Introducing Patrick Hadley’s The Trees So High (1931) Part II

The Trees so High was completed during 1931. This was shortly after Hadley had withdrawn his application for a lectureship at Armstrong College, Newcastle upon Tyne. He was concerned that this position would limit his time for writing music.

It is well known that the composer and conductor Constant Lambert (1905-51) had a low opinion of folk song as the basis for symphonic music. Anecdotally, he once stated that he considered that “the whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder.” William Mann (Sleeve Notes Lyrita SRCS 106, 1979) suggests that this comment may originally have been directed at Delius’s Brigg Fair. Eric Wetherell (1997, p.27) ponders that “It may not be too fanciful to assume that as an admiring pupil of Vaughan Williams, Paddy may have wanted to attempt something that his friend [Lambert] believed to be impossible” - a folk-symphony.

The completed score was dated “Heacham February 28,1931” and it was published by Oxford University Press the following year. The piece lasts for about 35 minutes.

The words of The Trees were taken from the Oxford Book of Ballads, edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch (1910). Hadley makes many changes and cuts to the text. Some of these alterations derive from the version of the song printed (alongside the tune) by Cecil J. Sharp and Charles L. Marson in their Songs of Somerset (c.1900, p.30f)

The ballad, The Trees so High, tells of a young man who was forced into marriage, aged only sixteen years of age. By seventeen he was a father, and he was dead and buried the following year. The narrator of the text would appear to be the lad’s wife, despite Hadley’s use of a baritone soloist.

The Trees so High is effectively a choral symphony. It has been likened in over-arching form at least, to Beethoven’s Choral Symphony (1822-24) and Mendelssohn’s Lobegesang (1840), in that the voices do not appear until the final movement. Furthermore, Strommen (2015, p.160) notes that The Trees is scored for a large orchestra, large mixed chorus, and baritone soloist “redolent of Delius’ s Sea Drift.”

In a detailed note to the vocal score, Hadley explains:

“This work…has four linked movements of which the first three are purely orchestral. They may be said to resemble three independent brooks which flow into one stream at the beginning of the last movement.”

The four movements are: I. Adagio ma non troppo, II. Andante tranquillo, III. Vivace and IV. Adagio.

Hadley continues with details about the formal parameters of The Trees:

“The first three movements are mainly constructed on the conventional symphonic plan, but with recurring thematic material, particularly those parts which are derived from phrases in the original air. The moods and ideas underlying the work arose out of this ballad and it tune, while the Introduction itself (of which the themes are structural to the entire work) owes its conception to the impression left upon the mind of the general shape and outline of those very trees “so high” which loom up all around in the imagined landscape amid which this simple country tragedy is set.”

The entire symphonic ballad could owe a considerable formal debt to Delius’s Brigg Fair (1907). This English Rhapsody was inspired by an old Lincolnshire folk song. Percy Grainger had discovered the tune and brought it to Delius’s attention. It can be analysed in more than a few ways, but a good rule of thumb would be to see it as a loose series of variations, on the folk tune. It does not always depend on the “found” song but is often athematic. Like The Trees, Brigg Fair is divided into four sections.

In 1976, Christopher Palmer’s monograph Delius: Portrait of a Cosmopolitan was published. This major study explored Delius’s own compositions in the context of other works being written in America, Scandinavia, Germany, France, and England. This wide-ranging review extended from music by Duke Ellington and George Gershwin to Peter Warlock and C.W. Orr. Palmer’s overview (p.181f) of Hadley notes that he was “profoundly influenced by Delius’s musical outlook…”  Palmer considers that The Trees so High and The Hills exemplify Hadley’s choral works. Sadly, they have “been allowed to fall into oblivion”: Both feature music that fuses “the free-ranging, folk song-oriented lyricism of Vaughan Williams…with a spirit of a more Delian nature-mysticism.” The result in each case is “original Patrick Hadley.”

Palmer continues, “Folk song colours the melodic countenance of [The Trees] yet the guiding force is Delius, the moving spirit rather than the letter.”  Despite it being inspired by a folk song, the:

“…real protagonist is nature - the shadows of high trees and high hills loom large over the proceedings, and the wonder of Hadley’s music is that it is constantly able to convey constant visual suggestiveness of these phenomena, these all-embracing backdrops, even when no specific allusion is being made to them…The generative force of The Trees…is profoundly Delian.”

In an earlier essay, considering Delius, RVW and folk song as stimuli, Palmer had suggested that “Hadley somehow contrives to reconcile these often-conflicting influences into something refreshingly strong and distinctive; the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.” (Palmer, 1973, p.1107)

Campbell (2015, p.163) makes important contrasts and comparisons between Delius and Hadley. He considers that the “choral writing in The Trees is more varied in texture and vocal orchestration than in Delius.” Examples adduced include frequent division of the choir into more than four parts. On page 30 of the vocal score, to the words “To let the lovely ladies know/They may not touch and taste,” he expands the choir to S.S.A.T.T.B.B, the only moment he does this in the entire work. Also remarked is Hadley’s “more contrapuntal” vocal writing, “with frequent shifts between imitative and homophonic textures.” Another Delian characteristic can be found on page 30 of the vocal score: at the “moment of greatest intensity the chorus sings an unaccompanied passage before orchestra rejoins for the soft conclusion.” Similar events occur in Appalachia, Sea Drift and The Song of the High Hills. Campbell notes that two other examples of Delius’s impact are a few very high notes for sopranos and, in the coda, Hadley calling for the chorus to sing a chain of wordless “Ahs,” with the tenors and basses being required to go into head voice. (Think Koanga).

Finally, another similarity to Delius was Hadley’s suggestion in the score that “I have imagined the chorus seated throughout, and the soloist, if acoustic conditions allow, standing behind the orchestra but apart from the chorus, without an air of formality of apparent consciousness of his…own importance.” Delius called for a seated chorus in The Song of the High Hills and for a “discrete” soloist in his Appalachia.

The premiere performance of The Trees so High was given at a Cambridge University Musical Society concert on 10 June 1932, conducted by the composer. It was well-received by contemporary critics. Frank Howes (Monthly Musical Record, July 1932, cited Wetherall, 1997, p.29) wrote:

“The atmosphere is consistent throughout, and the work is equally beautiful in its larger outlines as in its smallest detail. It succeeds in being at once well organised and spontaneous. More than this, it is an important work beyond its intrinsic merits, great as they are, for it reveals a composer, hitherto known only for a few songs and small pieces, handling bigger music with such a sure touch.”

Recording

Two recordings of Patrick Hadley’s The Trees so High: Symphonic Ballad in A minor have been made. The first was for the remarkable Lyrita record label and dates from 1975. Eighteen years later, Chandos issued a new edition. See the discography below for details.

Conclusion

Sadly, then as now, Hadley’s work is rarely heard, “not through any lack of intrinsic merit but because…it failed to receive the right kind of promotion at the time when the musical climate was most favourable.” (Palmer, 1976, p.181). Since these comments, a considerable proportion of his catalogue has been recorded, if not often heard in the concert hall or on the wireless.

One explanation for the failure of Hadley’s music to become popular is that sometimes “he lacks the warm-hearted expansive gestures of a Vaughan Williams on the one hand, and the luxuriant subjectivity of a Delius on the other.” His style tends towards “austerity of texture, rather than lushness, understatement and a species of tough-fibred introspection rather than passionate self-revelation or assertiveness.” (Palmer, 1974, p.152).

Nonetheless, Patrick Hadley’s exemplars are never too far away in The Trees and other works. Not a complete ‘Delius-ite,’ his music is infused by the elder composer’s reflective nature mysticism as well as quite a few obvious technical fingerprints.

Discography

1. Hadley, Patrick, The Trees so High: Symphonic Ballad in A minor, Thomas Allen (baritone), Guildford Philharmonic Choir and New Philharmonia Orchestra/Vernon Handley with Finzi, Gerald, Intimations of Immortality: Ode for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra, Ian Partridge (tenor), Guildford Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra/Vernon Handley, Lyrita SRCD.238, 2007. Originally released on SRCS.106, 1979 (Hadley) and SRCS.75, 1975 (Finzi).
2. Hadley, Patrick, The Trees so High: Symphonic Ballad in A minor, with Sainton, Philip, The Island, David Wilson-Johnson (baritone), Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus/Mattias Bamert, Chandos CHAN 9181, 1993.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to MusicWeb International where the biographical details of Patrick Hadley were first published during 2000.

With thanks to the Delius Society Journal Autumn 2023, No.174: 19-28 where this essay was first published.

Concluded

Introducing Patrick Hadley’s The Trees So High (1931) Part I

In his thesis, Jonathan Daniel Strommen Campbell (2015, p.9) suggests that the impact of Delius on the music of Patrick Hadley “is more often in his themes of nature mysticism and the nostalgic love of the landscape of Britain. But there are concrete, musical examples of Delius’s influence….”

In 1931, Hadley completed his first important essay, the Symphonic Ballad in A minor: The Trees So High. Despite not being either a pastiche or a parody of Delius, it exhibits several fundamental characteristics of the elder man.

This essay is not an analytical study, but an attempt to characterise various responses that include references to the music of Fred. Delius. I include a brief biography of Patrick Hadley, as well as an overview of his catalogue.

The Composer

Patrick (“Paddy”) Arthur Sheldon Hadley was born in Cambridge on 5 March 1899. His father, William Sheldon Hadley, was at that time a fellow of Pembroke College. His mother, Edith Jane, was the daughter of the Rev. Robert Foster, Chaplain to the Royal Hibernian Military School in Dublin.

Patrick studied initially at St Ronan's Preparatory School at West Worthing and then at Winchester College. The First World War interrupted his education. He enlisted in the army and was commissioned as a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. He managed to survive unscathed until the last weeks of the war when he received an injury that resulted in his right leg being amputated below the knee. This had a profound effect on his confidence. It led him to drink more than was wise; alcohol functioned as relief for the considerable pain he was constantly in.

After the War, Hadley went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was fortunate to study with both Charles Wood and the sadly undervalued English composer, Cyril Rootham. He was awarded Mus.B. in 1922, and an MA in 1925. Hadley then went to the Royal College of Music (RCM) in London. Here he came under the influence of Ralph Vaughan Williams for composition and Adrian Boult and Malcolm Sargent for conducting. He won the Sullivan prize in 1924, at that time the princely sum of £5 (about £250 now). His contemporaries at the RCM included Constant Lambert and Gordon Jacob.

Hadley became a member of the RCM staff in 1925 and taught composition. He became acquainted with Delius (see below), E.J. Moeran, Sir Arnold Bax, William Walton, Alan Rawsthorne and Herbert Howells. In fact, his friends were a litany of all that was best in English Music at that time.

In 1938 he was offered a Fellowship of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridgeshire and a position as lecturer at Cambridge University. A great deal of his time was spent administrating the music faculty. However, there was still time available for composition.

During the Second World War, Hadley deputised for Boris Ord (who was on active service) as conductor and director of the Cambridge University Music Society. There he introduced numerous works, including Delius' Appalachia and The Song of the High Hills. He was keen to promote a wide range of music - including the formation of a Gilbert and Sullivan Society.

Hadley was elected to the Chair of Music at Cambridge University in 1946. He retained this post until his retirement in 1962. Several of the students he taught have gone on to remarkable things: choirmaster and academic, Philip Ledger, conductor, choirmaster and organist, David Lumsden and the musicologist, Peter le Huray. In 1962 he retired to his house at Heacham. He wished to pursue his interest in folk song collection. Latterly he struggled with throat cancer, and this caused many of his activities to be suspended. Patrick Hadley died on 17 December 1973: he was 74 years old.

The Music

Patrick Hadley’s catalogue of published music is small. His best-known pieces are the anthems My Beloved Spake (1936) for choir and organ (or orchestra), and I sing of a Maiden (1936). His large-scale works include the present The Trees So High, (1931), and the cantata setting Keats’s La Belle Dame sans Merci, (1935). Hadley’s magnum opus is The Hills (1944), featuring his own text for soprano, tenor, baritone, choir, and orchestra. Other significant achievements include the incidental music for Sophocles’ Antigone (1939), One Morning in Spring: sketch for small orchestra (1942) and the cantata Fen and Flood (1955). In 2019, the early unpublished tone poem Kinder Scout (1923) was released on the Chandos label. One of his major tasks were arrangements made for the Caius Chorus. These extended from Verdi's Stabat Mater to Waltzing Matilda. As Eric Wetherell explains (1997, p.171), the list of these is “inevitably incomplete. [Hadley] dashed them off and later discarded them.”

Patrick Hadley absorbed a number of influences. He was a confirmed “Wagnerite” coupled with an appreciation of Debussy and Ravel. The impact of the latter is often heard in his orchestration and “harmonic colouring” (Wetherell, 1997, p.51). It is hardly surprising that his composition teacher at the RCM, Vaughan Williams, had a bearing on his style. Nevertheless, Hadley never fully subscribed to the folk song revival. His works were never simply “fantasias” on folk tunes, played again, louder. He often used the musical characteristics of folk song but developed them with subtlety and originality. Hadley’s compositions are typically lyrical in sound and rarely rely on angular melodies or sharp dissonances for effect. Modernist techniques derived from Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School and their post-War successors, find no place in his achievement. 

Another crucial influence on Hadley was the landscape, especially the Fen Country, the Peak District, and parts of Ireland. Nature mysticism was a characteristic he shared with Delius.

Hadley and Delius

Eric Wetherell (1997, p.25f) explains that Hadley first met “the composer whose music always meant so much to him” at the Delius Festival in London held during October 1929. Delius was on one of his rare trips to England. He was staying in the Langham Hotel, Langham Place. Composer and impresario, Balfour Gardiner took Hadley to the hotel to meet him. Wetherell explains that the following spring, during the Easter Break, he contrived to visit Delius at Grez-sur-Loing, once again in the company of Balfour Gardiner. Eric Fenby (1936, 1981, p.92f) recorded that “it was decided that we should bottle the white wine, so Balfour Gardiner with boyish enthusiasm, sat on a log pouring out the wine…whilst Hadley corked [the bottles] with a machine, and I wired them.” And then there was “a dangerous escapade involving the removal of an unsightly branch overhanging the river.” (Wetherell, 1997, p.25)

Hadley’s chief service to Delius was his recovery of the full score holograph and orchestral parts of Koanga. It had been taken to London during 1914 and was subsequently mislaid. That said, there seem to be various versions of this story, involving other people. Giving Hadley the benefit of the doubt, it was found by him in 1930. He explains in a letter to William Randall:

There is not much to tell about my running to earth the score of Koanga. I had been staying at Grez where I managed to elicit all the remembered data about when & where it was last seen et cetera. I forget most of the details, but I do remember putting two & two together and putting the chances fairly high that it might be amongst the extensive stock of the Goodwin & Tabb Hire Library. I happened to be in constant touch with this Firm & its personnel, so on return to London I hastened to 34 Percy Street W.C.1, their then premises, and expatiated the situation. They wouldn't let me search in person, but they put 2 or 3 men onto it who laid their hands on it after a weekend's hunt. I post-hasted over by that night's boat and delivered it the following mid-day. (Letter from Hadley to William Randel, 24 December 1962, cited Randel, 1971, p.153).

 

Wetherell elaborates the story by explaining that Hadley in fact made two trips to Grez, the first with the parts and a second two weeks later with the full score. (Wetherell, 1997, p.26).

On 23 April 1930, Jelka Delius wrote to Percy Grainger: “We had an amusing visit from Balfour and Patrick Hadley, the young composer, whom we liked very much.” She recounted to Grainger the story of the recovery of the Koanga score but suggested that Peter Warlock had found the parts and that May Harrison had brought over the score when she visited Grez to play through the Violin Sonata in the presence of Delius. (Carley, 1988, p.365). It is a mystery that may never be fully resolved.

Finally, Balfour Gardiner and Hadley were due to visit the Delius household again in the spring of 1932: this had to be abandoned because of an outbreak of influenza at Grez.  

Bibliography:

1. Campbell, Jonathan Daniel Strommen, The Choral Music of Frederick Delius (1862-1934) And its Influence on the Choral Music of Early Twentieth-Century British Composers: A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the North Dakota State University of Agriculture and Applied Science, Fargo, North Dakota, 2015.
2. Carley, Lionel, Delius: A Life in Letters, 1909-1934, Scolar Press, Aldershot, 1988.
3. Fenby, Eric, Delius as I Knew Him, Dover Edition, London, 1936, 1981.
4. Palmer, Christopher, “Patrick Hadley: A Note on the church music,” Musical Times, November 1973.
5. Palmer, Christopher, “Patrick Hadley: The Man and His Music,” Music & Letters, April 1974.
6. Palmer, Christopher, Delius: Portrait of a Cosmopolitan, Duckworth, London, 1976.
7. Randel, William, “‘Koanga’ and its Libretto,” Music & Letters, April 1971.
8. Wetherell, Eric, Paddy: The Life and the Music of Patrick Hadley, Thames Publishing, London, 1997.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to MusicWeb International where the biographical details of Patrick Hadley were first published during 2000.

With thanks to the Delius Society Journal Autumn 2023, No.174: 19-28 where this essay was first published.

To be continued…

Patrick Hadley: My Beloved Spake (1938)

A Happy Easter

From The Land of Lost Content

Patrick Hadley’s short choral work My Beloved Spake sets a biblical text from the Old Testament Book, the Song of Solomon (2:10-13,16a). It was completed in 1938. The anthem has long been popular at Anglican church services, particularly during the Easter season.

My beloved spake, and said unto me,
Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
The fig-tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

“The text speaks of the arrival of spring and symbolizes the awakening of love. Hadley’s composition captures the essence of this renewal with a lush, romantic musical setting that contrasts with the austerity of the Lenten season. The work begins with a call to “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away,” reflecting the passage’s pastoral and inviting nature.

The music is characterized by its rich harmonies and melodic beauty, reflecting the English pastoral tradition. Hadley’s skilful use of choral textures and dynamics brings the text to life, creating a piece that is both evocative and deeply moving.”

Christopher Palmer (Musical Times, November 1973, p.1107) writes that “Like Delius and Vaughan Williams, [Hadley] is essentially a nature mystic, even in the most celebrated of his shorter church pieces, the anthem My Beloved Spake…here, pregnantly and pragmatically expressed, is the vernal ecstasy of the magnificent first movement of The Hills ('The Hills in Spring'), the lovely Solitary Reaper (Wordsworth) and of the river-music in the wartime cantata The Travellers, where at the words “Your own voice [will] speak of the wonders to be” there is a sudden sunburst of sound with cymbal roll and harp glissandos shooting in both directions. The climaxes in My Beloved Spake are of similar quality.”

This anthem remains a demonstration of Hadley’s contribution to 20th-century British choral music and continues to be appreciated for its lyrical polish and emotional depth.

A splendid recording of Patrick Hadley’s My Beloved Spake, by King’s College, Cambridge, conducted by Philip Leger, can be heard on YouTube, here.

Patrick Hadley (1899-1973): Kinder Scout (Sketch for Orchestra) (1923)

I am not a mountaineer or climber, but I have been to the top of Kinder Scout in Derbyshire. And it was a wonderful day with clear and expansive views. Snowdon was visible in the far West, as was Pendle Hill and Ingleborough to the North. We thought we could see the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Wolds more than sixty miles to the East. And I am sure that I picked out The Stiperstones and the Long Mynd to the South. It was not a leisurely walk, and I recall we were glad to get back to Edale and a well-deserved pint. The Peak’s name is derived from the Old English ‘kyndwyr scut,’ meaning ‘water over the edge.’ This refers to the Kinder Downfall, where the eponymous river plunges 100ft to the moorland below. 

Patrick (Paddy) Hadley’s evocative tone poem Kinder Scout was written when the composer was 24 years old. It was given its first performance on 14th September 1923, in Buxton when it was played by the Buxton Spa Orchestra conducted by George Cathie. Cathie was the musical director of the Criterion Theatre in London. He occasionally took the podium in Buxton as part of his summer vacation in the Peaks. I was unable to locate any reviews of this concert.

Paddy holidayed on a regular basis in Derbyshire - both before and after the First World War. The Peak District was to become a great stamping ground of his. Even after he had sustained a leg wound during the war, he was able to walk for miles on the moors with as much vigour as a man with no disability. Hadley is quoted in Wetherell (1997 p.63) that "They were the first real hills I ever saw, except for the South Downs in Sussex once as a child, and then at prep. School."

Kinder Scout (Sketch for Orchestra) is a short and thoughtful tone poem evoking the 2087ft moorland plateau. The work opens with a mournful horn call. Soon, a cor anglais is heard singing a sad song over muted strings. This reflects the bleakness of early morning. Soon the music begins to swell. The sun rises. Progress to a huge climax is made. This is almost Straussian in its deployment of soaring horns. Lewis Foreman (Liner Notes, 2019) has suggested that the mist has cleared, and the rambler feels “exaltation on experiencing the panorama now in view from the peak.” This rapture does not last long before the music collapses once again into reflection. The piece closes with a poignant solo violin supported by “soft orchestral chords.” This is a short work, lasting less than seven minutes. Yet, it is a perfect miniature that is an ideal balance of form and presents subtle and at times impressionistic scoring. Exemplars of the piece include Delius and Vaughan Williams. However, Hadley has brought considerable personal skill and imagination to this tone poem.

Lewis Foreman (Liner Notes, op. cit.) reminds the listener that nine years after Hadley completed his score, the Scout was part of the “celebrated Mass Trespass which launched the right to roam movement and led to the establishment of National Parks.” I had family members who lived near Hayfield in Derbyshire, present on these demonstrations.

Twenty years later, in 1943, Patrick Hadley once again musically revisited the Peak District with his masterpiece, The Hills, composed for baritone, chorus and orchestra.

In 2019, Chandos Records issued the second volume of their British Tone Poems series. Included was Hadley’s Kinder Scout with Rumon Gamba conducting the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. (See below for details).

Andrew Clements, writing for the Manchester Guardian (26 September 2019, p.14) notes that “Patrick Hadley’s ‘sketch for orchestra’ Kinder Scout, is a brooding depiction of the famous Peak District landmark, which builds to an ecstatic climax hinting at Sibelius, a composer who otherwise seems an oddly absent influence on a disc devoted to the form that he perfected in the early years of the century.”

Reviewing this CD, Jonathan Woolf (MusicWeb International, October 2019) notes “This sketch for orchestra, or orchestral impression, takes as its subject a striking moorland wilderness and serves it up with richness and distinction. The climaxes evoke symphonic VW but the lyric and descriptive quality of the music making show of great discrimination in orchestration and in thematic material. This is a real find.”

Writing in the British Music Society eNews (October 2019), Geoffrey Atkinson is ambivalent, He states that this “evocation of that iconic part of the Peak District, leaves me undecided about its merits. It seems to me to be a less polished piece of work than the other items on the disc, and somewhat crudely orchestrated to boot. But I could be wrong.”

I disagree. For me the orchestration is a perfect fusion of subtlety, restraint and a robust but short-lived climax.

Finally, it surprises me that the Hallé Orchestra have not taken up this piece. To be sure, the Manchester Camerata’s concert conducted by Gábor Takács-Nagy on 6 February 2016, began with Kinder Scout. The concert included Frederick Delius’s A Walk to the Paradise Garden, Ralph Vaughan Williams’s The Lark Ascending and Felix Mendelssohn’s Symphony No.3 “The Scottish.”

Patrick Hadley’s Kinder Scout is uploaded to YouTube (Accessed, 12 November 2021).

Discography:
Rumon Gamba/BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, Patrick Hadley, Kinder Scout (Sketch for Orchestra), with works by John Foulds, Eric Fogg, Eugene Goossens, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Dorothy Howell, Frederic Hymen Cowen, and Arthur Bliss, Chandos: CHAN 10981 (2019).

Bibliography:
Wetherall, Eric, ‘Paddy’: The Life and Music of Patrick Hadley, Thames Publishing, London, 1997.
The pages of the BMS News, MusicWeb International, The Manchester Guardian, and the CD liner notes.

Patrick Hadley: The Music

Patrick Hadley was influenced by the music of Frederick Delius and also to a certain extent folk music. But there were other non-musical influences in his life too - Ireland and Norfolk gave him a profound sense of landscape and location.
His output was limited. He found the business of composing quite exhausting. Most people think of Hadley as composer of one or two church anthems - I Sing of a Maiden and the mildly erotic My Beloved spake. The catalogue shows a wide variety of musical forms - from a Symphonic Ballad to incidental music for the Twelfth Night. However, there are no cycles of symphonies, concerti or string quartets.

He maintained throughout his a career a sense of the lyrical. Not for him was the experimental music of the Second Vienna School. He had an exceptional understanding of how to set words to music. Much of his music is meditative and quite inward looking. One is left wishing he had written more music for chamber and orchestral forces. Much of Patrick Hadley's music seems to evoke the English and the Irish landscape. This is sometimes overt and sometimes intangible. However it is always done in a very subtle and beautiful way.

One of Hadley's undoubted masterpieces is the Symphonic Ballad - The Trees so High. This is a large-scale setting of the folk song of that name for baritone, chorus and full orchestra. The work is in four movements and it is only in the last, that Hadley deploys the chorus and soloist. It is in this movement that Hadley quotes the folk-song in its entirety.
The Hills was completed in 1944 and is perhaps the finest of Hadley’s cantatas. The others two being Fen and Flood and Connemara. It has strong personal links with the composer’s life, dealing with the meeting, courtship and marriage of his parents. The landscape described is Derbyshire and this is well reflected in the music. One is reminded, perhaps of Delius’ Mass of Life.

Perhaps the gentlest introduction to Hadley is his short orchestral work – One Morning in Spring, which was composed to celebrate Ralph Vaughan Williams 70th birthday. It is a fine example of an English tone poem.
Perhaps the desideratum is the early orchestral sketch ‘Kinder Scout.’ However this is still in manuscript and will take an adventurous record company to produce it.

Although Hadley was best of friends with Ralph Vaughan Williams, he never truly bought into the so-called folk song revival. Much of his music has folk characteristics, however not for him the old adage of Constant Lambert - all you can do with a folk tune is to repeat it -louder! Hadley's use of the folk idiom was subtle.
Much of the composer's output was connected with the Caius Choir. He did a number of arrangements of works in many different genres - from Verdi's Stabat Mater to Waltzing Matilda.
Patrick ‘Paddy’ Hadley’s music will never be widely popular. However, he will appeal greatly to those interested in British music. If he had only composed the Symphonic Ballad – The Trees So High and nothing else, he would be respected as a fine composer. As it is all his works exhibit a great degree of skill, craftsmanship and sheer musicality.

Originally Published on MusicWeb International.

Patrick Hadley: The Man

Patrick Hadley was born in Cambridge on 5th March 1899. His father, William Sheldon Hadley was at that time a fellow of Pembroke College. His mother, Edith Jane, was the daughter of Rev. Robert Foster, Chaplain to the Royal Hibernian Military School in Dublin.

Patrick studied initially at St Ronan's Preparatory School at West Worthing and then at Winchester College. However the First World War interrupted his education. He enlisted in the army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. He managed to survive unscathed until the last weeks of the war when he received an injury that resulted in his right leg being amputated below the knee. This had a profound effect on his confidence and also caused him to perhaps drink more than was wise; alcohol acted as relief for the considerable pain he was constantly in. Hadley's elder brother was himself killed in action during the Great War.

After the War he went up to Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was fortunate to study with both Charles Wood and the undervalued English composer, Cyril Rootham. Hadley was awarded Mus. B in 1922, and an MA in 1925. He then went to the Royal College of Music in London. Here he came under the influence of Ralph Vaughan Williams for composition and Adrian Boult and Malcolm Sargent for conducting. Eric Weatherall notes that Hadley's contemporaries at the RCM included Constant Lambert and Gordon Jacob. He won the Sullivan prize for composition at that time the princely sum of 5/-.

He eventually became a member of the RCM staff in 1925 and taught composition. He became aquainted with Delius (see Eric Fenby's account in 'Delius as I knew him') E.J. Moeran, Sir Arnold Bax, William Walton, Alan Rawsthorne and Herbert Howells. In fact his friends are a litany of all that was best in English Music at that time.

In 1938 he was offered a Fellowship of Gonville and Caius College in Cambridgeshire and a position as lecturer at Cambridge University. Much of his time was spent in run of the mill activities associated with the administration of the music faculty. However, there was still time available for composition. Some of his greatest works were written during and after the war.
During the Second World War he deputised for Boris Ord as the conductor and musical director of the Cambridge University Music Society. There he introduced a number of important works, including Delius' Appalachia and The Song of the High Hills.
He was keen to promote a wide range of music - including the formation of a Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Much of his time was spent in making arrangements for the use of the 'chaps' in the choir. However, most of these have not survived. We know them only from programmes notes and hearsay.
In 1946 he was elected to the Chair of Music at Cambridge University. He retained this post until his retirement in 1962. Some of the students taught by Hadley have gone on to make big names for themselves; Raymond Leppard, David Lumsden and Peter le Huray.
In 1962 Hadley retired to his house at Heacham. He wished to pursue his interest in folk-song collection. However, he latterly struggled with throat cancer and this caused many of his activities to be suspended.
Patrick Hadley died on 17th December 1973 at Kings Lynn. He was 74 years old.

Originally Published on MusicWeb International