William Baines wrote over two hundred works in sundry genres, including a symphony, a piano concerto and chamber music. However, it is his piano solo compositions that are his most successful and enduring achievements. He worked better as a miniaturist rather than on larger canvases. His piano pieces are often impressionistic, others range through a variety of moods and styles. It is not fair to try to attach influences onto Baines, but the works of Scriabin were seminal. He was able to fuse the style of the Russian with that of English Pastoralism and Romanticism. Add to this, the unique but underrated achievement of Cyril Scott, and we have an idea of how Baines approached the timbres of the piano. Baines’s music covered a range of emotion and styles; his harmonies could be rich or sparse. Grove’s Dictionary (2001/02) points out that the key to composer’s style is his Seven Preludes, composed in 1919. It is here that several of the aspects of his style are plain – “from virtuoso brilliance to rhapsodic contemplation, and from a lush Romanticism to sparse textures and acrid harmonies.” Frederick Dawson, Baines’s music adviser and promoter, once wrote that the young composer had "an inexhaustible fancy and the enviable gift of translating into terms of sound his love of Nature and his joy in the beautiful." Indeed, much of William Baines’s music was imbued with his love of nature, especially the countryside of East Riding and the seascapes of Flamboro' Head.
The composer’s favourite work in the piano repertoire was Maurice Ravel’s monumental Gaspard de la Nuit (1908). This suggested to him the format of his Three Concert Studies (Exaltation, The Naiad and Radiance). Roger Carpenter (1975, p.105) states that they “are generally held to be [Baines] finest achievement in terms of pianoforte technique…”
The inspiration for The Naiad was surely Ondine, from this work which “evokes the fluid surroundings of the water sprite.” (Hinson, 2000, p.633).
In Greek mythology a “naiad” was a nymph found in running water, often in springs, rivers, lakes, and fountains. The word was derived from the Greek “naiein,” meaning “to flow.” They are typically represented as being beautiful, carefree, and generous. Naïades are thought to be extremely long-lived, but not immortal. Note that they were associated with fresh water and not the sea. These latter divinities were Oceanids.
Carpenter (op. cit.) explains that The Naiad was originally titled Bowery Nook, and was prefaced by some lines from Keats poem Sleep and Poetry:
Structurally, Baines’s The Naiad is in ternary form. Like several of his pieces, the opening section is made up of ‘panels’ or ‘blocks’ of figuration, which are often repeated or juxtaposed with minor variations. The opening bars use rising and falling broken chords, often featuring augmented octaves or leaps of an 11th. These are deployed between both hands, often interlinking. Most of the material for the opening and closing sections of the piece is intimated in bars one and four. See Fig.1:
The recapitulation of the first theme is subtly varied from its first appearance but is clearly related. Baines has made many time-signature shifts in each part of this piece. For example, the first seventeen bars have nine changes, including relative rarities such as 4/8 and 5/8. The middle section is written entirely in 12/16.
Roger Carpenter (Liner Notes, PRCD550) sums up Baines’s success in this piece: “[This] study establishes its own identity so confidently [and] is a measure of his achievement, eschewing the extrovert brilliance of its companion pieces, yet demanding no lesser technical facility for a searching test of interpretive skill in feather-light undertones to be played veloce con dolcezza.” Carpenter insists that it is hardest of Baines’s works to interpret. He notes the “quality of restless longing and sadness underlying ‘the bubbling swirl of tiny waterfalls,’ ‘the soft undertones of the shallow rivulet’ and the “rush of miniature torrents.’”
In The Naiads the composer has fused the Greek landscape and its divinities to the scenery of Yorkshire.
Percival Garratt, writing in The Sackbut (April 1923, p.287) wrote that the “Three Concert Studies by the late William Baines…demand considerable interpretive powers, and will well repay study.” He considered that “The Naiad is particularly fascinating.”
In May 1996, the pianist Eric Parkin issued a retrospective CD of Baines’s piano music on Priory PRCD550. It included Paradise Gardens, Seven Preludes, Tides, Silverpoints and Coloured Leaves. Parkin chose to include only one of the Three Concert Studies – The Naiad. His performance of this piece has been uploaded to YouTube (accessed 19 September 2021). The video also includes the score.
Finally, Percival Garratt, in his review cited above, notes a couple of new publications: Edgar Barratt’s In the Highlands and Four Pastorals (Meadowland and Mountain) by Edward Austin. Surely these, simply by their title deserve revival.
Carpenter, Roger, Goodnight to Flamboro’ The Life and Music of William Baines, (Triad Press, 1975)
Hinson, Maurice, Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire Indiana University Press, 2000, 1987)
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