It is more than twenty
years since Lewis Foreman’s pioneering
study of Arnold Bax –‘a composer and
his times’ was published. Though he
had spent some fifteen years in research
before this it was obvious that much
more was to come. There were tantalising
references to compositions that had
not been found, let alone performed
or recorded and now with the third edition
of his book, we must give Lewis credit
for his assiduity in hunting down and
persuading artists and recording companies
to take up these long ignored works
– in which enterprise he had the support
of the Arnold Bax Trust.
While in the 1960s
and 1970s pitifully few works were available
on record – with Chappell’s disastrous
fire in 1964 leaving most of Bax’s music
out of print – it is astonishing, with
the advent of the CD that Bax’s music
is now at a high point with rave reviews
and virtually all his work available
and even several complete cycles of
the seven Symphonies! For this Lewis
must take considerable credit since
apart from the prestigious Catalogue
of Dr Graham Parlett - much more than
merely abstract details - Lewis’s study
is, for the moment at any rate, the
sole complete critical account of the
music. And with this text should be
read his innumerable programme and sleeve
notes. His account of the music is interleaved
with a richly documented portrayal of
the life of one of the most complex
personalities in music … "and not
only" as Richter said of Elgar
"in this country".
I have minor reservations
about emphases, chiefly in the symphonies
but all will come into true perspective
when other critical studies are written
by other commentators of varying persuasions.
It will be realised
that the raison d’être of
this present third edition is to take
account of the papers of the pianist
and Bax’s life-long lover and exponent,
Harriet Cohen. These she had deposited
in the British Library in 1967 with
access under embargo for thirty years.
These have now become available for
study – and with what is already known
about their relationship speculation
as to the nature and content of this
‘cache’ (1) can now be satisfied. Could
it contain yet unknown music? Or does
it contain personal material that might
well be destined for the tabloids? (2)
It appears that Lewis,
for the moment, has contented himself
with reproducing letters that have much
relevance to the ‘life’ – enabling him
to place more accurately performances
and critical opinion. There is too a
welcome photograph of the elusive Natalia
Skargynska whom he pursued to Russia
– compare the face with that of Evelyn,
his sister, and that of his mother!
It does seem to me
that the sensual Bax of most of the
letters, even to his cousin Freda (3)
is that aspect of the duality in Bax
- made explicit in the person of Dermot
O’Byrne. This belongs to an ‘escapist’
world – unlike the world of his music
which was for him the real world – perhaps
rather the reverse of what might seem
normal?
Even when the relationship
with Mary Gleaves provided a less feverish
liaison he could not help, in his fifties,
a brief excursion with the young Christine
Ryan.(4).
Something of the real
Bax is glimpsed amongst his cricketing
fellows at Broughton Gifford (then Clifford’s
home) and this is illuminated by a fascinating
letter to Harriet here quoted by Lewis:-
"all day long I was wondering
why men and women could never
be simply and easily happy together
as men are with other men. There
is always struggle and unhappiness
in the world of sex – the menace
of storm behind the sunlight.
(Even from the first) I frankly
can’t understand you at all
now"
It is doubtful, despite
the wealth of material relating to the
man if any of "those who knew him
intimately – ever really knew that inner
self whose soul is riven in the climaxes
of the seven symphonies. Even while
wandering in Eire with his friends of
later days he revealed little of himself
or of his music And suddenly, among
his companions he would become abstracted,
withdrawn, as if encountering something
of that visionary experience that makes
grim and fascinating reading in the
tales and the scores. For Bax, the romantic
experience – ‘within us the desire becomes
an agony to live for a single hour with
all the might of the imagination, to
drown our beings in the proud sunlit
tumult of one instant of utter realisation
even though it consume us utterly …"
flooded that forlorn twilight with a
brilliantly clear light. And in that
light we too can look – even momentarily
– upon that pristine world. (5)
We are closest to the
real Bax in the world of his music.
********************************
The book itself is
handsomely produced, and as before contains
the Appendices on Dermot O’Byrne, King
Kojata and The Happy Forest.
There are copious notes – but unfortunately
a printer’s error has resulted in the
notes from Chapter 15 to the end being
reproduced from the earlier edition
– so that much useful information and
acknowledgment is lost. The printer
has I understand agreed to provide corrections.
The book is certainly
the English Music-lover’s ‘Bible’
to which David Owen Norris has provided
a quirky Foreword. What I wonder does
he mean by Bax’s life is ""littered
with creative duplicity"? It is
therefore a ‘must’ at the most reasonable
price (£22.46 to British Music Society
members!)
Colin Scott-Sutherland
see also review
by Rob Barnett
Notes:-
- 4 metal trunks containing (inter
alia) 1500 letters from Bax to
Cohen; 350 letters Cohen to Bax: "letters
from close men friends" – "letters
from lovers and greatest men friends"
– and "another small collection
(significance unknown).
- Lewis indicates that there are also
naked photographs of both Arnold and
Harriet
- "I longed that you should be
here that we might steal down when
the house was quiet and out into the
dark. It would have been magical to
be naked in the long grass under the
apple trees and to feel the soft night
breezes moving over our bodies."
- My own excursions into this has
been confined to study of the early
female relationships (which prompted
the publication ‘Ideala’ ) and it
is apparent that casting each old
flame aside as he discovered another
Bax treated the girls rather badly
– particularly the sensitive Dorothy
(with whom he escaped to the Bohmischer
Schweiz (see Farewell my Youth page
38.))
- Arnold Bax (Colin Scott-Sutherland)
page 192 with quotation from ‘The
Lifting of the Veil" in "Children
of the Hills"
