel, in common with many men and women of her time whose politics were radical, was a keen cyclist. In his memoirs Sir Henry Wood recalled his first meeting with her. Sir Henry, also a cyclist, needed his bicycle to be repaired and was told by his maid that a man was waiting to see him in the drawing room. Walking into the room and assuming that the figure apparently wearing breeches with its back to him was the man who had come about the repair, he began to talk about his bicycle. The figure turned round and said: “Bicycle? I am Ethel Smyth!” The breeches were in fact the bloomers of Ethel’s ‘Rational Dress’, a fashion adopted by more daring women for cycling.
- Ethel worked as an assistant radiologist in a French military hospital in Vichy from 1915 to 1918.
- Dame Ethel’s penultimate composition in 1930 was a fanfare called ‘Hot Potatoes’ written in aid of the Musicians’ Benevolent Fund and performed by Army Bandsmen from Kneller Hall.
- Dame Ethel’s March of the Women was performed in 1930 at the unveiling of a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst in a version accompanied by the band of the suffragette’s main adversaries, the Metropolitan Police.
- Dame Ethel received the honorary degree of D. Mus from Durham University in 1901. Not many years previously the university’s position was that women were not eligible for degrees but might go through the exams and receive a certificate if they were successful. She claimed that she was made a Dame in 1922 after having come to the notice of Lord Riddell, a friend of Lloyd George, through her involvement in a dispute at Woking Golf Club between the male and female members about a short cut through the club house that involved the ladies passing the men’s dressing rooms. She received further honorary degrees from Oxford in 1926 (the first female recipient of an honorary doctorate in music from the university), St Andrews (1928) and Manchester (1930).
Further reading/listening
Copies of many of Ethel’s books are available for reference at the Surrey History Centre which also holds manuscript and printed copies of March of the Women. Alternatively, Ronald Crichton’s abridged selection from her writings with his informative introduction and a comprehensive list of compositions complied by Jory Bennett may be found online at the Internet Archive.
Spotify has many recordings of Ethel’s music. There is also a recording of the 1958 BBC programme, broadcast to mark her centenary, which begins with Sir Thomas Beecham’s extempore tribute and concludes with a number of anecdotes recalled by people who knew her well, including her niece.
There are also many recordings available on YouTube including a remarkable one of a radio broadcast, probably dating from 1935, in which Dame Ethel gives her not wholly complimentary recollections of Johannes Brahms.
The website www.ethelsmyth.org is dedicated to celebrating the life and achievements of Dame Ethel.
The SPAL collection holds a number of items relating to Ethel Smyth including scores, recordings of her music, and 3 books about her. Notable compositions include ‘The Wreckers’ and a Mass in D major. Smyth was heavily involved with the women’s suffrage movement (causing her to serve 2 months in Holloway prison). In 1911 she wrote ‘The March of the Women’, dedicated to Emmeline Pankhurst, which became the anthem of the Women’s Social and Political Union.
The crowd-funded recording of Ethel's 'The Prison' mentioned in the above article is now out and there is a write-up about it in the New Your Times. The article includes a remarkable photograph of Ethel in full academic dress conducting the Metropolitan Police Band at the unveiling of the statue to Emmeline Pankhurst in 1930 (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/arts/music/ethel-smyth-prison-chandos.html).
The recording is available for download from Chandos and on Spotify.
https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%205279
For a list of all Smyth resources in the SPAL collection for hire please see the table below and to read the extended article written by Roger Miller please download the PDF file below.
| ethel_smyth_full_article_written_by_roger_miller_may_2020.pdf |
Playwright: RC Sherriff (1896 - 1975)
NewSPAL trustee Carol Hall writes below about RC Sherriff whose name may be unfamiliar but some of whose work will be much more well known. He had a life-long Surrey connection and the SPAL collection contains a selection of his work. Read on!
Robert Cedric Sherriff (known personally as Bob, and to the literary world simply as R C) lived in Esher for most of his life. He was born in Hampton Wick, Middlesex, on 6 June 1896 and was educated at Kingston Grammar School, where he won several sports prizes.
He enlisted into the army in November 1915 with the Artists Rifles and by September 1917 had obtained a commission with the East Surrey Regiment as a Second Lieutenant. He served in France until he was wounded in action on 2 August 1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), and was sent back to England for treatment.
He never returned to active service in France, and remained with the 3rd and 12th Battalions, the East Surrey Regiment, in Britain until he was demobilised in early 1919. Sherriff’s ‘Officer’s Record of Service’ shows that he retained the rank of Second Lieutenant throughout his active service in France. Later, while on home service, he was promoted firstly to Lieutenant on 5 March 1918, and later to Captain on 8 January 1919. In 1919 Sherriff unsuccessfully applied for a permanent commission in the army, and he returned to working for his pre-war employers in insurance. He devoted his free time to sport, creative writing and amateur dramatics.
He wrote at least six plays on an amateur basis, often as a means to raise funds for local causes and organisations: A Hitch in the Proceedings (1921); The Woods of Meadowside (1922}; Profit & Loss (1923); Cornlow in the Downs (1923); The Feudal System (1925); and
Mr Birdie’s Finger (1926). Sherriff also acted in several of these early plays, as did his sister Beryl Sherriff. Sadly we do not have copies of these early plays in the SPAL collection.
Then, in 1928 Sherriff wrote Journey’s End, his most spectacular dramatic success, which was performed for just two nights at the Apollo Theatre in London. The play was set in the trenches in March 1918, and was based on his own experiences and comrades at the Western Front. It was well received, and the play transferred to the Savoy Theatre in January 1929. It soon proved to be a critical and commercial success. None of his later plays achieved the success of Journey’s End.
In the 1930’s Sherriff also began his career as a screenplay writer and wrote and co-wrote various film scripts, including The Invisible Man (1933), One More River (1934) and The Road Back (1937). His biggest success came in 1939 when he was nominated, along with Eric Maschwitz and Claudine West, for an Academy Award for writing the adapted screenplay for Goodbye, Mr Chips. This career continued in the 1940’s with That Hamilton Woman (1941), This Above All (1942) and the Academy Award winning Mrs Miniver (1942), for which he was an uncredited writer. In 1956 Sherriff was nominated for BAFTA Best British Screenplay Awards for The Dam Busters and also The Night My Number Came Up, both of which had been released in 1955.
In 1944 Sherriff resumed play writing. Many of these later plays were performed in the West End. We have a number of these plays (in sets) in the SPAL collection: Miss Mabel (1949); Home at Seven (1950); Long Sunset (1955); Telescope (1959); Shred of Evidence (1961); and White Carnation (1954). It would be an interesting project for a play-reading group to read all these plays! He also wrote a number of novels, and a memoir No Leading Lady (1968), which is available (for reference only) in the SPAL collection.
Sherriff never married, and remained devoted to his mother, with whom he lived, latterly at his Esher house ‘Rosebriars’. He died in Kingston Hospital on 13 September 1975.
Sherriff bequeathed his papers to the Governors of Kingston Grammar School, while his royalties were divided between the School and the Scouts Association. He also bequeathed his home to Elmbridge Borough Council as an arts venue. It was later sold, and the capital realized on its sale established the RC Sherriff Trust (formerly the Rosebriars Trust), which supports the arts within Elmbridge Borough.
There are three collections of Sherriff’s papers held at the Surrey History Centre, all of which are now fully catalogued and accessible thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund, and support from Surrey History Trust, Kingston Grammar School, The RC Sherriff Trust, and Curtis Brown Literary Agents.
See below for items by RC Sherriff in the SPAL collection available for hire:
NewSPAL trustee Carol Hall writes below about RC Sherriff whose name may be unfamiliar but some of whose work will be much more well known. He had a life-long Surrey connection and the SPAL collection contains a selection of his work. Read on!
Robert Cedric Sherriff (known personally as Bob, and to the literary world simply as R C) lived in Esher for most of his life. He was born in Hampton Wick, Middlesex, on 6 June 1896 and was educated at Kingston Grammar School, where he won several sports prizes.
He enlisted into the army in November 1915 with the Artists Rifles and by September 1917 had obtained a commission with the East Surrey Regiment as a Second Lieutenant. He served in France until he was wounded in action on 2 August 1917 during the Battle of Passchendaele (Third Battle of Ypres), and was sent back to England for treatment.
He never returned to active service in France, and remained with the 3rd and 12th Battalions, the East Surrey Regiment, in Britain until he was demobilised in early 1919. Sherriff’s ‘Officer’s Record of Service’ shows that he retained the rank of Second Lieutenant throughout his active service in France. Later, while on home service, he was promoted firstly to Lieutenant on 5 March 1918, and later to Captain on 8 January 1919. In 1919 Sherriff unsuccessfully applied for a permanent commission in the army, and he returned to working for his pre-war employers in insurance. He devoted his free time to sport, creative writing and amateur dramatics.
He wrote at least six plays on an amateur basis, often as a means to raise funds for local causes and organisations: A Hitch in the Proceedings (1921); The Woods of Meadowside (1922}; Profit & Loss (1923); Cornlow in the Downs (1923); The Feudal System (1925); and
Mr Birdie’s Finger (1926). Sherriff also acted in several of these early plays, as did his sister Beryl Sherriff. Sadly we do not have copies of these early plays in the SPAL collection.
Then, in 1928 Sherriff wrote Journey’s End, his most spectacular dramatic success, which was performed for just two nights at the Apollo Theatre in London. The play was set in the trenches in March 1918, and was based on his own experiences and comrades at the Western Front. It was well received, and the play transferred to the Savoy Theatre in January 1929. It soon proved to be a critical and commercial success. None of his later plays achieved the success of Journey’s End.
In the 1930’s Sherriff also began his career as a screenplay writer and wrote and co-wrote various film scripts, including The Invisible Man (1933), One More River (1934) and The Road Back (1937). His biggest success came in 1939 when he was nominated, along with Eric Maschwitz and Claudine West, for an Academy Award for writing the adapted screenplay for Goodbye, Mr Chips. This career continued in the 1940’s with That Hamilton Woman (1941), This Above All (1942) and the Academy Award winning Mrs Miniver (1942), for which he was an uncredited writer. In 1956 Sherriff was nominated for BAFTA Best British Screenplay Awards for The Dam Busters and also The Night My Number Came Up, both of which had been released in 1955.
In 1944 Sherriff resumed play writing. Many of these later plays were performed in the West End. We have a number of these plays (in sets) in the SPAL collection: Miss Mabel (1949); Home at Seven (1950); Long Sunset (1955); Telescope (1959); Shred of Evidence (1961); and White Carnation (1954). It would be an interesting project for a play-reading group to read all these plays! He also wrote a number of novels, and a memoir No Leading Lady (1968), which is available (for reference only) in the SPAL collection.
Sherriff never married, and remained devoted to his mother, with whom he lived, latterly at his Esher house ‘Rosebriars’. He died in Kingston Hospital on 13 September 1975.
Sherriff bequeathed his papers to the Governors of Kingston Grammar School, while his royalties were divided between the School and the Scouts Association. He also bequeathed his home to Elmbridge Borough Council as an arts venue. It was later sold, and the capital realized on its sale established the RC Sherriff Trust (formerly the Rosebriars Trust), which supports the arts within Elmbridge Borough.
There are three collections of Sherriff’s papers held at the Surrey History Centre, all of which are now fully catalogued and accessible thanks to the Heritage Lottery Fund, and support from Surrey History Trust, Kingston Grammar School, The RC Sherriff Trust, and Curtis Brown Literary Agents.
See below for items by RC Sherriff in the SPAL collection available for hire:
