Bax-Master of the King's Musick and Brazen Romantic

New Zealand Listener, Volume 10, Issue 242, 11 February 1944, Page 10

Bax-Master of the King's Musick and Brazen Romantic

SIR ARNOLD BAX, Master of the King’s Musick, who was 60 last November, is known to every music lover as one of Britain’s leading composers. Several of his _ works are familiar to New Zealand radio listeners — "Tintagel,’ for instance, and the first’ string quartet, or the newly released film music "Malta, G.C." Yet until his autobiography, "Farewell My Youth,’ was published last year, it was possible to say that music lovers knew very little about Bax the man, and that what they knew of Bax the composer was only a small part of what there was to know. Ralph Hill, music editor of the "Radio Times," recently wrote an article in "London Calling" (with some informal photographs of the composer, one of which we reproduce here), in which he offered his explanation for the protracted indifference of the musical world towards "one of the foremost figures in British music of our time." * * * N his early days, Arnold Bax came in for a good deal of spiteful criticism. By the diehards of that time he was considered an ultra-modern composer, and incidentally, by the die-easies of to-day he is dismissed as a reactionary. The truth is that he is neither one nor the other. His whole conception of music is essentially romantic, and his style as a composer, although very individual, is firmly based on the solid foundations of the past. This is especially so with regard to his harmony, in spite of a fondness for melodic decoration and a calculated use of dissonance when he wants to drive home a point. His views on atonalism as put into practice by composers like Schonberg are characteristic. "It is improbable," he says, "that healthy and natural things like the coming of spring, young love, or any gay or happy idea can ever be associated with so turgid a medium." The Battle of Bax The battle of Bax was fought over a quarter of a century ago, chiefly, if not entirely, by the then young and vigorous critic, Edwin Evans. On the whole, all that Evans proclaimed for Bax has come about, and this critic’s enthusiasm has been justified. Why then, you might ask, if Bax is such a great composer is his music not more widely known and appreciated? The answer is that British composers -outside the honey-pot brand-have never been allowed to be prophets in their own country. And this, I am sure, is the fault not so much of the indifference of the public, but of those individuals and societies who, since the beginning of the century, have been responsible — the notable exception being, of course, Sir Henry Wood-for making programmes. Like Elgar and Delius, Bax has had to make his way on the merits of his ‘music alone, for he is not a concert virtuoso, nor does he occupy a leading academic post. When Bax was appointed Master of the King’s Musick, he occupied a public position for the first time, (Continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) Bax is often taken for a Celt, for much of his music has certain features that are reminiscent of Irish folk song. But he was born in Streatham, now a suburb of London, of an old Surrey stock. At the age of 13, Bax went to live in Hampstead, and a couple of years later he became a student at the Hampstead Conservatoire-an institution, as he says, "ruled with considerable pomp by the afterwards celebrated Cecil Sharp." Then came five years at the Royal Academy of Music, after which a year or so at Dresden listening to opera and to the symphonic music of the great German masters. Bax tells us in his frank and stimulating autobiography, Farewell My Youth, that "it seems that I could

always read printed music at the pianostool with the same unthinking ease with which a man reads a book. I claim no merit in this. It is merely a natural gift, like thick hair! or strong teeth." Indeed, Bax’s ability to read complicated modern scores is prodigious: it is nothing for him to transcribe at sight on the piano a full score of a new orchestral work and give a very able performance of it. I have heard it said that his only equals among contemporary musicians were Vincent d’Indy and Sir Donald Tovey. Virtually Became an Irishman One of the most important events in the development of Bax as an artist: happened when he was 19 years of age and he came into contact with W. B Yeats’s poetry-as he puts it "in a moment the Celt within me stood revealed." Later, Ireland became his great retreat, and its countryside, its people, and its folklore coloured his whole outlook on life. While living there he virtually became an Irishman, He even adopted the name of Dermot O’Byrne, who turned author, and had several books that were published in Dublin. What Ireland’s greatest poet W. B. Yeats has meant to Bax, he tells us in his autobiography. "His was the key," he says "that opened the gate of the Celtic wonderland to my _ wide-eyed youth, and his the finger that pointed to the magic mountain whence I was to dig all that may be of value in my own art. Neither does my debt to that great man end there, for his poetry has always meant more to me than the music of the centuries. Under this Celtic domination, Bax says that his musical style became strengthened and purged of many alien elements. In part, at least, he rid himself of the influences of Wagner and

Strauss, and began to write in an Irish manner, using figures and melodies of a definitely Celtic curve. This idiom eventually became quite natural to him, so much so that many of his works have been described as being Irish or Celtic, although Bax supposed them to be purely personal to himself. A good example of this is the opening of the finale of his well-known String Quartet in G, which was written in 1918. The first tune has often been mistaken for a folk-tune. Bax has written seven symphonies: the first was composed in 1922 when he was 39 years of age: the seventh, which was heard at the Proms last season, was completed in 1939. These symphonies have yet to be assessed at their true value, for the simple reason that they are so rarely performed, and

have not been recorded. This neglect is quite unwarranted. In 1928, in an article published in Musical America, Bax claimed that he was a "brazen romantic-by which I mean that my music is the expression of emotional states. I have no interest whatever in sound for its own sake or in any modernist isms or factions." That indeed, sums up the man as well as his music. He is one of those quiet, shy, and thoughtful men who live a secluded life away from the hurly-burly and racket of the modern world. His interests lie almost entirely in music (unfortunately, he has composed little or nothing since the war), poetry and the countryside. To his small and select circle of intimate friends he is a responsive and stimulating companion. To that much wider circle of musiclovers who know nothing of the man but know and understand his music, Sir Arnold Bax remains one of the foremost figures in British music of our time. LS TT TE EE