MALCOLM ARNOLD IN CORNWALL by Phillip
Hunt
"Happy but not
idyllic - there’s nothing idyllic about
writing music and bringing up a family".
That was how Malcolm Arnold described
the years between 1965 and 1972 when
with his second wife Isobel he lived
at St Merryn in Cornwall. Eager to escape
the pressures of living in London they
moved just after their marriage to Primrose
Cottage, actually a row of three hundred
year old fisherman’s cottages converted
into one, in the small village just
outside Padstow. It was in Cornwall
during that period that he had his most
close and enthusiastic contact with
the Brass Band World.
Malcolm Arnold had
spent several holidays in Cornwall,
indeed during his student days at The
Royal College of Music he lived for
a short spell in Plymouth just over
the border in Devon. Following a row
with Sir George Dyson, the Principal
of The College, Arnold in his own words,
"ran away with a very beautiful
Welsh art student with red hair from
The Royal College of Art. We went to
Plymouth, where I decided never to do
music again, and just live the life
of an artisan. But music got the upper
hand and I got a job as a trumpeter
in a dance band in Union Street, where
I was very happy until I was found by
private detectives".
It was during the years
in Cornwall that Malcolm Arnold wrote
some of his most popular and successful
orchestral and film music including
his 6th Symphony, Peterloo
Overture, Four Cornish Dances and Fantasies
for Trumpet, Trombone and Tuba. The
self doubt that led to periods of mental
frustration and illness had not really
surfaced during those years when he
was still, at least outwardly, an ebullient
and gregarious character.
With his new wife and
infant son Edward, who was born in Cornwall,
he threw himself enthusiastically into
the musical life of the County, in particular
Brass Bands and specifically The Cornwall
Youth Brass Band. The 1966 Annual Course
of the Band took place at Fowey with
Geoffrey Brand as Course Director. One
of the pieces chosen for the course
was Arnold’s Little Suite for Brass,
which he had written for The National
Youth Brass Band of Scotland in 1963.
In a Foreword to the Concert Programme
he wrote "I have known some of
the Brass Bands and Choirs in Cornwall
for many years, but it was not until
I came to live here that I became aware
of what a living tradition of music
there is in this part of the world.
I am certain that such an organisation
as a Youth Brass Band not only does
so much good for talented young musicians,
but its influence will be far larger
in a social sense, than only a musical
one".
So impressed was Malcolm
Arnold by The Cornwall Youth Brass Band,
led on that course by Brian Minear,
that he offered to write a work for
them for their next Course. Naturally
the offer was gratefully accepted and
on January 19th 1967 the
score and parts of The Little Suite
No 2 for Brass Band were received by
Reg Trudgian, the Chairman of the Band.
On the original handwritten score, Malcolm
Arnold wrote "All players should
play in all parts (even in pianissimo
passages) unless otherwise indicated".
The new work was premiered at Fowey
on Easter Sunday that year at the end
of Course Concert with the Composer
himself conducting the three movements,
Round, Cavatina and Galop.
The Suite was received
with great acclaim prompting the Composer
to write to Reg Trudgian a few days
later that "The Concert was a great
experience which I shall never forget.
Every player excelled themselves and
made me realise what a wonderful thing
music is". The Little Suite was
repeated the following year when Malcolm
Arnold, to the delight of the Committee
and Band directed the whole Course himself,
an occasion fondly remembered by one
of the Baritone players Terry Sleeman
who said that he was "someone you
looked up to, he was jovial, but always
serious about the music".
His interesting choice
of music for the Course included, Tintagel
by Denis Wright, who had died earlier
that year and Music for a Brass Band
by Martin Dalby as well as lighter numbers
such as Sandpaper Ballet and Stardust.
Malcolm Arnold refused any fee or expenses
for his services and was quoted in The
Cornish Guardian as saying "These
seventy young people have given me more
than I have given them". There
was such a demand for tickets for the
Saturday end of course Concert that
an extra performance was laid on the
following day.
Though born in Northampton
Malcolm Arnold found himself in great
sympathy with the Celtic spirit of Cornwall
which he memorably described in a programme
note for the first performance of his
Four Cornish Dances as "a land
of male voice choirs, brass bands, Methodism,
May Days and Moodey and Sankey hymns".
In The Western Morning News on October
17th 1969 he is quoted as
saying "I am now aggressively,
chauvinistically Cornish" and he
felt immensely proud and flattered by
his adopted County when he was initiated
as a Bard of The Cornish Gorsedd at
Liskeard that year with the Cornish
Bardic name of Trompour, in English,
Trumpeter. The choice of name reflecting
his early career as a trumpet player,
particularly in The London Philharmonic
Orchestra, which he had joined as a
teenager and became principal trumpet
of at the age of twenty one, giving
it up to dedicate himself entirely to
composition some four years later.
Such was his interest
and involvement with the Cornish Musical
scene that after coming across the music
of Thomas Merritt he enthusiastically
promoted it to the extent of personally
organising and conducting a concert
of his works in Truro Cathedral. Thomas
Merritt, scarcely a familiar name in
British music though well known in Cornwall,
was born into a poor mining family in
1863 in the parish of Illogan near Redruth.
A miner himself from an early age he
was a self taught musician and became
a prolific composer and conductor before
dying in 1908 at the age of forty six.
For the concert which
took place on 16th March
1968, to mark the 60th anniversary of
Merritt’s death, Arnold assembled the
combined forces of The St Dennis and
St Agnes Bands as well as The Cornwall
Symphony Orchestra and several Choirs.
The programme included Merritt’s Coronation
March and several of his Hymns, Carols
and Anthems all arranged by Malcolm
Arnold himself for the combined forces.
In addition he went to the trouble of
composing a work himself called Salute
to Thomas Merritt, which is listed as
his Opus 98. The five minute piece,
scored for two Bands and Orchestra,
is in essence an extended fanfare and
the various ensembles were dispersed
around the Cathedral.
This almost led to
a break down in the music when The St
Agnes Band were making their way up
a narrow stone spiral staircase to a
gallery high above the Nave to play
their part. Eric Lobb, one of their
Bass players, managed to wedge the bell
of his instrument firmly between the
stones halfway up. With most of the
Band behind him it took some time before
he could be freed, in the end by brute
force, just in time for the Band to
take their places and come in on cue.
There is no doubt that
Malcolm Arnold’s concert march The Padstow
Lifeboat must be one of the most popular
brass band pieces ever written. It has
gone around the world taking the name
of the small Cornish town with it and
has been transcribed into wind band
and orchestral versions. It is in fact
a very personal work, written by Arnold
in 1967 specifically for the launching
of a new lifeboat in Padstow by The
Duke of Kent.
In an interview he
gave on Padstow Quay, which was broadcast
on Radio Three, the composer said "The
lifeboat here is very much part of every
body’s life. They do some tremendously
heroic rescues, I know the crew, I know
the Coxswain - Coxwain Elliot, most
of them are friends of mine and I was
struck by their heroism and it being
very much part of the Town I thought
I would like to write a march, that’s
all".
On the day of the Launch
the first performance was given by The
St Dennis Silver Band whose Musical
Director, Eddie Williams, handed over
the Baton to the Composer to conduct.
Following the formalities he took the
whole Band into the nearest Pub and
treated them to several rounds of drinks,
ensuring that the march was well and
truly launched in a way the Band Members
have never forgotten. Nor have they
forgotten the day he came to adjudicate
their Solo and Quartet Contest. St Dennis
not being the easiest place to find
in the Cornish lanes, he became completely
lost and ended up driving down a narrow
public footpath where his car became
jammed against a stile.
Since his youth Malcolm
Arnold had always been a restless figure
and by the early seventies felt the
desire to move on. His time in Cornwall
had been productive musically but on
the personal front had been marred by
the discovery that his son, Edward,
was autistic a condition about which
little was known at that time. To widespread
regret from the Brass Band musicians
of Cornwall he moved in 1972 to Ireland,
settling just outside Dublin.
Despite the fact that
his orchestral music has not always
been widely accepted by the musical
establishment Malcolm Arnold has always
been a popular figure in the Brass Band
movement with both players and listeners
alike. With many arrangements of his
orchestral works available for Bands
as well as his original Brass Band compositions
he figures regularly in Concert programmes
and at Contests. Living quietly now
in retirement in Norfolk he still takes
a keen interest in the Brass Band movement.
