MALCOLM ARNOLD IN
CORNWALL by Phillip Hunt
"Happy but not idyllic - there’s
nothing idyllic about writing music
and bringing up a family". That
was how Malcolm Arnold described the
years between 1965 and 1972 when with
his second wife Isobel he lived at St
Merryn in Cornwall. Eager to escape
the pressures of living in London they
moved just after their marriage to Primrose
Cottage, actually a row of three hundred
year old fisherman’s cottages converted
into one, in the small village just
outside Padstow. It was in Cornwall
during that period that he had his most
close and enthusiastic contact with
the Brass Band World.
Malcolm Arnold had spent several holidays
in Cornwall, indeed during his student
days at The Royal College of Music he
lived for a short spell in Plymouth
just over the border in Devon. Following
a row with Sir George Dyson, the Principal
of The College, Arnold in his own words,
"ran away with a very beautiful
Welsh art student with red hair from
The Royal College of Art. We went to
Plymouth, where I decided never to do
music again, and just live the life
of an artisan. But music got the upper
hand and I got a job as a trumpeter
in a dance band in Union Street, where
I was very happy until I was found by
private detectives".
It was during the years in Cornwall
that Malcolm Arnold wrote some of his
most popular and successful orchestral
and film music including his 6th Symphony,
Peterloo Overture, Four Cornish Dances
and Fantasies for Trumpet, Trombone
and Tuba. The self doubt that led to
periods of mental frustration and illness
had not really surfaced during those
years when he was still, at least outwardly,
an ebullient and gregarious character.
With his new wife and infant son Edward,
who was born in Cornwall, he threw himself
enthusiastically into the musical life
of the County, in particular Brass Bands
and specifically The Cornwall Youth
Brass Band. The 1966 Annual Course of
the Band took place at Fowey with Geoffrey
Brand as Course Director. One of the
pieces chosen for the course was Arnold’s
Little Suite for Brass, which he had
written for The National Youth Brass
Band of Scotland in 1963. In a Foreword
to the Concert Programme he wrote "I
have known some of the Brass Bands and
Choirs in Cornwall for many years, but
it was not until I came to live here
that I became aware of what a living
tradition of music there is in this
part of the world. I am certain that
such an organisation as a Youth Brass
Band not only does so much good for
talented young musicians, but its influence
will be far larger in a social sense,
than only a musical one".
So impressed was Malcolm Arnold by The
Cornwall Youth Brass Band, led on that
course by Brian Minear, that he offered
to write a work for them for their next
Course. Naturally the offer was gratefully
accepted and on January 19th 1967 the
score and parts of The Little Suite
No 2 for Brass Band were received by
Reg Trudgian, the Chairman of the Band.
On the original handwritten score, Malcolm
Arnold wrote "All players should
play in all parts (even in pianissimo
passages) unless otherwise indicated".
The new work was premiered at Fowey
on Easter Sunday that year at the end
of Course Concert with the Composer
himself conducting the three movements,
Round, Cavatina and Galop.
The Suite was received with great acclaim
prompting the Composer to write to Reg
Trudgian a few days later that "The
Concert was a great experience which
I shall never forget. Every player excelled
themselves and made me realise what
a wonderful thing music is". The
Little Suite was repeated the following
year when Malcolm Arnold, to the delight
of the Committee and Band directed the
whole Course himself, an occasion fondly
remembered by one of the Baritone players
Terry Sleeman who said that he was "someone
you looked up to, he was jovial, but
always serious about the music".
His interesting choice of music for
the Course included, Tintagel by Denis
Wright, who had died earlier that year
and Music for a Brass Band by Martin
Dalby as well as lighter numbers such
as Sandpaper Ballet and Stardust. Malcolm
Arnold refused any fee or expenses for
his services and was quoted in The Cornish
Guardian as saying "These seventy
young people have given me more than
I have given them". There was such
a demand for tickets for the Saturday
end of course Concert that an extra
performance was laid on the following
day.
Though born in Northampton Malcolm Arnold
found himself in great sympathy with
the Celtic spirit of Cornwall which
he memorably described in a programme
note for the first performance of his
Four Cornish Dances as "a land
of male voice choirs, brass bands, Methodism,
May Days and Moodey and Sankey hymns".
In The Western Morning News on October
17th 1969 he is quoted as saying "I
am now aggressively, chauvinistically
Cornish" and he felt immensely
proud and flattered by his adopted County
when he was initiated as a Bard of The
Cornish Gorsedd at Liskeard that year
with the Cornish Bardic name of Trompour,
in English, Trumpeter. The choice of
name reflecting his early career as
a trumpet player, particularly in The
London Philharmonic Orchestra, which
he had joined as a teenager and became
principal trumpet of at the age of twenty
one, giving it up to dedicate himself
entirely to composition some four years
later.
Such was his interest and involvement
with the Cornish Musical scene that
after coming across the music of Thomas
Merritt he enthusiastically promoted
it to the extent of personally organising
and conducting a concert of his works
in Truro Cathedral. Thomas Merritt,
scarcely a familiar name in British
music though well known in Cornwall,
was born into a poor mining family in
1863 in the parish of Illogan near Redruth.
A miner himself from an early age he
was a self taught musician and became
a prolific composer and conductor before
dying in 1908 at the age of forty six.
For the concert which took place on
16th March 1968, to mark the 60th anniversary
of Merritt’s death, Arnold assembled
the combined forces of The St Dennis
and St Agnes Bands as well as The Cornwall
Symphony Orchestra and several Choirs.
The programme included Merritt’s
Coronation March and several of his
Hymns, Carols and Anthems all arranged
by Malcolm Arnold himself for the combined
forces. In addition he went to the trouble
of composing a work himself called Salute
to Thomas Merritt, which is listed as
his Opus 98. The five minute piece,
scored for two Bands and Orchestra,
is in essence an extended fanfare and
the various ensembles were dispersed
around the Cathedral.
This almost led to a break down in the
music when The St Agnes Band were making
their way up a narrow stone spiral staircase
to a gallery high above the Nave to
play their part. Eric Lobb, one of their
Bass players, managed to wedge the bell
of his instrument firmly between the
stones halfway up. With most of the
Band behind him it took some time before
he could be freed, in the end by brute
force, just in time for the Band to
take their places and come in on cue.
There is no doubt that Malcolm Arnold’s
concert march The Padstow Lifeboat must
be one of the most popular brass band
pieces ever written. It has gone around
the world taking the name of the small
Cornish town with it and has been transcribed
into wind band and orchestral versions.
It is in fact a very personal work,
written by Arnold in 1967 specifically
for the launching of a new lifeboat
in Padstow by The Duke of Kent.
In an interview he gave on Padstow Quay,
which was broadcast on Radio Three,
the composer said "The lifeboat
here is very much part of every body’s
life. They do some tremendously heroic
rescues, I know the crew, I know the
Coxswain - Coxwain Elliot, most of them
are friends of mine and I was struck
by their heroism and it being very much
part of the Town I thought I would like
to write a march, that’s all".
On the day of the Launch the first performance
was given by The St Dennis Silver Band
whose Musical Director, Eddie Williams,
handed over the Baton to the Composer
to conduct. Following the formalities
he took the whole Band into the nearest
Pub and treated them to several rounds
of drinks, ensuring that the march was
well and truly launched in a way the
Band Members have never forgotten. Nor
have they forgotten the day he came
to adjudicate their Solo and Quartet
Contest. St Dennis not being the easiest
place to find in the Cornish lanes,
he became completely lost and ended
up driving down a narrow public footpath
where his car became jammed against
a stile.
Since his youth Malcolm Arnold had always
been a restless figure and by the early
seventies felt the desire to move on.
His time in Cornwall had been productive
musically but on the personal front
had been marred by the discovery that
his son, Edward, was autistic a condition
about which little was known at that
time. To widespread regret from the
Brass Band musicians of Cornwall he
moved in 1972 to Ireland, settling just
outside Dublin.
Despite the fact that his orchestral
music has not always been widely accepted
by the musical establishment Malcolm
Arnold has always been a popular figure
in the Brass Band movement with both
players and listeners alike. With many
arrangements of his orchestral works
available for Bands as well as his original
Brass Band compositions he figures regularly
in Concert programmes and at Contests.
Living quietly now in retirement in
Norfolk he still takes a keen interest
in the Brass Band movement.
