by Richard D. C. Noble
In August 1998 Arthur Butterworth will be celebrating his 75th birthday
and has recently completed his 100th opus, a string quartet. It is the
first time he has chosen to confront himself with this challenging genre
which is rather surprising when we consider the wide range and depth
of his creative output. One would like to think that the musical world
will be eagerly awaiting the completion of this new work which will
undoubtedly underline a new facet of his inspiration. Unfortunately,
despite all that he has achieved, Arthur Butterworth is little known
outside his native North of England (since strictly speaking he is a
Lancastrian) except in the rather confined world of the brass band for
which he has provided effective music that has been widely played. His
extensive output of orchestral scores, which includes four symphonies,
several concertos and other large-scale works, ensemble music of great
variety and some very telling vocal and choral pieces has all been highly
praised in its time but little has established itself in the regular
repertory.
It is a fate that has befallen many composers, of course, but for Arthur
Butterworth one problem has been that virtually nothing of his has ever
been commercially recorded. At one time this was never considered to be
very important but today recordings can make all the difference between
a composer who becomes well known and one who remains in relative obscurity.
Recordings are disseminated throughout the world and they also become
the easy option for broadcasting organisations, not least the BBC. Once
on record the music starts to be heard by ever-widening audiences and
if they like what they hear they demand more and the snowball effect gathers
pace. No composer is more deserving of this recognition than Arthur Butterworth,
who was appointed MBE in 1995. One can only hope that on the occasion
of his 75th birthday something can be done to draw attention to his remarkable
achievement.
Perhaps we should state straightaway that Arthur is in no way related
to the composer George Butterworth with whom he has sometimes been
confused. He was born in Manchester on 4 August 1923. On leaving school
he worked in a solicitor's office for a time before joining the Royal
Engineers in 1942. On demobilisation, he entered the Royal Manchester
College of Music (RMCM) in 1947, studying composition with Richard Hall
for two years; also trumpet and conducting. As a student of Richard
Hall - before Goehr, Maxwell Davies, Birtwistle and Elgar Howarth came
on the scene - he was inculcated with the ideals of the Second Viennese
School but soon rejected it as not being what he wanted to say. He had
already written some pieces before entering the College and his first
acknowledged opus, Now on Land and Sea Descending, a setting
for contralto and orchestra of 'The Vesper Hymn' by Longfellow, was
one of the pieces he submitted as evidence to the RMCM that he was suitable
to be taken on as a composition student. This was eventually performed
at a college concert and provided Butterworth with his first experience
of conducting a proper orchestra, albeit a student one.
Shortly after the war, being stationed in Germany at Flensburg, he
became much influenced by German church music and by a group of musicians
he met who opened his ears and eyes to what music was really about.
The German influence is reflected in some of his earliest pieces dating
from 1947 such as the Organ Partita on a German Chorale and the
Hindemithian Oboe Sonata, all destined for performance at the
RMCM student concerts, Then, at the behest of Richard Hall and with
some reluctance, he wrote his only strictly 12-note composition, the
Trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon, and had to admit when it was performed
that he rather liked it. The Modal Suite had a curious genesis.
One week-end Richard Hall took all his composition students away for
a seminar. The object was to go to a place without a piano so that the
pianists would not be able to rely on working at the keyboard. Each
had to write a work for the available instruments some of them played.
Hence the combination of flute, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet (Butterworth's
own instrument), violin, viola and cello. His Suite was somewhat tongue-in-cheek
and rustic, using quasi-folk modal tunes. He later used the first movement
as a trio section in his Gigues, Op. 42.
The first 'good' piece the composer considers he wrote as a student
was the Suite for strings of 1948, Its up-beat opening in ¾
time was inspired by Elgar's Severn Suite for brass band which
for some reason appealed to Butterworth. It was his first work to be
broadcast by the BBC with the London String Orchestra under Maurice
Miles but only on the Latin American Service on Short Wave. An in-house
recording on a huge 20" disc was made of the broadcast which the composer
was invited to hear but which, for contractual reasons, then had to
be destroyed. What a waste! In 1952 Butterworth himself conducted two
further performances of the work but no recordings were made and the
work has recently been revived by the English Sinfonia at Stevenage
on 26 October 1997.
Butterworth had better luck with the Sinfonietta of 1949, written
very much under the influence of Vaughan Williams, which was accepted
by the BBC and broadcast with the BBC Northern under John Hopkins in
1953 and later performed a few more times with other orchestras. Another
piece inspired by Vaughan Williams was the Legend, dating from
1950, which he wrote for the Buxton Spa Orchestra of which at the time
he was a member for the summer season of 1950. Butterworth took some
lessons with VW at about this time when his influence was at its zenith
and was told by the great man that eventually he would 'grow out of
it' and that he was not then to think himself 'unfaithful' to him. A
generous and perceptive comment to make to an incipient young composer
with much potential inside him. Inspired he must always have been by
this great figure in British music, but his mature music has followed
a rather different path, being profoundly influenced by the spacious
surroundings of the Airedale moors where he has made his home, not confined
to the more parochial English countryside which once led Elisabeth Lutyens,
that naughty girl, to condemn a whole generation of British composers
as 'the cowpat school'. He might well have heeded another pronouncement
coming from that provocative lady, namely 'If you are a composer, you
bloody well compose!'
Butterworth has never ceased to compose throughout his professional
life. Some pieces, relevant enough at the time they were written, he
can now dismiss as being of no importance, but the core of his output
is based on very solid foundations. His large-scale orchestral scores
have an expansive Nordic quality almost unique in British music and
may best be demonstrated in his four symphonies, the first of which
was premiered by Sir John Barbirolli in 1957 and brought to the Proms
in 1958, heralding what seemed at the time to be a powerful new British
symphonist, Unfortunately Butterworth's broad atmospheric gestures,
anchored in the tradition of an earlier generation were entirely out
of tune with the changing fashions of the 1960s. Always true to himself
and somewhat in conflict with the advice of his teacher, Richard Hall,
he came to the fore at the wrong time and his music has never established
itself in the way it deserves. He lists Elgar, Holst, Bliss, Ireland,
Finzi and Bax (but not Delius) as composers from whose music be has
received inspiration quite apart from Vaughan Williams but he feels
real spiritual attachment to Sibelius and composers of the northern
school. Perhaps his attraction for the wide open spaces which comes
through so forcefully in so much of his music was first triggered by
the experience of finding himself undergoing military training in Spey
Bay near Lossiemouth in the highlands of Scotland at the start of his
war service. He found it a remote and strangely mystical region which
had a profound effect on him and which he has subsequently revisited
in more benign circumstances, but the environment of the Yorkshire moors
where he has made his home offers space enough to feed his inspiration.
Not for nothing did he name his house at Embsay near Skipton, where
he has lived with his wife and family for many years, 'Pohjola' after
a Finnish legend of the Kalevala.
After leaving the RMCM, Butterworth began his professional career
as a trumpeter with the Scottish National Orchestra (1949-1955) and
then with the Hallé (1955-1962). Here he learnt all he ever needed
to know about the orchestra and how to write for it and has always regarded
the years he spent with these two great orchestras as among the best
in his life. He also taught brass for the former West Riding Education
Department for a few years until being appointed lecturer in composition
at Huddersfield University Music Department, a post he came to loathe
and finally gave up in 1980, leaving himself totally free to compose
and to conduct. In 1962 he had been appointed associate conductor of
the Huddersfield Philharmonic Society and in 1964 became permanent conductor,
a post he found much to his taste, leaving only in 1993. He has guest-conducted
many other orchestras, mainly in concerts where his own works have been
featured, not least some of the BBC orchestras, but has found that since
reaching the age of 60 this aspect of free-lance work for the BBC has
virtually ceased. Since 1969 he has had a particularly happy association
with the Settle Orchestra in the Yorkshire Dales where, against all
the odds of rural life, a very efficient amateur orchestra is maintained
which regularly engages good professional soloists and has a professional
leader.
Butterworth's success in writing effective music for brass bands may
be explained by the fact that he began his musical life as a brass player
in early youth with the Besses o' the Barn Band in Manchester and soon
acquired a full understanding of its capabilities but he has a love-hate
relationship with the brass band movement because of the trivial nature
of so much brass band mentality as regards the quality of its music.
His own music for the medium falls uncomfortably between two stools:
it is not popular enough in the brass band sense and not contemporary
enough for the intellectuals outside the brass band movement but he
is in constant demand for new pieces and he took on the directorship
of the National Youth Brass Band of Great Britain in 1975 but eventually
handed over to Roy Newsome, a true man o' brass.
Let us now return to Butterworth's time with the Scottish National
Orchestra in the early 1950s in order to examine his progress as a fully
professional composer. Worth mentioning for sure is the Romanza
for horn and strings which he composed in 1954 for the then principal
horn of the SNO, by all accounts an eccentric character whose grandmother
was said to be a Red Indian squaw. He never performed it, but it was
eventually done by Ifor James with the BBC Northern in 1958. By this
time Butterworth had moved from Scotland back to Manchester to join
the Hallé and his reputation had become firmly established with
the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 at the Cheltenham Festival on 19
July 1957 by the Hallé under Sir John Barbirolli. This was the
work in which the composer found his true mode of expression, creating
a great edifice of soaring harmony and spacious sound in the spirit
of Sibelius. Dedicated to his wife (they had been married in 1952),
the symphony was very slow in gestation. He had set down his first ideas
one September afternoon back in 1949 when he was still technically a
student although about to join the SNO. The hectic life of an orchestral
musician both with the SNO and then, on moving back to Manchester to
join the Hallé in 1955, setting up house and settling down in
new surroundings allowed little time for serious composition but eventually
he did find the time and the symphony was finally completed on 6 March
1956. The Cheltenham concert, which was nationally broadcast, was skilfully
planned with Rawsthorne's Street Corner Overture and Ireland's
Concertino Pastorale to serve as a warm-up for the new premiere.
The concert was rounded off, after the interval, with Beethoven's fifth
symphony, ensuring a packed house, and the new symphony was given a
splendid performance and was received with tumultuous applause. The
music critics, too, were suitably impressed although it may have been
a little disconcerting for the composer to discover that for The Times
critic the last movement was an effective evocation of huge crowds of
people heaving and roaring together at the end of a football match when
what he intended to depict was a wild northern landscape in winter.
The symphony went on to enjoy a successful London premiere at the Proms,
the following year, also under Barbirolli, again in company with Beethoven,
and to have several later performances including two with BBC orchestras
under the composer's baton but astonishingly it is the only work of
his ever to have been performed at a Prom which must count as a frustration
for him.
It was in 1958 that Butterworth was to write one of his most effective
and most often performed shorter works for orchestra, The Path Across
the Moors, and another evocation of wide open spaces with a haunting
melody which came to him one day when idly strumming on the piano and
which enchanted his wife. The piece is descriptive of a favourite walk
he took almost daily across the moors with his dog, "Piccolo" and conjures
up a wonderful atmosphere. Two years later he wrote a similar piece,
The Quiet Tarn (Malham), scored for chamber orchestra. This was
given its first performance with the BBC Northern under George Hurst
together with The Green Wind, which is not inspired by the Yorkshire
moors but by a villa of that name on the Côte d'Azur. Meantime
he had written another evocative work on a larger scale, premiered with
the BBC Scottish under Maurice Miles, Three Nocturnes: Northern Summer
Nights, inspired by summer nights spent not on the moors but in
the more remote Highlands of Scotland, taking as his starting point
a work he had written for solo piano for a fellow student at the RMCM
in 1949, Lakeland Summer Nights, but using new material in the
final movement.
In 1965 came A Dales Suite, his first significant work for
brass band, commissioned by Ermysteds Grammar School in Skipton. It
was soon published and has enjoyed a great many performances both in
this country and also in Australia. Many years later in 1981, he re-scored
the work for orchestra and this splendid new version was premiered by
the BBC Concert Orchestra under Ashley Lawrence in 1982 and has also
been heard in Australia performed by the Lane Cove Orchestra.
When the First Symphony was performed in Bradford in November 1957
it made such a strong impression that the Bradford Subscription Concerts
Society immediately commissioned Butterworth to write them a follow-up
symphony for the centenary of its association with the Hallé
orchestra in 1965. Like the First Symphony, No. 2 was long in gestation
but the composer did not get down to serious work on it until 1963-4.
It proved to be another large panoramic work and was duly performed
by Sir Adrian Boult with the Hallé during the centenary season,
which of course also marked the centenaries of both Sibelius and Nielsen,
the significance of which did not escape the composer's attention.
In the meantime, Butterworth had written another very substantial
work, unofficially for the BBC Northern but not commissioned or paid
for by the BBC. This was The Moors, a suite for large orchestra
and organ which evokes the spirit of the moors of northern England at
four different seasons of the year, four times of the day and under
four differing kinds of weather. It reality it is another full-scale
symphony and was first performed under Stanford Robinson in January
1963.
Butterworth's next work on a large scale, A Moorland Symphony,
was written for the Saddleworth Festival of 1967 and set words by the
little known Saddleworth poet, Ammon Wrigley (1872-1946). It was the
result of an Arts Council commission and was successfully premiered
under the composer's baton with the BBC Northern and the Saddleworth
Choral Society. Three years later he was commissioned to write another
rather different work for the Saddleworth Festival. This was Trains
in the Distance for speaker and tape with chorus and orchestra.
The poems all deal with nostalgia about the decline of steam power,
It was later also performed at the 1976 York Festival in the National
Railway Museum. A tape of this performance was made and is believed
to be still on sale in the NRM gift shop in York. Unfortunately the
performance was not as well rehearsed as it should have been. Butterworth
has always had an interest in railway history and serves occasionally
in the book-shop of his local village steam railway on fine summer Sundays.
The most successful of all Butterworth's numerous pieces for brass
band was Three Impressions, which has been played all over the
world. It was written for the Northumberland Youth Band and premiered
at the Morpeth Festival in 1968. It has titles descriptive of the 19th
century industrial revolution in Northumberland one of which, 'Puffing
Billy' describes the first crude railway engine and was adapted from
a Granada TV documentary on the Salvation Army transmitted in 1967 and
called 'The Warmongers' for which Butterworth contributed the music.
The Triton Suite for brass septet, commissioned by the Antonine
Brass Ensemble in Scotland, has also enjoyed wide success, especially
in the US, where it was published by Robert King Music. Among other
brass pieces of the period, Caliban written primarily for the
Brighouse & Rastrick Band, became well-known because it was chosen
as a test piece for the National Championship at the RAH but the composer
would prefer such works to be respected as concert rather than mere
contest pieces.
The work-list will reveal the wide variety of brass band and ensemble
music Butterworth was writing in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly for specific
performers and for educational purposes, some perhaps of transitory
value but much of durable worth. To examine each one of these pieces
here would take too much space and detract from the major works that
should command our attention, but certain works possess unusual features
well worth noting. One such is Ancient Sorceries commissioned
by the counter-tenor Owen Wynne for performance at a Radio Manchester
recital in 1975. The title comes from a tale of the supernatural by
Algernon Blackwood, the poetry from Walter de la Mare. Because of the
ethereal voice of the counter-tenor, the less than robust sound of the
recorder as opposed to, say, the flute, and the spindly quality of the
harpsichord, the composer strove to create a 'fairy' piece quite unlike
anything else he had written, skilfully avoiding the kind of pastiche
so many composers descend to when writing for early instruments with
a few 'wrong' notes added to bring their music into the 20th century.
Another curious work, The Owl and the Pussy Cat, dates from
1978 and arose because a friend in Denmark wanted something for the
improbable combination of brass band, jazz group and a small chorus
for a concert to be given in Hjørring. Apart from anything else
was he to set Danish words? Happily English is well spoken and understood
in Denmark and Edward Lear's grandfather had been Danish so he compromised
and settled for the latter. The amateur Danish performance was none
too successful but the composer was able to put on a more satisfactory
performance at the Huddersfield Polytechnic Music Department later on.
Nor is the work as zany as it might at first appear. Butterworth saw
a symbolistic, dark surrealist quality lying behind Lear's humour concerning
the predatory nature of cats and owls, brought forcefully home to him
on his nightly walks with his dog, occasionally rescuing other hapless
creatures of the night. An animal lover, he is chairman of the local
branch of the RSPCA. We have here an outwardly eccentric and humorous
piece with a much darker hidden message.
In the orchestral field Butterworth was to produce some lighter pieces
in the early 1970s. Italian Journeys written in 1971 for the
BBC Concert Orchestra and eventually performed under Ashley Lawrence
in 1974, inhabits a very different world from his northern environment
and is an evocation of his travels with the Hallé in Italy in
1957 with movements descriptive of Rome (Toccata), Ravello (Nocturne)
and Rimini (Tarantella). Another lighter work, Gigues,
which we have already mentioned in connection with the youthful Modal
Suite, was written for the Oldham Orchestra in 1973 but was later
taken up by the BBC Concert Orchestra and other ensembles and very much
wears its heart on its sleeve.
Then came the magisterial Organ Concerto, written for Gillian Weir
and performed under the composer's direction at the 1973 Huddersfield
Festival. It was also played later with the BBC Philharmonic. It was
the first of his major works in the concerto form to be followed in
1978 by the Violin Concerto, first performed by Granville Morris with
the Westmorland Orchestra in November of that year. Its first fully
professional performance came later in 1981 with the BBC Scottish and
with no less a soloist than Nigel Kennedy. When rehearsing the concerto,
Kennedy asked the composer "Have you played it much yourself then?"
and was utterly astonished to be told that the composer was no string
player and thought that he must be joking for he found the violin part
so idiomatically written that it could only have been created by a good
fiddle player. With such qualities we may well ask ourselves why more
violinists have not taken up this soaring and attractive work, and indeed
why more attention has not been paid to the Third Symphony, Sinfonia
Borealis, which much preoccupied the composer from the mid-1970s
and finally came to fruition in a midday Prom broadcast from the Royal
Northern College of Music in Manchester one Friday at the end of November
1979 with the BBC Northern under Bryden Thomson. Hardly prime time listening
for so important a work. Inspired by Sibelius and the music of the north
and at the same time paying homage to Vaughan Williams, it is another
atmospheric score on a large canvas evoking wide and horizonless landscapes
of isolation and solitude, as impressive as any of his essays exploring
this territory which be has made so especially his own.
Not long afterwards, Butterworth was commissioned to write a piece
for the Cotswold Sinfonietta, Nex Vulpinus. It takes the song
'The Fox' by Peter Warlock as the basis for a 'black' scherzo lamenting
the death of the fox in the hunt. Like The Owl and The Pussy Cat
it has other implications for the composer, an ardent anti-blood sports
campaigner. Its success led to another commission the following year,
Beowulf. Both were premiered at the English Music Festival at
Cirencester, unfortunately in a church with notoriously poor acoustics
but both works have enjoyed impressive performances at other venues
since.
1981 gave birth to the symphonic study for large orchestra September
Morn as the result of an Arts Council bursary award. Inspired by
the famous painting of that name, 'Matinée Septembre' by Paul
Chabas, it was written in honour of the centenary of Arnold Bax but,
alas, has never been performed. Sad, too, that what must have been an
amusing piece for two oboes and cor anglais entitled Leprechauns,
commissioned by three young players who never acknowledged the receipt
of the MS nor paid for it, has remained unheard. The players, as it
were, absconded.
By 1982 Butterworth was already planning a Fourth Symphony which he
finished in 1984, but the main themes had been in the back of his mind
since 1972. The scherzo for this last symphony was conceived one bright
cold frosty December afternoon when he was driving alone through Lossie
Forest in the Spey Bay near Lossiemouth and needless to say its whole
conception is inspired by the spacious, ever-changing northern landscapes
from which the composer derives so much uplift and in many ways carries
on the spirit of the First Symphony composed so many years before. It
was first performed at a public concert on 8 May 1986 by the BBC Philharmonic
under Bryden Thomson. The composer considers it to be one of his most
fulfilling large-scale works, yet it has been entirely neglected in
the years which have followed. This does not encourage Butterworth to
create more symphonies which take so long in gestation. By contrast
a Cheltenham Festival commission to mark his 60th birthday
in 1983 resulted in his first really substantial chamber work, the Piano
Trio, first performed by the Music Group of London and given many times
since. It was composed in a hurry without much time for self-conscious
reflection and has a fluency which makes it stand apart and we must
regret that he has not found the time and the inspiration to create
more works of this kind.
Perhaps Butterworth's most successful work for the brass band has
been Odin, a work of symphonic depth first played at the International
Trumpet Guild in 1986 which had the distinction of being chosen as the
test piece at the 1989 National Brass Band Championship finals and heard
no less than 22 times in succession at the Royal Albert Hall. The winners
of the competition were Desford Brass, who later commissioned two further
works from Butterworth Paean and Passacaglia, the latter
founded on the notation of the Passacaglia in Brahms' Fourth
Symphony, and both were enthusiastically received. Also dating from
about this time came Kendal Clock, written for the Westmorland
Orchestra to celebrate the 800th anniversary of Kendal's
charter. The work is based on the seven tunes, one heard each day of
the week, played by Kendal Town Hall clock which Butterworth successfully
worked into a fantasia.
Another highly unusual commission came the composer's way from New
Zealand to write a brass band work to celebrate the 700th
anniversary of the establishment of Maori culture. The composer was
sent a recording of some rather simplistic Maori folk tunes arranged
by the late Inia Te Wiata and sung by a girls' choir which formed the
basis for a suitably challenging work which became the Sinfonia Maoriana
for brass. By then he was working on a substantial Viola Concerto which
was not brought to fruition until 1992 and then given a broadcast performance
by the BBC Philharmonic under Barry Wordsworth with Peter Lale as soloist
in a concert to mark his 70th birthday but not transmitted
until May 1994. This was the first full-scale concerto he bad written
since the Violin Concerto of 1978, although Summer Music of 1986,
written for Alison Birkinshaw and performed with the Settle Orchestra
in 1987 is, in effect, a successful bassoon concerto. There are not
so many good viola concertos in the contemporary repertoire for this
one, with its tempestuous moto perpetuo finale and virtuoso writing,
to be ignored.
A symphonic study for large orchestra, Northern Light, was
commissioned by the Leeds Symphony Orchestra for its centenary in 1991.
This is another northern impression depicting the northern moorland,
in a midsummer midnight and early dawn. Also dating from 1991 is Solent
Forts, commissioned by English Heritage for the retirement of Lord
Montagu of Beaulieu as first chairman of EH. He actually chose the title
of the piece as being appropriate to where he lives in Hampshire and
with the notion of the many defences round the Solent - Drake and the
Armada; the Napoleonic forts and D- Day in 1944. It was first performed
by the Wren Orchestra at Kenwood and led to a brass band version, performed
the following year by Howard Snell. The Concerto alla Veneziana,
commissioned by the National Youth Brass Band, was set for a Saturday
afternoon concert for the Proms in 1992 but alas, was cancelled because
John Major apparently pressurised the BBC to relay test matches on Radio
3 on Saturday afternoons. Effectively a trumpet concerto, it was eventually
given a high profile performance at the York Barbican with Maurice Murphy
as solo trumpet. The composer was later persuaded to re-score it for
large orchestra for the BBC Philharmonic with the promise of a performance
that has yet to take place.
Another frustration for the composer in recent years was the commission
by the Hallé for a midwinter concert of The Great Frost.
Claire Bloom, who suggested the poetry and was to have been the narrator,
pulled out of the project and the work was never performed. Kent Nagano,
who was to have conducted, by way of compensation, asked the composer
if he could write a piece for large orchestra and brass band for the
Hallé to play at their last season at the old Free Trade Hall
before moving to the new Bridgewater Hall. Also the CWS was celebrating
the 150th anniversary of the Cooperative Movement in Lancashire
(always based in Manchester). Thus came about The Mancunians.
The composer found some of his inspiration from the impressionist paintings
of Adolphe Valette, the teacher of Lowrie. The CWS provided their own
excellent brass band from Glasgow and the performance became a resounding
success and a triumph in every way. Another successful recent work has
been the concert overture Ragnarök commissioned by the Isle
of Man government for the Manx Youth Orchestra in 1995. The Ragnarök
stone in the Isle of Man is a Viking relic.
In 1997, came another triumph with the new Cello Concerto, a somewhat
classically-based work cast in four movements in lyrical mood which
was premiered under the composer's direction at Huddersfield Town Hall
on 18 January 1997 with a brilliant young cellist, Rebecca Gilliver,
as soloist, to great acclaim by all who were privileged to attend. In
the summer he wrote some light entertainment music, Morris Dancers,
for four enthusiastic horn players in Huddersfield and responded to
a commission from the Mayfield Wind Ensemble by providing Actaeon's
Ride for twelve wind instruments and double bass and then composed
a serious concert piece, the Saxhorn Sonata for tenor horn in E flat,
an instrument for which there is a very limited solo repertoire and
a need for more. The tenor horn has a haunting quality and the work
is in part inspired by J.M. Barrie's play, Mary Rose, for which
Norman O'Neill wrote effective incidental music in 1920.
One hundred opuses and still the muse constantly beckons! But where
are the commercial recordings and broadcasts that could bring all this
music continuously to delight our ears? Perhaps in 1998, of all years,
something can be done. In the meantime Arthur continues to walk across
the moors with his dog, no longer, alas, with "Piccolo", nor "Flute"
who succeeded him, nor even "Basso" (a giant poodle), but now with an
Airedale of lengthening years named "Bruno", and all the time gaining
fresh inspiration in the ever-changing light to uplift us all. Many
happy returns!
© Richard D.C. Noble
The author would like to acknowledge the unstinting help he has received
from the composer in providing through protracted correspondence so
much invaluable information concerning the genesis of his compositions
during the preparation of this article.
