Bax: Symphonic Poems

Description

Arnold Bax (1883-1953)Symphonic PoemsThe son of cultured and well-to-do English parents,Arnold Bax was born in Streatham but spent much of hischildhood in Hampstead, where the family later settled,taught at home by a private tutor and strongly influencedby the cultured and comfortable environment in whichhe found himself. His early interest in music persuadedhis father, a barrister, to allow him to enter the RoyalAcademy of Music in London at the age of seventeen.There he became a piano pupil of Tobias Matthay, whilestudying composition under the Wagnerian FrederickCorder.In 1902 Bax came across the poem The Wanderingsof Usheen (Oisin), by the Irish poet W.B.Yeats, anddiscovered in himself a strong Celtic identity, althoughracially descended from a family long established inEast Anglia. He and his brother, the writer Clifford Bax,made their first visit to Ireland and were captivated.Here they established themselves for a time, associatingwith leading figures in Irish cultural life, while Baxhimself won a reputation as a poet and writer, assuming,for this literary purpose, the name Dermot O'Byrne andstudying Irish legend and the old Irish language. A visitto Russia with a Ukrainian girl that he had met inLondon and her Italian friend, introduced a furtherinfluence to his cultural formation. While his pursuit ofthe Ukrainian girl came to nothing, he was able toabsorb something of the spirit of Russian music, secularand sacred, and was dazzled by the glories of theImperial Ballet, as he was to be by Dyagilev's Balletsrusses on his return to London. His return also broughtmarriage to the daughter of the then distinguishedSpanish pianist Carlos Sobrino and the present of ahouse from his father. Bax, however, could not settle inLondon. Before long the couple had rented a house inIreland, and then returned to England, living in variousplaces, but eventually separating, thereby allowing Baxto pursue his own musical and amorous ventures in ameasure of freedom. His prolific career reached itscreative height in the years up to 1930, the period inwhich the present tone-poems were written. He was laterappointed Master of the King's Music, a position illsuitedto his talents and temperament, whichnevertheless allowed the composition of a CoronationMarch in 1952. He died while staying in Ireland thefollowing year.Tintagel owed much to Bax's relationship with theyoung pianist Harriet Cohen. In the late summer of 1917they had spent a few weeks on holiday in Cornwall atTintagel. The resulting tone-poem, dedicated to her, wasto become the most popular of all Bax's compositions.For a performance in Leeds in 1922 Bax provided aprogramme note, in which he declared his intention as'simply to offer a tonal impression of the castle-crownedcliff of ... Tintagel, and more especially of the longdistances of the Atlantic, as seen from the cliffs ofCornwall on a sunny, but not windless, summer day.' Hehad in mind, too, the legendary associations of theruined castle, the storie