Friday 15 November 2019

John Ireland: A Downland Suite (1932): A Fascinating Insight by Herbert Hughes


Whilst researching my post about John Ireland’s A Downland Suite for brass band, I came across a remarkable article printed in the Daily Telegraph (6 September 1932). This was written by their music critic Herbert Hughes. [1]:

John Ireland’s Test Piece
Saturday, Oct.1, is the day of days for the British bandsman. After months of hard practice, thousands of musicians from the collieries and workshops of the Midlands and the North will come to the Crystal Palace to compete with others from Wales and the South.
One hundred and eighty-six bands have entered, and many of them will come long distances by specially chartered charabancs to be present at the great festival. This year the coveted championship is to be won on the playing of a test piece composed by John Ireland. It is called A Downland Suite, a thing that has been inspired by the Saxon encampments on the Sussex Downs, and what by implication they mean to the life of modern England.
Yesterday I was privileged to go through the score with the composer himself – one of the shyest, most self-deprecating individuals I know. He played the work as best he could – for of course it is scored for the full panoply of brass and percussion – on the piano, explaining the various themes as he went along.

A New Departure
It is in four movements: Prelude, Elegy, Minuet, and Rondo. The distinguished composer had not before tried his hand at work in this medium. [2] It was a new experience, but, following in the recent footsteps of Bantock, Holst and Elgar, [3] Ireland has put himself whole-heartedly into it.
It was, he admitted almost shyly, a commission. And his problem was to adapt his own natural idiom to the unusual (to him) problems of the brass band. I feel sure he has succeeded.
The Prelude is a very vigorous, militant movement, in hearing which you may think of our plumed Roman conquerors. [4] The Elegy has a characteristic tune of the meditative kind, of which the composer makes dramatic use in the last movement. The Minuet is classical in manner, simple in essence, and the finale, the Rondo is distinctly exhilarating.
I came away from his Chelsea studio [5] feeling that John Ireland, so far from being middle-aged, is at heart one of the youngest of our composers, and today at the top of his form. Those exuberant virtuosi in the North will have some fun with this new work.
Herbert Hughes The Daily Telegraph Tuesday, 6 September 1932 (with minor edits)

Notes:
[1] Belfast-born Herbert Hughes (1882–1937) was a composer, musicologist and collector of Irish folksong. Between 1911 and 1932 he was music critic to the Daily Telegraph. Hughes is now best recalled for his arrangement of the song ‘I know where I am going’ made famous by Kathleen Ferrier.
[2] John Ireland was to compose one further piece for brass band: The Comedy Overture (1934).
[3] Herbert Hughes would have been thinking about Edward Elgar’s Severn Suite written in 1930. This work was later transcribed for full orchestra. In 1928 Gustav Holst had composed his Moorland Suite for brass band. A transcription of this work have been made for military band. Granville Bantock wrote many works for the genre. I think that Herbert Hughes will be referring here about the Oriental Rhapsody composed in 1930 for that years Open Brass Band Championships. Most of the remaining examples were composed during the Second World War.
[4] I am not sure to what extent A Downland Suite evokes history in this manner. I have always seen it as being inspired by the landscape, not a musical picture of it. The ‘Elegy’ is deeply reflective and may well reflect a personal relationship rather than a place or historical event.
[5] John Ireland’s house, The Studio was at 14A Gunter Grove in Chelsea. He bought this property in 1915 and stayed there for 40 years.

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