Arthur Bliss: Music and Literature

368 Pages·2017·65.69 MB·English

by  Stewart R. Craggs

Arthur Bliss
For
Trudy
Arthur Bliss:
Music and Literature
Edited by
STEWART R. CRAGGS
First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright © Stewart R. Craggs and the contributors, 2002
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Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.
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The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but
points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.
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The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes
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Typeset in Times New Roman by Manton Typesetters, Louth, Lincolnshire,
UK.
A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 2001048704
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-71850-0 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-315-19577-3 (ebk)
Contents
List of Plates vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Preface xiii
Music Acknowledgements xv
Introduction 1
John Amis
1 Metamorphic Variation: The Orchestral Music 6
Robert Meikle
2 Chronicle of a Collaboration: The Olympians 58
Roderic Dunnett
3 The Piano Concerto in B Flat (1939) 111
Bryan Crimp
4 The Songs of Bliss 121
Alan Cuckston
5 An American Interlude 172
Paul Jackson
6 The Film Music 191
Stephen Lloyd
1 In Search of a Progressive Music Policy: Arthur Bliss at the BBC 227
Lewis Foreman
8 The Recorded Works 266
Lyndon Jenkins
9 ‘ ... if Poets mind thee well... ’: Bliss and Christopher Hassall 281
Roderic Dunnett
Bibliography 338
Index of Bliss s Music 343
General Index 345

List of Plates
1 Bliss rehearsing the Royal Choral Society, 1969 (?) 162
2 Lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers (1914) 163
3 Arthur Bliss with Kenneth Wright and Hubert Clifford at the
BBC (1941) 164
4 Kathleen Raine 165
5 A discussion about the ballet Checkmate (1937) between Ninette
de Valois and McKnight Kauffer, the designer 166
6 Arthur Bliss with Lionel Salter rehearsing Age of Kings (1960) 167
7 Arthur Bliss with Jose de la Querriere, Claudio Arrau, Richard
Hale, Carlos Salzedo and Greta Torpadie in New York, with a
letter from Richard Hale 168
8 Solomon 169
9 Bliss at the BBC (1941) 170
10 Manuscript of Metamorphic Variations (1973) 171

Notes on Contributors
John Amis’s varied life in the world of sound has enabled him to become one
of radio and television’s favourite music presenters and interviewers, and to
become the ‘symphony’ man in the long-running radio and television show
My Music.
He has had a varied career in music. He sold gramophone records, man­
aged orchestras (notably for Beecham), was a music critic for eighteen years,
organized the Dartington Summer School for a quarter of a century, appeared
in the Hoffhung Festival and had his own radio and television shows.
John Amis’s autobiography Amiscellany was published in 1985, got rave
reviews and quickly went into paperback. In 1987 Musicians in Camera was
published: a collection of photographs and profiles of 74 musicians by Laelia
Goehr and John Amis. He spends part of the year giving talks not only in the
UK, but also in Australia, New Zealand and the USA.
In 1992 Nimbus issued a CD Amiscellany: music-making with friends
including Levon Chilingirian, Ian Wallace, Leslie Howard, Jeffrey Tate, Steve
Race, Penelope Thwaites and Donald Swann. Items include Poulenc’s Babar
the Elephant and Ridout’s Ferdinand the Bull.
Stewart R. Craggs, editor of this book, is an author, editor and bibliogra­
pher, with a special interest in British music of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The subject of his Ph.D. thesis was Sir Arthur Bliss and his
sourcebook on the composer was published by Scolar Press in 1996. He has
produced similar reference works on Lennox Berkeley, Peter Maxwell Davies
and William Walton. He is currently consultant to the Walton Edition, pub­
lished by Oxford University Press.
Bryan Crimp is known to record collectors for his many activities within the
record industry and his special interest in historic recordings. He spent most
of the 1970s with EMI Records, a period during which he systematically
reinstated to the catalogue the recordings of some of the greatest artists of
yesteryear. Since leaving EMI he has divided his time between broadcasting,
lecturing, writing and establishing the now acclaimed historic record label,
APR. It is on APR that the world premiere performance of the Bliss Piano
Concerto has recently appeared, together with previously unpublished move­
ments from Adam Zero conducted by Constant Lambert.
Alan Cuckston is a professional keyboard player. He read Music at King’s
College, Cambridge, 1959-63, studying composition with Patrick Hadley
and musicology with Thurston Dart. For more than thirty years he has per­
formed as harpsichordist, pianist and organist, giving solo recitals and