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ARNOLD BAX

By EDWIN EVANS

NE of the features that give a peculiar interest to British music of the last dozen years or so is that, thanks to the strong individualism which permeates it, and which prevents such group formations as operate in favour of uniformity of style elsewhere, it confronts us with a kind of chart in which all the tendencies of the day are drawn to scale. Perhaps it is due to the national genius for compromise that the English musicians have nothing to offer that would correspond to Stravinsky's "Symphony for Wind Instruments" or to the extreme works of the Schönberg school. But, with the exception of these æsthetic utterances of the "sea-green incorruptibles" of modern music, England presents to-day illustrations of practically every musical creed. It may have no Robespierres, but it has its Mountain and it also has some eloquent Mirabeaus. One might define it by saying that every creed that has acquired status and toleration is represented in England, and only those are missing which are still being preached in the wilderness. And some of them have even attracted more capable, if not more fervent adherents than in the countries of their origin, whilst those which are indigenous appear to maintain a steady equilibrium between the forces that make for independence and those that make for fusion. For the critic or the chronicler this creates an almost insuperable obstacle to systematic treatment. Many writers have endeavoured to classify the British composers of to-day, but every attempt, whatever satisfaction it may have brought to its author, was little more than a convenient fiction.

Moreover, the characteristic lack of consistency that in other spheres proves baffling to foreign observers also affects British music. For instance, we are told on all hands that the modern spirit is in open rebellion against romanticism, and the orthodox concept of beauty; that it is objective, of corruscating vividness, cerebral, cynical, full of devastating irony, and above all cacophonous; and Britain produces an Arnold Bax, to whom no critic in his senses would deny a full share of the modern spirit, and who is not only incorrigibly harmonious, a weaver of beauty, but a romantic-with a difference. In what that difference consists

is a problem the solution of which rests with the critic. But whilst it must be counted to Bax's virtues as a composer, it has certainly had the effect, in a double sense, of delaying the recognition that was his due. Before that which we now call the modern spirit came into its own, Bax's modernism acted as a deterrent to those not yet ripe for it. To-day, when we are all more or less moderns, just as we are all more or less socialists, Bax's romanticism blinds the less far-sighted of us to the fact that he is now, as he was then, abreast of his day. He is not yet completely out of these dangers. One still finds sometimes a conservative who anathematises him for the luxuriance of his harmonic invention, or a radical who dismisses him as out of date because he has the courage to revel openly in the making of a beautiful lyrical melody. Fortunately he has never been a gourmand for the sweets of public recognition, or he might have taken to heart his rejection from both camps alike. In the last few years, but later than happened with some of his contemporaries, the merit of his music has begun to outweigh these disadvantages, and the measure of success that has now come to him is perhaps the more convincing and substantial for having been due solely to his music itself, and not to the æsthetic solidarity that has helped so many others. An ironical observer might even detect signs to-day that the two main parties, the progressive and the reactionary, after having been lukewarm towards him for opposite reasons, are preparing to dispute possession of his name as that of a brilliant supporter of their respective arguments. All of which will pass over him and leave him as independent of classification as he has always been.

Biographically there is little that can be related. He was born in London in 1883, entered the Royal Academy of Music in 1900 and studied under Frederick Corder. He has travelled a little, notably on one occasion in Russia, and has come under the powerful attraction of Irish legendary folk-lore and poetry. He has a deep affection for the Atlantic coast of Ireland, and this influence pervades much of his music, but not all. There have been, of course, other and deeper influences exerted by the emotional experiences through which he has passed, but, as in the case of most composers, these are a sealed chapter to the biographer. To those who know him there is much intimate self-revelation in his works, and particularly in certain of them composed at turning-points of his life; but, apart from other considerations, there is, even when a composer has long been dead, something that is reprehensible, mean, and almost treacherous

in a too indiscreet attempt to probe the relation between the artist and his art.

Technically the evolution of his style has been largely a process of clarification, at least so far as the écriture musicale is concerned. The musical thought itself did not lack clarity, even in his 'prentice days, but, as frequently happens with the possessor of great gifts, he was at that time too often carried away with the exuberant sense of employing these. A perfervid musical imagination did the rest, and some of these early works were so luxuriantly elaborated that their contents became obscured.

So far as was possible these early works have been withdrawn from circulation. At most one or two remain to prove that the defect was due to an excess of skill, which it needed a maturer mind to hold on the leash. His was an extraordinary proficiency. Like Liszt he could improvise at sight a pianoforte transcription of any orchestral score, but the scores with which he performed this feat were such as never confronted that wizard of the keyboard: Strauss's "Heldenleben," Debussy's "Nocturnes," when both were novelties, are examples of his prowess in this direction. If, in those days, he piled difficulty upon difficulty, regardless of justification, one reason may have been that, not knowing what difficulty was, he could not discriminate against it. But out of this very exuberance, which had behind it real inventiveness, and not mere facility, grew some of Bax's most serviceable, as well as most characteristic, technical resources. Would his sense of harmonic variation be as rich and as sure of itself as it is to-day if it had been less freely exercised before? Bax has a temperamental dislike of repetition. It is the rarest of finds to discover in a work of his a phrase repeated integrally with its harmonic frame. Always there is a new sheen in the texture, always an inflection of some kind, contrapuntal or rhythmic, that sustains or recreates the interest. He has become the master of a certain type of chromatic arabesque in which there are no superfluous notes, each being pregnant with harmonic significance, or suggestive of new possibilities. But, stripped of this decoration, the fundamental idea is not only clear and concise, it is usually diatonic, and sometimes surprisingly strict. The complexity that is so often alleged against him belongs to the domain of legend. More dangerous is the charge of diffuseness which arises from this copious inventiveness. It is inevitable that such fertility should, in certain works, tend to length, of which a modern audience is inclined to be resentful. But compositions such as the Symphonic