Music Webmaster Len Mullenger

ELISABETH LUTYENS

Dr David C.F. Wright PhD.

© David Wright Ph.D
This article, or any part of it, must not be reproduced in part or in whole in any way whatsoever without prior written consent of the author.

Elisabeth Lutyens was a rugged individual; she was a maverick; she was both articulate and argumentative; she was a radical, a socialist and a snob. She liked to fight; she loved anything that smelled of excitement; she could not bear anything that was routine. She was strange and eccentric; she could be charming and exude a type of glamour one associates with a film star. Her obvious intelligence meant that no one could 'put anything across on her'.

And, like Benjamin Britten, she liked to outrage and annoy people.

She was born in 1906, one of five children of the celebrated architect, Sir Edwin Lutyens and his wife, Lady Emily Lytton a member of an eminently literary and political family. She always felt that she was the 'different' one in the family and, as a child, believed herself to be unloved and, in addition, hated her nanny. She used to call out to her father when he was nearby but she was told to be silent.

As a child she was known as Betty; later, she was also known as Liz.

From the age of nine she wanted to be a composer as it was something no other member of the family aspired to. If she had pursued art her father would always have been looking over her shoulder; if it were to be literature, her mother might dominate.

The only music she heard was the Salvation Army band in the street. When she was 14, she heard Le Marseillaise which made an impact on her.

The overwhelming feature in her childhood and adolescence was her mother's attachment to the Theosophical Society and an Indian boy whom the Society believed to be the incarnation of the Godhead. This created a rift between Sir Edwin and Lady Emily but for Betty and her sister, May, it meant spending time in the Tyrol, India and Australia with other adherents of the cult. Betty reacted against the Indian boy and blamed him for ruining her life.

She began to study music in Paris believing France was the country of the future. The atmosphere of Paris in the 1920s excited her and she was absorbed by Debussy and his music.

At the Royal College of Music she studied composition and the viola during the years 1926-30. The great 'modern' composer of the time was Brahms and Betty set the whole of the book of Job in the style of Brahms. It was never performed.

She regarded Parry and Stanford as the 'heavy clouds upon us'. She hated what she called 'cow-pat' music, overblown music such as Mahler, Bruckner and Elgar. She was criticised for her views and accused of liking Debussy which was 'not quite nice'.

Modern music concerts took place at the Nursing Association Hall just off Cavendish Square where there were plaques on the wall, 'Chastisty' and 'Endurance', which may have been appropriate for music of that time with audiences seldom exceeding a dozen in number.

A fellow student was Iris Lemare who took up conducting. The violinist, Anne MacNaughton formed a string quartet and the three women convened a meeting in a flat in Camden outlining the problems of being female and being musicians.

The MacNaughton-Lemare concerts came into being and quickly became an important force in London's musical life. They gave first performances of music by Elisabeth MacConchy, Grace Williams, Alan Rawsthorne and Benjamin Britten. Several of Lutyens' works were performed but she withdrew all such early works because they were 'conservative and uniform in style'. Another feature of these concerts was the performance of sixteenth and seventeenth century music which was quite unknown at the time and this was a crucial influence on Lutyens' maturity. She also developed a dislike for predictability and hated cadences. She would say, "If I hear another cadence, I shall scream." In 1939 she wrote her Concerto for Nine Instruments which is not strictly serial as it employs a fourteen-note series which device she discovered for herself. She would say, "In music you clarify what you want by knowing what you don't want." She was not the first British serialist; Humphrey Searle was.

In 1930, the BBC was a bastion against modern music and, indeed, remained so up to the time of William Glock in the 1960s. The performances of the music of Webern after the 1939-45 war was due to the championship of Searle who had been a pupil of Webern. This inspired Lutyens to compose her brand of serialism, as she called it, and earned her the nickname, Twelve-Note Lizzie. But, as she admitted in the same BBC interview, she was never a real serialist. She added that she would produce a twelve-note theme and repeat it without the serialism of chords and accompaniments. For her, it was a means of writing quite fast in an idiom devoid of predictable harmonic idioms and it was useful to know what the next note was! And she complained about strict serialism and offended many composers in the process.

Her first success was a setting of Rimbaud, O Saisons, O Chateau encored at the first performance in 1947 having been turned down by the BBC as unsingable.

In the 1930s and 1940s, Lutyens' artistic development was impeded by marriage and motherhood. In 1933 she married the singer Ian Glennie and they had three children, a boy and twin girls ... but, in 1938, she left him for Edward Clark whom she was to marry in 1942 after their son was born. Clark was eighteen years older than her and had been a BBC producer and planner and one of the architects of the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He was an international figure. He resigned from the BBC in 1936 and failed to find another job. Nevertheless he always gave the appearance of affluence (he always wore a carnation in his button-hole) even though he had no money.

Liz had suddenly turned up with her children on the doorstep of Clark's flat in Fitzroy Street. They were clearly in love at the beginning and all the children took to Edward. After all, he was full of confidence and charm. There were a lot of parties and drinking when visitors came. They included Alan Rawsthorne who wore a Stetson hat thinking he was Roy Rogers and he flirted endlessly even when he was sober. Betty's daughter, Rose, had a crush on him at one time. The flat was squalid. For example, the bath was in the kitchen and covered by a board when not in use. This was a far cry from Liz's opulent upbringing complete with servants. The marriage to Edward was always difficult; there were frequent rows, separations and reconciliations. Her life was particularly stressful when she evacuated to Newcastle at the time of the blitz.

On her return to London she took Dylan Thomas in as a lodger and her children stayed with well-to-do members of the family or foster parents. With Thomas and Rawsthorne she developed a serious drinking problem. She upset her children by her drunkenness and her appearances usually on the arm of some unknown man. She would be dressed in an expensive fur coat covering the most ordinary slacks or flares and smoking a cigarette in a holder.

All her life she was a tortured soul but when she died in London in 1983 she left a legacy of interesting and intellectual music. She wrote three works entitled Music for Orchestra (1955, 1962 and 1963) preferring not to use the word symphony. There is a stunning Concert Aria for high soprano and orchestra (1976), six string quartets from her early career (1937-42) and, paradoxically, a choral and orchestral work Essence of Our Happiness (1968).

One thing she was not, was happy. She may not be a great composer but she is an interesting one and some of her works have an enviable craftsmanship and telling impact.

 

© David C.F. Wright 1996 - Revised 2000

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