Bax: Symphony No. 3 / The Happy Forest

Description

Arnold Bax (1883-1953) Symphony No.3The Happy ForestThe son of cultured and well-to-doEnglish parents. Arnold Bax was born in Streatham but spent much of hischildhood in Hampstead where the family later settled, taught at home by aprivate tutor and strongly influenced by the cultured and comfortableenvironment in which he found himself. His early interest in music persuadedhis father, a barrister, to allow him to enter the Royal Academy of Music inLondon at the age of seventeen. There he became a piano pupil of TobiasMatthay, while studying composition under the Wagnerian 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,made their first visit to Ireland and were captivated. Here they establishedthemselves for a time, associating with leading figures in Irish cultural life,while Bax himself won a reputation as a poet and writer, assuming, for thisliterary purpose, the name Dermot O'Byrne and studying Irish legend and the oldIrish language. A visit to Russia with a Ukrainian girl that he had met inLondon and her Italian friend introduced a further influence to his culturalformation. While his pursuit of the Ukrainian girl came to nothing, he was ableto absorb something of the spirit of Russian music, secular and sacred, and wasdazzled by the glories of the Imperial Ballet, as he was to be by Dyagilev's Balletsrusses on his return to London. His return also brought marriage to thedaughter of the distinguished Spanish pianist Carlos Sobrino and the present ofa house from his father. Bax, however, could not settle in London. Before longthe couple had rented a house in Ireland, and then returned to England, buteventually separating, thereby allowing Bax to pursue his own musical andamorous ventures in a measure of freedom.In many ways it must seem that the 1920sbrought Bax his period of greatest success. He was prolific in his creativityand his works were widely performed. With the end of his marriage he was ableto continue his close association with the pianist Harriet Cohen, although thisdid not preclude other relationships. He wrote a quantity of piano music forHarriet Cohen, including a piano concerto for the left hand after the injury in1948 that made use of her right hand for a time impossible. The 1930s broughtpublic honours and at the end of the decade appointment as Master of the King'sMusick, although his gifts did not lend themselves easily to the composition ofoccasional celebratory works. as the position seemed to demand. The changes inmusical style and taste left Bax to some extent alienated from the world inwhich he found himself. Composition continued. however. including a CoronationMarch in 1952 for the accession of the new monarch. He died, as he mighthave wished, in Ireland, while staying with his friend