HUMPHREY SEARLE by David C. F. Wright
© David
Wright
Ph.D
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Many composers suffer neglect and some are, or become, completely forgotten.
Few composers, however, have been as badly treated as Humphrey Searle.
He was born in Oxford on 26th August, 1915, one of three sons born to Humphrey
Frederic, a civil servant, and Charlotte Mathilde May who, although born
in England, had no English blood. Her father was Sir William Schlich, who
came from Darmstadt in Germany, and Lady Schlich was of French, Belgian and
Italian descent. Humphrey's paternal grandfather trained as an organist and
was part of a musical family that lived in Devon.
At school, Humphrey had piano lessons but was never proficient as a pianist,
although, in later life, he could be persuaded to play a Bach Prelude and
Fugue at parties. What he did become, however, among many other things, was
a competent conductor with an impeccable ear for meticulous sound that earned
him respect as a record reviewer, writer and commentator. In all his critical
writings he was always constructive; he was never harsh or scathing - which
is some indication of the fundamental goodness of his character. In fact,
some have said that this was one cause of the neglect of his music, particularly
from the 1970s onwards. He championed many musicians and young composers
to the extreme of his unfailing generosity, and his own career suffered.
He was reticent and self-effacing often to the point of being embarrassing.
If the present writer commented on one of the many touches of genius in his
work he would invariably reply by demonstrating some passage in Bach, Beethoven
or Liszt that he thought to be marvellous.
Searle's real awakening to music came in 1928 when he went to Winchester
School, where he met Robert Irving and James Robertson. Irving was to become
musical director of the Sadler's Wells Opera at the same time that Humphrey
Searle was on its advisory panel in the 1950s. The availability of a gramophone
at school enabled the three students to familiarize themselves with the classical
repertoire and with such modern works as were recorded. Searle began to take
harmony lessons with George Dyson, who was "profoundly impressed" by him.
Having won a Classical scholarship to Oxford University, Searle went up in
1933 and, while he was absorbing the appropriate material for his degree,
he pursued musical studies with Sydney Watson, the organist of New College.
If interest in music germinated in 1928, then it blossomed six years later
when Searle heard the first English performance of Berg's Wozzeck
under Sir Adrian Boult, broadcast in March, 1934. "It knocked me sideways,"
admitted Searle, who, consequently, put his energies into finding out about
the serial style of composition as advocated by Arnold Schönberg, the
leader of the Second Viennese School, which included Webern and Berg, two
of Schönberg’s distinguished pupils. Today, there is no doubt about
the eminence of Berg's incredible score but it says a very great deal for
Searle that he recognized its greatness at once. Fifty years or so later,
musical opinion has realized that twelve-note music is an original means
of composition without the restrictions of traditionalism. In the hands of
brilliant composers such as Schönberg, Webern and Berg and, indeed Searle,
this musical language has proved itself to be wide-ranging and varied in
expression and emotion yet embodying the strictest discipline, as is
demonstrated, for example, in the language of Bach.
The history of music has produced many enigmas. One such is vacillating fashion.
A composer's work can be subjected to savage hostility and, later, with a
change in musical trends, it is reassessed as acceptable and sometimes admired.
Yet the composer, if he is still living, cannot claim recompense for the
injustice he has suffered. There. is some truth in Arthur Honegger’s
remark that the only qualification for the possibility of being a great composer
is being dead.
Searle was helped in his research by Theodor Adorno, who had studied with
both Schönberg and Webern and had come to Oxford as a refugee from Nazi
Germany. We may not be able fully to grasp what it meant in those days to
espouse the cause of serial music. It was, to say the least, unfashionable.
After the war, Searle was to make an equally courageous stand for the music
of Liszt, serving as secretary of the Liszt Society for twenty-two years
from 1950. At that time, Liszt was absurdly claimed to "compose music of
empty grand gesture", which, it was alleged, stemmed from "the reckless
extroversion of his oscillating character". Humphrey Searle's heroic position
has, subsequently, been vindicated but, at the time, he stood alone in this
country and its moribund musical establishment, whose members thought him
to be mad and, furthermore, to be shunned at all costs. It cannot be emphasized
enough that he took the brunt of acrimonious criticism of serial composition
in this country. Later, with the partial rebirth of the musical establishment,
younger composers gained some success with their twelve-note works and it
is to Humphrey Searle that they owe a considerable debt of gratitude. Their
respective attainments, however, brought no recognition for Searle. He was
still ignored and, while he did not complain, inwardly he was hurt. He used
to say that the music business was a savage jungle and some music lovers
are fickle, subscribing to the immature notion that what cannot be whistled
or immediately understood is rubbish. This denotes a parochial dependence
on the security of predictability and obviousness to the ennui that
may accompany it.
Professor of Music at Oxford, while Searle was there, was Sir Hugh Allen,
who saw the enormous potential in him and, consequently, promised a travelling
scholarship when he had taken his Classics degree. It was not only Allen
and Dyson who recognized the gifts latent in this young man. William Walton
saw some of Searle's compositions and urged him to pursue his musical studies
without delay, recommending lessons with John Ireland at the Royal College
of Music. On his entering the College Searle's parents withdrew their financial
support since they were opposed to a musical career, wanting their son to
sit the Civil Service examination. Searle was undeterred and made the first
of many stands showing the admirable courage and tenacity that never deserted
him.
Searle studied with Ireland only for a short while and liked him very much.
As for Ireland, he always said of Humphrey Searle:,"He is the cleverest musician
I have ever met." That is some accolade, particularly when it is remembered
that Ireland met and knew many world-famous musicians - for example, he used
to recall encounters with Ravel.
His allowance from his parents having ceased, Searle had to earn his living,
which partly came from teaching logic to a clergyman in Mornington Crescent.
He took his B.A. degree in 1937 and, with the promised scholarship, went
to Vienna that autumn to study with Webern, the lessons having been arranged
by Adorno. With Webern, Searle developed his dependable ear, but his
individuality meant that he did not fall into the trap of emulating so
illustrious a teacher. "Imitation, I suppose, is a sincere form of flattery,"
he told me, adding:
I want to write what I want to write. Anyone can copy someone else
and dress it up in the mendacious disguise of originality. Lesser composers
have done this and some have made a name for themselves in this mercenary
way but it says absolutely nothing for their integrity or the advancement
of music.
That originality is an essential ingredient in music will be, it is hoped,
readily admitted. This problem greatly troubled Walton in the late 1940s.
He was undergoing a crisis of his own musical identity and deploring the
suggestion that he was the successor to Elgar. Walton enjoyed "a few moments
of Elgar" whereas, at the other end of the spectrum, he considered Shostakovich
to he "the greatest composer of the twentieth century". Sir Adrian Boult
used to say how very disappointing Elgar's music was and that the better
it was played the less he liked it - by which he meant that if Elgar's music
were badly played you could blame the orchestra but if it were played well
the only person who could take the blame was Elgar himself.
Walton, being a discerning musician, went to Humphrey Searle for advice and
lessons, which is the highest compliment a composer with many successes like
Facade, Belshazzar’s Feast and a truly memorable Viola
Concerto behind him could pay to another. Yet that is the compliment
Walton paid to Searle and, as a consequence, Walton's later works have a
greater originality and an admirable texture, as is seen in the Johannesburg
Festival Overture, the masterly Cello Concerto and the Symphony
no.2, which continues to gain in appeal.
In Vienna during the years 1937-38 Searle attended the Conservatoire and,
among other things, took extensive tuition in conducting. He visited the
opera almost every night and these months were among the happiest in his
life. Such contentment was further enhanced by the fact that Webern was a
brilliant teacher. Searle once told the present writer:
It is still wrongly assumed in some quarters that Webern was only
interested in contemporary music. Nothing could be further from the truth.
It may surprise some to know that he did not give me one lesson in serialism
although he did suggest that I analyse his Variations for piano in
my private studies. His lessons with me were on the properties of the triad,
traditional harmony and counterpoint. Webern was an outstanding conductor
of the classics. The myth that modern composers are narrow-minded should
he dispelled once and for all. It simply is not so. Yet it is very sad that
musicians today who strongly object to the slightest hint of criticism of
Bach, Beethoven or Mozart can, and do, censure music of the
twentieth-century.
Searle returned to London just before Hitler's troops took Vienna in March,
1938. Back at the Royal College of Music, he continued lessons in orchestration,
conducting and counterpoint; among his teachers were R. O. Morris and Gordon
Jacob. His money having run out, he had to find work and became chorus librarian
with the B.B.C. It was "nothing more than being a pack-horse carting music
around London," he would say. That was one of his typically over-modest remarks.
In 1939 he conducted the London String Orchestra in one of his now discarded
pieces as well as in Liszt’s Malediction, his own arrangement
of three pieces by Thomas Roseingrave and the first British performance of
Webern's Five Pieces, op. 5 - a very brave choice indeed. The
concert also included Searle's arrangement of the Adagio cantando from
Bernard van Dieren’s String Quartet no.5. Searle had wanted to
study with van Dieren but the Dutch-born composer was far too ill and had,
in fact, died in 1936.
When war broke out Humphrey Searle, who had by now written a set of piano
variations and a string quartet, moved with the B.B.C. to Bristol and spent
time in the stimulating company of such people as William Glock, Lennox Berkeley,
Arnold Cooke, the poets Dylan Thomas and William Empson and the critic Henry
Boys. In March, 1940 Searle joined the Army and was with the Gloucestershire
Regiment for a short while. He was then transferred to the Intelligence Corps
and to a remote part of Scotland, which inspired his highly engaging
Highland Reel. It was in Scotland that he composed the first work
of his to bear an opus number- the Suite no. 1 for string
orchestra, which he acknowledged to be the first work of his maturity. It
was first performed in London in 1943 and conducted by Walter Goehr. The
composer admitted that the work owes something to Bartók. This was
followed by Night Music, op. 2, for chamber orchestra, written in
honour of Webern's 60th birthday, a work of great character and lucidity.
The Vigil for piano, op. 3, deliberately recalls Satie's
Gymnopédies, for it was dedicated to the French Fighting Forces.
More significantly the piece hints at the gloriously rich romanticism that
was to develop in his later works. However, Searle's first work to gain major
attention was the Piano Concerto, op. 5, a scintillating piece brimming
with vitality, power and, in the slow movement, moving tenderness. It was
played for the first time by Colin Horsley and the B.B.C. Symphony Orchestra
under Boult in 1946. The soloist has told the present writer how very much
he not only enjoyed the piece but also working with the composer. It is one
of many works that deserve revival provided that a pianist of the necessary
fibre can be found who has not only a cool head but also steel fingers. There
is no valid reason why this work should be kept from the public, as it would
be accessible to lovers of traditional music.
Searle, having been in various Special Operations Executive establishments
in southern England as an instructor and trainer of paratroops, found himself
at the end of the war posted to the Rhine Army headquarters, assisting Professor
Hugh Trevor-Roper in the investigation into the death of Hitler. But there
was another death that greatly affected Searle - the senseless and tragic
death of Webern, who was accidentally shot by an American sentry. This profound
sense of loss is reflected in the Second Nocturne for chamber orchestra,
op. 7, another carefully worked-out musical argument.
Rejoining the B.B.C. in 1946 as a producer of musical programmes, Searle
arranged broadcasts of music of the Second Viennese School as well as works
by such composers as Dallapiccola and Lutyens. He encountered much opposition
from those in authority at the B.B.C. and it has too soon been forgotten
that the establishment of Webern as a musical force to be reckoned with is
attributable to Humphrey Searle's pioneer work in the promotion of his output.
Another admirer of Searle's work was René Leibowitz, who had studied
with both Schönberg and Webern and was himself to teach Boulez and Henze,
among others. For Leibowitz to perform in Paris in 1947 Searle composed the
Intermezzo for eleven instruments, op. 8, a poetic and meditative
piece. That year also saw his setting of W. R. Rodgers’ Put Away
the Flutes, op. 11, written for the tenor Peter Pears. As in all
his vocal works, which began with the Two Songs of A. F. Housman,
op. 9, Searle displays his remarkable gift for rapid and apt musical
illustration of the text. Like Webern, Searle wanted his music to be devoid
of overstatement and "padding" (as it was called) - in other words, the
"spinning-out" of music to increase its length. In later years this obvious
talent for conciseness that Searle possessed, which conveyed atmosphere in
the shortest possible time, meant that he was commissioned to write a great
deal of incidental music. While a composer has to work, Humphrey Searle would
sometimes ask me quietly ,"Is it my music or is it me that is incidental?".
However, all such music was composed to his usual very high standard and
the music he wrote for The Foundling won the Italia Prix of 1965 with
its effective combination of the hymn "Ye watchers and ye holy ones" and
the supposed music of gargoyles. His reworking of music by Telemann formed
the basis of the score to accompany the B.B.C.'s dramatization of Swift's
Gulliver's Travels. His introduction to the film industry came when
Constant Lambert was unable to complete the score for Anna Karenina.
Of all Searle's original film scores the one that made the greatest impression
was that for The Haunting, directed by Robert Wise in 1963. His score
for The Abominable Snowman of 1957, which was directed by Val Guest,
was most appropriate. It proved Humphrey Searle could write tonal music.
Very few composers can write highly disciplined serial music as well as tonal
music of equal quality. Stravinsky may come nearest to this.
To return to 1947. Edith Sitwell sent Searle a copy of her long narrative
poem Gold Coast Customs, which he set for speaker, male chorus and
an unconventional orchestra. Sitwell was a world-famous poet and, as Walton
had used some of her verses in Façade, Searle may have felt
that he might achieve a similar success but in a more serious style. It has
been suggested that he probably wooed Sitwell to secure permission to set
the poem. Nonetheless, she was genuinely pleased with the result and insisted
on taking part in performances, as did Dylan Thomas and Constant Lambert.
It was Searle's first large-scale serial work.
That year saw the retirement of Edward Dent as President of the International
Society of Contemporary Music; Edward Clark, a pupil of Schönberg, was
elected in his place. Clark wanted Searle to be the general secretary - a
position he agreed to undertake for two years until it was realized that
the position needed a full-time salaried person. For Clark, Searle composed
the Quartet for clarinet, bassoon, violin and viola, op. 12, which
is a musical palindrome. When music critics asked the composer if listeners
should hear it as a palindrome he replied ,"They should hear it as a piece
of music." It is not just a clever, cerebral work; it is, in the words of
Colin Mason, "extraordinarily euphonious with its well-lubricated flow of
effortless sound".
In 1948 Searle had his first presentation at a Promenade Concert with his
Fuga giocosa, op. 13, which is based on a Danish proverb, "One little
feather can easily become five hens". By now, Searle had left the B.B.C.
to become a free-lance teacher, lecturer and author, but commissions were
hard to come by as he was still to be feared as a composer. It surprises
many today that he composed delightful settings of T. S. Eliot's Practical
Cats (he was a cat-lover himself), Cat Variations on a theme from
Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf and a setting of Lear's The Owl
and the Pussy-cat . "It is strange," the composer would say, "People
like my setting of The Owl and the Pussy-cat and find it amusing-then
they tell me they don't like any serial music. Should I tell them that this
piece is, in fact, serial?". This typical humour carried him through many
hard times.
On his 34th birthday Humphrey Searle was married to Margaret Gillian Lesley
Gray at Marylebone Registry Office, and they settled in St. John's Wood in
a house that was to be his home for the rest of his life. Lesley was a red-head
with a penchant for wearing black. She had been an actress and, latterly,
took up work with children. Her husband was troubled at the prospect of having
children as he felt that he and the nature of his work were unequal to
parenthood. The Searles lived a Bohemian existence. Searle was devoted to
Lesley and, although she was naive about music and art, she certainly brought
some social element into her husband’s life by arranging parties. This
was a great help to him as he was not always articulate in company and his
personality could be gloomy following his post-war depression.
Lesley was the inspiration behind the beautiful Poem for twenty-two
strings. op.18, written as a wedding present and first performed
in 1950 at Darmstadt under Hermann Scherchen. The work is a masterpiece;
its expression and breadth glow with a warmth that some believe suggests
Berg. However, it has a language its very own and provides a profoundly moving
experience that music seldom gives. Its neglect is totally inexcusable.
It was Sir Malcolm Sargent who introduced the Overture to a Drama, op.
17, at the 1949 Promenade Concerts. The Daily'Telegraph commented that
the composer had "crammed into a few pages every trick known to modern musical
science". Scherchen's reaction was both sensible and informed and he said
that Searle was "brilliant-the most gifted and original composer Britain
has produced since Purcell". High praise indeed, which Scherchen repeated
in the last year of his life.
It was Scherchen who gave the première of The Riverrun, op. 20,
a setting for speaker (or, rather, an actress "who should be an Irishwoman,
if possible from Dublin", as specified by the score) and orchestra. In fact
the success of this piece is enhanced by the Dublin accent but the music
itself is highly evocative and often strangely beautiful. It employs a 12-note
passacaglia throughout suggesting the relentless flow of the river Liffey.
The Riverrun is a setting of part of the final passage of James Joyce's
Finnegans Wake. It is a monologue spoken in the early hours of the
morning by Anna Livia, the female principal of the book, who is the Giver
and Renewer of life in the eternal cycle of life, growth, death and resurrection
that is the subject of Finnegans Wake. Anna Livia is the river Liffey.
As a young girl she flows down the Wicklow hills, having fallen as dew and
rain from her mother, the sky, and thence on to Dublin, where she has become
a matronly river. The city represents one aspect of her husband, Mr. Humphrey
Earwicker, a Dublin publican. The final monologue describes the death of
Anna Livia, her coming resurrection and her sequence of thought as she flows
to her grave, the sea.
Düsseldorf was the scene of the first performance (in 1951), and the
first English performances, also conducted by Scherchen, were given in Liverpool
and London in 1955. The revival of this incredible score won the Italia Prix
for Radio Eire in 1974. It is music of rare quality and is deeply moving,
particularly in such passages as "sad and weary I go back to you, my cold,
mad father . . . I see you rising . . save me!" and, later, with the words
"So. Avelaval. My leaves have drifted from me. All. But one clings still.
I'll bear it on me. To remind me . . . Carry me along, taddy". This is a
great work that I have listened to often, and its impact remains undiminished.
It is a work beyond praise.
The last in Searle's great trilogy of works for speaker and orchestra was
a setting of Edith Sitwell's The Shadow of Cain, first performed by
the poet herself with Dylan Thomas at London's Palace Theatre. Later Dylan
Thomas recited the complete speaking-part at the Winter "Proms". The music
is more subservient to the words than was the case in earlier works.
It should be readily admitted that no British composer has so successfully
combined speaker and orchestra as Searle, who was puzzled that this combination
was not more widely used. Schönberg had employed speech in his own
impressive trilogy, Pierrot lunaire, A Survivor from Warsaw and the
Ode to Napoleon. If the words of such a work were sung the impact
would be lost. The most versatile and dramatic instrument is the voice, and
it should not be restricted to singing alone. By this it is seen that Searle
was clearly drawn to Schönberg and so little influenced by Webern's
economic style, epigrammatic quality and aphoristic form. Humphrey Searle
used to say that "what Webern wrote was admirable and suited to what he wanted
to say. I want to say something different." And he did.
The British were probably unprepared for Searle's work and may have found
it a cultural shock. The major problem is almost certainly the extreme difficulty
of the music from the technical point of view, which is a feature of this
innovative and interesting composer. The other difficulty, if it is one,
is that his music is sometimes tough and challenging to listeners but, as
Peter Racine Fricker has rightly pointed out, this is one of its many strengths.
It is music that has to be heard without preconceived ideas or prejudice
and, consequently, requires the necessary time and will.
For the 140th anniversary of the birth of Liszt, Searle produced his Piano
Sonata, Op. 21. The difficulty in finding a publisher was nothing
as compared with its technical demands. As in the cases of Ballade, op.
10 and the Threnos and Toccata, op. 14, his piano-writing was
criticized as "orchestral writing". Indeed, the music does not always lie
easily under the hands, but that was said of Tchaikovsky's piano music, yet
Tchaikovsky is not so dismissed with what appears to be contempt. It is
inequitable to have a set of guide-lines that justifies Tchaikovsky and condemns
Searle. Gordon Watson gave the first performance of the Sonata, and
one notable pianist, who remains grateful to Humphrey Searle for introducing
him to the music of Alkan, told me in 1988 that this Sonata was "a
real cracker. If I could play it I could play anything". It is, probably,
both the finest and most original piano work ever produced by a British composer.
Cast in one movement and very loosely modelled on Liszt's own Sonata in
B minor. as was demanded by the occasion, it is a coherent and convincing
piece.
Scherchen now asked for an orchestral work, and the result was the Symphony
no. 1, op. 23, a milestone in the history of music, as it was
the first strictly serial symphony written by a British composer. The 12-note
row consists really of only four notes, the musical notes for B-A-C-H, which
four notes are transposed twice to constitute the twelve and, for a work
that lasts about 25 minutes, that amounts to an amazing feat of concentration.
A slow introduction leads into an Allegro of exhilarating power. The
slow movement is beautiful and has a central section of concertante proportions
with difficult passage work for the strings and reckless brass writing. In
fact, one B.B.C. orchestra threatened to "go on strike" if plans to perform
this Symphony went ahead, complaining that it was impossible to play. That
fact of history and its subsequent inadequate recording have meant that this
masterpiece has suffered neglect ever since. The Adagio is followed
by an Intermezzo that leads into another Allegro of ferocity
and rhythmic drive before a quiet epilogue in which B-A-C-H has the last
word. This Symphony is both romantic and dramatic, perhaps even
terrifying. It was first performed by Scherchen in Hamburg in 1954, and Sir
Adrian Boult undertook the British première on 1st June that year.
He later recorded it for Decca, but the recording misses the spirit of the
music, the reading being too classical. Boult was a fine conductor and, although
he admitted he was not in sympathy with the piece, he spoke of its worth
and historical significance.
This Symphony, and other works by Searle, were subjected to hostility
prompted by ignorance. Hugh Wood wrote of "a strain of gratuitous violence
which is worrying . . . emotional violence is very severely subject to the
law of diminishing returns". Perhaps the music of Humphrey Searle is sometimes
noisy but, if music is to communicate, it must have contrast - a feature
lacking in so much modern music. Wood's complaints can be disregarded, for
his own Symphony, while having some merits, is often elephantine; his criticism
of Searle's "reliance on formulas such as ostinato work or tremolando passages"
fails to take into account the fact that early composers constantly used
formulas as well as other devices such as ornaments and predictable cadences
to which no objections are made. Searle was, as usual, philosophical and
would say to me, "Bach and Corelli can do it but I can't." What emerges yet
again is that Humphrey Searle and his music were subject to unfounded prejudice
and unscholarly appraisal.
The Piano Concerto no.2, op. 27, a work of extraordinary technical
difficulties, was first performed by Gordon Watson and the B.B.C. Symphony
Orchestra under John Hollingsworth at the Albert Hall on 14th August, 1956.
It obviously made a tremendous impression, since it is the work most discussed
by my many correspondents. The Aubade for horn and strings, op. 28,
was written for the legendary Dennis Brain and the Aldeburgh Festival of
1955 and, as the composer said during a radio broadcast, "How marvellously
he played it for it is not at all easy." Despite its brevity it is not trite
and it captures something of the glow of Poem and, in the middle section,
generates some excitement.
Part 2
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