Chandos’s enterprise
in the recording of British music takes
them deep into uncharted waters with
this CD of the music of Cyril Scott
(1879-1970). Enterprise indeed, because
although the booklet cover does not
claim as such, the ‘première
recordings’ of both the symphony
and the tone-poem are in fact first
performances, making this altogether
a most important document, and it would
be only right to acknowledge the assistance
of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust
in the making of this CD.
Performances of Scott’s
works in his later years were infrequent.
Despite the advocacy of so eminent an
authority as Sir Thomas Armstrong, a
Cyril Scott Society faded not long after
its formation in 1962 and after his
death his works sank into even deeper
neglect. A fair assessment of his music
has therefore been very difficult. The
interesting Marco Polo all-Scott CD
recorded in South Africa in 1993 (8.223485)
included a range of works, from the
early Debussyian Aubade and the
Three Symphonic Dances that were
reworkings of his Second Symphony (1903)
to the Two Passacaglias on Irish
Themes of 1914, the 1928 Suite
Fantastique and the later Neapolitan
Rhapsody. Yet with none of these
works could one make any great claim
on Scott’s behalf. However, this Chandos
CD brings some pleasant surprises in
three very substantial works, one of
which shows us the fully-developed Scott
in his last years. Rather oddly, he
did not mention any of these important
works in his second volume of autobiography
completed the year before he died.
At first it might seem
a pity to have included the Second Piano
Concerto on this CD of otherwise unknown
works. Both the Second and the First
Concertos were recorded in 1976 for
a pair of Lyrita LPs (SRCS81 and 82,
never re-issued), with John Ogdon as
soloist and Bernard Herrmann conducting
the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Herrmann’s
Decca LP of British Film Music recorded
the previous year (and subsequently
transferred to CD) might have warned
us that in later life he favoured tempi
broader than those we are used to. Sure
enough, the Lyrita recording of the
Second Concerto (itself a first performance)
takes almost 25 minutes compared with
about 20¼ minutes on the new Chandos
(and comparisons with other known performances
of the First Concerto tell a similar
story). So now at least we are able
to judge the work more fairly.
The second concerto
is typical of the later Scott who had
withdrawn into his own very personal
and highly chromatic harmonic world
based largely, as he explained in the
appendix to his autobiography Bone
of Contention, on his favoured basic
chord (1,4,7). There is no key signature
and the time signature is constantly
changing. Howard Shelley makes a very
convincing case for a work that may
not warm easily to the listener on a
first hearing but yet contains passages
of beauty and merits repeated hearings.
This is probably only its second performance
ever.
It is the other two
works, however, that show Scott in new
light and even shake off a few misconceptions.
Neptune is a revision of a work
that originally carried a title open
to witty comment if things went wrong
in performance: Disaster at Sea.
Reviews of the early version, conducted
by Albert Coates at a Royal Philharmonic
Society in October 1933 in a barely
half-full Queen’s Hall, were not favourable.
Scott’s was not the only ‘new’ work.
The Times critic wrote that ‘it
would be pleasant to declare that the
absentees missed a newly discovered
masterpiece in Polaci’s Sinfonia and
a never-to-be-forgotten first performance
in Cyril Scott’s Disaster at Sea
but that would be to exaggerate the
consequences of their lack of enterprise’.
The tone-poem’s subject
was the loss of the Titanic and
the music was said to be ‘ "depictive"
of each episode in turn, from the first
shock to the band going down playing
"Nearer, my God, to Thee".
It might be,’ the critic continued,
‘the accompaniment to a film only that
a film would scarcely need anything
so elaborate, and would demand a rather
more realistic presentation of "that
atmosphere of frivolity, pleasure-seeking,
idleness, and luxury" which is
supposed to be the appropriate setting
for the disaster. The whole thing is
an extraordinary aggregation of "effects"
which may prevent the realisation of
what is undoubtedly the case, that the
composer aims at the expression of something
deeper.’ Constant Lambert succinctly
remarked in his Sunday Referee
column: ‘It would be easy enough to
pillory this work did one not wish to
forget about it immediately.’
Scott’s only comment
was that ‘although Ernest Newman wrote
that he found "much to interest
him" in the work, the other critics
called it ‘cinema music’; not, as one
of them said to me, because they disliked
the music itself, but because the temptation
thus to describe it had been too great
to resist!’ (This was probably thinking
back to pre-sound days when symphony
orchestras would sometimes accompany
the showing of silent films.) Yet by
today’s standards the work – or rather
its revision – may now seem even more
cinematic, with its massive orchestral
outbursts supported by full organ, wind
machine and other effects that have
become part of cinema’s musical language.
Quite how far Scott
went with his revision two years later,
leaving a work nearly 25 minutes long,
and how closely Neptune (dedicated
to Albert Coates) relates to Disaster
at Sea, are difficult to say. But
there is no escaping the programmatic
planning with the number of details
that clearly survive in the revised
version. The work’s almost static opening
– pizzicato cellos, that then glissando
to a higher note, and harp arpeggios
‘suggestive of the gentle lap of small
waves against the side of a vessel’
– gives way to the first massive climax,
with timpani thundering away against
full organ à la Strauss’s Also
Sprach Zarathustra as the liner
comes into view with what Scott originally
called the liner-motif. At (10) 3’ 21"
a fog-horn sounds (glissandi brass)
and then, after another climax (the
collision) and much allegro agitato
with wind machine, a further detail
seems to have survived the revisions:
at about (11) 3’ 57" and then again
at 4’ 25" we hear something remarkably
like a Morse Code signal being dispatched.
Perhaps, too, the snatches of waltzes
at [10] hint at the ‘frivolity, pleasure-seeking,
idleness, and luxury’ on board the doomed
liner.
At (11) 7’ 12"
we hear the first clear statement of
the first two lines of the hymn Nearer,
My God, to Thee that legend has
it the band were playing as the Titanic
went down. It is thereafter alluded
to right to the end of the work. There
are, of course, at least three different
tunes that have been attached to those
hymn verses written by Sarah Adams.
In his film, Titanic, perhaps
with his American audience in mind,
James Cameron chose to use Lowell Mason’s
tune that is familiar in the United
States. The tune that Scott uses, however,
is one that is known in England, called
‘Horbury’ and composed by that stalwart
of Hymns Ancient and Modern,
John B Dykes. (Yet in a fascinating
article on the Internet, Bernard S.
Greenberg convincingly argues that the
tune more likely to have been played
was an alternative one by Arthur Sullivan.
Not only was this the tune used in the
Titanic bandmaster Wallace Hartley’s
own parish church where his father was
choirmaster, but its opening bars were
inscribed on his tomb.) The work ends
with two full statements of the hymn
tune, [12] 1’ 13"", on the
second occasion on strings against the
lapping of harps as if they were strains
eerily coming from the sunken liner.
Scott clearly wanted
to rid the work of its Titanic
association and to throw us off the
scent by linking it instead to the god
of the sea and re-naming it Neptune.
Yet perversely, with the general interest
today in anything Titanic, it
might even be in the work’s survival
interest to retain the original title.
One can imagine it ‘going down well’
at the Proms, especially in so impressive
a performance as this.
The Symphony ‘The
Muses’ (which comes first on the
disc) is dedicated to Beecham, perhaps
in gratitude for his conducting the
first performance of La Belle Dame
sans merci at the 1934 Leeds Festival.
While not a steady champion of Scott’s
works, Beecham had earlier been responsible
for a number of first or early performances,
among them Helen of Kirkconnel
for baritone and orchestra, the Aubade,
Two Passacaglias on Irish Themes,
Piano Concerto No 1, and Melodist
and the Nightingale for cello and
small orchestra. The four muses represented
are ‘Melpomeme, the Muse of Epic Poetry
and Tragedy’; ‘Thalia, the Muse of Comedy
and Merry Verse’; ‘Erato, the Muse of
Love and Poetry’; and ‘Terpsichore,
the Muse of Dance and Song’.
If one can draw parallels
in Neptune with film scores,
one can just as easily do the same with
parts of ‘The Muses’ – which
is a kind of back-handed compliment
to Scott’s ability to create mood or
atmosphere. The opening pages could
grace many a Hammer horror film, tragedy
being very much the key word, and its
textures and mood in some respects resemble
the opening of Bax’s Second Symphony
in its powerful build-up. Even a wind
machine adds to the bleak picture. At
9’ 11" epic poetry is surely represented
by a wonderfully Ravellian passage that
is heavily indebted to Daphnis and
Chloe. It is not until the quiet
characteristic rising and falling phrase
at 11’40" that we can feel with
certainty the unmistakable stamp of
Scott.
The second movement
is a scherzo of tremendous energy and
spirit. This is not merely light comedy
for the merriment is impish, Puckish,
with tricks that the Gods play. Scott’s
brilliant scoring may surprise many
listeners. The slow movement is a lush
L’après-midi but with
an uneasy and uncertain resolution.
The last movement opens with timpani
and wind machine, and immediately a
steady rhythmic pulse – a sort of moto
perpetuo – drives the wordless chorus
(with a nod again to Daphnis)
to its climax with organ. At many places
in this symphony one is pleasantly surprised
at Scott’s feeling for momentum; there
is nothing here of the languid want
of direction one has felt in lesser
works.
This is altogether
an impressively engineered disc with
very persuasive performances from the
BBC Philharmonic under Martyn Brabbins
that hopefully will encourage a fresh
assessment of Scott, one that is not
based on second and third-hand opinions.
His contribution to the piano literature
is fairly well-known, the Dutton label
has issued two important CDs of his
chamber works ((CDLX 7116 Piano Quartet
in E mi and Piano Quintet; CDLX 7138
String Quartets Nos. 1, 2 & 4),
but his orchestral output is largely
unknown. Perhaps Chandos could now consider
recording one or two of his other concertos
and even his fine setting of Keats’
La Belle Dame Sans Merci for
baritone, chorus and orchestra. In the
meantime one is more than grateful to
them for bringing to life these three
important works.
Stephen Lloyd
see also review
by Colin Clarke
bHoward Shelley (piano); aHuddersfield
Choral Society/Joseph Cullen 