FIONA RICHARDS THE MUSIC OF JOHN IRELAND
Ashgate Publishing Limited; ISBN: 0754601110: 308pp: £45.00
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At last, an in-depth study of the music of John Ireland. Definitive? Yes
... my minor reservations, which grew as I read, have nothing to do with
Miss Richards' penetrating analyses of this music which I have known and
loved since my 'teens - but I began to realise that, fascinated by the reticence
of the man, I may have expected revelations inevitable in any study of a
personality. In the end I realised that in fact there was no more
to tell! This is no fault of the author, who writes with a cool passion for
her subject, and with an exploratory understanding more penetrating than
all but a few writers on Ireland hitherto. We must believe, from some of
her statements, that she has found the same defences raised around the man
as have others who have attempted a 'life'. One might have expected these
defences to conceal dark secrets - yet one is forced in the end to the conclusion
that the somewhat chatty account of Muriel Searle (a hagiography was hung
on the motto theme of the stained glass window) is all there is to tell -
on one plane at least, for the darker aspects of John Ireland are there
in the music. It seems likely that Ireland's guardian angels really did
not understand what is revealed there, a thought made more problematic by
Miss Richards' hints that gaps in our knowledge (of which she is well aware)
not only from the early life, have been rendered impenetrable by the perhaps
well-meaning ministrations of those very guardian angels who zealously protected
him in later life. It is quite devastating to think that dedicatory material
on manuscript scores could have been obliterated by the hand of another!
Even the matter of his homosexuality is the only aspect of his life that,
in today's world, might be seized upon for exposure, until it becomes obvious
that any hint of pederasty in the cloisters of the Anglican church would
at that time have met with instant dismissal.
Thankfully Miss Richards has not written a 'life' - or, rather she HAS written
THE life in so far as the outwardly uneventful pattern of Ireland's life
appears, its milestones marked clearly, not by high drama, exotic encounters
or scandal, riotous social behaviour and the like, but by the appearance
of individual compositions in which the passions and conflicts are there,
and ONLY there, revealed to those who understand. This book illustrates just
how little we know of John Ireland the man - and finally just how little
there is to know beyond the music. Perhaps it is for this reason that we
have, to this date, no really deep study. Yet the most casual run-through
of the musical periodicals of the early twentieth century reveals innumerable
articles on specific works, and on aspects of his output, almost all perceptive
- and in the case of Crossley-Holland and Stephen Banfield, full of insight.
Ireland was in fact (and is) a popular composer, in support of which assertion
I have several times cited the continuous sales traffic in the ledgers of
his publishers.
What are Miss Richards' sources? An extensive bibliography would seem to
spread the net very widely. Yet in the end the resources that can claim
justifiably to be authentic boil down to some dozen or so. Of these Schafer
(since these thoughts are Ireland's own), Stewart Craggs, Muriel Searle,
John Longmire, Norah Kirby and Father Kenneth Thompson, and, though not
published, the writings of Peter Crossley-Holland and the Crees lectures
of Alan Rowlands, are the most productive. By far the most important of these
is Father Thompson since it was to him that Ireland confided those intensely
personal thoughts, doubts and ideas that the author identifies in the music.
To those others one may resort for facts, sometimes not as accurate as they
might seem - as once again the ranks seem now and again to close. The
bibliography cites 346 entries, of which some 40/50 are specific articles
on the music. For the rest Miss Richards has read widely and significantly
- in Arthur Machen (without reading Machen, said Ireland, no one could understand
my music,) Jocelyn Brooke, Sylvia Townsend Warner, peripheral, though essential
reading overall.
There are also listed letters from Ireland himself, held by the John Ireland
Trust - how many is not indicated - to many musical friends. If Miss Richards
has read through these, and those items catalogued as "material relating
to" (the equally elusive Helen Perkin, Arthur Miller, and Herbert Brown)
and has in the process unearthed no shattering revelations other than those
expressed at emotional climaxes in the music, then one must conclude that
Ireland's life was in no way as bohemian as that of such contemporaries as
Augustus John, Philip Heseltine, Grainger or Cyril Scott. Indeed his
all-too-human peccadilloes would not be unexpected in the life of any creative
artist - and much milder than many another.
In her survey Miss Richards has adopted an original approach - by choosing
'topics' (a strange but here useful categorisation) delineated in the chapter
headings of Anglo-Catholicism, Paganism, City, Country, War and Love - developing
her thesis coherently from the opening 'encountering' the composer to the
ultimate 'knowing' the composer, convincingly substituting a cumulative effect
for the usual chronological pattern, which doesn't seem to work with Ireland.
This method proves successful, highlighting the very personal 'fingerprints'
that we recognise and that belong both to the life and to the music, knitting
the two together. We do recognise them - but their personal significance
for the composer is made clear by her thoughtful analyses. Her insight into
such neglected works as the little known song 'Earth's Call', Ireland at
his most ecstatic, is fascinating:
...the intensity mounting further, symbolic surely of an act of passion in
this rural setting. The ecstasy is expressed through a series of rising parallel
chords, until the E flat rhapsody of bar 15 returns in bar 87. The moment
of physical pressure past, the cuckoo call is heard again in bar 89, now
a major third, symbolising fulfilment, arrival. The protagonists are sated,
reflective, tranquil. In this piece, and typically in Ireland's passionate
idylls .. there is always a single moment of climax after which the music
is changed in some way." (page 110)
How apt is this to Harold Monro's-
'listen, till we understand, each through the other, every natural sound.
I can't hear anything today..'
as the moment of ecstasy passes. Listen even to such a miniature as 'The
Towing Path', how on the imagined passing of the draught horse, the scene
subtly changes.
She is perspicacious in dealing with the equally neglected 'Legend':
"This [horn call] sets the scene for a dark, brooding evocation. On to this
primitive landscape Ireland projects a piano soloist as protagonist, the
person entering into the experience. The opening horn motif is compressed
and taken up by the pianist … at which point another 'signal' instrument,
the gong, confirms the crossing between worlds." (page 85)
Avoiding over-flowery language while dealing with the music's psychological
implications, she is generous with music examples which, carefully chosen,
underline those 'topics' - the 'passion' element in the characteristic:
containing ecstasy, sadness and resignation - and the 'pagan' element in
the unresolved 6/4's of 'Months Mind', and in the ubiquitous 5-3-4-5 motif
from 'The Forgotten Rite' - these in themselves simple harmonic/melodic devices,
the personal use of which nonetheless sets the music quite apart from that
of his fellows.
At the outset Miss Richards seems to put her finger on the problem of the
man - 'as elusive as the music' - elusive that is, until her final chapter
when, with copious illustration much has been made clear. One returns again
to the music - and despite all, its beauty once more is mystifying, an elegiac
note running throughout even in the major passages. "It is full of pain and
doubt, but it also exudes total optimism" she writes. The high points of
Ireland's life are well pointed in this study in purely musical terms - from
the sun-pierced shadows of deep woods in the 1904 'prentice orchestral
'Poem' to the peaks of the Second Violin Sonata, the Cello Sonata,
The Forgotten Rite, the Piano Sonata (about which work she is curiously
ambivalent), the Concerto and the glorious 'My fair' (from Songs Sacred
and Profane) - and we are forced to believe that nothing came from his
pen that fell below the creative expression enshrined in these pages of music
that, like the G.Toc, Maiden Castle, afternoon tea, and the Trooping of the
Colour, are part of the heritage of this country, which also has its dark
side. Whilst reading, I went frequently to the piano (and occasionally to
the dictionary with words like 'hermeneutic', 'autodiegetic' and 'syntagmatic'!).
If I have dwelt long on the darker psychological aspects of the music - which
is that aspect that many listeners will be unaware of - there is ample
confirmation in chapters 'Country' and 'Paganism' of an evocative portrayal
of the land of England with all its allusive attributes:
"I should use, as the trees and birds did,
A language not to be betrayed;
And what was hid should still be hid
Excepting from those like me made
Who answer when such whispers bid.
'I never saw that land before' Edward Thomas.
The book is beautifully produced - a must for all lovers not only of music,
but of the country, of poetry and of our heritage.
Colin Scott-Sutherland
