Arnold Bax
Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax
Bax was born in the London suburb of Streatham to a prosperous family. He was encouraged by his parents to pursue a career in music, and his private income enabled him to follow his own path as a composer without regard for fashion or orthodoxy. Consequently, he came to be regarded in musical circles as an important but isolated figure. While still a student at the Royal Academy of Music Bax became fascinated with Ireland and Celtic culture, which became a strong influence on his early development. In the years before the First World War he lived in Ireland and became a member of Dublin literary circles, writing fiction and verse under the pseudonym Dermot O'Byrne. Later, he developed an affinity with Nordic culture, which for a time superseded his Celtic influences in the years after the First World War.
Between 1910 and 1920 Bax wrote a large amount of music, including the symphonic poem Tintagel, his best-known work. During this period he formed a lifelong association with the pianist Harriet Cohen – at first an affair, then a friendship, and always a close professional relationship. In the 1920s he began the series of seven symphonies which form the heart of his orchestral output. In 1942 Bax was appointed Master of the King's Music, but composed little in that capacity. In his last years he found his music regarded as old-fashioned, and after his death it was generally neglected. From the 1960s onwards, mainly through a growing number of commercial recordings, his music was gradually rediscovered, although little of it is regularly heard in the concert hall.
Life and career
Early years
Bax was born on 8 November 1883 in the London suburb of Streatham, Surrey, to a prosperous Victorian family. He was the eldest son of Alfred Ridley Bax (1844–1918) and his wife, Charlotte Ellen (1860–1940), daughter of Rev. William Knibb Lea, of Amoy, China.[1][2] The couple's youngest son, Clifford Lea Bax, became a playwright and essayist.[n 1] Alfred Bax was a barrister of the Middle Temple, but having a private income he did not practise. In 1896 the family moved to a mansion in Hampstead. Bax later wrote that although it would have been good to be raised in the country, the large gardens of the family house were the next best thing.[4] He was a musical child: "I cannot remember the long-lost day when I was unable to play the piano – inaccurately".[5]
After a preparatory school in Balham,[3] Bax attended the Hampstead Conservatoire during the 1890s. The establishment was run – "with considerable personal pomp", according to Bax – by Cecil Sharp,[6] whose passion for English folk-song and folk-dance excited no response in his pupil.[7] An enthusiasm for folk music was widespread among British composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Parry, Stanford, Vaughan Williams and Holst;[8] Sullivan and Elgar stood aloof,[9] as did Bax, who later put into general circulation the saying, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing."[10][n 2]
In 1900 Bax moved on to the Royal Academy of Music, where he remained until 1905, studying composition with Frederick Corder and piano with Tobias Matthay. Corder was a devotee of the works of Wagner, whose music was Bax's principal inspiration in his early years. He later observed, "For a dozen years of my youth I wallowed in Wagner's music to the almost total exclusion – until I became aware of Richard Strauss – of any other".[13] Bax also discovered and privately studied the works of Debussy, whose music, like that of Strauss, was frowned on by the largely conservative faculty of the academy.[7]
Although Bax won a Macfarren Scholarship for composition and other important prizes, and was known for his exceptional ability to read complex modern scores on sight, he attracted less recognition than his contemporaries Benjamin Dale and York Bowen.[7][14] His keyboard technique was formidable, but he had no desire for a career as a soloist.[n 3] Unlike most of his contemporaries, he had private means that made him free to pursue his musical career as he chose, without the necessity of earning an income.[16] The Times considered that Bax's independence and disinclination to heed his teachers ultimately damaged his art, because he did not develop the discipline to express his imagination to the greatest effect.[17]
After leaving the Academy Bax visited Dresden, where he saw the original production of Strauss's Salome, and first heard the music of Mahler, which he found "eccentric, long-winded, muddle-headed, and yet always interesting".[18] Among the influences on the young Bax was the Irish poet W. B. Yeats; Bax's brother Clifford introduced him to Yeats's poetry and to Ireland.[14] Influenced by Yeats's The Wanderings of Oisin, Bax visited the west coast of Ireland in 1902, and found that "in a moment the Celt within me stood revealed".[14] His first composition to be performed – at an academy concert in 1902 – was an Irish dialect song called "The Grand Match".[19]
Early career
I worked very hard at the Irish language and steeped myself in its history and saga, folk-tale and fairy-lore. ... Under this domination, my musical style became strengthened ... I began to write Irishly, using figures and melodies of a definitely Celtic curve.
Bax in his memoirs, 1943[20]
Musically, Bax veered away from the influence of Wagner and Strauss, and deliberately adopted what he conceived of as a Celtic idiom. In 1908 he began a cycle of tone poems called Eire, described by his biographer Lewis Foreman as the beginning of the composer's truly mature style. The first of these pieces, Into the Twilight, was premiered by
Bax's private means enabled him to travel to the Russian Empire in 1910. He was in pursuit of Natalia Skarginska, a young Ukrainian whom he had met in London – one of several women with whom he fell in love over the years.[27] The visit eventually proved a failure from the romantic point of view but musically enriched him. In Saint Petersburg he discovered and immediately loved ballet; he absorbed Russian musical influences that inspired material for the First Piano Sonata, the piano pieces, "May Night in the Ukraine" and "Gopak", and the First Violin Sonata, dedicated to Skarginska.[7][27] Foreman describes him in this period as "a musical magpie, celebrating his latest discoveries in new compositions"; Foreman adds that Bax's own musical personality was strong enough for him to assimilate his influences and make them into his own.[n 5] Russian music continued to influence him until the First World War. An unfinished ballet Tamara, "a little-Russian fairy tale in action and dance", provided material the composer reused in post-war works.[1]
Having given up his pursuit of Skarginska, Bax returned to England; in January 1911 he married the pianist Elsita Luisa Sobrino (b. 1885 or 1886), daughter of the teacher and pianist, Carlos Sobrino, and his wife, Luise, née Schmitz, a singer.
First World War
At the beginning of the war Bax returned to England. A heart complaint, from which he suffered intermittently throughout his life, made him unfit for military service; he acted as a special constable for a period.[1][14] At a time when fellow composers including Vaughan Williams, Arthur Bliss, George Butterworth and Ivor Gurney were serving overseas, Bax was able to produce a large body of music, finding, in Foreman's phrase, "his technical and artistic maturity" in his early thirties. Among his better-known works from the period are the orchestral tone poems November Woods (1916) and Tintagel (1917–19).[14]
And when the devil's made us wise
Each in his own peculiar hell
With desert hearts and drunken eyes
We're free to sentimentalise
By corners where the martyrs fell.
From Bax's poem "A Dublin Ballad", 1916.[35]
During his time in Dublin, Bax had made many republican friends. The Easter rising in April 1916 and the subsequent execution of the ringleaders shocked him deeply. He expressed his feelings in some of his music such as the orchestral In Memoriam and the "Elegiac Trio" for flute, viola, and harp (1916), as well as in his poetry.[1]
In addition to his Irish influences, Bax also drew on a Nordic tradition, being inspired by the Norwegian poet
During the war Bax began an affair with the pianist
Inter-war years
In a study of Bax in 1919 his friend and confidante, the critic Edwin Evans, commented on the waning of the Celtic influence in the composer's music and the emergence of "a more austere, abstract art".[41] From the 1920s onwards Bax seldom turned to poetic legend for inspiration.[42] In Foreman's view, in the post-war years Bax was recognised for the first time as an important, though isolated, figure in British music. The many substantial works he wrote during the war years were heard in public, and he started writing symphonies. Few English composers had so far written symphonies that occupied a secure place in the repertoire, the best known being Elgar (A♭ and E♭ symphonies) and Vaughan Williams (Sea, London and Pastoral symphonies).[43] During the 1920s and into the 1930s Bax was seen by many as the leading British symphonist.[14]
Bax's
In the mid-1920s, while his affair with Cohen continued, Bax met the twenty-three-year-old Mary Gleaves, and for more than two decades he maintained relationships with both women. His affair with Cohen ripened into warm friendship and continuing musical partnership.[1] Gleaves became his companion from the later 1920s until his death.[48][n 8]
In the 1930s, Bax composed the last four of his seven symphonies. Other works from the decade include the popular Overture to a Picaresque Comedy (1930), several works for chamber groups, including a nonet (1930), a string quintet (1933), an octet for horn, piano, and strings (1934) and his third and last string quartet (1936). The Cello Concerto (1932) was commissioned by and dedicated to Gaspar Cassadó, who quickly dropped the work from his repertoire. Although Beatrice Harrison championed the concerto in the 1930s and 40s, Bax said, "The fact that nobody has ever taken up this work has been one of the major disappointments of my musical life".[50][51]
Bax was
1940s and 50s
After the death of the
After the Second World War began, Bax moved to Sussex, taking up residence at the White Horse Hotel, Storrington, where he lived for the rest of his life.[58] He abandoned composition and completed a book of memoirs about his early years, Farewell, My Youth. The Times found it at times waspish, at times reticent, surprising in parts, and regrettably short.[59] Later in the war Bax was persuaded to contribute incidental music for a short film, Malta G. C.; he subsequently wrote music for David Lean's Oliver Twist (1948) and a second short film, Journey into History (1952). His other works from the period include the short Morning Song for piano and orchestra, and the Left-Hand Concertante (1949), both written for Cohen.[1] Bax and the Poet Laureate, John Masefield, worked on a pageant, The Play of Saint George in 1947, but the project was not completed.[37]
In his last years, Bax maintained a contented retirement for much of the time. Walton commented, "an important cricket match at
Music
Bax's music is never simply rhapsodic or formless ... but the tendency to be diffuse, to a point where the listener's attention insists on wandering, the love of picaresque construction and the absence of clear outlines—these faults account for the general apathy towards music that is intrinsically noble, humane, and capable of a certain melancholy grandeur.
The Record Guide, 1955[66]
Bax's fellow composer
The conductor Vernon Handley, long associated with Bax's music, commented that the composer's influences include Rachmaninoff and Sibelius as well as Richard Strauss and Wagner: "He was aware of jazz and many more composers on the European scene than we are now. That finds its way into a person's psyche and personality and into his technique as a musician."[69]
The critic Neville Cardus wrote of Bax's music:
The paradox is that Bax's methods, his idiom and tonal atmosphere are impersonal: that is to say, there is no direct unfolding of an individual state of mind or soul as we find in Elgar or Gustav Mahler. Yet there is no mistaking the Bax physiognomy or psychology: always through the gloom and thickets of the symphonies the warm rays of an approachable, lovable man and nature may be felt.[63]
York Bowen thought it regrettable that Bax's orchestral works frequently call for exceptionally large forces: "When the score demands such luxuries as triple or quadruple woodwind, six horns, three or four trumpets, extra percussion and perhaps organ, it is undoubtedly throwing extra difficulties in the way of performance."[70] The composer Eric Coates commented that Bax's music appealed greatly to orchestral players: "whichever instrument he wrote for, it was as if he played that instrument himself, so well did he seem to write for it".[71][n 10]
Symphonies
While in Dresden in 1907 Bax began work on what he later called "a colossal symphony which would have occupied quite an hour in performance, were such a cloud-cuckoo dream to become an actuality".[73] He added "Happily, it never has!", but he left a complete piano sketch, which was orchestrated in 2012–13 by Martin Yates, and recorded for the Dutton Vocalion label; it lasts for 77 minutes. The four-movement work, more conventional in structure than his completed symphonies, shows a strong Russian influence in its material.[74]
Bax wrote his seven completed symphonies between 1921 and 1939. In a study of the seven, David Cox wrote in 1967 that they were "often dismissed as amorphous by those who imagine that Bax consists only of Celtic mistiness and 'atmosphere'. In fact they have considerable strength and frequent astringence; and formally the thematic material is presented with consistency and purpose."
Concertante works
Bax's first work for solo instrument and orchestra was the 50-minute Symphonic Variations in E♭ (1919), written for Harriet Cohen. The Times considered it "like one of those deeds of recklessness which in the Army may be followed either by a Court-martial or a V.C. We incline to favour the Court-martial, and to award the V.C. to Miss Harriet Cohen for her part in the enterprise."[78]
The Cello Concerto (1932) was Bax's first attempt at a full-scale conventional concerto. It calls for a smaller orchestra than he customarily employed, with no trombones or tuba, and no percussion apart from timpani. Foreman points to many subtleties of scoring, but notes that it has never ranked high among the composer's mature works.[50] The Violin Concerto (1937–38) is, like the last symphony, in a more relaxed vein than most of Bax's earlier music. Cardus singled it out as "unusually fine",[63] although Heifetz may have felt it not virtuosic enough.[79] The composer described it as in the romantic tradition of Joachim Raff.[80]
Among the minor concertante works is Variations on the Name Gabriel Fauré (1949) for harp and strings, in a style more neoclassical than most of Bax's music.[81] Bax's last concertante piece was a short work for piano and orchestra (1947) written in his capacity as Master of the King's Music, marking Princess Elizabeth's twenty-first birthday.[14]
Other orchestral works
Bax's tone poems are in a variety of styles and have varied sharply in their popularity. His impressionistic tone poem In the Faëry Hills is described by Grove as "a succinct and attractive piece". It was modestly successful, but Spring Fire (1913) is instanced by Foreman as a difficult work; it was not performed in Bax's lifetime.[14] During the First World War Bax wrote three tone poems, two of which – The Garden of Fand (1913–16) and November Woods (1917) – have remained on the fringes of the modern repertoire, and a third – Tintagel (1917–19) – which in the decade after his death was the only work by which Bax was known to the public.[14] Grove characterises all three as musical evocations of nature, with little expression of subjective personal response. The orchestral piece that was neglected longest was In memoriam (1917), a lament for Patrick Pearse, who was shot for his part in the Easter rising; the work was not played until 1998. Bax reused the main melody for his incidental music to Oliver Twist (1948).[82]
Oliver Twist was the second of Bax's film scores. The first was for a short wartime propaganda film, Malta, G. C.. A four-movement suite was published after the release of the latter,[83] containing what The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music calls "a notable March with a genuine nobilmente theme in the best Elgarian tradition".[84] Bax's third and last cinema score was for a ten-minute short film Journey into History in 1952.[85]
Other orchestral works include Overture, Elegy and Rondo (1927) – a lightweight piece, according to Grove. The Overture to a Picaresque Comedy (1930), was for a time one of his most popular works.[50] It was described by the composer as "Straussian pastiche" and by The Times as "gay and impudent, and with that tendency to vulgarity which so easily besets the instinctively refined composer determined to let himself go",[86] Cardus thought the work so appealing that to live up to the overture the putative comedy would have to be "written by Hofmannsthal and Shaw in collaboration. Not often is English music so free and audacious as this, so gay and winning."[87]
Vocal music
The critic Peter Latham remarked that he was surprised that Bax had never set any of Yeats's poems to music. Bax replied, "What, I? I should never dare!". Latham added that Bax's sensitiveness to poetic values made him "painfully aware of the violence that even the best musical setting must do to a poem". Eventually this feeling caused him to give up song-writing completely.[80]
At the start of his composing career, songs, together with piano music, formed the core of Bax's work. Some of the songs, mainly the early ones, are conspicuous for the virtuosity of their piano parts, which tend to overwhelm the voice.
Bax wrote a substantial number of choral works, mostly secular but some religious. He was a nominal member of the Church of England, but in the view of the critic Paul Spicer, "None of Bax's choral music can be described as devotional or even suitable for church use … Here is a secular composer writing voluptuous music."[92] The choral works with religious texts include his largest-scale unaccompanied vocal piece, Mater ora Filium (1921), inspired by William Byrd's Five Part Mass; it is a setting of a medieval carol from a manuscript held by Balliol College, Oxford.[92] The composer Patrick Hadley considered it "an unsurpassed example of modern unaccompanied vocal writing".[93] Bax's other choral works include settings of words by Shelley (Enchanted Summer, 1910), Henry Vaughan (The Morning Watch, 1935), Masefield (To Russia, 1944), and Spenser (Epithalamium, 1947).[14]
Chamber and solo piano music
In his overview of Bax's earlier chamber works, Evans identifies as among the most successful the Phantasy for viola, the Trio for piano, violin, and viola and "a String Quintet of such difficulty that an adequate performance has seldom if ever been possible". He rates the Second Violin Sonata (1915) as the composer's most individual work to that date. For Evans, the culminating point of Bax's early chamber music was the Piano Quintet, a work "of such richness of invention that it would be an ornament to the musical literature of any country or period".[94] Foreman makes particular mention of the First String Quartet (1918 – "a classical clarity of texture and form to its Celtic inspiration", and the "grittier" Second Quartet (1925), the Viola Sonata (1922), the Phantasy Sonata for viola and harp (1927) and the Sonata for Flute and Harp (1928).[14]
The composer and musical scholar Christopher Palmer points out that Bax was unusual among British composers in composing a substantial oeuvre for solo piano.[n 11] Bax published four piano sonatas (1910–32), which are, in Palmer's view, as central to the composer's piano music as the symphonies are to the orchestral output.[96] The first two sonatas are each in a single movement, of about twenty minutes; the third and fourth are in conventional three-movement form.[95][96] The First Symphony was originally planned as a large-scale piano sonata in E♭ (1921); the manuscript score of the latter came to light in the early 1980s and was performed for the first time in 1983.[97] Bax's own virtuosity as a pianist is reflected in the demands of many of his piano pieces. Palmer cites Chopin and Liszt as major influences on Bax's piano style as well as Balakirev and the other Russians whose influence is seen throughout the composer's work.[95] For piano duo Bax composed two tone poems, Moy Mell (1917) and Red Autumn (1931).[96] His shorter piano pieces include picturesque miniatures such as In a Vodka Shop (1915), A Hill Tune (1920) and Water Music (1929).[95]
Neglect and revival
In his later years Bax's music fell into neglect.
I believe that there is little probability that the twelve-note scale will ever produce anything more than morbid or entirely cerebral growths. It might deal successfully with neuroses of various kinds, but I cannot imagine it associated with any healthy and happy concept such as young love or the coming of spring.[98]
Neither Bax's views nor his works were fashionable in the two decades after his death. The critic Michael Kennedy writes that the mid-1950s were a time of "immense change and transition in influential musical circles."[99] The music favoured by the cultural establishment until then was regarded as having made Britain musically parochial and indifferent to the developments of the past half-century. In Kennedy's words, "Rubbra, Bax and Ireland found themselves out in the cold".[99]
Foreman comments that in the years after Bax's death his reputation was kept alive by a single work – Tintagel. Kennedy estimates that it took "twenty painful years" before the music of the British romantics including Bax made headway against the dominance of modernism.[99] Foreman dates the revival of Bax's music to Handley's performances of the Fourth Symphony and other works with the Guildford Philharmonic Orchestra in the 1960s, and the pioneering recordings by Lyrita Recorded Edition of five of the symphonies.[n 12] Scholarly consideration of Bax's life and music came with studies by Colin Scott-Sutherland (1973) and Foreman (1983). Bax's centenary in 1983 was marked by twenty programmes on BBC Radio 3, covering a wide range of the composer's music.[101] In 1985 the Sir Arnold Bax Trust was established to promote the composer's work including the sponsoring of live performances and recording and publication of his music and writings.[102] Since then a large number of Bax's works, major and minor, have been recorded (see below). The proliferation of Bax recordings has not been matched by a revival in his fortunes in the concert hall; the critic Stephen Moss observed in The Guardian in 2007, "Bax is considered the promotional kiss of death."[103] In 1999 the Oxford University Press published a complete catalogue of Bax's works compiled and annotated by Graham Parlett; Music & Letters called it "a benchmark for any future researchers seeking to compile a catalogue of a composer's works".[104]
Recordings
Two recordings of Bax as a pianist were made in 1929. With
Parlett included an extensive discography in his 1999 A Catalogue of the Works of Sir Arnold Bax,
Honours and legacy
Bax received the gold medals of the
In 1992 Ken Russell made a television film dramatising Bax's later years, The Secret Life of Arnold Bax. Russell himself portrayed Bax and Glenda Jackson, in her final role before leaving acting for 23 years to pursue her political career, appeared as Harriet Cohen.[114]
Notes, references and sources
Notes
- ^ Their siblings were Alfred (1884–95) and Evelyn (1887–1984).[3]
- ^ This bon mot, often misattributed to Sir Thomas Beecham,[11] first appeared in print in Bax's memoirs, ascribed to an unnamed "sympathetic Scot",[10] later identified as the conductor Guy Warrack.[12]
- ^ He had even less desire to conduct, vowed never to do so, and broke the vow only once, in 1906.[15]
- ^ The work was recorded in 1985 by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson.[26]
- ^ Foreman lists among those who influenced Bax: Wagner, Strauss, Debussy, the Russian "Five" (Balakirev, Cui, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin), Glazunov, Ravel, Sibelius and early Stravinsky.[1]
- ^ Luise taught at the Hampstead Conservatoire, and Bax had known Elsita since his time there.[28]
- ^ The affair was not publicly known, though it was common knowledge in musical circles; Vaughan Williams was greatly amused to find in a musical dictionary an entry for Harriet Cohen which read, "– see under Bax".[36] Elsita Bax refused her husband a divorce, and remained his wife until her death in 1947.[37]
- ^ Cohen chose to ignore the nature of Bax's relationship with Gleaves, and referred to her in later years as "Sir Arnold's nurse".[49]
- gazetted as "Master of the Music".[56]
- ^ Orchestral players' regard for Bax was reciprocated: his London Pageant (1937) is dedicated "To my friends of the BBC Orchestra".[72]
- ^ Palmer comments that of the major British composers, Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Walton and Britten showed little interest in the solo piano and seldom wrote for it.[95]
- ^ The First and Second were conducted by Myer Fredman (1970), the Fifth by Raymond Leppard (1971), the Sixth by Norman Del Mar (1966) and the Seventh by Leppard (1974).[100]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Foreman, Lewis. "Bax, Sir Arnold Edward Trevor", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004, retrieved 16 September 2015 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- ^ Armorial Families: A Directory of Gentlemen of Coat-Armour, A. C. Fox-Davies, T. C. & E. C. Jack, 1910, p. 106
- ^ a b Parlett, p. 7
- ^ Foreman (1971), p. 60
- ^ Bax, p. 7
- ^ Bax, p. 11
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Herbage, Julian. "Bax, Sir Arnold Edward Trevor", Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 1971, retrieved 9 July 2021
- ^ Onderdonk, p. 84
- ^ Hughes, p. 143; and Stradling and Hughes, p. 140
- ^ a b Bax, p. 12
- ^ Sherrin, p. 109
- ^ Lloyd (2014), p. 37; and Schaarwächter, p. 578
- ^ Foreman (1971), p. 62
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Foreman, Lewis. "Bax, Sir Arnold", Grove Music Online, Oxford University Press, retrieved 16 September 2015 (subscription required)
- ^ Foreman (1971), p. 64
- ^ Foreman (1971), pp. 60 and 65
- ^ a b c "Obituary: Sir Arnold Bax", The Times, 5 October 1953, p. 11
- ^ Bax, p. 29
- ^ Foreman (1971), p. 63
- ^ Bax, p. 41
- ^ Foreman (1971), p. 66
- ^ "Music in London", The Manchester Guardian, 31 August 1910, p. 6
- ^ "Music: The Promenades", The Observer, 4 September 1910, p. 4
- ^ "Promenade Concerts", The Times, 31 August 1910, p. 9
- ^ "The Promenade Concerts", The Musical Times, October 1910, pp. 657–658 (subscription required)
- ^ "The tale the pine-trees knew; Into the twilight; In the faery hills; Roscatha", WorldCat, retrieved 16 September 2015
- ^ a b Foreman (1983), p. 67
- ^ Scott-Sutherland, p. 30
- ^ Foreman (1983), p. 83
- ^ Foreman (1983), p. 96
- ^ Foreman (1983), p. 95
- ^ Foreman (1983), p. 89
- ^ Banfield, p. 781
- ^ Jeffery, p. 94
- ^ O'Byrne, p. 63
- ^ Rothwell, p. 154
- ^ a b Parlett, p. 10
- ^ Parlett, p. 321
- ^ Foreman and Foreman, p. 204
- ^ Scott-Sutherland, p. 142
- ^ a b c Evans (March 1919), p. 204
- ^ a b c Herbage, p. 556
- ^ Scott-Sutherland, p. 117
- ^ a b c "Yesterday's Music: The Bax Symphony Reheard", The Observer, 13 January 1924, p. 15
- ^ "Bax's Symphony", The Manchester Guardian, 14 January 1924, p. 10
- ^ "Promenade Concert", The Times, 26 September 1930, p. 10
- ^ Hull, p. 33
- ^ Foreman (1983), p. 241
- ^ Foreman, Lewis. "Obituary: Colin Scott-Sutherland", The Scotsman, 16 February 2013
- ^ a b c Foreman, Lewis (1987). Notes to Chandos CD 8494, OCLC 705060287
- ^ Foreman (1983), p. 290
- ^ Foreman (1983) pp. 309–310
- ^ Scott-Sutherland, p. 75
- ^ Petrocelli, p. 58
- ^ "Master of the Queen's Music" The official website of the British Monarchy, retrieved 16 September 2015
- ^ Supplement, 5 August 1952, The London Gazette
- ^ Duck, p. 257
- ^ Parlett, p. 9
- ^ "A Composer's Reminiscences", The Times, 9 April 1943, p. 6
- ^ Bliss et al, p. 14
- ^ Parlett, p. 328; and Foreman (1983), p. 356
- ^ Foreman (1983), p. 355
- ^ a b c d Cardus, Neville. "Arnold Bax's Character in his Music: A Happy Man – But Tragic Themes", The Manchester Guardian, 5 October 1953, p. 3
- ^ Fry, p. 284
- ^ Scott-Sutherland, p. 188
- ^ a b Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, pp. 75–76
- ^ Bliss et al, pp. 1–2
- ^ Payne Anthony "Review: Bax at Length", The Musical Times, August 1973, 114 (1566), p. 798
- ^ Anderson, p. 93
- ^ Bliss et al, p. 6
- ^ Bliss et al, p. 7
- ^ Parlett, p. 219
- ^ Bax, p. 31
- ^ a b "Bax’s early Symphony in F – Premiere recording on Dutton", The Sir Arnold Bax Website, retrieved 4 October 2015
- ^ Cox, pp. 155–156
- ^ Anderson, p. 94
- ^ Anderson, p. 95
- ^ "Progress in Music", The Times, 19 April 1924, p. 8
- ^ Lloyd (2001), p. 165
- ^ a b Bliss et al, p. 11
- ^ Greenfield, Edward. "English music for strings", Gramophone, retrieved 16 September 2015
- ^ Foreman, Lewis (1999). Notes to Chandos CD 9715, OCLC 41148812
- ^ Foreman, Lewis (2003). Notes to Chandos CD 10126, OCLC 872996638
- ^ March, p. 80
- ^ Brooke, Michael. "Journey into History", British Film Institute, retrieved 17 September 2015
- ^ "Royal Philharmonic Society", The Times, 2 April 1937, p. 10
- ^ Cardus, Neville. "The Halle Concert", The Manchester Guardian, 20 November 1931, p, 11
- ^ a b Hold, p. 233
- ^ Hold, p. 219
- ^ a b "Bax, Sir Arnold Edward Trevor", Who Was Who, Oxford University Press, 2014, retrieved 16 September 2015 (subscription or UK public library membership required)
- ^ Hold, p. 227
- ^ a b Spicer, Paul (1993). Notes to Chandos CD 9139, OCLC 29688294
- ^ Bliss et al, p. 9
- ^ Evans (April 1919), p. 154
- ^ a b c d Palmer, Christopher (1988). Notes to Chandos CD 8497, OCLC 602145160
- ^ a b c Palmer, Christopher (1987). Notes to Chandos CD 8496, OCLC 602371238
- ^ Foreman, Lewis (1994). Notes to Continuum CD CCD 1045 DDD, OCLC 223356733
- ^ Amis et al, p. 307
- ^ a b c Kennedy, p. 200
- ^ Stuart, Philip. Decca Classical, 1929–2009, Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music, retrieved 18 September 2015
- ^ “Arnold Bax”, BBC Genome, retrieved 17 September 2015
- ^ “The Sir Arnold Bax Trust”, Open Charities, retrieved 17 September 2015
- ^ Moss, Stephen. "Building a classical music library: Arnold Bax", The Guardian, 11 October 2007
- ^ Pike, p. 145
- ^ a b c d e f Parlett, Graham. "Discography", The Sir Arnold Bax Website, retrieved 19 September 2015
- ^ "Recent Gramophone Records", The Manchester Guardian, 14 April 1944, p. 3
- ^ "Music of Arnold Bax", WorldCat, retrieved 18 September 2015
- ^ "Arnold Bax", WorldCat, retrieved 18 September 2015
- ^ Dibble, Jeremy. "The Gramophone Collection: Arnold Bax's Tintagel", Gramophone, August 2015, p. 93 (subscription required)
- ^ "His Master's Voice", The Musical Times, August 1948, p. 231 (subscription required)
- ^ Parlett, Appendix 3
- ^ "Arnold Bax Symphonies", WorldCat, retrieved 19 September 2015
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- ^ "The Secret Life of Arnold Bax" Archived 16 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine, British Film Institute, retrieved 18 September 2015
Sources
- JSTOR 729063.) (subscription required)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link - Anderson, Colin (March 2004). "Vernon Handley discusses Bax". Fanfare: 93–96. ProQuest 1264271. (subscription required)
- Banfield, Stephen (December 1980). "Review: Bax as Poet". The Musical Times: 780–781. JSTOR 962521. (subscription required)
- Bax, Arnold (1992) [1943]. Farewell, My Youth. Aldershot: Scolar Press. ISBN 978-0-85967-793-6.
- JSTOR 730227.) (subscription required)
{{cite journal}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - Cox, David (1967). "Arnold Bax". In Simpson, Robert (ed.). The Symphony: Elgar to the Present Day. Harmondsworth: Pelican Books. OCLC 221594461.
- Duck, Leonard (June 1954). "Masters of the Sovereign's Music". The Musical Times. 94 (1324): 255–258. JSTOR 934669. (subscription required)
- Evans, Edwin (March 1919). "Modern British Composers, II – Arnold Bax". The Musical Times. 60 (913): 103–105. JSTOR 3701644.
- Evans, Edwin (April 1919). "Modern British Composers. II. Arnold Bax (Continued)". The Musical Times. 60 (914): 154–156. JSTOR 3701614.
- Foreman, Lewis (January 1971). "The Musical Development of Arnold Bax". Music & Letters. 52 (1): 59–68. JSTOR 731834. (subscription required)
- Foreman, Lewis (1983). Bax: A Composer and his Times. London and Berkeley: Scolar Press. ISBN 978-0-85967-643-4.
- Foreman, Lewis; Susan Foreman (2005). London: A Musical Gazetteer. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-10402-8.
- ISBN 978-0-7509-4817-3.
- Herbage, Julian (December 1953). "The Music of Arnold Bax". The Musical Times. 94 (1330): 555–557. JSTOR 933544. (subscription required)
- Hold, Trevor (2005). Parry to Finzi: Twenty English Song-composers. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-84383-174-7.
- OCLC 500626743.
- Hull, Robert H. (1932). A Handbook of Arnold Bax's Symphonies. London: Murdoch, Murdoch & Co.
- ISBN 978-0-521-77323-2.
- Kennedy, Michael (1989). Portrait of Walton. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816705-1.
- Lloyd, Stephen (2001). William Walton: Muse of Fire. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-0-85115-803-7.
- Lloyd, Stephen (2014). Constant Lambert: Beyond the Rio Grande. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-84383-898-2.
- March, Ivan; Edward Greenfield; Robert Layton; Paul Czajkowski (2008). The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009. London: Penguin. ISBN 978-0-141-03335-8.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - Onderdonk, Julian (September 1995). "Review: The English Musical Renaissance, 1860–1940". Notes: 63–66. JSTOR 898796. (subscription required)
- O'Byrne, Dermot (1979). Lewis Foreman (ed.). Poems by Arnold Bax. London: Thames Publishing. ISBN 978-0-905210-11-7.
- Parlett, Graham (1999). A Catalogue of the Works of Sir Arnold Bax. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-816586-6.
- Petrocelli, Paolo (2010). The Resonance of a Small Voice: William Walton and the Violin Concerto in England between 1900 and 1940. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. ISBN 978-1-4438-1721-9.
- Pike, Lionel (February 2000). "Review: A Catalogue of the Works of Sir Arnold Bax by Graham Parlett". Music & Letters: 144–145. JSTOR 855343. (subscription required)
- ISBN 978-1-86105-474-6.
- OCLC 500373060.
- Schaarwächter, Jürgen (2015). Two Centuries of British Symphonism. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. ISBN 978-3-487-15226-4.
- Scott-Sutherland, Colin (1973). Arnold Bax. London: J M Dent. ISBN 978-0-460-03861-4.
- ISBN 978-0-460-04594-0.
- Stradling, Robert; Meirion Hughes (2001). The English Musical Renaissance, 1840–1940: Constructing a National Music. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-5829-5.
Further reading
- Beechey, Gwilym (August 1983). "The Legacy of Arnold Bax (1883-1953)." Musical Opinion, vol. 106, nos. 1270–1271, pp. 348–351, 357–363, 383.
- Foreman, Lewis (February 1970). "Bax, the Symphony and Sibelius." Musical Opinion, vol. 93, no. 1109, pp. 245–246.
- Handley, Vernon (August 1992). "Back to Bax. Vernon Handley on His Enthusiasm for a Neglected Composer." The Musical Times, vol. 133, no. 1794, pp. 377–378.
- JSTOR 946079.
- Pirie, Peter J. (February 1957). "The Nordic Element: Bax and Sibelius." Musical Opinion, vol. 80, no. 953, pp. 277, 279.
- Pirie, Peter J. (September 1961). "The Odd Case of Arnold Bax." The Musical Times, vol. 102, no. 1423, pp. 559–560.
- Thomson, Aidan J. (2012–2013). "Bax and the Celtic North." Journal of the Society for Musicology in Ireland, Vol. 8, pp. 51–87.
External links
- Bax Piano Sonata no. 1 on YouTube played by Jonathan Powell
- The Lied and Art Song Texts Page created and maintained from Emily Ezust Texts of the songs of Bax.
- Quintet for harp and strings from the Sibley Music Library Digital Score Collection
- Free scores by Arnold Bax at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
- National Portrait Gallery Archived 21 October 2008 at the Wayback Machine (18 portraits, 8 on display)
- Free scores by Arnold Bax in the Choral Public Domain Library (ChoralWiki)
- Works by or about Arnold Bax at Internet Archive
- "Archival material relating to Arnold Bax". UK National Archives.