The entire corpus of
Quilter’s piano music (with the exception
of piano reductions of his theatre music
and the English Dances opus 11) is contained
on this disc – occupying only a few
minutes above half an hour. There’s
an old Scots saying "guid gear gangs
intae little buik". And in these all
too brief moments is distilled the essence
of a kind of ‘art’ music that has its
true inspirational origins not specifically
in music but rather in literature (especially
poetry) and in painting (1). Apart from
the first three studies, which could
be said to embody technical/educational
elements though using a romantic idiom
- would that other books of ‘studies’
yielded such pleasure! - the remaining
titles are subtly-coloured mood pictures.
A glance at the catalogue of British
piano music of the early 20th
Century will reveal numerous pieces
of similar import – yet there is no
arguing against the quasi-aristocratic
essence of the Quilter pieces when compared
with many of the short piano pieces
by British composers of the period.
So much of this material was destined,
though not necessarily designed for,
the schoolroom.
A note on the sleeve
(by the pianist,) states that Quilter’s
piano music "is virtually unknown" Yet
the vogue of his songs and the piano
scores that continue to surface in boxes
in dark corners of secondhand bookshops
might suggest that, at least among musically
literate amateur pianists, these pieces,
like those of Grieg, MacDowell and Chaminade
– while not the stuff of conventional
concert programmes – were perhaps more
widely known than might be thought.
At all events Quilter wrote with great
understanding of the amateur executant’s
limitations – as do his song accompaniments
lying neatly under the hand. The pieces
are rich in associations with the sister
arts – cultured in their allusions –
from the evocative Keatsian "Summer
Evening" and the Brangwynesque "In a
Gondola" to the simple Grieg-like melodies
of "Shepherd Song" and "Forest Lullaby".
Quilter - with Norman
O’Neill, Percy Grainger, Cyril Scott,
and Balfour Gardiner – was a pupil of
the Conservatoire of Frankfurt-am-Main.
The ‘Frankfurt Gang’, as those loosely
associated figures were facetiously
known, have been treated in most surveys
of British twentieth century musical
history with a degree of disdain – even
contempt. This is in some measure due
to their shared and unconventional detestation
of the accepted Conservatoire classics.
Gardiner was heard to refer to Beethoven
as "that desolating old monkey". Cyril
Scott led the way in extreme chromaticism
and esoteric interests; Elgar questioned
about modernism in music commented "Ah,
but you must remember it was Cyril Scott
who started all that". Grainger amused
with his ‘naïve idiosyncrasies’.
Balfour Gardiner lost patience with
composition, despite the fact that he
wrote one of the loveliest pieces in
English music, his setting of "Philomela"
of Matthew Arnold. Their joint and varied
contribution to the British musical
renaissance in the very early 20th
Century has had too little recognition
and would bear a cultural and musical
reassessment.
Erickson continues
his exploration with Cyril Scott. Selecting
two pieces as illustrative of Scott’s
originality – Carillon, with
its Grieg-like sonorities and Rainbow
Trout, an impressionistic piece
of quasi-Japonisme with undoubted links
to Poissons d’Or and Debussy
(whose well meaning testimonial to Scott
led to his being pigeonholed as ‘the
English Debussy’). If anything is to
banish that unfortunate sobriquet it
is the larger-scale works which on this
disc are represented by the second of
Scott’s three piano sonatas astonishingly
recorded here for the first time. This
broad single movement is a powerfully
mystical work, acknowledging its Listzian
progenitor – not only in the organic
form, but in the echo of the four note
motif which runs through it like a thread;
no – too weak a simile - like a chain
through the constantly shifting rippling
skeins of colourful quasi-glissandi.
Grand opening gestures are followed
by a Scriabinesque tapestry which undoubtedly,
in its incantatory offertory, echoes
Scott’s deep interest in theosophical
matters. For myself I think the first
of the Sonatas (opus 66 – before he
tinkered with amendments) is a better
and richer canvas. However all three
(the third is printed in British Music
Society Journal Vol 3 1981) are major
works in the canon of British Music
of the time. All ought to be on disc.
The make-weight here of his children’s
pieces encapsulating animal characters
- a kind of musical ABC – is clever
and amusing. The space here, almost
three minutes, could have been better
occupied by one or more of his very
strange and advanced short pieces.
The playing by this
enterprising pianist, a pupil of John
Ogdon in Indiana, is authoritative,
with no lapses into lush sentiment even
in the lighter Quilter. It is a delightful
recording and I trust in time that the
other Sonatas will follow.
Colin Scott-Sutherland
(1) cf Dukas’ comment
"Verlaine, Mallarmé and Laforgue
used to provide us with new sounds and
sonorities. They cast a light on words
such as had never been seen before ...
above all they conceived their poetry
or prose like musicians ... It was the
writers not the musicians who exercised
the strongest influence on Debussy".
(Quoted in "Twentieth Century Music"
Marion Bauer, Putnams, NY 1933)
Clipper Erickson (piano) 
