Bax and the ‘Celtic North’

Scholars of Arnold Bax have long acknowledged the influence of the Irish Literary Revival on the composer’s compositional output up to about 1920, of Sibelius from the late 1920s onwards, and of the continuity of styles between these two periods. In this article I argue that this continuity relies on what Bax draws from early Yeats, which is less Celtic mythology or folklore than a particular way of imagining nature; that Bax’s use as a compositional stimulus of what he called the ‘Celtic North’ (essentially the landscapes of western Ireland and north-western Scotland) had parallels in the literature and art of 1920s Ireland; and that the ‘Celtic North’ offers a means of critiquing inter-war English pastoralism, which has traditionally been associated with what Alun Howkins, after Hilaire Belloc, has called the ‘South Country’. Bax thus offers a musical engagement with nature that is essentially dystopian, sublime and (within the discourse of British pastoralism) non-Anglo Saxon.

Bax's Elgar: Musical Quotation, Allusion and Compositional Identity in the First String Quartet in G

Whether we can ascribe specific meanings to the works of Arnold Bax is a vexed question, given that the composer was rarely explicit about such matters. In that context, this article explores the significance of musical quotation and allusion in Bax's First String Quartet in G major (1918), dedicated to Edward Elgar. Several references to Elgar's Violin Concerto are highlighted in the first and second movements of the quartet, and broader stylistic referencesto Dvořák and Debussy are also identified. Explanations are suggested for these references, based on parallels drawn between Bax's musical practice in this work, the composer's early reception, and his prose writings in the Musical Standard and Musical Herald, which discussed ‘artistic good faith’, musical influence and the difficulties of creating a national style in British music.

London, Wigmore Hall: Erik Chisholm and Ronald Stevenson

Murray McLachlan's première of Erik Chisholm's Sonata in A minor on 4 January marked the centenary of Chisholm's birth (in Cathcart, outside Glasgow) to the day itself. Chisholm was a considerable force for good while he was busy in Scotland: the first British performances of Les Troyens, Béatrice et Bénédicte and Idomeneo; visits to his ‘Active Society for the Propagation of Contemporary Music’ in Glasgow from Bartók, Casella, Schmitt, Sorabji (a close friend), Szymanowski and other luminaries. But he could, apparently, be a difficult man, and with his posting to Singapore by ENSA in 1943, to conduct the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and subsequent nomination to the chair of the music department of the University of Cape Town in 1946, his native land seems to have been content to forget the outsized personality whom Arnold Bax called ‘the most progressive composer that Scotland has produced’.

First Performances

‘The Doctor of Myddfai’ Roderic DunnettSt Magnus Festival Report Michael TumeltyRobert Simpson's String Quintet No. 2 Matthew TaylorCheltenham Festival: new piano music Calum MacDonaldNew music at the Brighton Festival Guy RickardRecent premières in Germany John WarnabyDmitri Smirnov's Cello Concerto Roderic DunnetRoxanna Panufnik & Arnold Bax Guy Rickards