British Music

[albion]

From shamokin88 -

William Wordsworth (1908-1988) - Divertimento in D, Op.58 (1954); Jubilation, A Festivity for Full Orchestra, Op.78 (1965); Spring Festival Overture, Op.90 (1970)

Many thanks, Edward.

[Dundonnell]

The addition over the last few days by Latvian and Shamokin of eight works by William Wordsworth means that the vast bulk of the composer's work for orchestra is now available for download from this site.

Missing are the Symphony No.6 "Elegiaca" for mezzo-soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra(1977; never performed), the Elegy for Frieda(in the arrangement for string orchestra; 1982) and the unperformed choral works-"The Houseless Dead" for baritone, chorus and orchestra(1939) and the Oratorio "Dies Domini" for three soloists, chorus and orchestra(1942-44).

To have succeeded however in assembling such a large collection of Wordsworth's orchestral work-thanks to the generosity of members- is a major achievement indeed It adds to the growing importance of this collection as a major repository of British Music.

(Btw the Spring Festival Overture is actually performed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra )

[albion]

From shamokin88 -

William Wordsworth (1908-1988) - String Quartet No.1 in D, Op.16 (1941); String Quartet No.3 in A, Op.30 (1947); String Quartet No.4 in A minor, Op.47 (1950); String Quartet No.5 in G minor, Op.63 (1957, rev. 1978); String Quartet No.6, Op.75 (1964)

A very welcome survey of this important aspect of the composer's output.

Many thanks, Edward.

[eschiss1]

ah thanks much!, I didn't notice this download/upload and know I requested some of these quartets (particular performances suggested by me at that time but less to the point than the works themselves- which I don't know - well, may have skimmed one of them in score awhile back, not positive- but look forward to hearing...)- time to check

[dafrieze]

Thanks for the Wordsworth string quartets!  (By the way, the first string quartet is played - if the announcer at the end of the recording is correct - by the Aeolian String Quartet, NOT the Alberni String Quartet.)

[eschiss1]

Wonder if anyone has that November 1953 recording by the MacGibbon quartet of Wordsworth's quartet no.3 - though as I haven't heard of the group, one is grateful for these - and for quartet 2 if it should turn up (or is that quartet missing in score as well ? No, quartet 2 in Bflat, Lengnick 1948 acc. to Worldcat, no op.no. given... and how's the piano-quintet-with-bass? )

[Jimfin]

Fabulous! I've wanted to hear this for longer than the number of years Baines lived!Just

[Jim: you must post replies like this in the appropriate thread in the Discussion board here, NOT in the Downloads board, which is only for posts and replies which have download links. Mark]

[albion]

From Latvian -

Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986) - Symphony No.4, Op.53 (1942); Resurgam, Op.149 (1975)

From A.S. -

William Baines (1899-1922) - Symphony in C minor, Op.10 (1917)

this was the first performance of Baines' work, given at the 1991 Grassington Festival.

Many thanks to both members.

[albion]

From Latvian -

Brian Boydell (1917-2000) - Shielmartin Suite, Op. 47 (1958-59)
Archibald James Potter (1918-1980) - Symphony No. 2, Ireland (1976)
Gerard Victory (1921-1995) - Olympic Festival Overture (1975)
Seoirse Bodley (b.1933) - A Small White Cloud Drifts Over Ireland (1975)

From Sydney Grew -

Reginald Smith Brindle (1917-2003) - Genesis Dream (1961)

Many thanks to both members.

[Dundonnell]

Many thanks to Latvian for the new Irish uploads How astonishing to find that the first performance of the Potter Second Symphony was given in Springfield, Massachusetts. I wonder how this came about

It is good to have some Reginald Smith Brindle for the British collection.....although, I fear, I have no sympathy for the Smith Brindle idiom

Nor would I not want to get into an extended debate about the subject but to describe Dylan Thomas as a "poetaster"-one dictionary definition of which is "a writer of insignificant, meritricious or shoddy poetry" seems to be, to say the least, a pretty contentious assertion.

[Dundonnell]

Ok...I can answer my own question about the Potter Symphony No.2

It was commissioned by the Irish American Cultural Institute.

........and it is a magnificent symphony which thoroughly deserves to be recorded for cd

[jowcol]

I've posted Canzona and Capriccio for Violin and Strings, Op. 37 by Richard Arnell


NOTE:  This was originally posted as a work for Viola and strings, but the sharp ears and researchers at UC have determined it is for Violin and Strings.

Not only am I an admirer of his symphonies, but this is a lovely work.




More on Arnell from Wikipedia:
Richard Anthony Sayer ("Tony") Arnell (15 September 1917 – 10 April 2009) was an English composer of classical music. Arnell composed in all the established genres for the concert stage, and his list of works includes six completed symphonies (a seventh was realised by Martin Yates) and six string quartets.

Biography
Arnell was born in Hampstead, London. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1935 to 1939, and was taught there by John Ireland (composition) and St John Dykes (piano). He was awarded the Farrar Prize for composition during his final year at the college. At the outset of the Second World War, attending the New York World Fair, Arnell (along with other English composers, e.g. Arthur Bliss) was stranded in New York, and stayed on until 1947, thereby finding himself in the position of having an established reputation in the U.S., but remaining relatively little known in his homeland. During his American soujourn, Arnell was the Music Supervisor for the BBC in North America, and was commissioned to compose (to a text by Stephen Spender) a cantata, The War God, in celebration of the opening of the United Nations, as well as a fanfare to greet Winston Churchill's arrival in New York.
His music has been championed by Thomas Beecham, Leopold Stokowski and Bernard Herrmann, among others and most recently by Martin Yates (one of his composition students at Trinity). Between 1947 and 1987 he taught at Trinity College of Music in London, where his students included Peter Tahourdin (1949-52).[1]

Arnell composed the music for The Land (1942), a 45-minute documentary film directed by Robert J. Flaherty for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was also commissioned by the Ford Motor Company to compose a symphonic suite inspired by the workers in the factory at Dagenham. The resulting work accompanies a film entitled Opus 65. Arnell established and headed the Music Department at the London International Film School until his retirement in the late 1980s.

He established a reputation as a major composer for the ballet stage through collaborations with choreographers of the stature of George Balanchine, John Cranko and Frederick Ashton. His many ballets have been successfully staged in both New York and London. His score for Punch and the Child was recorded by Sir Thomas Beecham with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, a recording which has seldom been out of the catalogue.

All seven of Arnell's numbered symphonies together with the Sinfonia Quasi Variazioni, the Piano Concerto (soloist David Owen Norris), the two Violin Concertos (soloist Lorraine MacAslan), Lord Byron: a Symphonic Portrait, Robert Flaherty Impression, Prelude The Black Mountain and the early Overture The New Age, received their world premiere recordings by conductor Martin Yates and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra between 2005 and 2008. The premiere recordings of the ballets The Angels, Harlequin in April and The Great Detective, together with Punch and the Child, were recorded by Martin Yates and the BBC Concert Orchestra in 2008-09.

Arnell had left sketches for a Seventh Symphony, dedicated to Nelson Mandela, at the time of his death, and it has since been realised and completed by Martin Yates. It was recorded in the summer of 2010 by Yates and the RSNO and was issued by Dutton Epoch. The String Quartets have recently been released on the Dutton Epoch label played by the Tippett Quartet.

Arnell is acknowledged as being one of the most masterful orchestrators of the twentieth century, Sir Thomas Beecham describing him as the best orchestrator since Berlioz.[citation needed]

And his obituary from the Times:

Richard Arnell: composer of Punch and the Child
(Hulton-Deutsch Collection / Corbis)
Arnell: he was, said Beecham, 'one of the best orchestrators since Berlioz'
In the 1940s and 50s, during his heyday, the music of Richard Arnell was as well known as that of his most prominent British contemporaries, among them Benjamin Frankel, Mátyás Seiber, Franz Reizenstein, William Alwyn, Malcolm Arnold and William Wordsworth, and enjoyed the advocacy of several distinguished conductors, including Leopold Stokowski, Bernard Herrmann and Sir Thomas Beecham. With the rise of British Modernism in the 1960s and its establishment thereafter as the lingua franca of serious composition, such music was to fall from institutional favour. But, although never of first-rate individuality, Arnell's oeuvre has in recent years — thanks to its solid craftsmanship and a number of important first recordings — enjoyed something of a revival and a cautious upward revaluation.

As it now stands, his reputation would seem to rest on six symphonies (seven if an earlier Sinfonia Quasi Variazioni is included in the canon), six string quartets, sundry concertos, the "symphonic portrait" Lord Byron, and several ballets, notably Punch and the Child, which was staged in New York by George Balanchine and soon after its premiere in 1947 recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Beecham, who was perhaps the staunchest of his champions.

Beecham, whom he had first met in 1941 through Virgil Thomson, once described Arnell as "one of the best orchestrators since Berlioz". During the course of the association, which lasted until the conductor's death in 1961, he performed no fewer than eight of Arnell's pieces, beginning with the Sinfonia Quasi Variazione at Carnegie Hall in 1942. Later Arnell made good the debt of gratitude by writing an Ode to Beecham to mark the RPO's 40th anniversary in 1986.

Arnell has also been dubbed the English Rachmaninov, an epithet that recognises not only his penchant for orchestral colour but also an essential musical conservatism epitomised by his fondness for richly harmonised and upward-thrusting romantic melody tempered, however, by a typically British emotional reticence.

Arnell wrote prolifically, perhaps too prolifically for reflection and renewal. The First Symphony dates from 1943, the last from 1994, yet the overall style, at times redolent of Aaron Copland and Roy Harris in its New Deal optimism, remains largely unmodified. Great claims, for instance, have been made for the Fifth Symphony (1956-57), which is now available for closer scrutiny thanks to recent CD releases by Dutton of all six symphonies and various other works. Its approachability is beyond question. Whether it endures, only time will tell.

Born in Hampstead towards the end of the First World War, Richard Anthony Sayer Arnell was an only child whose grandfather had been a violinist in the Hastings Municipal Orchestra and whose builder father was the brains behind the Kingsway and Aldwych development of 1905. His mother was a keen amateur pianist and he had his first piano lessons with his governess. At University College School he made 16mm films and formed a dance band. At the Royal College of Music he studied composition with John Ireland and piano with John Dykes. In his final year he won the Ernest Farrar Prize and enjoyed a student performance of a now withdrawn violin concerto. When war broke out in 1939 the newly married father found himself stranded in New York while attending the World Fair. He stayed on, initially on the advice of the British Consulate, but in the event he remained in the United States until 1947, with a steadily growing reputation and a job as music consultant to the BBC's North American Service.

It was a busy time for the emergent composer. Following his op.1, a set of orchestral variations broadcast by the New York radio station WQXR, Arnell managed to complete nearly a quarter of an oeuvre which would reach upward of about 200 compositions, including four symphonies, a piano concerto championed by Moura Lympany, The War God, a setting of a text by Stephen Spender to celebrate the opening of the United Nations, The Land (the first of many film scores) and a Ceremonial and Flourish for brass to mark the occasion of Sir Winston Churchill's visit to Columbia University in 1946.

And although there were disappointments — the planned premiere by Beecham of the Second Symphony in 1944 failed to materialise, resulting in its postponement for nearly 50 years — his music was in general well received, catching as it did the mood of the times and preparing him well for the second Elizabethan age, with its Festival of Britain optimism, to which he contributed on his return to the United Kingdom in 1947. He continued to make transatlantic visits after his repatriation, principally during the late 1960s as a Fulbright visiting lecturer.

Soon after Arnell's return to England, he became a professor of composition at Trinity College, London, and he remained there until the 1980s. He also directed courses in film music, eventually publishing a book on the subject, The Technique of Film Music, and worked as music consultant to the London International Film School. From 1961 to 1964 he edited Composer magazine and later served as chairman and vice-president of the Composers' Guild.

Arnell's symphonies were ideally suited to the Cheltenham Festival of the 1950s. The most significant of his performances there was probably of the Third Symphony, dedicated "to the political courage of the British people" and already broadcast by the BBC Northern Symphony under Norman Del Mar in 1952. It was publically premiered at Cheltenham a year later by the Hallé Orchestra under Sir John Barbirolli, who excised 20 minutes from the 65-minute score.

From the 1960s onwards Arnell's music began to fall from favour. And although he continued to compose as prolifically as ever — one of his last pieces, written in his late eighties, was an Ode for Mandela — and was taken up by prominent British musicians such as Sir Charles Groves, John Ogden, Edward Downes and Richard Hickox, he was never to rekindle the success of the Beecham years.

He was married eight times. Four children survive him.

[jowcol]

Malcom Arnold
Symphonic Study 'Machines' Op 30 (1951)
brass, percussion and strings

This symphonic study is a very interesting work with some very tasty brass.
Machines came from the music for a short film on the British steel industry; it is felt Arnold was looking back to Mossolov's Iron Foundry in this noisy essay for brass, percussion and strings.  Posted in the downloads section,  naturally.

[Dundonnell]

Looking forward to the Arnell I did not know of this work's existence

[eschiss1]

I've only heard by Arnell a few of his symphonies and a couple of other works so far myself I think..