The Violin Concerto has had a curious history. It was begun in 1940 and had reached semi-completion in sketch form when an air raid on Bristol (where the composer was then living) totally destroyed the manuscript. The necessary task of reconstruction was undertaken, but soon Rawsthorne was called up by the army, and the finished product was not ready until 1947. The first performance was given at the 1948 Cheltenham Festival of British music, [1] with the young Dutch violinist, Theo Olof, [2] and the Hallé Orchestra, under Sir John Barbirolli. A performance was soon given in Amsterdam by the Concertgebouw Orchestra, under Eduard van Beinum. [3]
As one studies this music, one is oddly struck by the absence of any direct influence on Rawsthorne’s mind of any one composer or school of musical thought. It seems to be as remote from Brahms as it is from the English Parry or the Irish Stanford. No one could label it as belonging to the Stravinsky category or the Schoenberg, to the Debussy class or the Vaughan Williams. I am not for one moment suggesting that Rawsthorne is an isolated phenomenon in history - a genetic sport, like a single freak shrub sprung up without assignable reason in the middle of a barren plain.
On the contrary, the Violin Concerto (along with its fellow works) has its roots in musical history and draws its sustenance from the common soil. It is, for example, palpably post-Liszt; it could not conceivably have been written before the Russian, the Bohemian, the French, and other not forgetting the English) reactions against the domination of one central German Austrian style. There is much to be heard in it of music from the more southern cultures of Europe. The fact remains that this music shows a strong independence of outlook, votes with no party, and to that extent creates its own genre.
I mention the point (an important one) at this juncture for one somewhat paradoxical reason - that the Violin Concerto shows more trace of another’s imprint than the rest of the composer’s music. The work is dedicated to Rawsthorne’s friend and fellow composer (by three years his senior), Sir William Walton. On a certain page of the score there occurs a delicate quotation from Walton’s Belshazzar’s Feast, where the assembled company in Babylon sing praise to the God of Iron.
An interesting question presents
itself, for such quotation is hardly de rigueur in music today, although common
enough a century or two back. Yet in literature - in titles especially - such
unacknowledged quotation is frequent, even considered admirable. How many, one
wonders, among the crowds who flocked to see Gone with the Wind paid
silent thanks to Dowson? Neither Aldous Huxley nor William de Morgan gave a
credit line for the use of “Antic Hay” or ‘Somehow Good.” [4]
But the matter goes deeper than this, Rawsthorne himself called this citation “a tribute to the master.” It is impossible not to find in the Violin Concerto numerous vague and indefinable indications that Rawsthorne has been deeply impressed by his colleague’s music. Such influence, if you can pin so square a label on it, seems to me entirely healthy. For myself, | am profoundly grateful to both Rawsthorne and Walton for this interchange of musical thought, this temporary linking of hands. It is a sign of comradeship; and I do not consider the influence of older on younger one whit greater here than that of Sibelius on Vaughan Williams in the D major (or Fifth) Symphony. The original manuscript score of the Vaughan Williams bore a superscription (expunged, save for the name, before print); “Dedicated without permission and with the sincerest flattery to Jean Sibelius, whose great example is worthy of imitation.” But to assert that Vaughan Williams is influenced by Sibelius is plain silly.
In his own program note for the first performance of his Violin Concerto, Rawsthorne wrote: “The intention of the Concerto is to combine a rhapsodical style of expression with the brilliance of a solo instrument.” We are told some of its secrets in the first bar. A note of G is established as a base, and the violin ruminates around it chromatically; the mood is plaintive. The long 9/8 tune arouses interest because it is obviously narrative in style - the composer told me that “it is telling a story while looking at something.” The story is not wholly cheerful, but it is beautiful; soon efforts are made to put an altogether bolder face on the world, but we sink back to the shadows, against which the brilliant cadenza for the soloist - no mere extra, but an integral part of the design - shines up more brightly.
There are only two movements, joined. The second, in a more elaborate tonality, again opens in a hesitant, fragmentary manner, but soon we get a fugato, cunningly wrought but not academically complete, followed by what the composer describes as “a new tune,” which is really a fresh decoction of the work’s opening mood. A strong allegro breaks the mood for a while, and then Fantasy steps in and blows away all the melancholy mists with a kind of gay but ghostly waltz. The large coda includes a reprise and a new touch of whimsicality.
The Symphony (commissioned by the Royal Philharmonic Society of London for its 1950 season) is made of altogether sterner stuff than the now gentle, now disturbing, now friendly, now menacing, Violin Concerto. A different vision of beauty is sought and portrayed for us -one more angular perhaps, but also richer. It is, as it should be, a work of larger scale and broader execution. One observes certain points, for the Symphony is hardly analysable save in the barest or most meaningless phrases: the assertion of a single note (again G) as the tonal basis of the work; swift changes in moods, each well developed and not mere petulant outbursts; a new use of long and inventive melodies of no particular harmonic significance but great progressive and constructive value; an elaborate but sparing use of the orchestra as a single instrument, for the work clearly has been thought into the instruments, not scored afterwards. Even the composer has labelled part of his slow movement “of a rather more romantic and sentimental nature.” The scherzo is short, rhythmic, and epigrammatic. The finale is “more discursive” with a “secondary theme of a playful nature” (I again quote the composer’s direct description). [5]
The Second Piano Concerto (1951) is perhaps the most immediately appealing of these three works by Rawsthorne, partly because of its unbroken effectiveness. It is very different from -and, I think, superior to - the brilliant First Piano Concerto (1942). Let me add that the first performance was given by the London Symphony Orchestra last year, with Clifford Curzon as soloist and Sir Malcolm Sargent as conductor. Within a few weeks a long-playing recording was made by London Records, with the same admirable team. [6] The Second Piano Concerto exhibits the full range of Rawsthorne’s musical mind in its present maturity of middle life. It is essentially conceived for the piano, with orchestral backing - a prolonged song for the pianist, with light and ingenious writing for the orchestra. We observe in its idiom that some use is made of sequences; that the piano-registration of chords is often of significance, even vital, to the structure; that false relations and the six-four chord with an added note are points of harmonic variety; that the argument is close but never intellectual; and that the work, without any linking themes, is a single and integral conception.
Rawsthorne adopts, here too, a predominantly gentle mood for the first movement - with exciting interruptions, of course. Both this allegro piacevole and the following scherzo have main themes that are easy to remember (rather, perhaps, difficult to forget). The third movement, called Intermezzo, is more rhapsodic, with the piano ruminating to its heart’s content. Once again Rawsthorne solves the eternal problem of the finale by allowing his character Fantasy to have its head. The opening subject is described by the composer as “of an innocence which verges on the banal;” it is in fact a brilliant and catchy tune of the kind that Rossini might have been proud to think of had he lived today. The whole movement consists of a series of built-up episodes, each clearly proving from a different point of view that the theme is neither innocent nor banal. It is immensely exciting, and of a proper scale to balance the whole work.
It would be extravagant even ridiculous at this point in our subject’s career - at this moment in history, perhaps - to claim for Alan Rawsthorne that he is a great composer. The meaning of those two words happens, also, to be very vague. On the other hand, I openly claim for Rawsthorne that he is keeping the loom of music spinning stuff in the great tradition; that he is continuing the mainstream of music in a manner, and at a level of excellence, that is worthy of the great achievements of the past. Of the importance of modern English composers in the music of the world, I have neither the space nor the inclination to write here. But I look around Europe, and I cannot see one composer of equal age in the symphonic field with whom Rawsthorne cannot stand up in at least proud equality, and I can see many over whom he towers with his powerful stature of musical thought. Having watched his progress for fifteen and more years, I can rely with confidence on the future - circumstances like health and peace permitting - as likely to produce many other brilliant and beautiful expressions of this very remarkable mind.
Notes:
[1] The premiere performance was
on 1 July 1948 at the Cheltenham Town Hall.
[2] Theo Olof (1924-2012) was a
Dutch violinist and writer, born in Bonn, Germany. He fled the Nazi regime with
his mother in 1933. Olof performed with major orchestras like the Concertgebouw
and Residentie Orkest and was a noted soloist and teacher. He won the fourth
prize at the 1951 Queen Elisabeth Competition.
[3] This performance was on 7 November
1948 at the Amsterdam: Concertgebouw Hall.
[4] English poet Edward Dowson’s
Cynara contains the lines: I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion/I
have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind. The title of Aldous Huxley’s Antic
Hay is derived from Edward II, a play by Christopher Marlowe, c1593, Act
One, Scene One, lines 59-60: "My men, like satyrs grazing on the lawns,
shall with their goat feet dance the antic hay", which is quoted on the
frontispiece. ‘Antic hay’ here signifies to a lively dance. William de Morgan’s
appropriation of Somehow Good eludes me.
[5] Rawsthorne’s Symphony No.1
was premiered on 15 November 1950 at the Royal Albert Hall, London. The BBC
Symphony Orchestra was conducted by Adrian Boult.
[6] Decca LX-3066 (1952);
Concerto for Piano No. 2; Clifford Curzon, piano; London Symphony Orchestra;
Malcolm Sargent, conductor. It has subsequently been released on CD: Clifford
Curzon Edition: Complete Recordings, 2012.
Concluded
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