William Baines (1899-1922) was an English composer and pianist known for his prolific output despite his short life. Born in Horbury, Yorkshire, he came from a musical family; his father was a cinema pianist and organist. Baines began piano lessons at an early age and composed his first pieces, aged twelve. He studied at the Yorkshire Training College of Music in Leeds and later moved to York, where he gave his first public piano recital at 18. His compositions, numbering over 150, were mostly piano miniatures inspired by the natural world. Notable works include "Chimes," "The Coloured Leaves," and "Dreaming Little Imps." Baines' career was cut short by tuberculosis, and he passed away at 23. His Symphony in C Minor was composed at 17 and premiered posthumously in 1991.
A. Walter Kramer, born Arthur Walter Kramer on September 23, 1890, in New York City, was an American music critic, music publisher, and composer. He was taught music by his father and took violin lessons from Carl Hauser and Richard Arnold. Kramer graduated from the College of the City of New York in 1910. He contributed to Musical America from 1910 to 1922 and served as its editor from 1929 to 1936.
The following article by A. Walter Kramer appeared in Musical America (September 1933 p.24)
ONE day, several years ago, while reading an English musical magazine, I was attracted by an advertisement which listed some compositions by a composer whose name was quite new to me. It was not only the name but the dates of his birth and death, printed under the name, which made me pause, subject, like most of us, to the sympathy aroused for those whose life is cut off almost before it has begun. Those dates were 1899-1922. Here clearly, I thought, was another victim of that bitter chapter in world history, the war, which those who promulgated, but not those who fought it, insist on calling ‘great.’ I read in the announcement that he had composed principally for the piano: just a sheaf of works were listed, their titles in no way unusual, yet something about them held me. Due to the press of more immediate duties, I was unable then to look at this music. But a year later I returned to it and had his published music sent to me, also as much about him as could be available on one whose biography was at most a brochure. I knew, from the moment I saw the advertisement mentioned above, that I would give some attention to this young British composer. Something indefinable assured me of what turned out to be a very definite interest. I asked his publisher, W. W. A. Elkin, [1] one of the ablest men in the field in England, who throughout his long and distinguished career has shown his idealism and sportsmanship in taking up composers of rare talent, to send me a photograph of this young composer. And when I saw the face, I knew that in this wistful countenance was mirrored a poet’s soul.
Then one day I sat down to read the music. I sensed something of disappointment. I was not surprised; it was but natural. It had occurred to me, and to many others before, to be expectant, only to be let down. To be sure, I had not in this case been told that the composer was “the most important talent since,” or anything like that to impress me. Nevertheless, I had led myself to expect, which was in its way just as bad and, also, I was on my guard not to allow to influence me the fact that two decades and three years were all the time allotted to him on this sphere. I am of those who will never forgive the literary critics, who in 1914 made the grave error of hailing Rupert Brooke a Thomas Chatterton! Who is the young English composer? you will ask. A simple name, William Baines, known, I am almost certain, to but a few of those who read these lines. From the material which I have assembled I learn that he was born at Horbury, in Yorkshire, on March 26, 1899, that his father was musical director of a moving picture theatre, what they call a cinema in England, that he enlisted in the British Army, was taken ill after three weeks of military training, spent eight months in a hospital, but never regained his health. He died on Nov. 6, 1922. What a brief span for composing! In spite of this, Baines was able to leave behind a small amount of individual music, for the piano, all of it that I have seen published by Elkin & Co. Ltd., in London. (New York: Galaxy Music Corporation). There are Silverpoints, four pieces, Tides (The Lone Wreck, Goodnight to Flamboro’), Seven Preludes, Milestones (Three Pieces), Paradise Gardens and the Three Concert Studies (Exaltation, The Naiad and Radiance). [2] Examining these, in the main, brief pieces, one is impressed perhaps most strikingly by two qualities, which all of them exhibit. These are their extraordinarily personal harmonic garb and their never-failing vitality. To me these constitute a claim to attention. Add to this that they are music indisputably conceived for the piano, that they could have been planned for no other instrument and would have little point, or at least would lose much of their real character, if transcribed for other media, and there is all the more wonder that the contemporary world of music is not better acquainted with them.
Let me make clear that there has been a certain recognition of the music of William Baines in his native England. There the concert pianist, Frederick Dawson sponsored this music, which was first championed by the late Dr A. Eaglefield Hull [3] in an article in The Bookman in April 1922. L. Dunton Green [4] had also praised him about that time. But the general public has not responded as it should to the finely integrated productions of a youth who, I am almost certain, was touched with the Promethean fire. There have been many who have felt a Scriabin influence in Baines’s music, witnessed, they hold, by his harmonic scheme bearing points of similarity to the music of the gifted, and still unappreciated, Russian, who labored so tirelessly with his theories of sight and sound. But we have it on excellent authority that Baines lived and died without having known a page of Scriabin’s music! Were there time and space I would feel it a privilege to discuss every one of these superb piano compositions, to point to the inevitably sure impress of conspicuous talent that one finds in them. But I can only speak of a few, those which are an ornament to British contemporary piano music.
Notes:
[1] William W. A. Elkin (1861-1937). Elkin & Co was a small family-owned London music publisher that was started in 1903 by Robert Elkin. The Elkin family sold their catalogue and company to Novello & Co in the 1960's. During the first four decades of the 20th century Elkin was a prolific publisher of mainly short works by contemporary British composers for piano or voice and piano. Major composers in their listings were Cyril Scott, William Baines, Geoffrey Bush, C.S. Lang, and Roger Quilter. (From IMSLP)
[2] Silverpoints (1921), Tides
(1920) Seven Preludes (1919), Milestones (1920), Paradise Gardens
(1918-19) and the Three Concert Studies (1919-20)
[3] Arthur Eaglefield Hull
(1876-1928) was an English music critic, writer, composer, and organist. He
founded the British Music Society and edited several music publications. He
wrote biographies of the composers Scriabin and Cyril Scott.
[4] From the Times
obituary 1 January 1934: Mr. Louis Grein, who lost his life in the aeroplane
disaster, was the brother of Mr. J. T. Grein, the dramatic critic, and was well
known in London musical circles as "Dunton Green," the music critic.
He contributed regularly to The Chesterian and occasionally to other musical
periodicals; he was London Correspondent for. important musical reviews in Berlin,
Paris, and Turin…He was a good linguist and a man of wide culture and
experience, open-minded, judicious, and of genial personality.
To be continued…
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