Editing Arnold Bax (section)

==Music==
{{see also|List of compositions by Arnold Bax}}
{{Quote box| quoted=true|width=33%|bgcolor=#FFFFF0|align=right|quote= Bax's music is never simply rhapsodic or formless&nbsp;... but the tendency to be diffuse, to a point where the listener's attention insists on wandering, the love of picaresque construction and the absence of clear outlines—these faults account for the general apathy towards music that is intrinsically noble, humane, and capable of a certain melancholy grandeur.|salign = right|source= ''[[The Record Guide]]'', 1955<ref name=rg>Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor, pp. 75–76</ref>}}
Bax's fellow composer [[Arthur Benjamin]] wrote that Bax was "a fount of music", whose "spontaneous and inexhaustible outpourings", unique among his contemporaries, were comparable to those of [[Franz Schubert|Schubert]] and [[Antonin Dvořák|Dvořák]].<ref>Bliss ''et al'', pp. 1–2</ref> Evans has suggested that Bax's music paradoxically combines robustness and wistfulness,<ref name=evans1/> a view that later commentators including Herbage have endorsed.<ref name=archive/> The early music is often instrumentally difficult or orchestrally and harmonically complex; from about 1913 onwards he moved towards a simpler, sparer style.<ref name=evans1/> The composer and musicologist [[Anthony Payne]] considered that Bax's best works date from the period between 1910 and 1925: he instances ''The Garden of Fand'','' Tintagel'', ''November Woods'', the Second Piano Sonata, Viola Sonata, and first two symphonies.<ref>Payne Anthony [http://www.jstor.org/stable/957574 "Review: Bax at Length"], ''The Musical Times'', August 1973, 114 (1566), p. 798</ref> By the 1930s Bax's music ceased to be regarded as new and difficult, and towards the end of that decade it was attracting less attention than before.<ref name=grove/>

The conductor [[Vernon Handley]], long associated with Bax's music, commented that the composer's influences include [[Sergei Rachmaninoff|Rachmaninoff]] and [[Jean Sibelius|Sibelius]] as well as Richard Strauss and Wagner: "He was aware of jazz and many more composers on the European scene than we are now. That finds its way into a person's psyche and personality and into his technique as a musician."<ref>Anderson, p. 93</ref>

The critic [[Neville Cardus]] wrote of Bax's music:
{{blockquote|The paradox is that Bax's methods, his idiom and tonal atmosphere are impersonal: that is to say, there is no direct unfolding of an individual state of mind or soul as we find in Elgar or Gustav Mahler. Yet there is no mistaking the Bax physiognomy or psychology: always through the gloom and thickets of the symphonies the warm rays of an approachable, lovable man and nature may be felt.<ref name=cardus>Cardus, Neville. "Arnold Bax's Character in his Music: A Happy Man – But Tragic Themes", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 5 October 1953, p. 3</ref>}}

York Bowen thought it regrettable that Bax's orchestral works frequently call for exceptionally large forces: "When the score demands such luxuries as triple or quadruple woodwind, six horns, three or four trumpets, extra percussion and perhaps organ, it is undoubtedly throwing extra difficulties in the way of performance."<ref>Bliss ''et al'', p. 6</ref> The composer [[Eric Coates]] commented that Bax's music appealed greatly to orchestral players: "whichever instrument he wrote for, it was as if he played that instrument himself, so well did he seem to write for it".<ref>Bliss ''et al'', p. 7</ref>{{refn|Orchestral players' regard for Bax was reciprocated: his ''London Pageant'' (1937) is dedicated "To my friends of the BBC Orchestra".<ref>Parlett, p. 219</ref>|group= n}}

===Symphonies===
While in Dresden in 1907 Bax began work on what he later called "a colossal symphony which would have occupied quite an hour in performance, were such a cloud-cuckoo dream to become an actuality".<ref>Bax, p. 31</ref> He added "Happily, it never has!", but he left a complete piano sketch, which was orchestrated in 2012–13 by [[Martin Yates]], and recorded for the [[Dutton Vocalion]] label; it lasts for 77 minutes. The four-movement work, more conventional in structure than his completed symphonies, shows a strong Russian influence in its material.<ref name=abw>[http://arnoldbax.com/baxs-early-symphony-in-f-premiere-recording-on-dutton/ "Bax’s early Symphony in F – Premiere recording on Dutton"], The Sir Arnold Bax Website, retrieved 4 October 2015</ref>

Bax wrote his seven completed symphonies between 1921 and 1939. In a study of the seven, David Cox wrote in 1967 that they were "often dismissed as amorphous by those who imagine that Bax consists only of Celtic mistiness and 'atmosphere'. In fact they have considerable strength and frequent astringence; and formally the thematic material is presented with consistency and purpose."<ref>Cox, pp. 155–156</ref> In Herbage's view, the cycle can be seen to fall into two groups – the first three and the last three – with the [[Symphony No. 4 (Bax)|Fourth Symphony]] as "an extrovert interlude between these largely introspective works".<ref name=archive/> Handley agreed that the first three could be grouped together; Foreman sees a Celtic influence in all three, with Bax's emotions about the Easter rising and its aftermath discernible.<ref name=dnb/> The Fourth is generally regarded as a more optimistic work than its predecessors and successors. Handley calls it "festive", but comments that its ideas developed into darker mood in the [[Symphony No. 5 (Bax)|Fifth]] and [[Symphony No. 6 (Bax)|Sixth]].<ref>Anderson, p. 94</ref> The Fifth is, for Herbage, "the greatest ''tour-de-force''"; the Sixth stands out for its "magnificent final movement", which the critic [[Peter J. Pirie]] said "tears the earth up by its roots";<ref>Anderson, p. 95</ref> and the [[Symphony No. 7 (Bax)|Seventh]], in the view of the ''[[Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians]]'', has an elegiac tone, its simplicity far removed from the discursive and complex music of Bax's earlier years.<ref name=archive/><ref name=h556/>

===Concertante works===
Bax's first work for solo instrument and orchestra was the 50-minute ''Symphonic Variations'' in E{{music|flat}} (1919), written for Harriet Cohen. ''The Times'' considered it "like one of those deeds of recklessness which in the Army may be followed either by a Court-martial or a V.C. We incline to favour the Court-martial, and to award the V.C. to Miss Harriet Cohen for her part in the enterprise."<ref>"Progress in Music", ''The Times'', 19 April 1924, p. 8</ref>

The Cello Concerto (1932) was Bax's first attempt at a full-scale conventional concerto. It calls for a smaller orchestra than he customarily employed, with no trombones or tuba, and no percussion apart from timpani. Foreman points to many subtleties of scoring, but notes that it has never ranked high among the composer's mature works.<ref name=chandos>Foreman, Lewis (1987). Notes to Chandos CD 8494, OCLC 705060287</ref> The Violin Concerto (1937–38) is, like the last symphony, in a more relaxed vein than most of Bax's earlier music. Cardus singled it out as "unusually fine",<ref name=cardus/> although Heifetz may have felt it not virtuosic enough.<ref>Lloyd (2001), p. 165</ref> The composer described it as in the romantic tradition of [[Joachim Raff]].<ref name=b11/>

Among the minor concertante works is ''Variations on the Name Gabriel Fauré'' (1949) for harp and strings, in a style more neoclassical than most of Bax's music.<ref>[[Edward Greenfield|Greenfield, Edward]]. [http://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/english-music-for-strings "English music for strings"], ''[[Gramophone (magazine)|Gramophone]]'',  retrieved 16 September 2015</ref>  Bax's last concertante piece was a short work for piano and orchestra (1947) written in his capacity as Master of the King's Music, marking [[Elizabeth II|Princess Elizabeth]]'s twenty-first birthday.<ref name=grove/>

===Other orchestral works===
[[File:Bax-In-the-Faery-Hills.jpg|thumb|alt=bars of a printed orchestral score|upright=2|''[[In the Faëry Hills]]'', 1910 symphonic poem]]
Bax's tone poems are in a variety of styles and have varied sharply in their popularity. His  impressionistic tone poem ''In the Faëry Hills'' is described by ''Grove'' as "a succinct and attractive piece". It was modestly successful, but ''Spring Fire'' (1913) is instanced by Foreman as a difficult work; it was not performed in Bax's lifetime.<ref name=grove/> During the First World War Bax wrote three tone poems, two of which – ''[[The Garden of Fand]]'' (1913–16) and ''[[November Woods]]'' (1917) – have remained on the fringes of the modern repertoire, and a third – ''[[Tintagel (Bax)|Tintagel]]'' (1917–19) – which in the decade after his death was the only work by which Bax was known to the public.<ref name=grove/> ''Grove'' characterises all three as musical evocations of nature, with little expression of subjective personal response. The orchestral piece that was neglected longest was ''In memoriam'' (1917), a lament for [[Patrick Pearse]], who was shot for his part in the Easter rising; the work was not played until 1998. Bax reused the main melody for his incidental music to ''[[Oliver Twist (1948 film)|Oliver Twist]]'' (1948).<ref>Foreman, Lewis (1999). Notes to Chandos CD 9715, OCLC 41148812</ref>

''Oliver Twist'' was the second of Bax's film scores. The first was for a short wartime propaganda film, ''Malta, G. C.''. A four-movement suite was published after the release of the latter,<ref>Foreman, Lewis (2003). Notes to Chandos CD 10126, OCLC 872996638</ref>  containing what ''[[The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music]]'' calls "a notable March with a genuine ''nobilmente'' theme in the best Elgarian tradition".<ref>March, p. 80</ref> Bax's third and last cinema score was for a ten-minute short film ''Journey into History'' in 1952.<ref>Brooke, Michael. [http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/705508/index.html "Journey into History"], British Film Institute, retrieved 17 September 2015</ref>

Other orchestral works include ''Overture, Elegy and Rondo'' (1927) – a lightweight piece, according to ''Grove''. The ''[[Overture to a Picaresque Comedy]]'' (1930), was for a time one of his most popular works.<ref name=chandos/> It was described by the composer as "Straussian pastiche" and by ''The Times'' as "gay and impudent, and with that tendency to vulgarity which so easily besets the instinctively refined composer determined to let himself go",<ref>"Royal Philharmonic Society", ''The Times'', 2 April 1937, p. 10</ref> Cardus thought the work so appealing that to live up to the overture the putative comedy would have to be "written by [[Hugo von Hofmannsthal|Hofmannsthal]] and [[George Bernard Shaw|Shaw]] in collaboration. Not often is English music so free and audacious as this, so gay and winning."<ref name=nc>Cardus, Neville. "The Halle Concert", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 20 November 1931, p, 11</ref>

===Vocal music===
The critic Peter Latham remarked that he was surprised that Bax had never set any of Yeats's poems to music. Bax replied, "What, I? I should never dare!". Latham added that Bax's sensitiveness to poetic values made him "painfully aware of the violence that even the best musical setting must do to a poem". Eventually this feeling caused him to give up song-writing completely.<ref name=b11>Bliss ''et al'', p. 11</ref>
[[File:Bax's-poets.jpg|thumb|left|alt=four head and shoulders portraits of British poets|Among Bax's settings were poems by (clockwise from top left) [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]], [[Robert Burns|Burns]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]] and [[James Joyce|Joyce]]]]
At the start of his composing career, songs, together with piano music, formed the core of Bax's work. Some of the songs, mainly the early ones, are conspicuous for the virtuosity of their piano parts, which tend to overwhelm the voice.<ref name=Hold233>Hold, p. 233</ref> ''Grove'' contrasts the virtuoso accompaniment of "The Fairies" (1905) with  the simpler "The White Peace" (1907), one of his most popular songs. The musical analyst Trevor Hold writes that the piano "goes berserk" in "Glamour" (1920).<ref>Hold, p. 219</ref> Among the poets whose verses Bax set were his brother Clifford, [[Robert Burns|Burns]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer|Chaucer]], [[Thomas Hardy|Hardy]], [[A. E. Housman|Housman]],  [[James Joyce|Joyce]], [[J. M. Synge|Synge]] and [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson|Tennyson]].<ref name=grove/> The composer himself singled out for mention in his ''[[Who's Who (UK)|Who's Who]]'' article "A Celtic Song-Cycle" (1904) to words by "Fiona Macleod" (a pen name of the poet [[William Sharp (writer)|William Sharp]]).<ref name=who>[http://www.ukwhoswho.com/view/article/oupww/whowaswho/U234539 "Bax, Sir Arnold Edward Trevor"], ''Who Was Who'', Oxford University Press, 2014, retrieved 16 September 2015 {{ODNBsub}}</ref> Among the post-war songs, Hold considers Bax's "In the Morning" (1926) to be one of the best of all settings of Housman's works, "and it makes you wish that Bax had made further explorations into the Shropshire landscape."<ref>Hold, p. 227</ref> Hold classes that song, together with "Across the Door" (1921), "Rann of Exile" (1922) and "Watching the Needleboats" (1932), as "truly modern, 20th-century masterpieces of song".<ref name=Hold233 />

Bax wrote a substantial number of choral works, mostly secular but some religious. He was a nominal member of the [[Church of England]], but in the view of the critic Paul Spicer, "None of Bax's choral music can be described as devotional or even suitable for church use{{space}}… Here is a secular composer writing voluptuous music."<ref name=spicer/> The choral works with religious texts include his largest-scale unaccompanied vocal piece, ''Mater ora Filium'' (1921), inspired by [[William Byrd]]'s [[Mass for Five Voices|Five Part Mass]]; it is a setting of a medieval carol from a manuscript held by [[Balliol College, Oxford]].<ref name=spicer>Spicer, Paul (1993). Notes to Chandos CD 9139, OCLC 29688294</ref> The composer [[Patrick Hadley]] considered it "an unsurpassed example of modern unaccompanied vocal writing".<ref>Bliss ''et al'', p. 9</ref>  Bax's other choral works include settings of words by [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]] (''Enchanted Summer'', 1910), [[Henry Vaughan]] (''The Morning Watch'', 1935), [[John Masefield|Masefield]] (''To Russia'', 1944), and [[Edmund Spenser|Spenser]] (''Epithalamium'', 1947).<ref name=grove/>

===Chamber and solo piano music===
[[File:Bax-Second-Violin-Sonata-scherzo.jpg|thumb|alt=bars of printed score for solo violin and piano accompaniment|upright=2|Scherzo of Bax's Second Violin Sonata (1915)]]
In his overview of Bax's earlier chamber works, Evans identifies as among the most successful the Phantasy for viola, the Trio for piano, violin, and viola and "a String Quintet of such difficulty that an adequate performance has seldom if ever been possible". He rates the Second Violin Sonata (1915) as the composer's most individual work to that date. For Evans, the culminating point of Bax's early chamber music was the Piano Quintet, a work "of such richness of invention that it would be an ornament to the musical literature of any country or period".<ref>Evans (April 1919), p. 154</ref>  Foreman makes particular mention of the First String Quartet (1918 – "a classical clarity of texture and form to its Celtic inspiration", and the "grittier" Second Quartet (1925), the Viola Sonata (1922), the Phantasy Sonata for viola and harp (1927) and the Sonata for Flute and Harp (1928).<ref name=grove/>

The composer and musical scholar [[Christopher Palmer]] points out that Bax was unusual among British composers in composing a substantial oeuvre for solo piano.{{refn|Palmer comments that of the major British composers, Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams, Holst, Walton and Britten showed little interest in the solo piano and seldom wrote for it.<ref name=cp2>Palmer, Christopher (1988). Notes to Chandos CD 8497, OCLC 602145160</ref>|group= n}} Bax published four piano sonatas (1910–32), which are, in Palmer's view, as central to the composer's piano music as the symphonies are to the orchestral output.<ref name=cp1>Palmer, Christopher (1987). Notes to Chandos CD 8496, OCLC 602371238</ref> The first two sonatas are each in a single movement, of about twenty minutes; the third and fourth are in conventional three-movement form.<ref name=cp2/><ref name=cp1/> The First Symphony was originally planned as a large-scale piano sonata in E{{music|flat}} (1921); the manuscript score of the latter came to light in the early 1980s and was performed for the first time in 1983.<ref>Foreman, Lewis (1994). Notes to Continuum CD CCD 1045 DDD, OCLC 223356733</ref>        Bax's own virtuosity as a pianist is reflected in the demands of many of his piano pieces. Palmer cites [[Frédéric Chopin|Chopin]] and [[Franz Liszt|Liszt]] as major influences on Bax's piano style as well as Balakirev and the other Russians whose influence is seen throughout the composer's work.<ref name=cp2/> For piano duo Bax composed two tone poems, ''Moy Mell'' (1917) and ''Red Autumn'' (1931).<ref name=cp1/> His shorter piano pieces include picturesque miniatures such as ''In a Vodka Shop'' (1915), ''A Hill Tune'' (1920) and ''Water Music'' (1929).<ref name=cp2/>