Second-Tier English Symphonies

For a number of very different reasons I hesitate to join in the discussion of this topic.

Firstly because I have already posted as an Administrator. It is not always easy to reconcile the requirements I believe that role imposes upon me with the opinions I might wish to express as a member. There have been times when, through either laziness or lack of care. I have posted as "Dundonnell" when it would have been more appropriate perhaps to have posted as "administrator".

As a member I might have an opinion about the clarity or "coherence" of a particular post but I do not think that it would be appropriate, given my current role, for me to express such an opinion.

Secondly, as may well be evident from my posts over the years on this forum and elsewhere, I would claim a certain familiarity with a large number of British symphonists and their compositions. Whether that familiarity is any more than superficial is for others to judge. I would not assert that I am an expert musicologist! Very far from it! My response to the British symphonies I know is essentially "visceral" rather than analytical.

If pushed however I could write a very long essay on the the subject of the British symphony over the last 100 years. Whether most other members would wish to read it is quite another matter!

Thirdly, I have recently had a letter published in the newsletter of the Havergal Brian Society in which I took issue with attempts by other members of that society to rank Havergal Brian in a list of "great British composers" and to produce a ranking list which included Elgar and Vaughan Williams. I deplore such attempts to rank composers "against" each other. Musical analysis is not a beauty contest. The promotion of the music of a particular composer is not helped by claims, whether reasonable or extravagent, which seek to elevate that composer's music "above" that of other composers.

I fully appreciate that this was NOT what Greg was proposing. Talking about a "Second Tier" is not a ranking system. I can understand what he was talking about when he used that description of a group of British composers who would generally agreed to be, at worst, competent, certainly "worthy", and at times better than those words might imply.

British symphonists can be crudely, but not necessarily, inaccurately divided into certain categories. There were those who wrote in a romantic or post-romantic idiom, derived from the influence of composers like Sibelius. Some of these composers-Stanley Bate would be an example-clearly wrote in a style which is pretty overtly influenced by Vaughan Williams (a style which was denounced by Hugh Wood in the late 1950s!). Others certainly echo with Sibelian references (derivations might be a less flattering description). The symphonies of composers like Sir Arnold Bax, William Alwyn, William Wordsworth or Arthur Butterworth can sound Sibelian....at times. Sir Michael Tippett withdrew his early Symphony in B flat and one reason for this was his perception that it was too Sibelian. Sir William Walton's Symphony No.1 has echoes of this but George Lloyd is, I suppose, one of the most explicitly "romantic" of these composers.

Other composers-though one might still characterise them as "romantic" and whose symphonies are essentially lyrical and certainly tonal- appear to have been more influenced by American composers like Aaron Copland and by the music of Shostakovich. Sir Malcolm Arnold and Richard Arnell might be examples.

Robert Simpson's symphonies are more influenced by Beethoven, Anton Bruckner and Carl Nielsen and therefore tend to sit apart.

There are those who were more susceptible to influences from a post-Sibelius Scandinavian or German tonal idiom. Arnold Cooke was a pupil of Hindemith and the inflence of the German composer is palpable in his music.
Alan Rawsthorne probably fits into this category although his music is more chromatic than that of Cooke.

In the post-1945 period a number of British composers began to write symphonies which were influenced by the music of Bartok and mid period Stravinsky. These pushed at (or sometimes beyond) the boundaries of tonality. Benjamin Frankel, Peter Racine Fricker, Iain Hamilton, Humphrey Searle, Alun Hoddinott all wrote symphonies which approached, flirted with or crossed into atonality.

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies's symphonies are an extraordinary marriage of Sibelius and modernism.