Born in Northampton on 21st
October 1921, Malcolm Arnold studied composition
with Gordon Jacob and trumpet with Ernest
Hall at the Royal College of Music. In
1941 he joined the trumpet section of
the London Philharmonic Orchestra, becoming
principal by 1943. After two years of
war service and one season with the BBC
Symphony Orchestra he returned to the
LPO in 1946; but composition was already
becoming his priority and he had already
produced a catalogue of attractive works,
an early example being the comedy overture
Beckus the Dandipratt, Op.5 (1943), recorded
in 1948 by the LPO under their principal
conductor Eduard van Beinum. That same
year Arnold won the Mendelssohn Scholarship
which enabled him to spend a year in Italy;
on his return he decided to concentrate
entirely upon composition. His experience
as an orchestral player stood him in good
stead as a composer. He quickly built
up a reputation as a fluent and versatile
composer and a brilliant orchestrator,
many commissions were to come his way.
Arnold has written works in almost
every genre for amateur and professional
alike, including nine symphonies, five
ballets, two operas, 20 concertos, overtures
and orchestral dances, two string quartets
and other chamber music, choral music,
song cycles and works for wind and brass
band. Somehow, in the midst of this
prolific creativity, Arnold has found
time to score over 80 films including
the Academy Award-winning score for
Bridge on the River Kwai, written in
only ten days and Inn of the Sixth Happiness
which brought an Ivor Novello Award.
In 1969 Malcolm Arnold was made a
Bard of the Cornish Gorseth, he was
awarded the C.B.E. in 1970 and received
honorary doctorates from the universities
of Exeter (1969), Durham (1982) and
Leicester (1984). He was made a fellow
of the Royal College of Music in 1983
and is an Honorary R.A.M. In 1986 he
received the Ivor Novello Award for
outstanding services to British music.
He was Knighted in 1993.
Arnold's music springs directly from
roots in dance and song. Typically it
is lucid in texture, clear in draftsmanship.
His lighter entertainment pieces are
easy to listen to and rewarding to perform.
As an inventor of tunes, his powers
seem to be inexaustible, and he is prodigal
with his gifts; the 'big tune' in the
modest little Toy Symphony, for example,
is just as much a winner as the many
memorable themes in many concert works.
Many of these are firmly established
in the concert repertory. Yet for those
who have ears to hear, his works frequently
give more than a hint of a complex musical
personality and of dramatic tensions
not far below the surface. In fact there
is scope in Arnold's music which reflects
his profound concern with the human
predicament and also in his belief that
music is "a social act of communication
among people, a gesture of friendship,
the strongest there is."
A Short Introduction to the
Music of Sir Malcolm Arnold
by Vincent
Budd
This is a slightly expanded version
of an article written for a local newspaper published in the Outer
Hebrides. Amendments and additions have been made to the original
text, and a brief biographical sketch has also now here been included.
For those new to Arnold and wishing to find out more about the
composer and listen further to his music, a brief bibliography
and a short discographical note have also been appended. Those
who have already caught the Arnold bug, may be interested to know
that there is a Society devoted to his music:
https://www.malcolmarnoldsociety.co.uk/
 |
| Sir Malcolm Arnold at
his home in Attleborough, Suffolk
with the author in unfortunate
jacket disaster. The composer
has in recent years suffered from
periods of ill-health and has
stopped composing but is now looked
after by Anthony Day. |
I
Sir Malcolm Arnold rightly
now stands as one of Britain's most
pre-eminent and cherished musical figures.
Fellow composer William Alwyn, also
from Northampton, once described Arnold
as having walked into his life like
a 'genial tornado'. The simile is spot
on - as the man, so the music. Arnold's
works have their serious and cerebral
priorities and contain deeply moving
moments of elevating mindfulness and
heart-felt emotion, not least in his
major swansong, the 9th Symphony:
yet they are also filled with such teeming
tunefulness, such ebullient vitality,
and such a positiveness of spirit that
they constitute not simply an oeuvre
of uncandid charm, but one of the most
endearing contributions to the music
of these Isles this century. His scores
always possess, as becoming a brilliant
orchestral trumpeter, a masterly understanding
of orchestral effect. Warmly expressive
yet devoid of superfluity, they contain
a consummate sense of structure and
an acuity and conciseness of expression
that make an undeniably immediate impact:
they are intelligent and clever, sometimes
stunningly wrought and intricate, but
often full of humour, characteristically
open-hearted and unpretentious, occasionally
brilliantly anarchic and riotous. Indeed,
his music contains some of the brightest
all-conquering tunes any music lover
is likely to hear in one lifetime on
planet earth and his gift for attractive
and shapely melodic invention is seemingly
almost boundless.
Arnold has over the
years been the butt of some worthless
critical abuse and undergone periods
of unfashionableness, not least for
his contumacious eclecticism - a characteristic
invariably a bit scary for the more
insecure and blinkered critic who must
make verdict. The composer once wrote:
'One of the great curses of the present
day is our apparent need to be regimented,
and I would suggest that we could use
the freedom that the arts give for a
wide variety of expression in a wide
variety of styles, as an antidote to
our narrow lives'. Arnold's muse reveals
a humanitarian and democratic spirit
eager to transcend our sometimes all-too
myopic musical landscape and ready to
embrace rather than exclude the contrasting
and multi-faceted temperaments of the
human soul; and his compositions are
filled with an ever-flowing musical
invention that has a far-ranging emotional
appeal. Like any self-respecting free-spirit,
he retained a worthy respect for the
time-honoured forms and techniques of
orchestral expression: but he was unconcerned
with academic respectability and was
never afraid to flout convention, juxtaposing
diverse and contrasting musical modes
in his work; a radical spirit always
willing to look forward and beyond,
impassioned, unblinkered, and unhindered
to incorporate other musical cultures;
unashamedly happy to employ a whole
variety of idioms into a single piece
- jazz, folk, and popular music could
all be plundered with marvellous result.
An Arnold piece can jump from musical
profundity to extravagant trifling,
quiet sobriety to vibrant raciness,
deep seriousness to buffoonish self-mockery
in a bar - often to scintillating effect.
He was quite unafraid to use a cliché
when appropriate and he sometimes engagingly
wore his loves and influences (e.g.
Mahler, Berlioz, Sibelius, and Shostakovitch)
on his compositional short sleeves:
but his works were marked by a clear,
undeniable, and abiding individuality.
Sibelius once famously remarked in a
conversation with Mahler that what he
admired about the symphony was its severity
of form and the profound logic that
created an inner connection between
all the motifs. Mahler countered: 'No,
no. The symphony must be like the world
- it must contain everything'. Arnold
would have assented to both - for him
there was no stylistic dilemma to resolve.
II
Malcolm Henry Arnold
was born in 1921. A handsome set of
silver knives, forks, and spoons lay
ready on his plate. He was the youngest
of five children from a well-to-do Methodist
Northampton family involved in - you've
guessed it - the footwear business,
but also with a worthy lineage of involvement
in music especially on his mother's
side: his mother was herself a fine
pianist and obviously a dominant figure
in his life; his father also played
the piano and organ. Arnold was educated
privately and at home, and this included
tuition in violin, piano, violin, and
later, the trumpet, the instrument with
which he was to make his first real
mark on the musical world. He was by
his own admission thoroughly spoilt
as a child: unlike many an aspiring
musician or composer, he certainly appears
to have been given every encouragement
to pursue his obvious precocious musical
talents. He was soon too showing strong
streaks of rebelliousness and emotional
impulsiveness, volatile tendencies which
were to have both comic and more serious
consequences during his life - the words
'roller' and 'coaster' sometimes spring
to mind. (According to his friend, the
flautist Richard Adeney, he intended
to commit suicide at the age of thirty
as he did not want to become 'a boring
old man'.) As a young man he became
besotted with jazz and at the age of
twelve he saw Louis Armstrong play in
Bournemouth. This had a catalytic and
lasting effect, and by the age of fifteen
he was having trumpet lessons from Ernest
Hall. Hall was Professor at the Royal
College of Music and it was there that
Arnold entered in 1938 ostensibly to
pursue his musical education in real
earnest: composition and trumpet were
his principal subjects, though he also
took courses in piano and conducting.
In the end, having already gone AWOL
on at least one occasion, he never took
his final examinations and instead towards
the end of the second year of his course
joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra
as second trumpet (becoming principle
in 1943), an appointment that perhaps
proved to be more vital to his musical
education than his short stay at RCM.
In 1941 Arnold married
Sheila Nicholson, who gave birth to
two children, Katherine and Robert.
However, the war years were not the
happiest of times for the trumpeter
and then still part-time composer. He
was at first a conscientious objector,
but 1944 saw a change of heart. The
army predictably did little for his
emotional well-being and it proved a
frustrating and regretful experience,
and after accidentally-on-purpose shooting
himself in the foot (potentially a very
serious offence) he was discharged on
medical grounds. There was then a brief
stint with the BBC Symphony Orchestra,
until he returned to the LPO where he
stayed until 1948. He had of course
been writing all this time and a number
of scores had been played in the concert
hall: but it was a score from 1943,
the overture Beckus the Dandipratt,
which saw the first real recognition
of his talents as a composer. In 1948,
he was awarded the Mendelsshon Scholarship
by the RCM, and following a period in
Italy, he returned to Blighty to take
up composing as a full time profession.
Symphony No.1 was completed the
following year, and he was soon at work
on a second. In 1947 Arnold had also
written his first film music: it of
course provided an important source
of well-needed income, but it also proved
an important outlet for his prodigious
muse and masterly skills, with his soundtracks
for David Lean being of particular note;
and it was not until 1969, with nearly
120 scores to his name, that he decided
to discontinue this line work. Given
all his other activities during this
period, it is a wonder where Arnold
found all the time and energy.
Over the next decades
Arnold produced some of the finest music
of any British composer working during
this period, even though his critical
standing with the nation's critics (compared
say to Britten and Tippett) failed to
match it much of the time, especially
in the '70s. His life has been rich
in friendships and he has written concertos
and instrumental music for, inter
alia, Richard Adeney, Larry Adler,
Julian Bream, Dennis Brain, James Galway,
Benny Goodman, Leon Goossens, Yehudi
Menuhin, and Julian Lloyd Webber. Overtures
such as Tam O'Shanter, The
Smoke, Curtain Up, the Sussex,
Festival, and Grand, Grand,
and the ballets Homage to the Queen,
Rinalda and Armida, Sweeney
Todd, Electra, and Ierusalemme
Liberatat all helped to add to his
reputation. A wondrous and engaging
set of chamber and instrumental music
too figured large in his output. All
this was set alongside numerous other
'incidental' works (sinfoniettas, suites,
music for children, piano, brass, and
vocal pieces, small-scale operas, etc.).
However, it was in the symphonies that
Arnold reserved some of his more serious
and most substantial musical statements;
yet they always remain to the point,
unstuffy, still often marked by his
abidingly incandescent voice even at
their most serious. By 1978 he had completed
eight symphonies, but there was to also
to be a ninth, a deep-felt and intense
musical statement, completed nine years
later in Norfolk.
Indeed, the history
of Arnold's life and music has been
marked by a distinctive cultual geography
which has often made a particular import
into the form and character of his work.
During the sixties, following the failure
of his first partnership, he married
Isobel Gray and the couple left London
to live in Cornwall, where he soon began
to make a more than telling contribution
to the musical life of the West Country.
It was here that Isobel gave birth to
the third of Arnold's children, Edward,
who, after much trauma, was eventually
diagnosed autistic. Then in 1972 he
moved to Ireland, and Isobel and Edward
joined him soon after. Sadly, his personal
life began to deteriorate and there
was an attempt at suicide: this was
followed by divorce, enforced estrangement
from his young son, and a return to
the mainland, and an almost complete
breakdown. Arnold's life had always
been full, replete with extremes of
both high emotion and social honour
and depressions and personal tragedy,
but the end of the seventies and early
eighties saw Arnold at possibly the
lowest ebb of his life. Although at
first he still managed to produce work
of outstanding quality, including the
8th Symphony and the Philharmonic
Concerto, it did lead to a period
of compositional silence. Not only was
he eventually left in a very precarious
position pecuniarily, but he also became
very ill, and indeed close to premature
death; a situation obviously not helped
by his propensity and capacity for alcohol
which had always been an important part
of his adult life. Nor was it to be
aided by the seemingly uncaring attitude
of his new-found 'guardians' back in
his home town of Northampton. It is
a tragic episode in Arnold's life from
which, though much improved, he has
never fully recovered: but it was to
have a happy ending. 1984 saw the arrival
of Anthony Day into Arnold's existence,
and it was he who literally saved his
life and provided a passage-way out
of his personal 'hell'. The pair moved
to Norfolk, Day's home county but also,
coincidentally, an area important in
Arnold's family history. Anthony has
been his constant carer and 'personal
assistant' ever since and has not only
helped restore the composer's health
and rectified his financial situation,
but also been active in the promotion
of Arnold's music. Just as importantly
he encouraged Arnold to begin composing
once more, and not surprisingly it is
him to whom Arnold's 9th and final symphony
is gratefully dedicated. Arnold began
work on his Op. 128 on 12th August 1986,
Anthony Day's birthday, and it was apparently
completed just eighteen days later.
Sir Malcolm Arnold has now ceased to
compose, but he does not, he says, miss
it.
III
If you think you have
never heard any of Arnold's music, you
are probably mistaken. TV viewers are
probably familiar with the theme to
What the Paper's Say (from his
English Dances), most men
at least have enjoyed a St. Trinian's
film at one time or other, and Bridge
on River Kwai is undoubtedly a screen
classic. Arnold wrote the music for
all three. In recent years, after a
period of comparative neglect, the appreciation
of the composer's music has undergone
something of a renaissance, and though
a good amount of material (especially
his film music and small-scale operas)
remains to be recorded, he is at present
quite well served in the catalogue.
Space here permits the selection of
just three
CD releases which perhaps give a
particular and special insight into
the compositional life of this outstanding
musical spirit and provide worthy points
at which to begin an exploration of
his life's work: few music lovers could
not be captivated by the sheer magical
brilliance of this marvel of British
music.
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