Bax, Arnold

Preface

Bax, Arnold – Symphony No. 7

(b. Streatham/London, 8 November 1883 – d. Cork/Ireland, 3 October 1953)

(1938-39)

I Allegro Allegro (p. 1) – Poco meno mosso (p. 17) – Più mosso (p. 27) – Molto vivace (p. 28) – Meno mosso (p. 29) – Tranquillo (p. 44) – Meno mosso (p. 46) – Tempo primo. Allegro (p. 58) – Poco largamente (p. 62) – Più mosso (p. 66) – Poco meno mosso (p. 67) – Più mosso (p. 80) –
Poco meno mosso (p. 83) – Tempo primo. Allegro (p. 97)
II Lento (p. 107) – Più mosso (p. 127) – Tempo primo (p. 141)
III Theme and Variations. Allegro (p. 158) – Theme. Meno mosso (p. 164) – Più mosso (p. 171) – Tempo primo (p. 174) – Meno mosso (p. 182) – Andante (p. 190) – Più mosso (p. 198) –
Vivace (p. 200) – Molto moderato e maestoso (p. 205) – Epilogue. Sereno (p. 209)

Arnold Bax grew up in very well-off circumstances and enjoyed a rather liberal and fundamentally artistic upbringing. From 1893, the family moved into the idyllic parkland grounds of Ivy Bank in Hampstead High Street, a true “island of the blessed” on the periphery of cosmopolitan restlessness. The dreamy element in his psyche, feverishly longing to escape the everyday and often leaning out blindly and ignoring danger, which was a prominent character trait, is probably rooted in this family seclusion, which took little notice of the brittle outside world. The world of dreams could expand almost endlessly here, and a creatively open-minded young person like Arnold found material for life in these dreams, which actually sufficed for almost an entire lifetime. His material circumstances were so generous that he never had to worry about earning an income, and so he almost never worked as a teacher. His younger brother Clifford made a name for himself as a respected poet for his time, while Arnold showed eminent musical talent.

From September 1900, he attended the Royal Academy of Music – the more progressive of the two London institutions (the Royal College of Music, which was founded later, had the more renowned teachers with the Brahms epigone Stanford and Hubert Parry – Ralph Vaughan Williams, Bax’s important colleague and friend, had studied there). He studied composition with the Lisztian Frederick Corder and quickly gained a reputation as London’s best sight-reading pianist, even for the most complicated orchestral scores. He practiced four-handed playing just as intensively with his friends, most of whom remained close to him for the rest of his life, and they enthusiastically inhaled everything they could get their hands on – the latest French, Russian and German works. All conceivable musical influences were present in his daily practice.

The decisive, overpowering influence, however, came from another corner: in 1902, Bax read “The Wanderings of Oisin” by Ireland’s great writer William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), which gained such lasting and idolatrous significance for him that in later years he still said with undiminished enthusiasm that the whole history of music was not worth what Yeats’ work gave him. Two things above all were the result of this encounter: Bax’s love and inner connection to Ireland, which led to his identification with the intense nature and the Irish people in continual visits – he remained English, but his involuntary choice was Celtic Ireland, the manifest romantic dream of the better world; and he began to master the Gaelic language with rare perfection, and became the writer Dermot O’Byrne in a second skin alongside being a musician. Ireland was his bridge to what he longed for without being able to grasp it concretely. This is how we hear him in 1929: ”This West of Ireland atmosphere is hovering between the world we know too well and some happy otherworld that we begin to glimpse when we are growing up and never reach.” (4 September 1929) And in 1932: ”…such a lovely day this has beenfull of the west of Ireland’s marvelous enchantment of sun and sea and of that strange feeling that there is only a thin veil between this world and some fairyland where no-one grows old and no beauty can fade.” (6 August 1932) [All quotations are taken from the extraordinary biography “Bax – a composer and his times” by Lewis Foreman, published in 1983/87 by Scolar Press in England: ISBN 0-85967-643-9]. …

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