This year and next see the centenaries of the births of several exceptional British composers, whose music has – it seems, naturally – suffered almost total neglect since their deaths, seemingly going the way of almost all posthumous flesh. They were very different composers with regard to the language and expressive aims of their compositions, but they were each men of considerable artistic integrity, and I knew them all.
The oldest was London-born Peter Racine Fricker (pictured) – a descendent of the French poet. At the time of my own musical awakening – late-1940s & -early-1950s – he was becoming widely regarded as the composer to watch.
Peter was born in 1920. In the 1955 edition of their indispensable book The Record Guide Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor commented “Peter Racine Fricker may well prove to be the most important British composer of his generation.”
Well, of course, it didn’t work out that way, but it doesn’t mean they were wrong – after all, there was a handful of significant British composers of that generation, born in the four or five years immediately following World War One, each of whom – in varying degrees – made their mark around the same time: Richard Arnell, Fricker, Robert Simpson, Malcolm Arnold and Iain Hamilton.
With the possible exception of Arnold, the major works of all of them – each exceptionally gifted – has fallen into neglect. Why should this be so? Well, there are many reasons, almost none of which has to do with the quality of their music, which remains the same since the day it was written.
Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor were not fools. Their ears were finely attuned to musical quality, and they were not alone in their praise, not only of Fricker but also of his contemporaries, as well as of older, more established figures whose music is also, today, almost never heard.
In those days, of course, there were classical record companies – principal of which were EMI and Decca, both British, long-established, whose artists were almost exclusively native musicians, or those whose reputation was made or significantly enhanced by appearances in this country – before, during and after World War Two.
One only has to consider Herbert von Karajan, whose career was made in Britain in the decade following the War, or Otto Klemperer, whose reputation burgeoned when he came to settle in London – in so far as his recordings and concerts were concerned.
Both great conductors were exclusively associated with one of the greatest orchestras in the World at the time – the Philharmonia, which had been formed in 1945 essentially as a recording orchestra in the wake of the decimated ensembles. In that regard, the Hallé in Manchester should always be excepted – but its ‘provincial’ base, as perceived at the time, detracted from its international standing.
Today, those great companies, with their incomparable artistic legacies – including regular monthly complete opera issues, recordings by the greatest singers, conducted by the finest and most experienced musical directors of the opera-house – are no more, the great names of EMI and Decca at best forming small parts of major international ‘media’ conglomerates, with often less-than-wholly-admirable artists recording the same repertoire over and over again, with the same dispiriting sales figures: we need another set of Beethoven Symphonies as much as General Custer needed more Red Indians.
Well, that’s how it was, and there are (for those who have managed to survive) many reasons for looking back to the first few decades of the post-war period through rose-tinted spectacles – yet I wonder if, in sixty or so years’ time, record companies (if they still exist) will be able to draw on broadcast performances from the BBC with the same guarantee of musical excellence as our memories and surviving LPs and CDs attest.
The BBC now has five symphony orchestras, each with its individual management and artist-and-repertoire structure. In one sense they appear to be competing with one another, as it’s all pretty much the same old, same old with a smattering of something a bit different – actually, more ‘fashionable’, giving the critics something to write about – not for their readers, but to convince their sub-editors that a column on ‘classical music’ is worth printing because of its ‘wide appeal’ – and not rather than being so often subjected to the ‘delete’ button.
The removal of music as a subject from the National Curriculum a few years ago by Michael Gove was the worst and most offensive act of artistic barbarism by any government since the War. The notion that ‘music’ can be studied by playing guitars or drums after school hours is the attitude of a profoundly uncivilised individual. What was removed was the history of musical art – Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms, Elgar, Britten – and Malcolm Arnold – from the experience of the country’s young people.
I am not suggesting they should be sat in a school hall listening to a String Quartet by Haydn or Bartók (though, today, our general musical ecumenicism may produce some surprisingly successful results were that to happen) – but to remove the subject entirely from the experience of children was cultural vandalism on a nuclear scale – more so, as it had first been placed there by a National Government during World War Two.
Children, and adults too for that matter, can hardly be expected to express an opinion on something with which they are never given the opportunity of coming into contact – all art, including drama, literature, painting, and classical music, is their heritage – and it’s free. It is not something that should have been subject to the whim of a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politician.
Classical Music remains – just about – part of the country’s aesthetic heritage, and not because a thirty-something Scandinavian conductor has been appointed to a BBC Orchestra. No-one can reasonably expect a conductor of such provenance to have knowledge of British music of the last 100 years – other than Britten, or a bit of Peter Maxwell Davies or Harrison Birtwistle, with – may be – a smattering of Richard Rodney (not Robert Russell) Bennett – of whose names they may have heard in the course of their recent studies.
As I said earlier, the music of those British composers, born 100 years ago, remains the same as the day the ink dried on their manuscripts. Fricker’s music inspired two of the greatest British critics of their, or any other, generation, to put their reputations on the line, and to become subject, as we all are, to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. We owe it to ourselves – and to our children – to investigate just what it is in Fricker’s music that so moved those musical commentators sixty-five years ago. The music hasn’t changed: it’s us – or have we?
Robert Matthew-Walker
I don’t disagree with anything in this article. It makes me want to hear more music by these British Composers. I do have some recordings by Composers that are mentioned, but it would be most helpful to me and I expect other readers, if Mr Matthew-Walker could give us examples of some of the particular Works that in his opinion would help us enter more into the creative world of each of these Composers. Obviously it would be most helpful if there happen to be recordings, including in the second hand market, of the Works that Mr Matthew-Walker recommends.
It’s nice to think that recordings of these composers’ finest works did exist, but that is not true by any means – at least, not entirely true, but in the case of the most neglected of the five, Fricker (Arnell, Arnold and Simpson are all well represented in recent catalogues), I would suggest five unrecorded works that made a deep impression on me at the time, and which I recall with admiration. When I was at RCA in London I licensed the Louisville Orchestra’s recording of Peter’s First Symphony, which I issued on the mid-price Gold Seal label – it’s not the greatest performance one can imagine, but is still quite good, but the unrecorded major works are the Litany for double string orchestra (superb piece), the Toccata for piano and orchestra – this was the set piece for the first International Liverpool Piano Competition, won by my friend Joaquin Achucarro, beating John Ogdon into second place – Joaquin gave the London premiere with the LSO under Skitch Henderson (a pupil of Schoenberg), the staggering oratorio The Vision of Judgement and the Fifth Symphony for Organ and Orchestra I’d also like to hear again the Piano Concerto (for Harriet Cohen), the Rhapsodia Concertante for violin and orchestra (for Christian Ferras) and the Concertante for three pianos and strings. The recent Toccata CD of Peter’s organ music is well worth having, but it’s those big works I’ve mentioned that ought certainly to be recorded – and performed by the BBC, should anyone there pay attention to such matters any more.
May I add to Bob’s list a recording easily found, on Naxos 8571374, of Fricker’s Three String Quartets, played by the Villiers Quartet. Colin
Impossible to take issue with anything in Bob’s typically trenchant article. ‘Offensive’ is the best word I’ve so far encountered to describe M. Gove’s barbarism towards music in schools. Apropos Fricker: I must re-acquaint myself with the pieces that I knew as an Edinburgh music undergraduate in the 1970s. One of my lecturers there, the pianist Colin Kingsley, was a vigorous advocate on behalf of this music. I remember well his Radio 3 series of piano music by Faure and Fricker. An intriguing and provocative coupling, quite aside from the alliterative link between the two composers!
Essential reading from Bob’s pen. Earlier than the Brits he mentions, I’d add William Alwyn, born in 1905. A composer a version of whose memoirs, I’m shamed to admit, I rejected as a young, green publisher’s reader in the 60s (I rejected Piatogorsky’s too). Media juggernauts, the arts industry generally, influence, decide, what the majority should see and hear. Like it or not, they judge who is “worthy”, bankable, who isn’t. Back in the day new-broom William Glock and his BBC captains – Robert Simpson and Alan Walker notably excepted – had a lot to answer for: exciting if you were a European or Soviet (preferably persecuted), better still a radical experimentalist; dismal if you were a Brit (worse, a “tonal” one) born pre-war. They made sure, took care anyway, that nothing of Alwyn’s was programmed at the Proms following a Sargent outing in 1964. It took until the end of Ponsonby’s drab reign, 1982, for another work of his to be heard, the Fifth Symphony. Humphrey Searle – who put Liszt on the British map – fared marginally better (he’d studied with Webern). But another, Reginald Smith Brindle (who’d studied with Dallapiccola and Pizzetti), got only one hearing, in 1964. Rawsthorne, too, didn’t fare so well. One could continue. Significant/celebrated one moment, insignificant/dismissed the next, forgotten yesterday, famous today, forgotten tomorrow … it goes in waves, one sees it all the time. Composers, performers, writers, artists, the theatre – no one is exempt. One way or another, right/wrong people, place, time, admirers and denigrators, chemistries of favour and dislike, come into everyone’s story. Without rhyme or reason. “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” as Bob says …
Brilliant article, especially about the lack of music teaching in school. I know the foundations of my own understanding and appreciation of music – in its widest sense – were laid in a post-war state primary school by teachers dedicated to the serious teaching of recorders. Even if they couldn’t afford to buy an instrument, every child had the opportunity to learn because the school provided a stock of descant recorders, cleansed with dettol after every session. A small handful of more advanced children learned the treble recorder – the same fingering but in F instead of C, itself quite an achievement for 9 year olds to master. The repertoire was soundly grounded on small pieces “From Purcell to Handel”, genuine folk tunes and a wide variety of recorder manageable later items. Thanks to the skill and enthusiasm of those teachers, our little school, on an impoverished housing estate, created a recorder band sufficiently skilful to perform to other schools and even at the Froebel institute. It is shocking that these days most people are denied any sort of key to open the magical world of “real” music. All my understanding of music grew from those precious early years, where we learnt how to set three against two and appreciated just how major could be modified to minor – none of which is properly addressed by crudely strumming along to drums and guitars.
Thank you Bob, for such a perceptive article and I have also enjoyed reading our colleagues’ replies.
In the past 25 years SOMM has given me a great chance to embrace British composers of the 20th century, not least Rawsthorne, Alwyn, Doreen Carwithen, Ruth Gipps and Kenneth Leighton (although sadly, no Racine Fricker yet). 1900 to the present day, constitutes a golden era in British music and I’ve been privileged to discover and record many a treasure along the way. We’ve poured a great deal of energy and enthusiasm here in its support and promotion and we’ve been amply rewarded by a relatively modest coterie among the public and colleagues, friends and reviewers who have shown equal enthusiasm. However, unless people at the top, both in government and those in key positions within the music industry give it the support and recognition it deserves via increased exposure and performance, it will sadly remain a closed door. Alas, I can’t think of one person within the present government who would give music a second thought, let alone British music.
I have already complimented Bob personally on his Fricker article. His wide-ranging knowledge and perceptive and out-spoken writings are an example to us all. Before the pandemic stopped us all in our tracks, Bob and I, among others, were in correspondence about the release, hopefully, of Fricker’s splendid Horn Sonata, Op. 24, which John recorded with Ifor James, for Pye Golden Guinea, 1969. John was a great admirer of Fricker’s music, especially admiring The Vision of Judgement. Bob and I were hoping that the Fricker Sonata could be released, as an archive recording, together with Hindemith’s Horn Sonata (1939) and also his Sonata for Althorn and Piano, in E flat, also recorded by John and Ifor. The particular sticking point was finding out to whom the recording copyright now belonged. I’m hoping we will eventually be able to trace this, and be permitted to release these performances on CD.
There are many outstanding, neglected works by British composers which need a commercial recording, including, I am sure, works by Nicholas Maw, and also, among others, Symphonies Nos. 3, 5, 6 and 7 by John.
Bravo, Bob! I’ve put several paragraphs of the above on my Facebook page – attributed to me, of course! But seriously, if a country does not look after its own cultural heritage, no one else is going to do it. You take the example of Peter Racine Fricker, a composer whose music always seems excellent to me, when I get the chance to hear it. The works I know best are the Viola Concerto and the string quartets. I don’t want to get political – well, actually I do want to get political – but what the Tories have done to music education is all of a piece with their dismantling of half the things which in the past have made Britain look like a civilised country.
An excellent article, thank you Bob. Quite by chance I have recently reread the transcript of an interview conducted by Lewis Foreman with Fricker on 23 May 1981 when on a visit to London, published in the British Music Society Newsletter No 103 (September 2004). As a trustee of the Matyas Seiber Trust I was pleased to be reminded of Fricker’s comment on Seiber, with whom he studied – another forgotten composer of a slightly older generation – as was Seiber’s daughter Julia, Chair of our Trust. He said this: ‘My studies with Matyas Seiber were probably the biggest thing that happened to me in my whole life. He was a tremendous influence on my life’. Anyone with an interest in Fricker will, I think, be certain to enjoy reading Foreman’s wide-ranging interview; at the end of which Fricker himself says: ‘Thank you for your precision in asking your questions’. I would be happy to scan a copy of this to anyone who has so far commented, who would like to see it.
I too would like to put in a plea for the Rapsodia Concertante, of which I do have an elderly tape, but would much rather have a CD.
And finally – there is a Lyrita CD of the Vision of Judgement plus Symphony No 5 [REAM 1124 – £10.50 from Presto Classical]
Thank you Bob, for your superb and timely article, with which I can only agree wholeheartedly. It also brings wonderful memories, as in my first years in the UK, in the late sixties, I performed many times, in this country and abroad, Peter Racine Fricker’s Cello and Piano Sonata, introduced to it by another talented British composer, William Lloyd Webber. The work has been beautifully put on disc by Lloyd Webber’s son Julian and pianist/composer John McCabe.
In the same generation as Fricker, there is also the excellent Dutch-born British composer Gerard Schurmann, who died only two and a half months ago, aged 96.
After naming several post World War l composers, your article, says “……as well as older, more established figures whose music is also, today, almost never heard.”. Among the ‘older’, although they never became very ‘established’ I’d like to mention Alfred Nieman, whose great 2nd Piano Sonata I had the privilege to perform, and later record for an American label. Nieman, much admired by Pierre Boulez, as well as Yehudi and Hepzibah Menuhin, was born in the year many Governments agreed to play the first International War Games, 1914. Two years into the tragic contest, in 1916, the world lost – aged 31 – another major British talent, whose music I enjoy performing, George Butterworth.
Much work to be done by BMS, the British Music Society, by the BBC, Classic FM and record labels.