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.