Josef Holbrooke on William Baines.

Josef Holbrooke (1878-1958) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. Born in Croydon, Surrey, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Holbrooke was known for his symphonic poems and operas, particularly the trilogy The Cauldron of Annwyn, which includes The Children of Don, Dylan, and Bronwen, based on Welsh legends. Despite his prolific output, his works fell out of the mainstream repertoire over time.

His literary writings were known to be controversial. His book Contemporary British Composers “follows up a discussion of the state of British musical life today with a collection of opinions upon some of our leading composers. It is unfortunate that he allows prejudices to distort much of what is sound in his argument.” (Spectator 19 December 1925, p.31)

William Baines (1899-1922) was an English composer and pianist known for his prolific output despite his short life. Born in Horbury, Yorkshire, he came from a musical family; his father was a cinema pianist and organist. Baines began piano lessons at an early age and composed his first pieces, aged twelve. He studied at the Yorkshire Training College of Music in Leeds and later moved to York, where he gave his first public piano recital at 18. His compositions, numbering over 150, were mostly piano miniatures inspired by the natural world. Notable works include Paradise Gardens, Tides and Silverpoints. Baines' career was cut short by tuberculosis, and he passed away aged twenty-three years. His Symphony in C Minor was composed at 17 and premiered posthumously in 1991.

The present essay was included in Contemporary British Composers (p.243ff). It also featured a works list which is hopelessly inadequate.

This young musician has, alas, departed from us. [1] His fragrant gifts merit sympathy and attention wherever our music is exhibited. If early gifts are worth anything at all, go and play his seven piano preludes, and judge for yourselves. These piano works are singularly original and beautiful. They are of the Cyril Scott [2] exoticism in feeling perhaps, and the style may also be of Scriabin piano tracery; but how conclusive they are! I cannot call to mind anything British of the same refinement and visibility as the piano solo, Paradise Gardens. Here is a very young poet giving us all the technique we want, and clouds of chords are absent. The same beautiful clarity is here as in some of the F. C. Nicholls' [3] songs and Felix White's [4] pieces, which of course remain unknown to us! For one in his teens when he wrote them, I give my whole admiration to Baines for his Paradise Gardens [5] and his Tides wondrously pianistic and difficult. So true is it we cannot hope to teach genius when it comes along. There is small chance for the schools of music cornering the jewels. The great gifts are sporadic, and we know not when we are in the face of them. We cannot say to what heights young Baines would have reached had he lived, but his poem Goodnight to Flamboro' [6] is high enough, when we consider the weird assortment, we are regaled with in these days of spumescent Schoenbergs:

“There is a jewel which no Indian mines.

Can buy, no chymic art can counterfeit.

It makes men rich in greatest poverty:

Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,

The homely whistle to sweet music's strain:

Seldom it comes, to few from heaven sent,

That much in little, all in nought—Content." [7]

Such are the works of William Baines - a small boy born in Yorkshire (in Dr E. Hull's words), [8] "reared in circumstances so humble that they allowed of no musical training, of only sparse opportunities of hearing good music…who wove music of an unusual beauty, and a rare originality, out of nothing.” [9] Much ungenerous dispute has arisen over the use of the word 'genius' in connection with Baines. Why haggle over words? Is it not enough that Baines has left to the world music of real and original beauty, written with a mastery of means and perfection of style which are astonishing?

Finally, we would remind the reader that fine music seldom reveals its beauty at one hearing. Baines' music will strike many people as strange - indeed it is strange. But if they will play it (or listen to it) again and again, with sympathy and understanding, they will assuredly fall under its spell. Dr Hull makes curious assertions, and much haggling over the word "genius." This has been so over many greater composers than young Baines, and I do not think his music is strange. We might certainly apply this word to the work of Malipiero, Casella, Stravinsky, and their followers. [10] Baines has the real poetic fibre in his chaste muse.

Notes:
[1] William Baines died on 6 November 1922, three years before Holbrooke’s book was published.

[2] Cyril Meir Scott (1879-1970) was an English composer, poet, and occultist. He composed a multitude of works, including symphonies, operas, piano concertos, and chamber music. Known for his Romantic and Impressionist styles, Scott was a pioneer in British piano music and influenced several composers. He also wrote extensively on alternative medicine and metaphysics.

[3] Frederick Charles Nicholls (1871-1952) was a minor composer as well as being a professor of music. According to Holbrooke he wrote songs and light piano music that nodded to Chopin.

[4] Felix Harold White (1884-1945) was an English composer, pianist, and music teacher. Known for his orchestral and instrumental works, piano pieces, and choral compositions, White's music often reflected his pacifist beliefs, especially after his experiences during World War I. His notable works include Shylock and Astarte Syriaca.

[5] Paradise Gardens is regarded as William Baines’s masterpiece. He wrote: "there was a lovely view, overlooking the gardens of the Station Hotel [in York]. You looked through thick green foliage on to the grounds, which were beautifully laid out with flowers - and in the centre a little fountain was playing. A perfect blue sky, and the sun shining low - made indeed a grand picture." The piece he began just a few days later is a major tone poem for piano. The work is a subtle balance of impressionism and a more romantic musical language. (Sadly, much of the ‘Paradise Gardens’ has been turned into a car park.)

[6] Goodnight to Flamboro' was the second of two pieces issued in 1920 as Tides. The first was The Lone Wreck.

[7] This is a short poem by the English madrigal composer John Wilbye (1574-1638).

[8] Arthur Eaglefield Hull (1876-1928) was a British music critic, author, organist, and composer. He wrote for many periodicals, including The Monthly Musical Record. His books include an early biography of Cyril Scott (1919) and Modern harmony, its explanation and application (1915). He edited the organ works of Alexander Guilmant. His life ended in tragedy when he fell in front of a train at Huddersfield Railway station. The coroner reported “Suicide whilst of unsound mind.

[9] Josef Holbrooke quotes from Arthur Eaglefield Hull’s A New Yorkshire Musical Genius printed in The Bookman, April 1922

[10] Unfairly Holbrooke applies the adjective “strange” to the music of Gian Francesco Malipiero (1882-1973) and Alfredo Casella (1883-1947). Both composers were cosmopolitan in outlook and were able to absorb both modernism and tradition. Few would regard Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) as “strange” nowadays.