THE WILLIAM ALWYN SOCIETY

President: Mary Alwyn
Patron: Vilem Tausky CBE

Cover Painting: Chinese Lanterns by William Alwyn

Notes by Mary Alwyn, © Mary Alwyn

By the late 1930s Alwyn was regarded by his fellow musicians as an avant-garde composer and had achieved a secure place in contemporary music. His works were played at important concerts and were frequently broadcast. From 1936, when he entered, as a pioneer, the Documentary Film Movement, his scores for films were increasingly in demand.

In this decade radio was in its infancy and only a very few gramophone records were available, but there were many opportunities for music to be heard in public. R.C.M. Patron's Fund Concerts were held at the Wigmore Hall; the R.A.M. New Music Society at the Royal Academy of Music. Under the latter's auspices exchange concerts of English music were given in Paris and Warsaw, Alwyn's music being played in both cities - the foreign artists playing the English composer's music, and in return the British musicians giving performances in London of the French and Polish composers. Iris Lemare organized a series of concerts at the Mercury theatre where works by E. Goossens, Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Lutyens, Britten and Rawsthorne were played, as well as those by Alwyn. At the Cowdray Hall the London Contemporary Music Centre also gave composers an opportunity to hear their works performed.

All these concerts, together with many of those given daily on the "wireless", were reviewed in The Times and other major newspapers, although the criticisms were not always kindly! Alwyn's Fantasia for String Quartet appeared to last into eternity but a later work, Rhapsody for Piano Quartet was a taught, vigorous work, very effectively written for the medium.

The professional musicians involved in these performances - the distinguished Goossens family: Léon the oboeist, Sidonie and Marie, harpists, and Eugène the composer and conductor, with string players such as Frederick Grinke, Watson Forbes, Douglas Cameron and William Pleeth - were all Alwyn's friends, and so it was inevitable that he should write music for these players, who, in their turn, welcomed the new works specially written for them.

Such writing for friends continued throughout the composer's life - the Concerto for Flute and Eight Wind Instruments (1980) being one of the latest examples, written at the request of William Bennet for the English Chamber Orchestra Wind Ensemble. This work

is in fact a nonet for wind - a light-hearted work in four short movements of which the two outer movements are the most substantial. The second movement is a lively scherzo and the third movement is the slow movement - expressive and meditative in style. The last movement, heralded by a flute cadenza, is contrapuntal, a fugal subject is announced by the bassoon and taken up in turn by the other instruments - the pace quickens and finishes with a brilliant flourish.

The little Suite for Oboe and Harp was written for Léon and Sidonie Goossens. It is in three short movements, the last of which is a lively jig with a hint of an Irish folk song. The manuscript, lost for many years, was located in the Léon Goossens bequest of his entire musical repertoire to the British library. He and his sister first played the piece on 25 August 1946, at a Sunday Afternoon Concert which they gave with Joseph Szigette and Gerald Moore, which was broadcast from the concert hall of Broadcasting House.

All creative work is in a sense autobiographical, and Naiades is no exception, for it recaptures both Alwyn's past experience as a professional flautist and his home in the Suffolk countryside.

It is a virtuoso work and exploits to the full the technical resonances of both instruments. My studio overlooks the River Blyth - tidal waters flanked by a broad expanse of reedy marshes, haunt of shrill seabirds. To wander there on a Summer evening, when the reeds are a rustling sheet of gold and the water the colour of the "wine-dark" sea, is to believe again in Pan and Syrinx, sense the presence of Undine, and hear the Naiads sporting in the shallows, hidden from mortal sight by the shrouding reeds. But all music, however descriptive, is in essence "absolute" music; and this piece, a sonata in one movement, is no exception.

Naiades was first performed by Christopher Hyde-Smith and Marisa Robles, the dedicatees, at the Bath Festival in May, 1971.

Music for three players. The three players for whom this work was written were Arthur Pennington (violin), Reginald Kell (clarinet) and Richard Favell (piano) - known as the "Claviano Trio". The music consitst of eight short pieces, played with scarcely a break. Alwyn called this work "a group of eight pieces" - and they are rather like a conversazione between three friends. In most of them the piano spans the discussion with the violin and clarinet adding their comments.

The Trio for Flute, cello and Piano was written in the Summer of 1951 for three French artists, all this time involved with the Paris Conservatoire: René le Roy - the flautist who had played Divertimento with such distinction at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in 1941; Jacques Février - the brilliant pianist and champion of Ravel, and Roger Albin - himself a composer as well as a noted cellist.

Alwyn's first symphony had been completed in 1949, and performed at the 1950 Cheltenham Festival. 1951 had seen the publication of his Sonata alla Toccata and he had written the Concerto Grosso No. 2 for strings - but he was never idle, and while his mind was brooding on Symphony No. 2, he found some relaxation in writing this chamber work as a piece for three instruments which involved no large-scale scoring for full orchestra.

The pages of initial sketches contain all the work's ideas, but he did not write immediately in score. Together with these are personal reminders such as "long tune", "echo on cello", "don't forget piano left hand", and "take this a long way in sequence with cello and the build to a climax". This is really how music is composed - the mind always creates faster than the pen can write. Once these first ideas are on paper the complex task of creating the final work begins.

The comparatively short time of two months saw the completion of the Trio, which is in two movements, Adagio ma non troppo and Allegro con brio e giocoso. In the Adagio the two main ideas are heard immediately, the first on the piano and the second on the cello. Much is made of a canon between the flute and cello for this again is very much a "conversation piece" between the players. The rhythmic opening of the Allegro is the basis of much of the movement, and the canon and the "echo on the cello" are much in evidence. A brisk coda is based on the opening theme and ends Fortissimo.

Notes by Mary Alwyn, © Mary Alwyn

Reviews