The Symphonies of Arnold Bax
by Colin Scott-Sutherland
THE SIR ARNOLD BAX WEB SITE
Last Modified May 18, 1997
Note: Musicologist Colin
Scott-Sutherland is well known and loved to all Baxians. He wrote
the pioneering study on Bax's life and music titled simply, Bax,
which was published in 1972. He is currently working on a book that
will explore the creative productions of Bax's teenage years. The
article below was written for the Bax Society. I greatly appreciate
Colin allowing me to post it here.
The literary Doppelganger of "Dermot O Byrne" was evoked
by Arnold Bax to convey necessary aspects of his personality that
found better expression in letters than in music. O Byrne represents
one side of an apparent duality in Bax's nature, that
Irish-sympathetic second self, forcibly brought into existence by
the artistic conditions prevailing on his first visit to that
country into which he had been spiritually baptised by Yeats. He had
gone first to Ireland as a youth of nineteen, in a state of
considerable spiritual excitement, and it is scarcely to be wondered
at that the exaggerated romantic realism of Irish cultural and
political affairs exercised a strong influence on him. It is
significant that the districts to which he ultimately gravitated
were those on the fretted seaboard of Kerry and of Donegal - to
places like Glencolumcille. An avowedly "brazen romantic",
Bax reacted sharply to the more extreme moods of Nature, and the
blend of pantheistic Nature worship and mysticism in his
temperament, the outcome of factors too numerous to detail here,
gave him a deep insight into the forbidding beauty of the wilder
moods of Nature.
We do well to realise that the epithet "Celtic", applied
as it so often is, indiscriminately, to Bax's work is, to say the
least, misleading. In 1910, Bax undertook a journey to Russia which
was to prove of vital importance. That he went first to Ireland and
carved for himself, solely by his literary ability, a place amongst
the intelligentsia of Dublin, was a significant factor in his
development - but no more so than the exciting, if outwardly
fruitless, chase to Russia in pursuit of beauty in more human form
(see Farewell my Youth, page 63, et seq.). In his early music, two
strong influencing elements are apparent - the poetry of Yeats, and
the dark spirit of the North, in the personage of Russia. It may be
that there is some kinship between the two, for the colourful
traditions of the Slav peasantry are not far removed from the
decorative Western-Orientalism of the Celtic peoples.
His early music records these two influences vividly. In the tone
poems, Christmas Eve in the Mountains, Cathleen ni Houlihan and In
the Faery Hills, it is the shadow of Yeats which is uppermost. Yet,
in two of his most important early works, the blazing piano Quintet,
with its curiously oriental opening figure, and the massive first
piano Sonata (in the finale of which, written ten years later, the
composer records a colourful impression of his first visit to St.
Petersburg during the Easter Festival, "Bells thundered and
jangled from every church, with its crosses and cupolas awry"),
we are conscious of something that transcends this, of something
deeper, more significant, and in view of his later work, more
lasting. With The Garden of Fand in 1916 Bax finally came to terms
with the Celt in him and gave it its full expression, acknowledging
in the score that the music was not a portrayal of the legend upon
which it is based, but an original and subtle synthesis of the
Celtic tale and the impressions that this story evoked within
himself.
Embarking almost by chance upon his career as a symphonist in 1921
(the first movement of the first Symphony was not conceived as
symphony, but its symphonic character was recognised and urged upon
him by his lifelong champion and exponent Harriet Cohen) he
proceeded to record, with the utmost clarity, the fruits of the
impressions made by the Russian visit of 1910, and the true
significance of his sojourning in Western Eire. It was this
influence, underlined by subsequent visits to Norway, Iceland, and
Finland - the dark sombre power of the North, elemental, barbaric,
and full of strong contrasts - that flowered in full and riotous
bloom in the seven symphonies. These thousand-odd pages constitute a
great chart of Bax's spiritual wanderings, and express almost every
facet of his character including the Celtic, which however is
subordinated to a stronger force that at once raises its head in the
powerful opening of the first Symphony. This finds its ultimate
fulfilment in the fifth Symphony, in some of the most expressive
pages ever penned in British music.
The neglect of the symphonic works has temporarily deprived Bax of
his true position in music, and has prevented an accurate assessment
being made of his ultimate creative worth. Here in the symphonies is
the reason for the mystical and demonic music of the second Sonata
for piano; here is the motive power underlying Winter Legends, a
composition strongly related to the last three symphonies and
equally symphonic in conception.
It is significant that it took three essays in symphonic form to
resolve in part the emotional conflict evident in the first, perhaps
excusing in some measure the blatantly ignorant comment that
"when you have heard one you have heard them all". The
terrifying urgency of the First broke new ground in 1922 (although
Sibelius had written five by that date), yet the conflict was
personal. The bleak fury of the final march leaves problems unsolved
(Neville Cardus of the first Manchester performance writes that it
seemed not so much composed, as "erected out of some amorphous
basic material."). The Second withdrawn and introspective
("Catastrophic and oppressive" were the composer s own
words.), carries the battle into darker regions from which it
emerges, after some stormy crises, in the epilogue of the Third,
with a poignant triumph that seems to suggest that the beauty of
which he is in quest is not altogether attainable. The metaphor of
storm is not ill-advised and in the brooding peace of this epilogue
there is a calm that is not born of the resolution of these
stresses. It carries the violent outbursts of the first two
symphonies to its final climax, and the lurid sunset after storm
achieved in the Epilogue is the night before the grey and gusty
freshness of the following morning s opening of the Fourth. But
there is tension still unresolved, and the massive quiet of the
final pages is not calculated to ease the spell.
The great points of the Third, its remote beauty, its pioneer sense
of orchestral colour, its driving ostinato passages, its dark
saga-like ancestry, its unassailable architectural correctness (in
spite of ill-considered criticism), its epilogic consummation not
only summing up the material, but also putting into proper
perspective the deep portent of the preceding eight movements all
these are developed in the last three works. Continuity between
Third and Fifth is more in evidence in the Winter Legends score than
in the extrovert fourth Symphony. But in the Fifth we come face to
face with a mind of unexceptionable power that has, to our national
shame, lingered long unrecognised about the confines of our musical
establishment. Here is the fragrant flower of 1910. It was not only
the dedication of the Fifth that drew words of praise from Sibelius,
nor the fragmentary Sibelian character of the material. Nor was it
only the obvious spiritual kinship Bax had found with the Finnish
Titan in the happy hunting grounds of the Kalevala. The Fifth is a
work of immense personal achievement and displays a complete freedom
from insular thought, while remaining wholly and understandably a
work by a British composer. The expressive music alternates between
a profound and melancholy contemplation and a blazing triumph. This
former mood, asserting its supremacy in the epilogue is not
retrospective. The ultimate peak has not been reached. The whole of
the symphonic output to that date looks forward to the finale of the
Sixth, pages which mark off, irrevocably, the seventh Symphony as
distinct and separate.
In many ways the Sixth has been the most misunderstood of all Bax s
symphonies. It has been described as the ascendancy of the musician
over the poet; but, although the work displays a tighter structure
and a more rigid economy in the development of the material, the
depth of feeling is intense.
The days before the composer took up residence at Storrington in
Sussex were, in a sense, the final peak of his musical achievement,
and the outbreak of war in 1939, and the move to Storrington shortly
thereafter, marked a dividing line in his work and indeed in his
life. It is as if the artist ceased his public message, realising
with a prophetic eye the consequences for him of the outbreak of
conflict, and that communication between himself and the public was
to be irreparably destroyed. The music composed subsequently to the
seventh Symphony resembles the private jottings of an artist intent
on self communication. The extreme reticence and intimate discourse
of the Concertante for piano (left hand), and the Concertante for
three solo instruments are couched in different language from the
symphonies, and bear little relation to the undercurrent of
contemporary public affairs. The composer had virtually retired
("like a grocer", as he expressed it) into a private world
untroubled by the approaching Nemesis. The Sixth, written as early
as 1934, approaches the apex of his symphonic career, the peak from
which the composer looked back over his entire output - and from the
closing bars of the epilogue, I might conjecture over the entire
period of musical activity in Britain, of the generation to which he
belonged.
The Symphony opens with a cold severity that asks much of the
listener. The urgency of the pounding ostinato carries all before it
throughout the entire first movement. The principal motif appears at
once in woodwind and horns, bleak and remote. Hammerlike figures
drive the music to a deliberate and intense climax which, after a
pause, introduces the principal subject and ostinato figure in
diminution. Ceaseless variation in place of development leads to the
dark-hued entry of the second subject whose semi-lyrical character
does little to dispel the severity of the movement. The second
movement is in strong contrast. Here the prevailing note is one of
poignant nostalgia. An intensely romantic falling figure whose
triadic summons and Grieg-like harmonies beckon the second subject
forms a coda to the initial figure of the movement. A forlorn
trumpet states the second motif, seized upon in less gloomy vein by
oboe as it is expanded to frame the variants of the first subject
which follow. A curious slow-march pattern like the beat of never
ending time underlies a resigned and surrendered first subject as
the music fades.
The curious triptychal pattern of the last movement is less
important in performance than on paper. The whole movement stems
from the first two patterns to emerge, the second gaining a full and
imposing ascendancy as the work progresses. Into the resumption of
the hectic and strenuous scherzo material Bax weaves the strands of
a colossal triumph. The ascendancy of the second figure of the
introduction is underlined with tremendous force in a brilliantly
orchestrated passage. This is the culminating point of all Bax
symphonic reasoning.
The transition from this peak to the shadow and sunset of the
Epilogue, a majestic mirror of the process already undergone in the
similar patterns of the Third, is something unparalleled in English
music - indeed in anything before Schoenberg and the advent of a new
musical language. A falling figure of unbearable sweetness in
trumpets sets the stage for the final statement of the last movement
s opening clarinet theme, now wreathed in mysterious light, and as
the tremendous sunset fades, the horns with unutterable poignancy
voice their final plea.
The seventh Symphony, completed at Morar in January, 1939, is in no
way retrospective or elegiac and is totally unlike its predecessors
in content. There is a tense expectancy about the first movement
which bursts forth in passages of vigorous, almost youthful
exuberance, the vigour of which is unimpaired by the more lyrical
material of the second subject and the sombre beauty of the second
movement, whose "Legendary Mood" is far removed from the
Celticism of his early days. An introductory Allegro, which states
the material from which the following pages are derived, precedes
the final Theme and Variations. For the theme itself we are totally
unprepared by Bax s previous work, and its gracious solemn lines
take on something of a significance.
The theme and the introductory material are closely interwoven and
after a sprightly Vivace the Symphony moves into the final epilogue.
Unlike previous epilogic material this contains no hint of that
characteristic wistful reverie, but is full of serenity and calm
acceptance, sounding a note of final achievement, with the theme in
its epilogic form, an ostinato-like figure on solo clarinet. All is
peace - a peace that takes the composer beyond this world into the
regions to which music of all the arts is the easiest door of
access.
This text is copyrighted by Colin Scott-Sutherland
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