SIR MALCOLM ARNOLD:
SYMPHONIST, MELODIST,
INSPIRED JOURNEYMAN
An Obituary by
Rob Barnett
EARLY YEARS
Sir
Malcolm Arnold was born in the then
flourishing shoe factory town of
Northampton in England on 21 October
1921. His father, a Primitive Methodist,
was a shoemaker who was also a keen
amateur pianist and organist. His
mother who encouraged him in music
was an excellent pianist. She was
the great grand-daughter of William
Hawes the eighteenth/nineteenth
century composer of glees and madrigals
who also conducted the first performance
in Britain of Weber’s Der Freischutz.
The young Arnold studied with Philip
Pfaff, the local organist of St
Matthews Northampton. Pfaff’s son
Nicholas Pfaff is a leading player
of the French horn. The 12 year
old Arnold had a great enthusiasm
for jazz and especially the dizzy
trumpet playing of Louis Armstrong
(‘Satchmo’). It was almost certainly
the influence of Armstrong that
lead Malcolm Arnold to take up the
trumpet. This was coupled with an
enthusiasm for Delius inflamed by
the Delius Society recordings and
Beecham’s realisations of the Delius
scores.
At 15 Arnold was travelling to
London to study trumpet with Ernest
Hall leading trumpet player of the
BBC Symphony Orchestra. Hall was
the dedicatee of Philip Sainton’s
The Island. Interestingly
Arnold was to have studied with
Patrick Hadley but Hadley proved
too ill at that time to take on
teaching duties. Hall was a great
inspiration to the young Arnold.
One of the unexplained wonders is
why Arnold the trumpeter virtuoso
waited until the late 1970s to write
a trumpet concerto.
His first public appearance was
in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No.
2 playing a Bach post-horn trumpet.
This was an experience which he
likened to ‘blowing down a gas-pipe.’
Arnold studied for two years at
the Royal College of Music, London.
Before the end of the second year
he had won a prize for a single
movement string quartet in the Cobbett
Competition and left the College.
He left to join the London Philharmonic
Orchestra as third trumpet. He remained
with the orchestra for seven years
demonstrating breath-taking technique.
The orchestra management also featured
him as trumpet soloist in concertos
by Haydn, Goedicke and Riisager.
In addition he, with the tragically
ill-fated Noel Mewton-Wood was soloist
in Shostakovich’s knockabout first
piano concerto.
THE WAR
While he never completed his academic
musical education he absorbed the
art and craft of music from the
inside. He heard the scores from
the vantage point of the brass terrace.
As a brass player enjoying long
tacets he had the chance to follow
scores and to absorb orchestration
skills which were to stand him in
good stead for the future. He particularly
recalled playing a single Mahler
symphonic movement with the LPO
during the 1940s. He felt impelled
immediately after the session to
rush out to Foyles and buy all the
Mahler symphony scores he could
find and sat down to absorb them.
This is not a surprise. Arnold’s
symphonies mix the vulgar (crude
whistleable tunes, Caribbean tin
can bands, military and ‘Sally Army’
marches and other popular elements)
with tragic elements and passion.
His first chamber works were written
as a diversion to relieve the boredom
of the war years. In the quintessentially
British tone poem The Larch Trees
Arnold taps into the long tradition
of British countryside. It was the
work in which he felt his composer
self was first truly approached.
It dates from June 1943.
Arnold was a Conscientious Objector
and had in March 1943 (at the age
of 21!) also become Principal Trumpet
of the LPO. Months after securing
this plum job he had a change of
heart and left the orchestra to
volunteer for the Navy. They refused
him and he joined the army. There
his time was not a success. Having
been discovered as a musician and
directed to join the regimental
band of the Buffs he shot himself
in the foot to escape his fate.
He was discovered in a toilet cubicle
in a pool of blood by a sergeant
who reputedly had been victimising
him.
AND AFTER
Briefly he joined the BBCSO when
he left the army. There he played
second trumpet to his teacher, Ernest
Hall’s principal. He then rejoined
the LPO for a seven year stint until
1948 when he won the Mendelssohn
Scholarship. After this with the
independent income it offered he
never played professionally again.
During the period 1943-48 he had
been phenomenally productive with
20 concert works to his name and
reputation. These included the raucous
overture Beckus the Dandipratt.
Eduard Van Beinum ended up recording
the overture with the LPO in 1948.
In 1947/48 he did his first work
for films and married Sheila Nicolson
who had been a violinist at the
Royal Academy of Music. With his
scholarship and financial security
he went to Italy where, in Hugo
Cole’s words, he enjoyed the good
life and developed a taste for Frascati.
MALCOLM THE NEW ELIZABETHAN
The peak productive years were
those from 1948 to 1960. In 1949
his impressive and very Sibelian
First Symphony appeared followed
three years later by the second.
The Second became extremely popular
and received premieres all over
the world. The world premiere was
given by Charles Groves with the
strife-torn, budget-depleted and
committee-embattled Bournemouth
Municipal Orchestra. Groves rose
for a while triumphantly above the
municipal heroism and back-biting
but was finally sunk by it and moved
on to great things elsewhere – principally
in Liverpool.
In June 1949 he wrote his first
ballet, the full length Homage
to the Queen. This was premiered
at Covent Garden on the day of the
Coronation. He also produced two
fresh, boisterous and poetic sets
of English Dances. Rich in
character and alive with incident
these blew away the cobwebs of a
more lethargic approach to the British
countryside. There was no Delianism
in this music. Instead there is
an earthiness - a scent of clods
new turned and of a pint and pastie
at the local pub. This instantly
captivated audiences and musicians
worldwide. There is also humour
and a wink and a nod in these dances
but that was nothing new. The humour
remained a rich vein and Arnold
was in some quarters punished for
it and frowned on for vulgarity.
LIGHT MUSIC
The accessibility of much of Arnold’s
music may well have been an obstacle
to its cultural acceptance among
the elite circles in London and
elsewhere. While this has been less
so since about 1980 there is still
a measure of discomfort about a
composer who can write tunes and
still wanted to write tunes. Worse
than that; this was a composer from
the industrial provinces and also
one without personal wealth who
wrote to earn a living. His success
(120 scores) in film music no doubt
militated against him and continues
to be an obstacle though perhaps
less so now. I have already commented
on the ‘living dangerously’ humour
which you can hear in many of his
works for example in the rowdy final
movement of Concerto for Phyllis
and Cyril.
His outstanding achievements in
writing music for solo players,
duos and orchestras should also
be noted. His long series of fantasies
for solo instruments has been spectacularly
and deservedly successful. Children
often hear Tam O’Shanter in
the class-room as their introduction
to classical music.
CORNISH BARDS
Arnold had a special feeling for
Cornwall - the gateway to Atlantis.
He holidayed there with a girlfriend
during the 1940s and had the warmest
affection for the place. During
the 1960s he lived in Cornwall in
retreat from life, the dead-end
obsessions of a London celebrating
Stockhausen and Cardew and also
perhaps from a corrupting success.
It is important to bear in mind
that the Cornwall of the 1940s,
1950s and even to some extent of
the 1960s was a very different place
from the road-crossed peninsula
of the 1980s and 1990s. Travelling
to Cornwall from London took a long
time and although rail travel to
Penzance was a convenient option
the roads within Cornwall were often
narrow and tiring. Arnold bought
a house at St Merryn on the North
Coast within earshot of the foghorn
at Trevose and the wild wild Northern
Atlantic coast. Struggling with
a taste for alcohol produced a number
of startlingly colourful and masterful
works. I know something of that
violent wild and beguiling atmosphere
having had family holidays at Treyarnon
and Constantine Bay both during
startlingly blue, sunburnt summer
holidays and during gusty, foghorn
reverberating Autumn and Winter
days.
CORNISH DANCES
The Cornish years produced a variety
of works. They were not all ‘Cornish’
in nature. He has little patience
with the naff Cornish piskies beloved
of holiday souvenir shops. Instead
in his Cornish Dances he tapped
into the mists, the deserted tin
mining wheelhouses, the stern Methodist
traditions of the area, the brass
bands and choirs and, permeating
all, a mysterious atmosphere and
a sense of distant engulfed Atlantis.
This latter was not that far removed
from the music of John Ireland in
Mai-Dun and The Forgotten
Rite although his visions were
from the prehistory of the Sussex
and Dorset downs. Bax and Warlock
picked up similar influences in
Cornwall although neither of these
composers could summon the Cornish
atmosphere with such urgent immediacy
as Arnold in the Cornish Dances.
Bax’s Tintagel is of course
centred on the North Coast of Cornwall
but is less topographical than psychological.
LIFEBOATS
Arnold seems to have been at ease
in Cornwall although the drinking
continued. He conducted a festival
of brass bands and choirs at Truro
Cathedral and made arrangements
of the Cornish composer Thomas Merritt’s
music. His brass band music includes
a gravelly and boisterous march
The Padstow Lifeboat. The
march is distinguished by an unmistakable
evocation of the foghorn. Long before
he left his beloved Cornwall for
another refuge at the edge of the
world (Eire) he had been made a
Bard of the Cornish Gorsedd. This
happened in 1969. This accolade
was accepted in much the same way
that Bantock had achieved Bardic
status in Wales.
TWO WORLDS COLLIDE
Arnold was an extremely successful
and accomplished film music composer.
He worked robustly and without sparing
himself. At his peak during the
period 1950-1965 he was producing
six full film scores a year. This
was in addition to a large number
of concert pieces and miscellaneous
conducting duties. In 1957 his score
for The Bridge on the River Kwai
garnered an Oscar.
It is now something of a cliché
and evidence may be hard to identify
however there seems little doubt
that his success in what was seen
as a frivolous and consumer-disposable
world did little to impress the
critics and some orchestral and
broadcasting managements. A composer
who wrote tunes and wrote them without
shame and in fact with glorious
indulgence was not likely to be
in favour in the early 1960s. The
Glock regime at the BBC was closing
doors on the melodists like Bax,
Finzi, Rubbra and Alwyn. Arnold
certainly suffered however such
was the popularity of certain of
his works that they continued to
receive broadcasts. Performances
by amateur and professional orchestras
in the concert hall hardly let up
at all. In fairness Glock commissioned
Arnold’s Symphony No. 4 during the
mid-1960s. In 1970 the year Arnold
received his CBE he commissioned
from Arnold a piece for audience
and orchestra for the Last Night
of the Proms.
ARNOLD THE CONDUCTOR.
His conducting is a little appreciated
aspect of Arnold’s musical world.
Although he is well enough known
for directing performances of his
own music both in the concert-hall
and the recording studio his reputation
for conducting the works of other
composers is largely overlooked.
Fellow trumpeter, Philip Jones (of
Philip Jones Brass Ensemble fame)
recalls an incandescent performance
(the best he could remember) of
Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique
conducted by Arnold at Croydon
during the 1950s. Arnold’s studio
performances of Rubbra Symphonies
Nos 3 and 4 with the then BBC Northern
Orchestra during the mid-1960s are
remarkably intense. I rather hope
that they survive in the BBC archives
but fear the worst. They certainly
merit reissue.
NORTHAMPTON
I have no idea what it is about
Northampton but it produced three
remarkable British composers. Arnold,
William Alwyn and Edmund Rubbra
were all born there. Arnold and
Rubbra each wrote eleven symphonies;
Alwyn wrote five symphonies.
ARNOLD AND WALTON: THE BATTLE
OF BRITAIN
Both Walton and Arnold were successful
on the silver screen. They admired
each other’s work. Perhaps Scapino
and Portsmouth Point are
only a few degrees removed from
Beckus and Tam! Arnold
was infinitely more prolific in
film scores. Walton sometimes gave
the impression of writing for the
cinema when he needed to boost his
bank account. Arnold plugged away
for the studios at great cost to
himself. Arnold visited Walton on
Ischia. Walton despised Oldham as
much as Arnold seemed to snub Northampton
although his home town has now honoured
his achievements with an annual
Arnold music festival. Both spent
years at the geographical periphery
away from London concert life. Arnold’s
years in Cornwall, Eire and latterly
Norfolk all serve as testimony to
this. In any event when Walton wrote
the music for the 1970 film The
Battle of Britain it was Arnold
who conducted the orchestra and
did the orchestrations. As it turned
out the score was largely dropped
by the purblind (or deaf) movie
moghuls and a score by Ron Goodwin
was used instead. Arnold, at approximately
the same time, also orchestrated
Walton’s String Quartet and this
has been performed as the Sonata
for Strings. Until recently the
only recording of this work was
Neville Marriner’s 1970s recording
with the Academy of St Martin in
the Fields.
ARNOLD AND THE RECORDING
STUDIO
In 1986 Arnold was lured back to
the recording studio by Richard
Itter of the Lyrita Recorded Edition.
Lyrita have done more than any other
company to promote rare and deserving
British music. They have been a
constant source of inspiration and
enterprise, witness the crop of
recordings they made with the ailing
Boult during the 1970s. The finest
of these was Boult conducting the
‘New Philharmonia Orchestra of London’
in the Moeran Symphony. Later however
they achieved the honour of recording
Arnold’s Fourth Symphony with the
composer conducting the LPO. During
the mid-1980s Arnold was undergoing
yet another life crisis. This shows
in the very extended performance
which he gave this largely ebullient
work rife with Caribbean rhythms
and percussion. People have complained
about Bernstein’s dragging out of
performances of Enigma and various
Shostakovich symphonies. Anyone
who knows the Fourth Symphony from
earlier BBC broadcasts both by the
composer and Maurice Handford will
(at least) raise an eyebrow. For
my part, while still surprised by
the performance and aware that it
can seem ponderous and portentous,
I regard the recording as a very
important document. I cannot believe
that the composer did not intend
to say something vital to us in
performing the symphony in this
way. It normally runs circa 36 mins
but in the Lyrita recording it runs
52 mins! Hearing it is like viewing
the symphony through a microscope.
Every vein and artery is apparent.
In some ways the composer seems
to be writing the symphony for us
laying open its physical and psychological
makeup in lambent detail.
Arnold was knighted in 1993.
REPUTATIONS
There are parallels between Gordon
Jacob and Arnold: teacher and pupil.
Both were prolific, Jacob more so
than Arnold. Both wrote for films:
Arnold more than Jacob. Both wrote
reliably and with conviction to
commission. Neither were effete
or ivory tower aesthetes. They were
practical musicians.
The differences are obvious. Arnold
did not teach. Jacob’s music, as
far as we know it (and I have only
heard the second of his two symphonies),
did not so consistently touch the
heights of unaffected lyricism or
the great peaks of symphonism. Jacob
achieved few popular successes and
nothing to match Arnold’s Symphony
No. 2, Tam, English and Scottish
Dances and the film music.
Arnold was active in the same era
as other great British composers.
Walton wrote little but Arnold who
was much more productive can be
spoken of in the same breath as
Walton. Arnold’s music has a vulnerable
Tchaikovskian heart absent from
Britten’s music. He was briefly
a conscientious objector so there
is a superficial parallel with Tippett
and Britten but that’s about it.
Arnold, Frankel and Alwyn were
very successful in the film world.
Arnold’s music is much closer to
that of Alywn than Frankel. Arnold
seems to have little time for atonalism
and tone rows. Frankel’s sometimes
tortured lyricism was his own and
is in general more difficult to
approach than Arnold’s. Alwyn is
a better but still imperfect parallel
as Alwyn’s music, in the five symphonies
and the clutch of concert works,
is unfailingly lyrical even in its
moments of anguish and pain. Alwyn
was however much more of an aesthete
than Arnold although he too wrote
celebratory dances and lighter overtures:
Elizabethan Dances and Scottish
Dances!
There is a certain gorgeously over-the-top
quality to Arnold which speaks directly
to most people. We hear it not only
in the technicolour slow-motion
sun-burst at the end of the Fifth
Symphony but also in the unrepentant
vulgarity of the end of the Concerto
for Phyllis and Cyril as well
as in the Grand Grand Overture.
But also let’s not forget the feel-good
works like The Larch Trees,
the English, Scottish and Cornish
Dances, the Eighth Symphony and
the grievously neglected Oboe Concerto.
Some piece remain enigmatically
unperformed and one of the most
fascinating is the Cello Concerto
The Shakespearean which he
wrote for Julian Lloyd-Webber in
1988. Let’s hope for an early performance
and recording. Everyone has their
own favourites but we all have more
to discover among Arnold’s output.
Arnold survived many troubled years
between the 1960s and 1980s as is
well known from the book Malcolm
Arnold - Rogue Genius: The Life
and Times of Britain's Most Misunderstood
Composer by Anthony Meredith
and Paul Harris and from Tony Palmer’s
DVD Towards the Unknown Region.
That passage of arms can be heard
searing through the Seventh and
Ninth Symphonies – it is part of
the whole man. Latterly he found
a trusted carer and companion in
Anthony Day.
Sir Malcolm died after a short
illness (chest infection) at the
Norfolk and Norwich Hospital.
Rob Barnett
Sir Malcolm (Henry) Arnold:-
Born: Northampton, 21 October
1921
Died: Norwich, 23 September
2006
Further details at:-
