Hubert James Foss was born in Croydon on 2 May 1899. He was a composer,
pianist, music editor, educationalist, author and composer. Foss was educated
in classics at Bradfield College, Berkshire. At the age of 20 he was assistant editor
of the wartime journal Land and Water.
In 1924 he became musical editor at Oxford University Press, and founded
their music department. Foss died in
London on 27 May 1953. In 1933 he
published Music in my Time which is still important to music historians examining
music from the first third of the 20th century. He is best
remembered for his Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Study (1950) which was the first
book-length analysis of the composer’s life and music.
Almost exactly five years ago, an
orchestral concert[1] was given to indicate the
range of Arnold Bax's talents; on October 20 last, a chamber concert at the
Wigmore Hall demonstrated his achievement in chamber music.[2]
The length and variety of these
two solitary exhibitions have been their special value. They have enabled
musicians to stop and make a sudden critical survey of Bax's music; to wonder,
could any other English composer produce an equal accumulation of effect? This
prolific and varied talent not only survives, but even needs, such an ordeal as
this for displaying itself; so that these concerts have helped to establish Bax
as a big composer. He is not yet fully recognized as a big composer; though
some of his works have been performed on the continent (at Prague, Salzburg,
Berlin, and Paris chiefly), and at Cleveland, Ohio, one may say he is virtually
unknown outside Great Britain, and even here there is a tendency still to
regard Bax as a promising young man and not as a real composer. With such a
catalogue of works at 44, and one of such a quality, his magnitude must surely
be accepted; and any criticism of him must be founded upon this base.
[Only such an assumption,
therefore, permits one to examine—without any attempt at assessing finally an
imagination which has not yet reached its fullest powers—certain
characteristics in the four works of Bax recently heard in London—the quintets
for piano and strings and for oboe and strings, the sonata for viola and harp,
and the second string quartet.
I should add that his chamber
works number, besides these four and many smaller works, two piano sonatas, two
violin and piano sonatas, a quartet and quintet for strings, a quintet for
strings and harp, two trios for violin, viola, and piano and flute, viola, and
harp respectively, a phantasy and a sonata for viola and piano, a sonata for
'cello and piano, and 'Moy Mell' for two pianos (four hands), all of which, as
well as the choral and orchestral works, are integral to a consideration of the
whole Bax!] (Originally a footnote in the article)
Bax's sheer ability to compose
music is phenomenal; his invention of sounds never ceases. One wonders,
vaguely, as one has wondered of Reger, whether there could in the future be
another Bax: whether, mathematically, music could stand it. But Bax writes
sounds where Reger often writes notes. The thousand and one musicians who so
seriously toy with composition might well despair at the score of, say, the
second quartet. But it is not a mere collection of counterpoints, a charming
interlaced pattern printed upon a leaf.
It is a map of effects in sound,
planned only by intimate knowledge and imagination. The music in Bax is so
essentially on the instruments, and the paper notation nothing but a skilfully
used aid to the players—an order of procedure not common enough among composers.
Compare in this connexion the opening of the second movement of the quartet, or
the lovely end to the first movement of the oboe quintet, the last movement of
which shows Bax's capability in a clearer texture than he usually contrives.
There are times, of course, when the mere music pleases one more than its
presence at a particular juncture; one of these, I think is the ending of the
second string quartet’s first movement. The E major statement of the second
theme (itself not quite convincing to me) leads so suddenly to an exquisite
twenty bars of coda, where the first subject, of which we had hoped great
things, dwindles to a slightly acid reminiscence in a passage of exquisite
sounds.
The Fantasy-Sonata for viola and
harp is, technically the highest achievement I have met of Bax’s musical
invention. It is extraordinary that with this limited combination he could have
devised sounds that are always interesting for so long a time. Even on a first
hearing, one could recognize the superb musical thought for the instruments
employed, the beautiful writing for them, if one would not dare come to a final
aesthetic judgement about the work as a whole. As a technical feat at least
this work is remarkable.
In this ability of Bax’s to fit
his musical thought to the instruments, to pin it on to them as it were, does
one find a trace of the failure of his musical individuality? His mastery of
the physical capabilities as well as the characteristics of the various ‘sound producers’
is obvious; and it is as right as it is inevitable that these distinctive
characters should affect his musical ideas as they are born in him. But I feel
that sometimes the sounds are too much for him, as if they had escaped beyond
this proper limit. He produces a complicated texture for the string quartet
with as much apparent ease as the organist a single chant, and it seems to me
that his very talent leads him sometimes away, not only in matters of form, but
also in the quality of the musical thought itself.
The sounds may be more appropriate
to the instruments, that is to say, than they are to the final effect of the
work; most of all perhaps in the oboe quintet.
So much good and new music from
these works passes through one's mind during performance and a study of the
scores that one tries, at the end of it all, to decide what one has really
liked best without reference to any earlier feelings one may have had about
other works of Bax. Always I find myself saying: 'What a moment!' or 'How
beautiful! 'about the quieter, more veiled, more softly romantic passages—about
that superb entrance on the piano of the second subject proper in the piano
quintet, for example. Whatever this may tell of the reagent, it must also, and
I firmly believe does, tell something of the cause of the reaction, too.
It is not misleading to speak
thus precisely of a certain mood in Bax's music, for his themes and tunes wear
their hearts upon their sleeves. The meaning of a particular work may be
obscure and its moods elusive and remote, but, in external characteristics, the
musical ideas in it are well, almost excessively defined. In sharpest contrast
to this softer music comes the music always spoken of by annotators as 'rough',
and in preferring the former I am not forgetting such fine things as
'Beg-Innish',[3] or the emphasis of the
oboe at the end of the quintet, or the magnificent opening of the quartet—the
finest passage at the concert perhaps. There remain those times when Bax.
speaks rhetorically, as in the opening theme of the quintet, and others when the
piano bangs and the oboe brays because we are all, as it were, going to be
violent now—by way of contrast.
There are the sul ponticello and martellato[4]
passages, the heavy chords on the strings and the elaborate passage
work—fortissimo—when the effect seems perhaps a little unreal and flimsy in
comparison with the effort—a feeling never present in me in the moments of
lyrical harmony or reminiscence, however complicated in texture.
Hubert J. Foss The Dominant
December 1927.
Continued in next post...
[1] The
concert of Arnold Bax’s orchestral works was organised by his publisher,
Murdoch, Murdoch and Co., London and was held on 13 November 1922 at the
Queen’s Hall. It featured The Goossens Orchestra and its conductor, Eugene
Goossens, the Oriana Madrigal Society under Charles Kennedy Scott, Harriet
Cohen, piano, Lionel Tertis, viola, and John Coates, tenor. The concert opened
with the tone-poem, The Garden of Fand.
Songs were sung by John Coates and accompanied by Bax: they included ‘The
Market Girl’, ‘I heard a Piper Piping’ and ‘Green Grow the Rushes O’. Harriet
Cohen gave a performance of the Piano Sonata No.2 in G major in the first half,
after the interval she played the piano character pieces ‘Lullaby’, ‘Hill Tune’
and ‘Burlesque.’ The Sonata was followed by ‘Mater Ora Filium’ for
unaccompanied double choir. The next work was the Phantasy for viola and
orchestra, which is effectively Bax’s ‘Viola Concerto.’
In the second half Coates sang
the Four Traditional Songs of France.
The Oriana Singers presented two carols, ‘Of a Rose I sing’ and ‘Now is the
time of Christymas’. The second half of this marathon concert closed with the
orchestral transcription of the piano piece, Mediterranean. An exhausting evening!
[2] The Arnold Bax [Chamber] Concert held at the
Wigmore Hall on 20 October 1927 included four major chamber works. The String
Quartet No.2, the Fantasy-Sonata for harp and viola, the Oboe Quintet and the
Pianoforte Quintet. The players were
Maria Korchinska, Leon Goossens, Harriet Cohen and the Virtuoso Quartet
(Marjorie Hayward, violin; Edwin Virgo, second violin; Raymond Jeremy, viola
and Cedric Sharpe, cello. The String
Quartet No.2 was completed at Glencolmcille, County Donegal, on 18 December
1924. It had been premiered by the New Philharmonic Quartet at the Grotrian
Hall (formerly the Steinway Hall) on 15 March 1927. The Fantasy Sonata for viola and harp was
dated ‘April 1927.’ It is dedicated ‘To Madame Maria Korchinska.’ It was first
heard at the Grotrian Hall on 10 June 1927. Raymond Jeremy was accompanied by
the dedicatee. The Quintet for oboe, 2 violins, viola and cello was completed
at the end of 1922. It was dedicated to Leon Goossens. The first performance was at the Hyde Park
Hotel on 11 May 1924, with Goossens and the Kutcher Quartet. The final work
played at this long concert was the early Piano Quintet composed between June
1914 and April 1915. It was dedicated to Edwin Evans. The premiere was a
private performance on 19 December 1917 at the Savoy Hotel. Harriet Cohen was the
pianist along with the English String Quartet, which included the composer
Frank Bridge (viola).
[3]
‘Beg-Innish’ was the fifth song in the cycle of Five Irish Songs (1921). The text was written by J.M. Synge.
[4]
The terms sul ponticello and martellato mean ‘play near the bridge’’
and ‘hammered’ respectively.
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