Arnold Bax: A Pen Portrait by John F Porte, Part I

On 10 January 1924, the American magazine, Musical Courier carried a length pen portrait of the English Composer Arnold Bax. The author, John F. Porte (1901-1941) was a London based author and music critic. He regularly contributed articles to the Musical Courier and many other leading music journals. He published books about Edward MacDowell and Chopin as well as catalogues of the music of Edward Elgar and Charles Villiers Stanford. 

The present essay discusses Bax when he was 41 years old, so he was a mature composer. The reader will note that there is no reference to the Symphonies. The first one (of seven) had been heard in London on 2 December 1922, so Porte should have been aware of it. The Second was not completed until 1926. In the first post of this article, Porte gives an overview of Bax’s life up to that point, followed by a brief discussion of his orchestral works. It concludes with some remarks about Impressionism in Bax’s music and a few notes about the choral music.

I have silently made a few minor corrections.

Arnold Bax, that curiously reticent figure in modern British music, presents a discussive attraction that comes but slowly. Born in London on November 8, 1883, his career so far has been, in the even tenor of its way, a contrast to the inspiringly romantic journeys to success of his fellow-countrymen, Elgar and Holst. In his early youth he showed distinct musical gifts, and entered, in 1900, the Royal Academy of Music, London. Here he studied the pianoforte with Tobias Matthay, a distinguished teacher who now has his own pianoforte school in London, and composition with Frederick Corder, a composer and well-known authority on the orchestra.

After five years Bax left the R.A.M. in possession of a complete equipment in musical technic, but with his personality, as is now observed, free. It is, indeed, hard to imagine this elusive poet of music in the harness of academic routine.

As I have indicated, the career of Arnold Bax is even and unobtrusive, and this is something of a reflection of the personality of the man. Retiring and unassuming, he is not of the unapproachable type, but may rather be described as not easily accessible. We may read much of the man in his music, where we find an initial reticence that afterwards makes it all the more interesting. He has a deep interest in the dreamland of Celtic legendry, and certain of his music expresses this. A further predilection for things of the past is his interest in old English and French folksongs.

Yet his views on musical composition are thoroughly modern, for no academic restrictions could be allowed to shackle his poetical expressions.

As a pianist, Bax has made public appearances on several occasions, mostly in conjunction with a singer or instrumentalist for performances of his own works. He is a capable, but not outstanding, player and does not occupy a position comparable with the composer-pianists, Percy Grainger and Cyril Scott. Apart from the appearances referred to, the public has seen little of him.

The performances of works by Bax have been growing in number of late, but I doubt whether he will ever achieve popularity among the musical public. Of course, a group of admirers stand by him and laud his works, but this is perhaps not of great value when we consider that he is welcomed by many as an addition to the modernist group of composers. The enthusiasts for thoroughly modern music are rather apt to welcome all recruits for the cause, whether they have any chance of success outside their own circle or not, However, Bax is making his way into the programs of first-class concerts. His fame is spreading beyond the confines of his own country, and it will be all the more enduring for having been courted with an inherent delicacy and restraint that makes the possessor one of the most sympathetic figures in contemporary British music. Both the personality and the music of Arnold Bax are incapable of self-advertisement.

The Works of Bax

The compositions of Arnold Bax embrace orchestral and choral works, ballets, various chamber music and songs. There is no classification of them by that convenient indicator of period, the opus number. The orchestral works, from the first example, express by their titles the poetical, imaginative trend of their composer’s thought. Indeed, the early piece, Into the Twilight, gives us a titular indication of the kind of journey on which we are taken with the majority of Bax’s music

Passing these characteristic, but generally immature and over-elaborated numbers (In the Faery Hills, Festival Overture, Christmas Eve on the Mountains, a suite of four orchestral pieces (a) Pensive Twilight, (b) Dance in The Sun, (c) From the Mountains at Home, (d) Dance of Wild Irravel and Nympholept), we pause at Spring-Fire, a rather more clear impression than the foregoing. A Scherzo, first performed by Sir Henry J. Wood, September 3, 1919, at a Queens Hall promenade concert, is between this and the next work, The Garden of Fand, where we meet the composer discarding superfluity, leaving a complex idiom that flows naturally, if not at once eloquently, for we are reminded of the fact that all of Bax’s music requires a closely sympathetic attention. The piece needs a great refinement of interpretation, and recent performances have indicated that it presents a finely painted impression.

Other orchestral compositions of Bax include the expressive In Memoriam; the strong, often-played Tintagel, which many people think harsh and strange; and Mediterranean, the orchestral version of a pianoforte piece.

Other orchestral compositions of Bax include the expressive In Memoriam; the strong, often-played Tintagel, which many people think harsh and strange; and Mediterranean, the orchestral version of a pianoforte piece.

An Impressionist

The most important of Bax’s orchestral works up to the present is probably November Woods. This remarkable orchestral tone-picture, with its acceptance of Nature in her bleak sombreness, devoid of the fragrant perfumes of beautiful gardens, is undoubtedly the work of an impressionist having moods that are deep and sensitive. With November Woods the fame of Bax rose to a higher level than it had hitherto reached.

The Symphonic Variations in E, for pianoforte and orchestra, have met with some approval. An interesting example of a modern concerto, they should be heard and digested as the work of a very skilled musician, although not that of a genius. They were first played on November 23, 1920, by Harriet Cohen at a Queens Hall promenade concert. The same artist has played them several times since.

The choral music of Bax has only lately come into prominence, and perhaps no sooner than possible, for it is only the recently issued works of his in this form that are outstanding.

The first of these high watermark works that claims our attention is the motet, Mater, Ora Filium, for choir, harp, violoncello and contra-bass, [1] produced in London in 1922 by the Oriana Madrigal Society. This work, with the fifteenth century carol for male voices, The Boar's Head, the carol for unaccompanied double choir, Of a Rose I Sing and the recent motet for unaccompanied choir, This Worlde’s Joie, shows how Bax, despite his modern proclivities is descended from the old English madrigalists. His part-writing technic is skilful, yet ways subservient to the spirit, and the results are exquisitely wrought things.

The words of This Worde’s Joie are said to date from about the year 1300, the modernized version used being:

Winter wakeneth all my care,

Now these leavés waxeth bare;

Oft I sigh and mourné sare

When it cometh in my thought

Of this worldes joy, how it goeth all to nought.

Earlier choral works of Bax are for the more modern combination of choir and orchestra, the most noticeable being Fatherland (poem by J. I. Runeberg). Beside his unaccompanied examples, however, they pale into the significance of ordinary things.

John F. Porte, Musical Courier, 10 January 1924

To be continued…

Notes

[1] Mater, ora Filium is scored for SSAATTBB. The reference to harp, violoncello and contra-bass should apply to the Of a Rose I Sing.