Bax: Symphony No. 1 / In The Faery Hills / Garden Of Fand

Description

Arnold Bax (1883 -1953) In the Faery HillsThe Garden of FandSymphony No.1 in E flat  The son of cultured and well-to-do Englishparents, Arnold Bax was born in Streatham but spent much of his childhood inHampstead, where the family later settled, taught at home by a private tutorand strongly influenced by the cultured and comfortable environment in which hefound himself. His early interest in music persuaded his father, a barrister,to allow him to enter the Royal Academy of Music in London at the age of seventeen. Therehe became a piano pupil of Tobias Matthay, while studying composition under theWagnerian Frederick Corder.  In 1902 Bax came across the poem TheWanderings of Usheen (Oisin), by the Irish poet W. B. Yeats, and discoveredin himself a strong Celtic identity, although racially descended from a familylong established in East Anglia. He and his brother, the writer Clifford Bax, madetheir first visit to Ireland and were captivated. Here they established themselvesfor a time, associating with leading figures in Irish cultural life, while Baxhimself won a reputation as a poet and writer, assuming, for this literarypurpose, the name Dermot O'Byrne and studying Irish legend and the old Irishlanguage. A visit to Russia with a Ukrainian girl that he had met in London and her Italianfriend, introduced a further influence to his cultural formation. While hispursuit of the Ukrainian girl came to nothing, he was able to absorb somethingof the spirit of Russian music, secular and sacred, and was dazzled by theglories of the Imperial Ballet, as he was to be by Dyagilev's Ballets russeson his return to London. His return also brought marriage to the daughter ofthe then distinguished Spanish pianist Carlos Sobrino and the present of ahouse from his father. Bax, however, could not settle in London. Before long thecouple had rented a house in Ireland, and then returned to Engiand, living in variousplaces, but eventually separating, thereby allowing Bax to pursue his ownmusical and amorous ventures in a measure of freedom.  The tone-poem In the Faery Hills waswritten in 1909, later forming the centre of a trilogy of tone-poems under thegeneral title Eire. It is dedicated to the composer Balfour-Gardiner, animportant figure in the musical life of London among younger composers, towhom he was able to give practical encouragement, particularly in a series ofconcerts of music by English composers that he organized in 1912 and 1913, andis scored for a characteristically large orchestra. The instrumentationincludes piccolo, bass clarinet, two harps and a varied percussion section,with glockenspiel and celesta, in addition to the usual instruments of the fullsymphony orchestra. The work was first performed in 1910 at a PromenadeConcert, when it was conducted by Henry Wood, who had requested itscomposition. The poem by Yeats, to which In the Faery Hills owes itsinspiration, allows Oisin or Usheen, replying to St Patrick, to describe hiswandering:And