In November of the previous year the Glasgow Herald (24 November 1955) had announced that ‘the Master of the Queen’s Musick…is writing a new overture to be entitled “Edinburgh.”’ It was to mark the 10th anniversary of the Edinburgh International Festival. A letter from Bliss to the Festival’s artistic director Robert Ponsonby was quoted: ‘Because of the occasion, I am calling my new overture ‘Edinburgh’ but – being born south of the Border – I am not presuming to make the music in any way characteristically Scottish.’
Stewart Craggs (Craggs, 1996) cites
a letter (16 March 1956) from the Lord Provost of the City of Edinburgh, Sir
John Garnett Banks to the composer in which he states that ‘We have already
learned with pride that you have been generous enough to compose and present to
us a new Overture, to be entitled “Edinburgh…”
Arthur Bliss (BBC Radio Broadcast 27 July1956,
reproduced Roscow, 1991, p.237) declared that he ‘could at last say a musical
'thank you' to Scotland for the two honours I have received from Scottish
universities. I greatly prize being a Doctor of Music at Edinburgh, and a
Doctor of Law at Glasgow, and though this work of mine is a short and modest
one, it allows me at any rate to do something in return.’
The work was completed whilst
the composer was living in London (probably) and the manuscript is dated ‘July
1956.’ The miniature score was duly
published by Novello and Company Limited in 1962.
The year 1956 was relatively unproductive for Arthur Bliss; the few works he did compose were largely in his capacity as Master of the Queen’s Musick. These included The First Guards for military band celebrating the Tercentenary of the Grenadier Guards, the short anthem Seek the Lord for the Centenary Service of the Mission to Seamen and ‘Music for a Service of the Order of the Bath’ which was performed by trumpeters in Westminster Abbey. Bliss also produced a two minute ‘Signature and Interlude Tune’ for the new ABC Television channel. At the end of the year he signed a contract to compose the score for the drama film Seven Waves Away starring Tyrone Power and Mai Zetterling.
On 31 March Arthur Bliss’s
daughter Karen had married Christopher Sellick. Bliss travelled to Russia on 14
April where he conducted a concert in Moscow before returning to the United
Kingdom in May.
The opening event was devoted to
Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Edinburgh Royal Choral Union. The second
concert, on 20 August, was in two discrete sections. The first half consisted
of Bliss’s new overture followed by his masterly Violin Concerto with Alfredo
Campoli as soloist. The composer conducted both pieces. After the interval
there was only one work: Brahms’ Second Symphony conducted by Beecham.
On the morning following the
concert, Arthur Bliss’s Clarinet Quintet was performed at The Freemasons’ Hall
by the Melos Ensemble with the soloist Gervase de Peyer.
The next concert comprised Richard Strauss’s Don Quixote and Hector Berlioz’s Harold in Italy featuring the cellist John Kennedy and the violist Frederick Riddle. The fourth included Boccherini’s Overture in D, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 4 with Robert Casadesus as soloist and Balakirev’s Symphony No.1. The final concert featured the première of Richard Arnell’s Landscapes and Figures as well as Delius’s In a Summer Garden and the attractive ‘Scottish’ overture Waverley by Berlioz. This performance also included the Sixth Symphonies of both Schubert and Sibelius.
Lyndon Jenkins (Craggs, 2002, p.267) presents an interesting anecdote about the Bliss concert which was quoted in the 25th Edinburgh International Festival Programme Book, 1971. Robert Ponsonby, the Festival Director was given the ‘delicate’ task of negotiating Sir Thomas’s consent for Arthur Bliss, Master of the Queen’s Musick to share the rostrum with him. Ponsonby must have been relieved when the maestro’s only comment made with ‘wicked innocence’ was ‘Will he appear in uniform?’ Jenkins states that ‘as far as is known, Sir Thomas Beecham never played a note of Bliss’s music...’
The composer provided a detailed, but not technical, programme note for the Overture which has been reprinted (Roscow, 1991, p.237). He notes that the word-rhythm of ‘Edinburgh’ occurs frequently throughout the piece and is presented in a variety of tempi. Bliss writes that with its ‘massive scoring, and the rhythm pounded out by side drums, it may perhaps suggest a vision of the castle itself on the heights.’
After the
opening section, a tune from the Scottish Psalter is heard. Psalm 124 is paraphrased 'Now Israel may say,
and that truly, if that the Lord had not our cause maintained…then certainly
they had devoured us all.' The well-known tune, Old 124th, to which it is often sung is
from the metrical version of the psalms still popular in Scotland. It was derived
from Trente quatre pseaumes de David, Geneva, published in
1551. Bliss muses on the fact that this very tune may have been heard in the
Church of St. Giles during the middle part of the sixteenth century. This links
into the middle section of the work which is a ‘Pavane in memory of Mary Queen
of Scots.’ Finally, Bliss writes, ‘No
music for Edinburgh can leave out a reference to dancing, so the final section
of my overture is characterised by reel and strathspey rhythms. I cannot
possibly compete with Scotland's magnificent pipers in this, nor do I pretend
that anyone not born in Scotland can give you the authentic spirit, but I feel
this dance section is needed to bring the overture to a gay end.’
Craggs, Stewart R., Arthur Bliss: A Bio-bibliography (Westport Connecticut, Greenwood Press, 1988)
Craggs, Stewart R., Arthur Bliss: A Source Book (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996)
Craggs, Stewart R., ed., Arthur Bliss: Music and Literature (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2002)
Foreman, Lewis, Arthur Bliss: Catalogue of the Complete Works (London: Novello, 1980; suppl. 1982)
Roscow, Gregory, ed., Bliss on Music: Selected Writings of Arthur Bliss 1920-1975 (Oxford, OUP, 1991)
Wilson, Conrad, Notes on Brahms: 20 Crucial Works (Edinburgh, St. Andrew Press, 2005)
Files of the Daily Mail, Glasgow Herald, The Gramophone, Manchester Guardian, Music and Musicians, The Times, Records and Recording.
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