The Centenary of the Death of Willaim Baines Part 2

And another obituary from the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer

 WILLIAM BAINES: A NOTABLE BRTISH COMPOSER - EARLY DEATH.

By the death of Mr William Baines, a figure of singular promise is removed from the musical circles of this country. After a long and painful illness, he passed away his home in York on Monday. The son of a professional pianist, William Baines was born at Horbury in March 1899. Most of his life was spent there and at Cleckheaton, but about five years ago he removed to York.

Early opportunities for musical training were restricted, but at length he was enabled to study harmony under Mr Albert Jowett, Mus. Bac., whom he used to assist at the organ St. John's Church, New Briggate, Leeds. It was at a Leeds concert that he first heard an orchestra, and that was, comparatively, towards the close of his career.

Hence, we find that the medium for which most of his music is written is the pianoforte. It was the one ready to his hand, and over it he gained a technical mastery that, in view of his frail physique, was surprising in its virility and power. Two elements seem to have influenced him; his love of Yorkshire (and particularly of the sea) and a literary taste nourished by extensive reading. These features are reflected in his music, most of which consists of short “programme" tone-pictures bearing a fanciful title. For instance, we have Goodnight to Flamboro' and Labyrinth (a water cave) - the latter piece compounded of tonal liquescence of wind and wave.

By some strange gift, Baines seemed to write instinctively in modern idiom even before he had ever heard recent music. In The Burning Joss-stick he uses a whole-tone scale, but though there are hints, now and then, of such styles as those Debussy and Scriabin, his music never seems actually derived, nor is it wilfully extravagant. Two or three competent critics have suggested traces of Chopinism in Baines’s use of melody and his poetic standpoint. But besides the delicate fancy of Water Pearls, he could also rise to the stateliness and sonority of Ave! Imperator and Purple Heights. Probably his most developed work was Paradise Gardens - the outcome of a reverie at sunset in a peaceful garden near the ancient greyness of York's city walls, in the summer of 1919.

As is usually the case, Baines had a hard struggle for recognition; and it is pathetic that his death, before reaching his twenty-fourth year, occurred just when certain of his works had been issued by the eminent music publishers.

He received help and encouragement from Dr Eaglefield Hull and Mr Frederick Dawson, the latter of whom never missed an opportunity to introduce Baines’s works at his recital. Among the earliest to recognise the merits of this young musician were the music critics of this and other journals, who attended the recitals given by the composer at Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, York, Bradford, Huddersfield, and elsewhere. One of Baines’s pieces is dedicated to Miss Myra Hess, who was keenly interested in his work. The British Music Society. too, extended him its valuable support.

“Baines's imagination takes fire from the glory of colour, the rhythm of sunsets, the glow of flowers, and the stories of [Edgar Allan] Poe," says Dr Hull.

Yet the young man was modest the verge shyness, and the writer can testify to his quiet personal charm. The last time we met, he told me about the hope of securing publication for a string quartet he had composed. For his works were not confined to the pianoforte; he also wrote a symphony (when 17), two orchestral poems and violin sonata, besides vocal and chamber music. It was no uncommon thing for him to play between 20 and 30 of his own piano pieces at one recital.

He volunteered in the war, his services during hostilities brought an illness from which never completely recovered. Our music the poorer for his loss. A. J. D.
Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer - Wednesday 08 November 1922, p.6

Notes

1. Arthur Eaglefield Hull (1876-1928) was a British music critic, author, organist and composer. He wrote for many periodicals, including The Monthly Musical Record. His books include an early biography of Cyril Scott (1919) and Modern harmony, its explanation and application (1915). He edited the organ works of Alexander Guilmant. His life ended in tragedy when he fell in front of a train at Huddersfield Railway station. The coroner reported “Suicide whilst of unsound mind.”

2. The British Music Society mentioned in these pages is no relation of the present British Music Society which was founded in 1979.

3.  Frederick Dawson (1868-1940) was a Leeds born pianist and teacher. He taught at the Royal Manchester College of Music and at the Royal College of Music in London. Dawson had a wide-ranging repertoire from early English music to the French Impressionists.