CYRIL SCOTT:
A man whose time has
come again?
by
Desmond Scott
Cyril Scott was truly
one of the more remarkable men of his
generation. Far ahead of his time in
many ways, in others he was inescapably
a product of the Victorian age in which
he grew up. As John Ireland his friend
and exact contemporary wrote to Scott
in 1949 "You were the first British
composer to write music which was non-academic,
free and individual in style and of
primary significance. Long before I
could write anything in the least worthwhile
you had made a great reputation in England
and on the Continent".
His music, though certainly
the most important, is only one aspect
of his enormously varied creative output.
He wrote the lyrics
for many of his songs and the libretti
for his operas.
He published forty
books; on alternate medicine, ethics,
religion, occultism, psychology, humour
and music; wrote two autobiographies
forty years apart and six volumes of
poetry. Many of the books he wrote remain
in print today and one trilogy in particular,
The Initiate, written in the
1920s was optioned just recently for
a film and continues to be translated
into other languages, the latest being
Swedish and Romanian.
In his staunch advocacy
of alternate medicine decades before
it became mainstream Scott was again
ahead of his time.
His poetry on the other
hand is very much of the period, deeply
romantic and infused throughout with
a Pre-Raphaelite sensibility.
In the same mode he
designed some of his own furniture,
trying, as he said, to make his lodgings
look as much like a monastic cell as
possible. More practically, he later
devised a unique piano. It was a regular
upright but with a sloping front replacing
the lid to form a broad writing desk
leaving him space beneath to play on
and compose.
As a hobby he also
painted - two of them can be seen on
the covers of recent CDs.
Aware that some people
felt he was spreading himself too thin,
he defended himself in his later biography
Bone of Contention, (1969) by
saying: "Holding the belief that
the more subjects one can, within reason,
become interested in, the less time
and inclination one has to be unhappy,
I will make no excuses for what the
friends of my music call my versatility,
and its detractors the dissipation of
my energies (for) in a sad plight is
the composer who has no sideline or
pastime to turn to during those desolate
periods when musical ideation gives
out, leaving but that painful sense
of emptiness and frustration so familiar
to all creative artists."
Scott was born in Oxton,
near Liverpool to a middle class family
in 1879. As his son, I truly find it
hard to realise that I’m intimately
connected to someone who, as a student
in Frankfurt heard Clara Schumann play
and remembered his teachers taking the
day off to go to Vienna for Brahms’
funeral.
He was born into a
world we wouldn’t recognise today, except
through costume dramas on the BBC. It
was a world of the horse and carriage
and cobbled streets, a world without
cars, planes, radio, TV, computers,
CDs or the Internet. The last time I
saw him we sat in front of the TV together
and he watched a man land on the moon.
That’s quite a change in one lifetime!
Scott’s father was
a businessman involved in shipping whose
chief interest was the study of Greek.
His mother played the piano "with
a certain superficial brilliance, and
had even written a waltz which somehow
got into print." (Bone of Contention)
As a young child he
was abnormally sensitive and precocious,
bursting into tears at any music that
affected him. He played the piano almost
before he could talk, picking out tunes
from the barrel organs heard in the
street outside.
When he was 12 his
parents sent him to the Conservatory
in Frankfurt to study piano where he
was the youngest pupil accepted up to
that time. He stayed there for eighteen
months, came home, decided he was more
interested in composition than in teaching
or being a concert pianist and returned
to the Conservatory when he was not
quite 17.
There at one time or
another he met Norman O’Neill, Balfour
Gardiner, Roger Quilter and the one
he remained closest to, Percy Grainger,
the five musicians becoming collectively
known as the Frankfurt Group.
Grainger became not
only an especially good friend but also
a tireless advocate of Scott’s music,
playing his compositions, in particular
the Sonata No. 1, all over the
world. He was also extraordinarily generous
to him. During WWII, having earlier
become an American citizen and with
restrictions on taking money out of
the country, he insisted that Scott
be given all his British royalties and
after the war lent him his cottage in
Pevensey Bay rent-free for two and a
half years.
Success came early
for Scott. His First Symphony was performed
in Darmstadt in 1901 and his Second
under Henry Wood in London two years
later.
It took one hundred
years, though, before his next Symphony,
The Muses, had its first hearing
in 2003!
For the first quarter
of the last century he was in the forefront
of modern British composers, hailed
by Eugene Goossens as ‘the father of
modern British music’ and admired by
men as diverse as Elgar, Debussy, Richard
Strauss and Stravinsky.
By the time he died
in 1970, however, he was remembered
by the general public for little more
than Lotus Land (1905) and small
piano pieces such as Water Wagtail
(1910), which at one time, according
to Lewis Foreman, was used as the signature
tune to the Test Match broadcasts on
the BBC!
What caused such a
sharp decline is hard to assess. Musical
tastes change. Avant garde can
easily become vieux jeu. Maybe
Scott’s highly individual style, which
to listeners more accustomed to the
work of Stanford and Parry would initially
have appeared radical and ‘modern’,
began to seem dated.
Or, maybe Diana Swann
was right when in a perceptive article
for the British Music Society in 1996
she wrote, " ... Perhaps too much
hope was pinned on him at a point when
England’s fading Imperial importance
craved a compensatory and valuable place
in European music."
Another possibility,
as she noted, was that after WWI, "English
music was encouraged to progress only
along the folksong/Tudor revival/Christian
agnostic path" and the new composers
finding favour had all been trained
at the Royal College or Academy of Music.
Scott, not part of
the club, had studied in Frankfurt,
was un-English in many ways, believing
in occultism and reincarnation and dressed
outlandishly in velvet jackets instead
of Harris tweeds!
A more important consideration
is that he became suspect as a serious
composer because of the huge number
of popular miniatures he produced. These
were written at the request of his publisher,
Elkin, which as he said, sealed both
his fame and his undoing. Yet as Leslie
De’Ath in his liner notes to his recent
Dutton CD of the Suites and Miniatures
says: "It is tempting in consequence
to dismiss all the Elkin miniatures
as trivial drawing-room nothings tossed
off upon command for an indiscriminate
market. Closer inspection of these piano
pieces however reveals some interesting
surprises. They are not always so "miniature",
and are often harmonically recondite,
interpretively elusive and occasionally
technically demanding."
During the 1930s Scott
was still considered of sufficient importance
for there to be performances of several
large-scale works including the Festival
Overture, which had won the Daily
Telegraph prize and the tone poem Disaster
at Sea as well as smaller pieces
like the Harpsichord Concerto,
the Ode to Great Men and the
2nd Piano Sonata. With the exception
of the Harpsichord Concerto,
however, none of them was very favourably
received.
Some of the criticism
of his music is revealing. ‘Meaningless’,
‘pointless’ ‘shapeless’, ‘not moving
toward a climax’ occurs again and again,
indicating, perhaps, that the musical
idiom of the day favoured more goal-oriented
works than his.
Of the Festival
Overture there was one London critic
who did describe it as "a most
accomplished piece of writing, decidedly
personal in style and temperament, somewhat
slight in matter, for all the fullness
of the scoring; the music of a composer
of more taste than self-assertiveness,
more grace than passion". but it
was outweighed by negative comments
from the other papers. Reviews for Disaster
at Sea were worse. Composers are
notoriously unappreciative of other
composers and it was Constant Lambert
who said of it: "It would
be easy enough to pillory this work
did one not wish to forget about it
immediately."
Speaking of critics,
I can’t resist quoting this charming
letter from Ernest Newman, the great
Wagner scholar and pre-eminent music
critic of the day. I don’t know if he
was referring to this piece or some
other work that had recently been savaged
but he wrote to Scott: "Don’t take
that appalling drivel too seriously!
What is one to say about a new work
that comes and goes in a moment, and
of which one doesn’t know a note in
advance and in connection with which
one cannot even be sure that it is sounding
as the composer meant it to sound?"
Scott revised Disaster
at Sea and renamed it Neptune.
Seventy years later, in 2004,
it was issued on the Chandos label
along with The Muses Symphony
and the Second Piano Concerto.
Now how different the notices were!
Peter Dickinson, writing
in the Gramophone, headed his review
"the warmest of welcomes for a
remarkable discovery in 20th-century
British music" and Calum MacDonald
in the BBC Music Magazine praised the
extraordinarily imaginative orchestration
and described the CD as "an important
act of restitution" and "an
eloquent case for fine music, unnecessarily
consigned to oblivion without the courtesy
of a hearing,"
The 1930s, despite
the critics, turned out to be extremely
busy for Scott. The Muses Symphony,
Disaster/Neptune, the Cello
Concerto, Harpsichord Concerto,
Concerto for two Violins, the Mystic
Ode and the Variations for two
Pianos were all composed at this
time.
A brilliant pianist,
in 1934 he performed the Rachmaninov
3rd Piano Concerto at a concert in Harrogate,
which between the two wars was a noted
musical centre. This concert was a rarity
for him, because though he performed
frequently he tended to play only his
own work. The critic praised his breadth
of technique, sensitive touch and his
understanding of the piece.
As for writing, he
was equally prolific. 1932 saw the publication
of the last volume of his Initiate
series; 1933 Music, Its Secret Influence
Through the Ages and The Vision
of the Nazarene, 1936 An Outline
of Modern Occultism and The Greater
Awareness, 1938 Doctors Disease
and Health and in 1939 he published
not one but three books the same year
on totally different subjects. The
Ghost of a Smile, which is dedicated
to the three surviving members of the
Frankfurt Group, (Norman O’Neill
had died in 1934), is on humour,
Man Is My Theme is on the childish
behaviour of adults and Victory Over
Cancer Without Radium or Surgery
on one of his favourite topics
alternative medicine and diet.
The 1940s, by contrast,
and the WWII years in particular were
not good. Scott did publish two books,
Health, Diet and Commonsense
in 1940 and The Christian Paradox;
What Is As Against What Should Have
Been in 1942 but he left his London
home when the war began, moved from
one set of lodgings to another in Somerset
and Devon, was without a piano and composed
nothing. He worried about his finances,
became ill and depressed and in November
1942 wrote to Grainger that he felt
death to be near. It was the low point
of his life. He was 63. Two years later,
though his health had improved, he was
saying he would never write another
note of music. Impossible for him to
be idle, though, he turned to writing
plays, ten original manuscripts and
adaptations of ‘The Moonstone’ and ‘Barchester
Towers’ and after a lapse of 40 years
returned to writing poetry.
After the war he moved
to Sussex, first to Grainger’s little
Pevensey Bay house and then to Eastbourne.
He began to compose again. He still
had another twenty five years to live.
By the late 1940s the
BBC had written him off entirely and
considered no major work of his to be
worth programming which put the Music
Director Sir Steuart Wilson in an awkward
position when asked to talk at Scott’s
70th birthday party. "His speech"
writes Scott "was a masterpiece
of eloquent evasion. Ingeniously avoiding
any allusion to my work or merit as
a composer, with consummate skill he
contrived to give the impression that
he was saying nice things about me,
when actually he believed there was
little nice, musically, that could
be said". (Bone of Contention)
Scott was undeterred.
During this latter period he wrote constantly,
producing not only a number of chamber
works, Trios, Quartets and Quintets,
but also major works including his only
full length opera, Maureen O’Mara,
the Fourth Symphony, which
is to be recorded later this year, the
Second Piano Concerto, a Concertino
for Flute and Bassoon, a Sinfonietta
for Organ, Harp and Strings and
a large unpublished secular oratorio
Hymn of Unity, which more than any
other work with the possible exception
of the Mystic Ode, expresses
his deeply felt philosopy, that of Unity
in Diversity. His final composition,
a revision of an earlier Danse Song
for Vocalise and Piano, he completed
with failing eyesight, hardly able to
hold the pen, three weeks before he
died on the final day of 1970 at the
age of 91.
In 1977 Sir Thomas
Armstrong, Principal of the Royal Academy
of Music and President of the shortlived
Cyril Scott Society said in a BBC Radio
3 broadcast: "Cyril Scott didn’t
care whether his music was performed
or published; he would have liked to
have it performed, he would have liked
to have it published, he was glad when
it was performed. But he went on writing
knowing there was little chance of a
symphony finding performance. He went
on writing day after day. He was a marvellous
example of the dedicated creative artist."
He also continued producing
books; Medicine, Rational and Irrational,
The Tragedy of Stefan George,
on the German poet he met when in Frankfurt,
Man, the Unruly Child, Simpler
and Safer Remedies for Grievous Ills
plus the two enormously popular pamphlets
on Black Molasses and Cider
Vinegar. These little books sold
in their hundreds of thousands all over
the world, bought largely by people
who had no idea the author had ever
written a note of music!
In the years immediately
following his death there were isolated
voices such as Norman Demuth, Christopher
Palmer and Stephen Lloyd, deploring
what they described as the inexplicable
neglect of Scott but their protests
resulted in few recordings and fewer
still live performances.
Now, however, a new
generation seems eager to explore the
music afresh.
Has the wheel turned
and his time come round once again?
Interest has been sparked
by several events occurring close together.
The first was the publication in 2000
of Laurie Sampsel’s outstanding bio-bibliography
of Scott, the first to gather together
all the compositions, writings and discography.
The second, undoubtedly, was the decision
by the Ralph Vaughan Williams Trust,
spurred on by their administrator Bernard
Benoliel and trustee Bruce Roberts to
fund the production of works, some of
which had not only never been recorded
before but had never even been performed!
Chandos, delighted with the CD’s reception
last year, has now decided to record
all the major works. As I mentioned
earlier, the Fourth Symphony with
Martyn Brabbins conducting the BBC Philharmonic
was recorded last month and will be
issued next year The disc also includes
the 1st Piano Concerto and Early
One Morning both with Howard Shelley.
To my mind, Early One Morning
is one of the most delightful of Scott’s
compositions, ranking with such quintessentially
English pieces as The Banks of Green
Willow, The Lark Ascending
or On Hearing the First Cuckoo in
Spring. The following year the same
orchestra and conductor will record
the Festival Overture, the
Cello Concerto with Julian
Lloyd-Webber as soloist and the Violin
Concerto, soloist yet to be announced.
Another event was the
remarkable discovery of the Sonatina
for Guitar which Scott had written
for Segovia in 1927 but which had since
been thought irretrievably lost. Performed
in 2001 by Julian Bream at the Wigmore
Hall and later recorded by the German
guitarist Tilman Hoppstock and the Mexican
Carlos Bernal the work was described
by Allan Clive Jones in the Guitar Magazine
as ‘one of the summits of the guitar’s
repertoire in the 20th century’.
Dutton Epoch which
has already issued the Piano Quartet
and Piano Quintet and three of
the String Quartets has begun
recording all the solo piano music with
the Canadian pianist Leslie De’Ath.
With the exception of Scriabin, Scott
wrote more music for that instrument
between 1903 and 1910 than any other
composer in the world, making the recordings
a major commitment for Dutton. De’Ath’s
first double CD of the Suites
and Miniatures is already out,
so are the four Sonatas and the
remainder, comprising over a hundred
works, will be issued at regular intervals.
Another example of
renewed interest was the International
Musicological Seminar in Melbourne last
July where there were six papers on
Scott, dealing with different aspects
of his music and his friendship with
Percy Grainger.
There is also an extensive
website at http://www.cyrilscott.net
designed by Scott’s granddaughter Amanta
Scott which gives a complete list of
both compositions and books.
The swings in fortune
during and after his lifetime he would
undoubtedly have put down to Karma,
in which he firmly believed. But perhaps
there is a simpler answer, an answer
he supplied himself. Writing a chapter
in a book on John Ireland, who at the
time felt himself to be neglected, he
said, "The truth is, I suggest,
that whether a given composer is neglected
or not is largely a matter of fortuitous
circumstances."
Fortuitous circumstances
may continue to play a part in whether
the wheel continues to turn in Scott’s
favour but one thing is certain: For
the first time there is finally material
readily available for a fair and knowledgeable
assessment to be made.
© Desmond
Scott, 32 Belcourt Road, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M4S 2T9
[This article first appeared in the
October 2005 issue of the ISM
Journal and appears here courtesy of
the author]
http://www.cyrilscott.net
