ALGERNON ASHTON -
THE CASE FOR REVIVAL
by Harold Truscott
It is no news that
England is seldom quick to advertise
her artistic wares, and I will anticipate
at the outset a possible question raised
by my title: why should I drag from
obscurity a composer about whom previous
generations have not troubled themselves?
The reason is this: if one cares about
music, no part of one's heritage is
insignificant and, in fact, Ashton looms
large at a very critical moment in the
resurrection of English music; and resurrection
it was. To anyone who has spent a considerable
amount of time in examining the record
of English instrumental music from the
death of Arne (1778) and Boyce (1779)
to the end of the nineteenth century
it is a familiar fact that this period,
up to roughly the eighteen-eighties,
is a desert. The amount of instrumental
music written during the Victorian era
alone would fill a fair-sized library,
but there is scarcely a single two-page
piece which could be called with reason
a composition. I have found the Gadsbys,
the Jacksons, the Farmers, the contrapuntal
exercises they call symphonies, the
imitations (at many removes) of Schumann's
G minor Piano Sonata which pass for
piano sonatas, the organ pieces which
are so stiff with academicism that they
appear to be in permanent plaster of
Paris, a fruitful source of entertainment
and instruction, but the entertainment
was inadvertent and the instruction
concerned the innumerable ways academicism
holds up her sleeve for avoiding composition.
It is a period littered with the Doctor's
Exercise (which is always published),
the prim personal examples by the great
Teachers - the Prouts and Macfarrens.
I doubt if there has ever been a period
in the history of English music when
more music was published and less composed,
when almost every church organist added
to the dusty piles of notes without
volition. Whatever movement or semblance
of life this mass of work may have is
purely involuntary. Some good things
in other directions came out of this
time, but it was crowned by the English
love of the academic institution, without
whose imprimatur nothing had any worth;
in spite of what is superficially a
freer outlook, we are fundamentally
still bound by the same cord, All that
has happened is but a natural saturation
point was reached and an inevitable
movement against the current began,
with difficulty, to make itself felt.
I would not want to
pass by without due respect one or two
curiosities on the way. Cipriani Potter,
for instance, an early Principal of
the Royal Academy of Music, in the days
when there was still a clergyman Headmaster
as well, who wrote nine symphonies -
symphonies in exactly the same keys
in exactly the same order as Beethoven,
These symphonies do have some spark
of an idea about them but in each case
the idea has been sparked off by Beethoven.
And there was the gentleman who much
later, emulated Wagner's Rheingold Prelude
which, representing the flow of the
Rhine, is almost entirely on the chord
of E flat, by writing an overture to
an oratorio Jonah which cleverly represented
the whale's belly by being entirely
on a chord of D. The weak and derivative
quality of much of this production is
crucial and might stand as symptomatic
of the whole period in matters of composition.
Particularly is anything
like an imaginative keyboard style conspicuous
by its absence; apart from the bread-and-milk
imitations of Schumann to which I have
already referred, such a style exists
merely as watered down versions of Cramer's
studies or extensions or modifications
of a prevalent hymn-tune style. The
only composers in England during the
whole of this lengthy period who produced
great and original keyboard music were
two foreigners and an Irishman: Clementi,
Dussek and Field, with Cramer and Moscheles
(two more foreigners) as near misses.
Sterndale Bennett was certainly imaginative,
but he wrote his best work in Germany
under strong Mendelssohnian influence,
which was much of the reason for his
appreciation by the Germans.
Now this depressing
picture did come to an end, but the
ironical thing is that it had done so
long before England realised it, and
it came to an end in Germany. The return
of a genuine creative spirit to English
music is usually associated with the
advent of Parry, born in 1848, and Stanford,
1852, leading on to Elgar, 1857, who
took longer to develop than the other
two. This is particularly true of Parry,
in practically every department of music
except opera and piano music.
The former he did not
touch, the latter is represented by
a delightful collection of pieces called
'Shulbrede Tunes' and four piano sonatas,
all of which were written towards the
end of his life and do not show any
great creative power; they are merely
well written, which is something. He
did write some organ music which is
fine, if not great. His power is essentially
in his orchestral music and his choral
writing, where he is superb. Stanford,
a great teacher, wrote some outstanding
songs, many of which could justly be
called great, and some distinguished
orchestral and chamber music; I would
hesitate to use the word 'great' about
the instrumental music, although there
is no doubt that it was composition
of a very real kind. But, again, although
both composers began to write early
in life, about the age of eight, they
developed a musical maturity only slowly.
Elgar's story is well-known, and has
become much more so since the centenary
of his birth in 1957. And this brings
us back to Ashton.
He was christened Algernon
Bennett Langton Ashton, a name which
surely speaks of the quiet dignity of
an English cathedral close in mid-nineteenth
century. His father a lay-clerk at Durham
Cathedral, removed his family to Leipzig
in 1863; when the boy was four years
of age, and that is where he grew up.
His mother gave him some musical instruction,
which he craved early, and he attracted
the attention of Moscheles, who advised
sending him to the Conservatoire.
There he went when
he was fifteen, studying under Reinecke,
E.F. Richter, Jadassohn and others.
In 1879 he left with the Helbig prize
for composition, made a short visit
to England and proceeded to Frankfurt
for further study, this time for nearly
two years with Raff. Later he settled
in London and from 1885 to 1916 was
professor of piano at the Royal College
of Music which had gained its present
status in 1882. He died, hale and vigorous
practically to the end, in 1937.
It was during the period
of study with Raff that Ashton began
the long series of extremely individual
works which reach, in opus numbers,
to 174; this number is his last piano
sonata. But this list does not include
a number of concertos for various instruments,
piano, violin, violoncello and viola,
as well as a number of symphonies, all
of which remain in manuscript, or a
last titanic chamber work.
This means that during
the eighteen-eighties there was being
written some of the most vital and original
English piano and chamber music in our
recent history, which was, in fact,
virtually first in the field after the
century-long gap. But it was written
in Germany, it was first recognised
by Germans, and Ashton was literally
the first English composer since Sterndale
Bennett to be taken seriously in Germany,
but for a very different reason. The
brief article on Ashton which was written
for the second edition of Grove's Dictionary
by F. G. Edwards ended thus: 'Certain
of his chamber works have fine qualities
which should rescue them from oblivion'.
This has been anonymously changed in
the fifth edition to read: 'Certain
of the chamber works have fine qualities,
but they belong to a school influenced
mainly by Brahms, the minor exponents
of which are now beyond revival.' This
amendment moves from the grudging ceding
of a bare minimum of the original to
the quite frankly inaccurate. The point
is that what the Germans saw in Ashton
was not Brahms or any other German manifestation
but a genuine English accent which they
welcomed. Most of Ashton's music was
published by German firms, Hofbauer,
Ries and Erler, Robert Forberg and Simrock,
and he had a high reputation in that
country as a rare phenomenon, an English
composer of real note.
It would be strange
indeed if his music showed no European
influence, and of course it does; but
its English accent is as unmistakable
as that or Elgar or Tovey, and as undeniable.
The last composer he would suggest is
Brahms, and I suspect that (if, indeed
he troubled about this at all) our anonymous
friend made his acquaintance with Ashton’s
music in the way in which most such
'authorities' familiarise themselves
with the' work of a somewhat obscure
subject on whom they have been asked
for a few lines by a rather watery eye.
In Cobbett's 'Cyclopedic Survey of Chamber
Music', which badly needs bringing up
to date, Adolph Mann gave a much more
enlightened account of Ashton's work.
But Mann was a German, and probably
knew the music. I have a vivid memory
of a certain member of staff at the
Royal College of Music laughing heartily
at the mere mention of Ashton as a composer
and then, being pressed, confessing,
without shame, that he knew none of
the music.
At any rate, whatever
the reason, England punished Ashton
by taking no notice of him at all, except
to treat him as a joke. And he had two
hobbies which greatly helped the fun-loving
English in this interesting pursuit.
He wrote letters to the newspapers and
did so in considerable quantity. Could
it reasonable have been expected that
anyone with such a hobby should be taken
seriously? The letter-writing perhaps
brought such names as 'Disgusted', that
grand old comic English institution,
to people's minds, but the truth is
that Ashton was anything but disgusted.
The two volumes of letters which were
published under the title of 'Truth,
Wit and Wisdom' are remarkable for the
fact that the," are literally chockful
of these three qualities. Contrary to
a prevalent modern practice, Ashton
actually supplies what he promises.
What these letters show is a vigorous,
well-informed mind, alive and acutely
interested in everything that concerns
life and humanity in general; and it
is a pleasant change to be able to read
worthwhile letters (many of which are
fair-sized essays) which one knows were
intended to be read publicly where one
does not feel that one is continually
prying into private affairs. It is also
extremely refreshing and encouraging
to find a musician of such accomplishment,
with such a record of achievement, who
was interested in so much that did not
concern his art; in this he is an object
lesson to us all.
The greater part of
his published music was composed before
1900, although some of it was only published
later. In 1932 he wrote to a friend
to tell him of the completion of twenty-four
elaborate string quartets in all the
major and minor keys, without the slightest
hope or prospect of having one of them
performed, let alone published. There
is a nobility about this gesture which
alone must command one's admiration.
Let us remember one
or two other things. During the last
two decades of the nineteenth century
there was no English style to which
one could make any reference, and this
particularly applies to keyboard music.
This had been largely in abeyance since
Boyce's death. It was with the enormous
development of music on the continent,
and in particular in the German-speaking
countries, that we had to catch up.
When, about the turn of the century,
English composers began to try to form
an English style, it was largely through
folk-song that they did so. But this
is quite factitious. Any music can be
given a certain spurious English flavour
by the use of English folk-song or a
folk-song style; it can be done by a
to foreigner, quite convincingly, and,
indeed, has been done, by Bernard van
Dieren, and Busoni's elegy, 'Turandots
Frauengemach', invoking the tune 'Greensleeves',
sounds as English as Vaughan Williams.
This has following to do with a spontaneous
English way of speaking, as unmistakable
as the German accent of a Brahms or
the equally Austrian one of Joseph Marx.
Any real attempt at a genuine English
musical language had, perforce, to begin
abroad, for you cannot make a language
without surface material; and, in fact,
as the folk-song impetus died down,
English composers began to do in the
twentieth century what many were blamed
for doing towards the end of the nineteenth
- they took their initial impetus from
the Continent. There was nothing to
show that, for instance, Alan Bush's
Symphony or Racine Fricker's Violin
Concerto, to take two works at random
(l could pick a hundred more were not
written by Central Europeans instead
of by Englishmen, and when we come to
the English twelve note imitators it
has really become a case of Tweedle-Dum
and Tweedle-Dee.
Ashton, like Elgar
and Havergal Brian, never had anything
to do with English folk-song or the
comparatively easy and ready-made English
accent imparted to the music of the
folk-song school, very often, be it
noted, by the use of English folk-songs
of foreign origin- many of the most
beautiful of Essex folk-songs, for instance,
are a legacy from the Dutch settlement
on Canvey Island; such an English quality
depends on the listener being familiar
with certain tales which they believe
to be of English origin. But a genuine
national accent accepts the genuine
international accent and comes from
that indestructible thing, the soul.
And this is the particular quality which
can be found in Ashton's music, not
least in the magnificent series of eight
piano sonatas which are the crown of
his piano music. It is also what struck
the Germans as outstandingly attractive
and fascinating about his music. The
point is that such a genuine native
strain came first from this composer
who has been persistently and determinedly
cold-shouldered by the country he was
the first in a very long time to make
eloquent in music on her own account.
Another thing is this:
although his music has never been publicly
performed in England, and I can recall
in the last twenty-five years only two
broadcasts of works of his, both before
the last war, there is abundant evidence
that his work has had a considerable
influence on the formation of a genuine
English school of composition in this
century.
One has only to see
the great variety of names in the list
of musicians, creative and otherwise,
and all good friends of his, to whom
he dedicated his long record of published
work, to realise that his music was
well-known privately if not publicly.
To support this, there is the fact that
much of the best English music of this
century bears the strong imprint of
his highly personal style, a style of
freely moving lines, usually of single
notes, with chords reinforcing the texture
at quite unexpected points, phrases
which overlap each other, rising in
pitch by intervals of a fourth or fifth
until they begin to descend by smaller
intervals, the whole demanding extreme
concentration and the clearest part-writing
in a keyboard texture tremendously difficult
and exciting in its clarity, both of
sound and thought. Now, nowhere before
Ashton is this style to be encountered,
either in England or abroad, but it
has gradually crept in, at first by
direct contact and then, with younger
composers no doubt at second-hand, so
that many composers so affected are
probably unaware of the origin of much
of their own style.
Again, the work of
every really individual composer has
an appearance which cannot be mistaken.
By this I do not mean that the work
can be assessed by eye, but that something
of the composer's personality imparts
itself to the appearance or the music,
so that a glance at a page is enough
for one to be aware, without doubt,
of the authorship. With some composers
one may suspect several possibilities
but with the front-rank individuals
there is no doubt.
Ashton's music has
this marked individuality to the eye;
and indeed his music is quite un unmistakable;
even the music of composers strongly
influenced by him does not give the
impression of his music. And his individuality
is most obvious in his keyboard writing,
which is literally the first genuine
English piano style in the history of
music. Not since the sixteenth century
had there been an English keyboard style
of such power and range of expression,
and in this connection it is rather
a happy coincidence that one of the
masters of keyboard writing in early
sixteenth-century English music was
Hugo Aston (sometimes spelt Ashton).
And it is still true that, with rare
exceptions, such as John Ireland and
Arnold Bax, English composers do not.
excel in the piano sonata, or in piano
music in general. No other English composer
has produced anything like the series
of eight piano sonatas which Ashton
left behind him. When the first of these,
in E flat minor was written in 1878
English music had indeed come alive
with a vengeance; its first movement,
in particular, is sombre, powerful,
and has a sense of form dictated by
the music which is perhaps both the
most surprising and the most convincing
thing about it. It is music made of
the very stuff of the piano; it lives
on the keyboard as Mozart's operas walk
on to the stage.
I do not know what
notice, if any, will be taken of this
centenary year of the birth of a very
notable English composer, to say the
least, but I do know that if it is allowed
to pass without comment or performance
other than mine, there will be one more
black mark against England's manner
of appreciation of her own musical heritage,
and Ashton will have fought a battle
for an object - the musical reputation
of his country - which is not worth
the effort.
Harold Truscott
[first published in ‘Musical Opinion’
- 1959]
This article appears here courtesy
of the Algernon Ashton Society
