Three Pieces Arranged by Humphrey Searle by Thomas Roseingrave: Origins: Part I

Humphrey Searle (1915–1982) was an English composer whose music fused late‑Romantic passion with the disciplined modernism of serial technique. A classics scholar at New College, Oxford, turned musician, he studied with Gordon Jacob and John Ireland before travelling to Vienna to work privately with Anton Webern: an encounter that proved decisive for his artistic direction. Returning to Britain, Searle became, alongside Elisabeth Lutyens, one of the country’s earliest and most committed advocates of serialism although always tempered by artistic expediency.

His output includes five symphonies, the opera The Diary of a Madman, and significant works for speaker and orchestra such as Gold Coast Customs and Riverrun. A noted Liszt scholar, he created the first systematic catalogue of Liszt’s works and wrote widely on music.

Writing in his autobiography, Quadrille with a Raven, Searle recalled that: “Early in 1939 a friend of mine, Rodney Phillips, kindly said he would put up some money for a concert which I was to conduct. We hired the Aeolian Hall in Bond Street…and a small string orchestra. As we thought it best to do an out-of-the-way programme, we started with three pieces by the curious chromatic 18th-century Irish composer Thomas Roseingrave; Constant [Lambert] had copied them out in the British Museum, and I arranged them for strings.”

Thomas Roseingrave was born in Winchester in either 1690 or 1691. As a young lad he moved to Dublin where he was educated by his father Daniel. Grove’s Dictionary explains that in 1707, aged sixteen he entered Trinity College, but failed to complete his degree. Two years later, at the expense of the Dean and Chapter of St Patrick’s Cathedral, he was sent to study in Rome. Whilst abroad he became acquainted with both Domenico and Alesandro Scarlatti. On his return to London, he became composer in residence at the King’s Theatre as well as organist at St George’s Hanover Square, between 1725 and 1752. Here he gained a significant reputation for his improvisations. Noted for his championing of Scarlatti’s Sonatas of which he published an edition, he is deemed to have begun a “Scarlatti Cult” London. After a brief and unhappy romance, his commitment to his duties faltered, and he later moved back to Dublin.

His catalogue includes an opera, several cantatas, and many works for keyboard. His keyboard music is vividly individual - chromatic, irregular, even wild- echoing Purcell’s expressive dissonance rather than Italian refinement. Thomas Roseingrave died at Dunleary [Dún Laoghaire] on 23 June 1766.

These three transcriptions make easy listening. Searle took three movements (Fugue I, Voluntary VI anf Fugue III) from Roseingrave’s Voluntarys and Fugues made on purpose for the Organ or Harpsichord and provided a straightforward scoring for string orchestra. As the liner notes for the only recording of these pieces suggested, “It may also have been a nod in the direction of his teacher’s transcriptions of Bach, although Searle’s treatment of eighteenth-century music is, dare one say, a great deal more conformist.”

To be continued…