Frank Bridge: Summer (1914-15)

The tone poem, Summer must rank as one of my all-time favourites. It would certainly feature as one of my Desert Island Discs. I understand that it was completed whilst Bridge was living in Bedford Gardens in Kensington. However, he had recently (1914) moved from Chiswick. It was written at a time when the composer was extremely disturbed by the effect the Great War was having on the lives of his friends. Bridge was too old to be involved in the fighting himself; besides, he was an unrepentant pacifist. He was uneasy with the apparent jingoism that was in the air at that time. Rather than write a ‘troubled’ work depicting in musical terms the clash of the Titans, he resorted to a kind of escapism. It is this context that we are to listen in Summer and the Two Poems which were also composed at about this time. 

It would be easy to see Summer as a kind of parody of Delius. However, it is a cleverly constructed work with an obvious ternary form to it. The skill that Bridge brings with his orchestration and harmonic structures tends to blur the underlying form. This is one of those pieces of music that need to be listened to with a kind of relaxed concentration. By this I mean that it is not to be listened to in the background whilst discussing the holiday snaps over a glass of Chianti. Neither, though, should it be an intellectual exercise. Switch off the light, open the window, enjoy the cool evening breeze, and just fall into the delicious harmonies and counterpoints. Let the music wash over you. Lose yourself in the summer’s day haze. Think of Matthew Arnold’s evocative lines “All the live murmur of a summer’s day!” It is nine minutes and forty seconds of Heaven. There is plenty of time to evaluate and analyse the score the next morning.

Summer was premiered on 13 March 1916 during a Royal Philharmonic Society Concert at the Queen’s Hall: the composer conducted the resident orchestra.

Paul Hindmarsh, in his Frank Bridge Catalogue quotes a letter from Frank Bridge to his friend Marjorie Fass. It was penned as an update on the composer’s tour of the United States and refers to the American premiere by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Hence the (sadly disingenuous) generalisations about Americans:

This piece ‘Summer’ goes at a snail’s pace, comparatively; it has a peace in it which I wish I could find and rest in at the moment. It reflects nothing that the average American has in his or her life. It has nothing to do with any material aspect of life. It has nothing to do with twenty-storey buildings or the concrete roads which run throughout the country. Only to the lover of the footpath which winds through the woods and over brooks with the aid of old-fashioned foot bridges, or with stepping-stones, can this piece arouse a sympathetic understanding. (From a letter to Marjorie Fass, dated 17 October 1923)

Frank Bridge must have the final word. He is quoted as saying in a letter to his wife, ‘…only if there is such a thing as rest in the soul of the listener and in the sweetness of a summer day faraway in the heart of the country will my piece Summer make any impression.’ 

My favourite version of Bridge’s Summer is the recording by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra under Sir Charles Groves on HMV ASD 3190, (1976) (LP): EMI Studio CDM 7 69870-2 (1989) (CD). This version has been uploaded to YouTube. Other good accounts have been made on Chandos (Hickox) and Naxos (Judd).