Introduction
Gordon
Crosse’s Elegy received its Proms premiere on 9 September 1965. This work was
composed in 1959, originally for a large wind orchestra. The composer has told
me that it was never performed in this form. The following year Crosse arranged
it for a chamber orchestra consisting of flute, oboe, cor anglais, clarinet,
bass clarinet, horn, trumpet, trombone and strings. It was this version which
was heard at the Promenade Concert. The performance was by the BBC Symphony
Orchestra, conducted by Norman Del Mar. Other works at this Prom included
Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with the soloist Joseph II Suk and Jean Sibelius’
Symphony No. 4 both conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.
The Premiere
The
first performance of Crosse’s Elegy had been given at the Free Trade Hall in
Manchester on 24 April 1962. The event
was a ‘Halle-cum-Associated Rediffusion-cum-Society for the Promotion of New
Music public rehearsal. Maurice Handford also conducted Charles McMullen’s
Variations for orchestra which has disappeared from view. Crosse’s Elegy was
deemed (J.H.. Elliot, Manchester
Guardian, 25 April 1962) to be ‘modernistic in idiom… [but] contrives to
avoid the appearance of constraint.’ The Elegy is ‘a shapely work with a large
measure of spontaneity of expression and feeling.’ The reviewer felt that in the work’s ‘later
stages does it appear to become involved and fussy rather than direct in the
statement of ideas.’ After the event
there was a discussion chaired by the composer Francis Chagrin at which the
principal speaker was Peter Maxwell Davies. Crosse has told me that the Elegy
was performed ‘two or three’ times between the Prom concert and the 1980
recording.
Crosse
has subsequently composed three successors to this Elegy: No. 2 in memory of
Benjamin Britten, No. 3 in memory of his father and No. 4 in memory of the
Nightingale.
The Music
The
composer in his programme note for the Promenade concert has explained that the
Elegy is in one movement ‘that forms an arch of increasing and decreasing
tension…’ It is divided into three sections. The main melodic, rhythmic and
harmonic material is contained in the slow opening theme for flute. The first
six notes are then inverted with all twelve notes of the chromatic scale creating
the series. The middle section increases the tension and the pace of the music.
Significant use is made of contrapuntal devices such as canon, both simple and
mensural -where following
voices imitate the leader by some ‘rhythmic proportion’ rather than just
melodically. The final section reprises
music from the opening of the Elegy but in a more ‘fragmentary’ or ‘pointillistic’
style. Crosse concludes his programme note by pointing out that the ‘descent of
the [formal] arch is broken by a short cadenza for woodwind against a held
string chord.’ It is a poignant moment.
The
work was written in memory of the composer’s aunt Margaret Tilbury who died in
1951 after suffering with MS. Crosse recalled her as a ‘saintly’ presence
throughout his childhood.
Anthony
Payne, in Music and Musicians
(November 1965) notes the composer’s ‘fine ear for instrumental sound’ and
suggests that it ‘is obviously a piece which has been really felt and heard [by
Crosse] right through.’ There was a
criticism of the central climax which ‘needed to be more interesting, if the work
was to have a hard core of meaning – unless this is to mistake the composer’s
intentions.’ The paragraph was headed
‘soft-centred elegy’ which in many ways is appropriate.
In
his important essay on Crosse’s music, John C.G. Waterhouse writes: ‘The
Elegy for small orchestra, op 1, is a warmly expressive piece, whose sustained,
smoothly polyphonic opening paragraph at once establishes the calm,
contemplative tone that was to prevail in most of his music of the next three
years. The soft, sonorous texture reminds one of his admiration for
Dallapiccola, whom he has often named as the older-generation composer with
whom he feels the greatest sympathy.’ (Musical
Times May 1965).
The most recent discussion of
Gordon Crosse’s Elegy is published in a new book from Cambridge University
Press: British Musical Modernism: The
Manchester Group and their Contemporaries, (Rupprecht, Philip, June 2015). In a section entitled ‘In the Serial Workshop’
the author gives a detailed study of this work.
He begins by noting the ‘compact and contrapuntally vigorous’ nature of
the Elegy, which in his opinion ‘offers one of the stricter essays in adhering
to a ‘Classical’ serial technique. He further explains that the basis of the
series is a tone row found in the liner notes written by Robert Craft for the ‘Complete
Works of Webern’ LP issue. The programme
note that Crosse wrote for the Manchester premiere indicates that ‘the
pointillistic orchestration of much Webern-inspired music has been avoided in
favour of longer, contrapuntal ‘singing lines…more suitable to the elegiac
character of the music. (Typed programme note). Rupprecht continues his study
of this work with a detailed and musically illustrated description of the
Elegy’s progress. He concludes by noting
Crosse’s certain awareness of contemporary scores by Peter Maxwell Davies such
as the First Taverner Fantasia which ‘does not pursue the
outrageous, psychologically fraught atmosphere of Davies's British-themed works
of the later 1960s. (It is a work I have not heard) and St Michael.
Crosse was well versed in contemporary avant-garde accents but does not allow
his music to become less personal. (Accessed Google Books 7 June 2015)
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