Cecil Armstrong Gibbs: ‘Dusk’ and the Fancy Dress Suite.

The only piece of music by Cecil Armstrong Gibbs (CAG) regularly played on Classic FM is ‘Dusk.’ It is invariably heard in the Hyperion (CDA66868) version with Ronald Corp conducting the New London Orchestra. To my knowledge, the presenter rarely, if ever, mentions that this piece is an extract from a larger work.  As far as Classic FM are concerned, the composer is a ‘one hit wonder.’ On the other hand, it is good that Armstrong Gibbs is heard on the wireless at all.

The ever popular ‘Dusk’ was, in fact the third movement of Armstrong Gibbs’s dance suite for orchestra, Fancy Dress, op.82, written in 1935. The other movements are ‘Hurly-Burly’, ‘Dance of the Mummers’ and ‘Pageantry (Processional)’. Angela Aries in her biography of the composer, explains that the work ‘was composed at the suggestion of Leslie Boosey (of the publishers, Boosey & Hawkes) …that CAG should write a light suite for orchestra’. Armstrong Gibbs himself wrote that ‘This [suite]…had a moderate success, but by no stretch of the imagination could it have been said to have set the Thames on fire.’ He was modest about the popular ‘Dusk’, writing that ‘it makes no pretensions to be ‘great’ music, it is not a pot-boiler, nor am I in the least ashamed of having written it.’ The work was dedicated to Leslie Boosey.

The entire Suite is both charming and well-constructed. The opening ‘Hurly-Burly’ is a tour-de-force that never gets out of hand. In fact, the central big romantic tune is quite delicious and is the antithesis of the title. ‘The Dance of the Mummers’ is written in an archaic style with a subtle modern twist. It is typically wistful in effect with the middle section rising to a rousing climax, before the thoughtful music returns. Little need be said about ‘Dusk’ save to say that it is Delian in effect. The listener is in no doubt that the composer is painting a musical picture of evening. CAG has written that ‘it sets out to portray the long, languorous twilight of a summer evening.’ He considered that with the theme and the ‘harmonic colour’ ‘Dusk’ ‘achieves precisely what it aims at.’ The orchestration which is effective in the entire Suite is especially felicitous here. ‘Pageantry’ is a march, which (deliberately, I think) has neither the swagger of Elgar nor the rhythmic swing of Eric Coates. It is not jingoistic in any way. More of a ‘local’ rather than a ‘national’ celebration.

Fancy Dress suite was also arranged for small orchestra. The scores have never been published but the holograph and parts are available on hire from Boosey and Hawkes.

Several arrangements of ‘Dusk’ have been made including for piano, clarinet or trumpet and piano and recorder ensemble.

Cecil Armstrong Gibbs was born in the village of Great Baddow, Essex on 10 August 1889. After a general education at Winchester and Trinity College, Cambridge, he served for several years as a schoolmaster. After the end of the Great War, he began to composer music. He studied with Adrian Boult and Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music (RCM). In 1920, he joined the staff at the RCM and became Professor of Harmony and Counterpoint.   Around this time, Armstrong Gibbs moved from London to the Essex village of Danbury, where he was to live until his death on 12 May 1960.  After the Second World War he was much occupied as an adjudicator for, and eventually Vice-President of, the National Federation of Music Festivals.

Much of Armstrong Gibbs music was composed for ‘amateur’ choirs, orchestras and theatres. However, there is a solid core of music that fulfills the requirements of the professional concert hall and recital room. His masterpieces may well be the choral symphony Odysseus, and the Symphony No. 3 ‘Westmorland’, written on the death of his son David in battle near the River Sangro in Central Italy. Singers are surely grateful for his wide range of solo songs: instrumentalists have much to discover in his enormous catalogue of chamber music.

The only full performance of Cecil Armstrong Gibbs’s Dance Suite: Fancy Dress can be found on Lyrita SRCD 214. The CD also includes Granville Bantock’s Russian Scenes, Phyllis Tate’s London Fields, Elisabeth Lutyens’s En Voyage and some waltzes by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. The Lutyens and Gibbs is played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Simon Joy. The other works feature the London Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Barry Wordsworth. At the time of writing, this version of the Fancy Dress Suite can be heard on YouTube.

In his fulsome review of this disc, Rob Barnett (MusicWeb International May 2007) reminded listeners of the ‘phenomenally successful’ Dusk. He considers that ‘Hurly-Burly’ is ‘knockabout Prokofiev-like stuff’ with the ‘Dance of the Mummers’ ‘doff[ing] a hat and a deep bow towards [Peter Warlock’s] Capriol and RVW’s English Folk Song Suite’. As for ‘Dusk’, Barnett thinks that it is ‘delectably emotional slow Delian waltz – light yet searching but not deep.’ Finally, the final march ‘Pageantry’ has ‘a splash of [Eric]Coates and Elgarian nobilmente.’

Andrew Achenbach (The Gramophone, August 2007) reviewing this CD wrote that ‘the fragrant waltz (Dusk)…made the composer’s name back in the 1940s and ’50, but the rest of the work proves an endearing find.’

It would be splendid if Classic FM were to play some of the other movements in this charming Suite. Cecil Armstrong Gibbs is certainly no ‘one-hit-wonder.’