Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Music of Lennox Berkeley by Peter Dickinson

Review by: Winton Dean
Source: Music & Letters, Vol. 71, No. 3 (Aug., 1990), pp. 439-442
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/736793
Accessed: 24-11-2023 17:59 +00:00

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details of the original casts of Checkmate or Miracle in the Gorbals as it is to have that of
The Olympians. By referring to the index, finding the entry on a particular work is easy;
however, it would also have been useful for the page references to different genres to be shown
as subsections on the contents page.
In such a comprehensive reference work (and one written with such obvious affection for
the music too), it is regrettable that certain significant information, such as revisions of
works or changes of publishers, has not been included. For example, the orchestral work
MWlefantasque was originally published by Curwen in 1921 but is now held by Faber, and
it was revised twice, in 1937 and 1965; yet this information is not given. Similarly, the entry
for Discourse for Orchestra, composed in 1957, makes no mention of its 1966 revision,
despite the performance information referring to the premieres of its original and revised
versions. More confusing still, though, is the information relating to those works which were
rewritten or drawn from earlier ones. For instance, although the Concerto for two pianos
and orchestra (1924; revised 1925-9, 1950) is listed clearly as an independent work in the
catalogue of Bliss's complete works published by Novello in 1980, it appears here under the
'Other selected performances' entry for the Concerto for piano, tenor, strings and percussion
(1921). As this work was replaced by the Two-Piano Concerto it seems strange not to give the
latter an entry in its own right; it is, however, referred to in the index. On the other hand, in
another example, Fun and Games (1970; for two pianos (three hands), reworked from the
ballet Adam Zero), there is no separate reference in the index, and it only appears, in-
congruously, noted as a 'Selected performance' related to the ballet.
Inevitably, discographies date rapidly. However, in a book published in 1988 it is a pity
that recordings issued only up to 1985 are included. The omission of, for example, Vernon
Handley's recording of A Colour Symphony and the suite from Checkmate with the Ulster
Orchestra, on the Chandos label, is glaring. More surprisingly, important issues before 1985
are also omitted: Janet Hilton's performance of the Clarinet Quintet with the Lindsay
Quartet, and the recording by Eric Parkin of the Piano Sonata, which were both released in
1983, again by Chandos.
The most valuable section of the book is the bibliography, which would have followed
more appropriately after the list of works rather than after the discography. Here the author
has chosen succinct extracts from original reviews and articles; for instance Ernest
Newman's review in the Manchester Guardian of Bliss's incidental music to The Tempest
(1921) or the reviews of the first performance, at Gloucester, of A Colour Symphony. The
comprehensive references to Bliss's own fine writing are particularly useful. The only dis-
appointment here is that the opportunity was missed to compile a list of his own programme
notes for his works and of important notes by other writers; a reference, for instance, to
George Dannatt's masterly programme note on the Metamorphic Variations (jointly
dedicated to Dannatt and his wife Ann) would have been invaluable. A list of broadcasts by
and about Bliss would also have been welcome, as would have been information about his
unpublished writings; his important lectures to the Royal Institution in 1934 are mentioned
in the footnotes to the biographical section but nowhere else.
To be fair to Dr Craggs, such information was probably outside his brief; nevertheless, its
omission means that this most useful reference volume for all admirers of Bliss's work has to
be used with caution (and in conjunction with the 1980 catalogue) and with the reservations
I have expressed borne in mind.
ANDREW BURN

The Music of Lennox Berkeley. By Peter Dickinson. pp. 240. (Thames, London, 1988
[1989], ?15.95. ISBN 0-905210-47-6.)

This is the first book devoted to the music of the late Sir Lennox Berkeley. The fac
surprising: he is not the sort of composer who dives into the pool with a great splash, s
the spectators and setting the commentators by the ears. The element of reticence -al
diffidence-in the man is reflected in the music; he said, in connection with his C
Songs, that he disliked over-emphasis and reiteration. This of course has nothing to d

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bloodlessness in his music or his tastes; it is amusing to find him telling Britten in 1940 that
he loved Gzannz Schicchi ('You're the only person I can really share enthusiasm with about
that kind of music -most people are so infernally highbrow and inclined to turn up their
noses'). Nor did it restrict his output. He was in fact remarkably prolific, and not only in the
smaller forms: his oeuvre includes four symphonies, seven concertos, an oratorio and four
operas and runs to over 100 opus numbers, many of them comprising several works. It does
mean, however, that he is easily underestimated. Peter Dickinson notes that when Berkeley
writes about other composers whom he finds sympathetic he is apt to say things equally
applicable to his own work. On Faure, for instance:

The more closely one examines his music, the more one is brought to realise that the extreme sobriety of his
manner hides a talent of a highly individual kind. There is an element of understatement in his music which has
limited his public appeal. And it demands a correspondingly greater effort on the part of the listener than does
music of a more extrovert character.

Berkeley may well come to occupy in English music a position not unlike Faure's in France.
Peter Dickinson, a fellow composer and a friend for many years, is well qualified for his
task. His approach is roughly chronological, though not schematic. He says relatively little
about the chamber music, ignores the liturgical works, and picks and chooses elsewhere. A
number of key works-the First Symphony, Six Preludes for piano, the Piano Concert
Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila and the Stabat mater-are subjected to close analysis with
the aid of copious quotation. The music examples, 118 in number, some of considerabl
length, and including parallels from Britten, Walton and Poulenc, are among the book
strongest features. There are also liberal quotations from critics (many from Dickinso
himself) and from Berkeley's own writings, which often throw light on his aims and i
tentions. Dickinson's judgements are nearly always perceptive and soundly based; he is
particularly good when he touches on the relationship of Berkeley's music to that of h
contemporaries.
Berkeley's early career was not typical for English composers of his generation. A
starter, he did not study music seriously until he had gone down from Oxford, though t
fact that he got a Fourth in Modern Languages (he was partly French by descent an
fluent French speaker) suggests that his eye was not on orthodox studies. Reacting agains
the parochial and conservative English tradition represented by such composers as Bax an
Ireland (and Vaughan Williams?) he subjected himself to a rigorous course of discipl
under Nadia Boulanger in Paris. This introduced grit into the machine, and for a ti
seemed to dry up his lyrical impulse, but the ultimate effect was beneficial, especially w
blended with the influence of the younger but more precocious Benjamin Britten, a
friend and in one work a collaborator during the later 1930s. Maturity came suddenly abo
the beginning of the war; from the delightful Serenade for strings (1939) Berkeley's mus
spoke with a recognizable personal voice, though it passed through a number of phas
Dickinson does his best to plot Berkeley's development during these early years. But wh
as with Britten, a number of unpublished works have been rediscovered and broadc
recently, many have been lost, or at least mislaid. Berkeley had a genial knack of forgett
what he had written; I remember the surprise with which he discovered that he had com
posed a cello concerto as late as 1939. (Could there be an atavistic link with two of
forebears who omitted to marry until well embarked on family life, thereby cutting him
from an earldom?) That he possessed a native lyrical gift is clear from the haunting melo
of the song 'D'un vanneur de ble', composed as an undergraduate in 1925 before he had an
serious instruction. The French flavour is apparent even before Ravel gave him an introd
tion to Nadia Boulanger. More light will perhaps one day be thrown on the Paris yea
(c.1926-31), about which Dickinson does not say much. The affinities of the surviving mu
are naturally Parisian-Ravel, Les Six (especially Poulenc), Stravinsky-with an anti-
sensuous strain and a good deal of neo-Baroque and neo-Classical patterning. Dicki
detects a populist jazz element, which - to his obvious regret - Berkeley was later concern
to play down. His most ambitious work on returning to England was the oratorioJ
(1933-5), which we are told was damned 'with a wanton brutality of which English cr
have seldom been guilty'. It is a pity Dickinson does not quote them; the lesson might ha

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been salutary. Berkeley later withdrew the work, which was evidently badly performed
(though he gave it an opus number). Dickinson calls it a link between Belshazzar's Feast and
A Child of our Time. Incidentally the Three Choirs Festival performance of the Psalm
'Domini est terra' (1938) was in Worcester, not Gloucester Cathedral; it was my introduction
to Berkeley's music.
The relationship with Britten was of major importance. For some time Berkeley's attitude
to his younger colleague was one of humble admiration, almost of self-abasement. That he
was deeply influenced was to be expected; Dickinson, who makes some interesting com-
parisons between the two composers' settings of the same poems by Auden (some still un-
published), finds evidence that the influence also worked the other way. Berkeley said that
Britten encouraged him to write the sort of music he wanted to write, regardless of current
fashion. The result, manifest in the Serenade for strings, was a general loosening of style,
release from Stravinskyan dislocated rhythms, stronger emphasis on lyrical melody, and a
fresh eye for old tonal devices, triads, scales and cadence figures. In Dickinson's words, 'they
had both discovered the secret of rehabilitating traditional materials at a time when the
more advanced composers were moving in the opposite direction. As a result. Berkeley began
to lose the support of the modern music lobby without yet gaining wider public acceptance.'
It is interesting that Berkeley's enthusiasm for Les Illuminations found no echo in Nadia
Boulanger; on the contrary, 'we had a terrific argument about it'. As Dickinson nicely puts
it, 'Britten had given Berkeley the courage to contradict his domineering musical mother-
figure'. Wilfrid Mellers wrote in 1954: 'Berkeley's growth to maturity has been a growth in
lyrical conviction: as lyricism has become the essence of his music, so he has translated his
French idiom into English'. The chief precipitant in this process was Benjamin Britten.
After the war Berkeley extended his range, first into a new kind of religious music, then
into opera. The St. Teresa song cycle, the subject of Dickinson's most concentrated analysis,
and the Stabat mater are surely masterpieces by any standard, with a depth of emotional
commitment perfectly balanced by technical command. The two piano concertos that im-
mediately followed (one of them for two pianos) are also among Berkeley's freshest and most
inventive works; Dickinson plausibly attributes the burst of creativity at this period to
Berkeley's very happy marriage. He lays some stress on the employment of twelve-note rows
off and on from 1955, beginning with the Concertino for recorder, violin, cello and harp-
sichord, and suggests this may have reflected an urge to tighten up his style. But although
there is an increase of dissonance and temporary atonality, the treatment of serialism is far
from systematic and does not undermine Berkeley's basically tonal idiom, any more than the
use of a note-row in The Turn of the Screw modified Brittens. Berkeley may have used note-
rows as a starter or experimentally to see what happened, but he very soon dropped them;
Dickinson talks of him exorcizing the serial devil and 'casting off his serial shackles with
some relief'. Moreover the works of this phase, which include the Violin Concerto and the
Third Symphony, are not among the most successful, as Berkeley may have recognized, for
he moved away from them.
The operas are treated more superficially. Dickinson cites Colin Mason's pertinent com-
ment that the first three suffer from flawed librettos (this also applies to Castaway, not yet
written), but though he suggests that that of Nelson 'has been treated too reverentially by
the composer' he makes no attempt to go into the matter. The Dinner Engagement, as he
recognizes, comes off well in the theatre, but there is something amiss with the much more
ambitious Nelson, for all its abundance of attractive and inventive music. Berkeley himself
recognized this, and at one time thought of overhauling the score; he did make a number of
cuts after the Sadler's Wells production (1954), but these were not all happy, and they did
not go to the root of the problem. This was a matter of dramatic pace and timing; the con-
trast with Britten, whose touch was so much more sure, is revealing. The second act of
Nelson is certainly the best of the three, partly because the conflict is forcibly expressed in
ensembles. Elsewhere the action is apt to hang fire, especially in the first scene of Act III.
Nevertheless the opera deserves a stage revival. Ruth despite an exquisite score is (except for
part of one scene) dramatically static; the action stops long before the music. Dickinson says
little about Castaway and misses half its point, remarking that 'the romance with Nausicaa
seems ephemeral at best'. So it is for Odysseus, but Nausicaa is more deeply involved. On the

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other hand Dickinson is right in finding the element of comedy intrusive and out of scale.
This charming and subtle work has never had the recognition it deserves.
Dickinson makes some interesting points about Berkeley's composing method, which he
calls a combination of the instinctive and the calculated. Berkeley said of the main theme
of his Third String Quartet: 'Some of the appearances seem to happen more or less acciden-
tally, or at all events subconsciously, as I did not set out to write a monothematic piece'. This
variation of material, almost amounting to continuous development, governs Berkeley's
whole approach, at least in instrumental works. He operates by allusion rather than restate-
ment, and tends to add new ideas by free association as a movement progresses. Dickinson
contrasts this with Britten, who is much more rigorous in developing his material, and likens
it to the rhapsodical procedure of Delius.
This book may not be the last word on Berkeley, but it breaks much new ground and is
full of observations that force the reader to think. It is written in a pleasant chatty style, as if
addressed to a lecture audience, with touches of colloquialism ('the piano laughs like a
drain'). It contains attractive illustrations of the composer, his family and friends, full lists
of works, lost works and Berkeley's writings, but no discography. The layout is less elegant
than the composer's music; the examples are reproduced in many different sizes, and the
often illuminating footnotes are tiresomely banished to the end of each chapter.
WINTON DEAN

New Year: Opera. Libretto by Michael Tippett. pp. xiv + 33. (Schott, London, 1989, ?2.
ISBN 0-946535-12-4.)

See below under 'Reviews of Music', p. 468.

A Pilgrim Soul: the Life and Work of Elisabeth Lutyens. By Meirion & Susie Harries. pp. xi
+ 324. (Michael Joseph, London, 1989, ?20. ISBN 0-7181-2547-9.)

When Elisabeth Lutyens declared that 'I have come at last to the conclusion that the best
art does seem to flourish at times when things are a little bit more difficult' (Murray Schafer
Britzsh Composers zn Interview, London, 1963), she was expressing her resentment at the
relative ease with which, in her view, certain younger composers in the 1960s were cosseted
by publishers and promoters. There is also a strong hint of her awareness that true artists
may well be their own worst enemies. Hence the hollow ring to the sentence ending her auto-
biography, A Goldfzsh Bowl (London, 1972): 'I trust . . . that the Sitwell butler was right
when he said, "The first seventy years are the worst", and that there is still a lot of fun
waiting round the corner'. Lutyens's life was dominated, not by the desire to have 'fun', bu
by the struggle to ensure that circumstances did not make work impossible: or, more posi-
tively, by the struggle to ensure that work, however difficult the circumstances in which
was undertaken, was truly representative of her own creative ideals.
It is in attempting to define ideals as well as establish circumstances that the student of
Lutyens approaches painful paradoxes. She could boast of making ?10,000 in one year from
film music, yet could also claim, however defensively or dismissively, that 'the ideal length
for a piece of hers was seven minutes'. To a less troubled personality such a contrast might
well have been stimulating. For Lutyens it represented a deep-seated conflict, and it is one
of the many virtues of the Harries' study that they paint so convincing a portrait of com-
plexity and inconsistency without seeming to over-simplify. Lutyens believed that 'ne
music should make a new sound, otherwise it had little point', and her passionate, ofte
angry attachment to Edward Clark was a defiant embodiment of a commitment to radical
ideas doomed through personal circumstances to dissolve in a long nightmare of farce and
frustration. Moreover, as the authors provocatively claim, it is possible that her radio and
film music
offered her a more direct channel for emotions which lay behind all her music but were sometimes concealed by
the infinitely more complex and opaque medium of her 'serious' work. There are signs of the different composer
she might conceivably have been had she not followed the twelve-tone path; she was patently capable of writing
'English Renaissance' music. And there is evidence of the person she always was underneath-sensitive, even
sentimental, and never cynical-even when in her concert music she was abrasive and uncompromising.

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