At the risk of being
accused of violating the unwritten rules
of criticism, I’m going to start not
only by referring to a review I found
elsewhere on the Web, but also by quoting
it in full.:
"A sordid,
dirty, little book that will do nothing
to enhance the reputation of this great
composer. Don't bother with it unless
you are a fan of sloppy research and
tabloid tittle-tattle. What is missing
from this book is a scholarly analysis
of the man's music."
The main virtue of
this "review" is its brevity.
The main failing is its accuracy. I’ve
quoted this, not to join the slanging
match that it seems hell-bent on provoking,
but because it actually - and from its
tone I would guess accidentally - raises
a pair of particularly pertinent points.
Firstly, indeed there
is no scholarly analysis of the
music. Like Paul Jackson’s, published
early in 2003 [review],
this book almost exclusively considers
Arnold’s music in relation to the composer’s
professed "All my music is autobiographical".
You will find oodles of analysis, but
not of the dry, academic sort that is
usually implied by the adjective "scholarly".
Instead, the analysis is non-technical
in style, and might more usefully be
termed "description" or "interpretation".
Aimed squarely at the general reader,
it is thus entirely in keeping with
the book’s express intention, first
and foremost, to be a biography
of the composer - as well as a determined
attempt to remove the "mis"
out of the "misunderstood"
of its sub-title.
Secondly, there’s this
little matter of "sordid".
Here the authors run into the same critical
problem as did Arnold’s "serious"
compositions. With Arnold, as with (say)
Mahler and Shostakovich, we have to
be particularly careful to distinguish
between music that actually is
tasteless, trivial, banal or downright
vulgar, and music which uses materials
which are tasteless, trivial, banal
or downright vulgar. To put it another
way, some folk did, and for that matter
still do, confuse "content" with "craftsmanship".
Meredith and Harris’s researches, which
involved an uncommon amount of seeking
out of actual witnesses, uncovered much
about Arnold’s life that could be considered
"sordid". To put it bluntly,
they dug, and found that they had dug
up a lot of "dirt". This left
them two choices: gloss over it all,
or publish and be damned. The former
option hardly constitutes a proper foundation
for the pathway to enlightenment that
we generally expect of a serious biography.
That leaves the latter option, in which
case the book itself can be considered
"sordid" only if it drools
over the supposed juicy bits. Well,
it doesn’t.
The first and most
obvious thing that you notice is that
this is by no means a little book: it
weighs in at a fairly wrist-wrenching
two and a half pounds (1.15 Kg.). Eighteen
of its nineteen chapters are devoted
to more or less linear narrative. However,
the narrative comes to an end in 1996,
whilst the last chapter is subtitled
"Ten Scenes in the Life of an Octogenarian".
That means that nearly five years have
gone missing down a literary "black
hole"! Why? It isn’t as if nothing
of note happened; just for starters,
there was a weekend-long Arnold festival
in Northampton in 2000, and then there
were the landmarks of the completions
of two recorded cycles of the symphonies.
It is doubly frustrating that, because
of the "snapshot" nature of
the final chapter, the most recent major
upheaval in Arnold’s life to date, which
happened after Jackson’s book came out,
is only sketchily - I nearly said "scantily"!
- covered. The near-fatal attack of
pneumonia in 2003, and the subsequent
protracted tug-of-war between Arnold’s
daughter, Katherine, and his faithful
carer, Anthony Day, surely should have
been part of the narrative. It isn’t
as if timing had anything to do with
it: the composer was finally returned
to the haven of his home in Attleborough
in February 2004, well before the finishing
touches were applied to this tome.
As you get on with
reading, the second thing you notice
is, not surprisingly, the style of writing.
Grammar and spelling are exemplary.
There is, inevitably but commendably
rarely, the occasional minor "blooper".
For example, the word "intent"
in the quotation at the top of p. 284:
either this is a typographical error
or it should be qualified by "[sic]".
Again, on p. 236 you’ll find the term
"based around", an internally-inconsistent
specimen of fashionable usage that fair
makes my teeth grind! OK, so in the
Acknowledgements they also spelt my
name wrongly; I’ll try not to let that
colour my judgement!
With dual authorship,
it is inevitable that the individuality
of the "person" talking to
you in your head as you read will be
diluted. That imagined voice speaks
fairly dispassionately, which is good
when you consider the subject matter
is as hot to handle as incandescent
coals. Yet, this voice is also intimate
and friendly, which is just as well
when you consider how deeply depressing
is some of the material. One evening,
when I put the book down, I could have
wept. I’ll tell you this: if you think
that Tony Palmer’s new film [ review,
review]
is candid and - to quote Rob Barnett
- "pulls no punches", then
you are in for a right old shock. Without
the cosy buffer of filmed images, alone
with that still, small voice and your
own thoughts, Arnold’s life-story unfolds
as a thoroughly unnerving experience.
By comparison (I stress) Palmer’s
film pales to a rose-tinted whitewash.
That leads us nicely
to the third thing you notice - you
can’t miss it, as it slaps you in the
face! - the abundance of fine detail,
an abundance that simply cannot be accommodated
within the span of a film. Continuing
the trend established by Jackson, Meredith
and Harris provide what is, thus far,
the most penetrating insight into the
composer’s tumultuous and eventful life.
This is largely due to their comprehensively
"networked" - and blatantly
far from "sloppy" - research,
based mostly on talking with people
who were "there" or, failing
that, with people who had known those
people, resulting in what is a conspicuously
eye-witness - and far more hair-raising
- account.
However, this doesn’t
just give us more of the day-to-day
minutiae of Arnold’s life. Numerous
"myths and legends", such
as the young Malcolm’s refusal to attend
school, are clarified, and several long-standing
misconceptions are corrected. In particular,
the authors bring forth some important
influences that had previously, at best,
been only dimly recognised. By far the
most significant of these important
influences can be summed up in one word:
ladies. The fair sex has had
short shrift in all previous writing
about Arnold, yet the ladies in his
life turn out to be one of the dominant
factors. Fascinating as it is to observe
the developing patterns of Arnold’s
responses to the different categories
of lady - ranging from the sex-object
through the girl-friend to the wife,
sister and daughter - what is most revealing
is his relationships with those who,
to quote Paul Harris, "loved him
the most": his sister Ruth, his
first wife Sheila, second wife Isobel,
and daughter Katherine.
However, to my mind
at least, the most important "revelation"
has to be the elucidation of the unseen
forces that moulded the composer’s psyche.
Oh, we always knew that Arnold had a
drink problem, a liking for the ladies,
a predisposition to riotous behaviour
and wild mood swings, a tendency to
become depressed and occasionally suicidal
- and all the rest of it. We also had
the impression that this was also, to
an assumed large degree, entirely voluntary:
if he’d just knocked the boozing on
the head, and settled himself down a
bit, then everything would have been
OK, more or less. What Harris and Meredith
report, however, brings the real truth
of the matter into stark relief. They
ram home with unsettling candour the
unpalatable fact of the composer’s manic-depressive
illness. Driven from the very outset
by this horrendous, pervasive, incurable
malady, Arnold was as helpless as a
dead leaf in the wind. It lay behind
everything, including the drink problem
that generally gets the blame, and of
course, residing in his head, it wormed
its way into much of his music.
This is why the authors
contend that "We cannot divorce
the man from his music ... to understand
one is to understand the other."
It is understandable that they should
make such a claim, but it is nevertheless
a highly contestable one, certainly
in its conclusive phrase. The problem
here is that our - by which I mean each
individual’s - "understanding"
of music is determined not just by what
the composer puts into our heads, but
also by what else is already there.
To coin a rough analogy, music is a
bit like flour: what comes out of the
oven depends on what you mix with it!
However, this doesn’t invalidate the
intention behind the authors’
statement: you can learn a lot about
what makes Arnold’s music tick if you
understand his motivations.
Of course, as ever
it is the exception that proves (i.e.
tests) the rule. Although many of the
major works jibe with their biographical
contexts, some of the arguments strike
me as being just a wee bit fanciful,
I suppose largely because of the chemistry
between the music and the pre-existing
contents of my particular brain - and
this will be true of anybody’s
particular brain. However, there are
occasions where the music presents a
square peg for insertion into their
round hole, and then generally they
seem to whittle the peg to suit. For
example, they note that the "gloomy
introspection" of the Sinfonietta
No. 3 is at odds with Arnold’s new wife
and child, and so they blithely attribute
the music’s mood to the composer’s "looking
at the recent past" and "purging
his soul of chaotic selfish[ness]".
Such things are not "paradoxical",
as the authors at one point suggest,
but merely go to show that life and
art can’t always be forced to fit such
simple equations. They do, however,
tacitly admit defeat over the first
set of English Dances, which are "...
so simply and lovingly crafted, it is
hard to believe that they were created
in the wake of extreme mental anguish."
Rule proved?
The problem doesn’t
stop there, not quite. Sometimes the
authors’ interpretations of the emotional
goings-on in the music strike me as
a bit curious. I suspect that the zealous
pursuit of their thesis has coloured
their impressions of the music - the
"zeal" being part of the "brain
chemistry" I mentioned above! In
the case of the Second Symphony, they
conclude that the first movement is
all sweetness and light, that the second
has "impish optimism" with
"no hint of mania", in the
third they find a "quiet homage
to the third movement of Mahler’s First
Symphony" although Arnold’s is
"deeper than Mahler’s [because
he] was simply mourning the desertion
of ... Joanna Richter", and in
the finale they find Arnold "at
his happiest". Personally, excepting
that Mahler’s funeral cortège
was indeed emotionally shallower than
Arnold’s, if not for the reason quoted,
I would disagree with pretty well all
of that.
More problematical
is the description of The Padstow Lifeboat,
where I have real trouble squaring the
detailed goings-on of the authors’ progressive
"programme" with what is,
after all, a march in simple ternary
form. Then again, there is one angle
on the "enigmatic" close of
the Fifth Symphony that I know is missing,
simply because it came from my own thoughts
on the music and a discussion I had
with Arnold in 1998 - right in the middle
of the narrative’s "black hole"!
It’s a difficult thing
for me to pin down, so let me put it
like this: the difficulty lies in the
authors’ attempts to describe this supposed
interlocking of the composer’s life
with his music. It would perhaps have
been better to merely interleave
the descriptions of his life and his
music, and leave the figuring out of
the interlocking of the two,
and its extent, to the reader!
The wealth of reportage
is a good thing, because the sheer weight
of evidence hammers home the message.
The down-side is that you can get too
much of a good thing! I wasn’t much
over half-way through when I noted "This
is getting repetitious!" - as yet
another witness stepped forward
to testify, yet again, that Arnold
was either a jolly good chap, or an
unmitigated b*****d, or could change
from one to the other in the blinking
of an eye. Yes, it is vital that we
have all this on record, and yes, I
would much prefer all these witness
statements be included rather than omitted
- but perhaps, in order to de-clutter
the narrative a bit, shouldn’t more
of the quotes that don’t tell us anything
essentially new be relegated
to the footnotes or an appendix?
However, I don’t want
to make too much of such things. I have
what seem like a million minor carps,
questions and comments swilling around
in my head. If I were to plod through
them all they would, by sheer weight
of numbers, give the false impression
of diminishing the overall achievement
of the authors. So, look at it this
way: Jackson’s biography already showed
Arnold to be a more complex personality
than many of us had previously suspected.
Meredith and Harris have gone much further,
peeling off several more layers, and
bringing us preciously close to that
"last five per cent" that
Arnold, they tell us, said we don’t
want to know about anybody. The story
that they have to tell is uncomfortable,
often extremely so, but it is also absorbing
and utterly compelling. Will it, as
the authors hope, finally change the
"establishment" attitude to
Arnold - an attitude, by the way, that
the authors have also more clearly elucidated?
It ought to, purely because they have
immensely enhanced our understanding
of the man behind the music, and the
irresistible forces that shaped his
destiny, that caused his flame to burn
brightly, and that ultimately burnt
him out.
There is one other,
very curious reason: the authors have
shown, pretty well conclusively, that
Arnold is disabled - a musical
genius of the very first order, but
nonetheless the sufferer of a life-long,
disabling mental illness. It doesn’t
matter that the manic-depressive illness
and the genius probably go hand-in-hand;
the fact remains that in today’s political
climate his disability, like so many
others, should earn him some "positive
discrimination". In the light of
Meredith and Harris’s revelatory account,
what will be the consequences of the
"establishment" continuing
to suppress - or, more to the point,
failing to promote with all due vigour
- Arnold’s astonishing music? With bated
breath, I await developments.
This biography fearlessly
confronts the most appalling situations
and circumstances with what I can only
describe as "sympathetic detachment",
almost from the standpoint of a concerned
but remote relative. For anyone wanting
to get to know and understand Britain's
greatest living composer, up close and
in intimate detail, this illuminating
book now takes pride of place: it is
absolutely essential reading.
Paul Serotsky
The
Malcolm Arnold Society
