Havergal Brian is a composer who defies categorisation. Although a contemporary of Vaughan Williams and Holst, his compositional style is completely different from theirs. His thirty-two symphonies reflect influences from Bruckner, Elgar, Mahler, Sibelius and perhaps Nielsen too, from within the symphonic tradition. Beyond that one can detect the influences of composers such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Varèse. With regard to the great Viennese pioneer of serialism, his liking for extremely elaborate orchestral textures, as well as his stretching of (and eventual abandonment of) tonality finds an echo in the first four symphonies of Brian.

This orchestral flamboyance stems from Richard Strauss, to whom Brian dedicated his mammoth first symphony, The Gothic. The former’s operas, Salome and Elektra, as well as early works of Schoenberg, such as Gurrelieder and Pelleas und Melisande, provide the closest ties within the musical mainstream to the sort of musical language that Brian uses in the first movement of his third symphony.

At this point, however, one must make an important distinction. Schoenberg’s harmonic adventurousness led to a complete break with triadic tonality, whereas Strauss, after the heady excesses of Elektra rarely, if ever, pushed his use of tonality to the same extremes. The first movement of Brian’s third symphony, however, begins and ends in C sharp (minor at the beginning, major at the end), and returns to that key at pivotal points throughout the movement, so that it is possible to see this central key area, or tonic, as an anchor for the movement.

This raises the issue of harmonic consistency, and the related manipulation of dissonance. These features were a source of unity and strength in music from Monteverdi to Mahler, and even in the music of Brian’s contemporary Franz Schmidt, who also sought to continue the tradition of symphonic writing, one can hear this consistency working to marvellous effect.

On the other hand, the music of Alfred Schnittke has derived much of its potency from the deliberate juxtaposition of wildly differing levels of dissonance and the use of many different harmonic idioms. To accuse Brian (or Schnittke) of inconsistency is to miss the point: as becomes clear from an analysis of the music, there is a consistency of approach and method in the first movement of the third symphony in the way in which Brian places, and treats, his non-triadic passages. This argues for the composer striving for a particular effect, rather than indulging in the whims of an over fertile musical imagination without any resource to compositional discipline.

The aim would appear to be to accommodate the non-tonal within the tonal. The resulting tension can be either stimulating or original, or disruptive and undisciplined, depending on one’s attitude. The music attempts a balance between an overall unity (provided by thematic and harmonic focus and repetition) and within that a strikingly diverse use of musical language. Brian challenges the notion of the seeming mutual exclusivity of the triadic and non-triadic harmonic idioms; the coherence of the resulting music depends more on a consistency of approach, resulting in intelligibility, than a unified sound-world.

There are three spans of music in this movement deserving of consideration within the context of the present article:

1) From fig 8 to fig 11:7
2) From fig 14 to fig 15:5
3) From fig 18.5 to fig 19:6

(Note, the references to figure numbers, and bars within those figures, are based on the following example: fig 4:1 is the bar at the beginning of which is written, above the bar-line, the large circled number 4).

1a) from fig 8:2 to fig 8:10
1b) from fig 9:1 to fig 10:6
1c) from fig 10:7 to fig 11:7

This passage, before the second version of the theme first heard at fig 5:9 is unified more by rhythmic gesture than any binding sense of tonality. In the first four bars, there are dotted rhythms in trombones and tuba, heard against florid writing for piano 1. The next two bars feature the rhythm semiquaver+semiquaver triplet on flutes and piano 1, with rising scale-like semiquavers in the left hand of the piano, as well as horns and clarinets. This is followed, by inversion, with one bar of the rhythm semiquaver triplet+semiquaver against descending scale-like semiquavers. The next two bars are anticipatory in nature, and both make use of the same rhythmic gesture: a demisemiquaver flourish on the first crotchet beat in the first piano, followed by dotted rhythms in piano 2.

In the present case the melody is unchanged, but the texture around it is totally transformed; little wonder that the effect is so disconcerting. What was a Late-Romantic English-tinged melody almost becomes an Ivesian textural battleground. Furthermore, rather than strengthening the character of the melody, this elaborate restatement challenges and undermines it, thus contributing in a disruptive way to the perceptible unity of the musical discourse.

Brian achieves a successful and smooth transition here between the non-tonal (in which a similarity of motivic shape is the binding element) and the key-centred. C sharp is heralded as the goal of this passage and is clearly articulated as a point of arrival. The motivic outline of a step upwards followed by a larger leap downwards pervades this passage until four bars before the re-emergence of C sharp minor as a key-centre. At that stage the prevalent pattern changes to a step downward followed by a leap downward (eg A-G-D, D-C-G, E-D-A).

11:4 A G D C
11:5 D C G E
11:6 D C G
11:7 D C

The emphasis on the pitches D, C and G above provides a striking illustration of how Brian manages to integrate the tonal and the non-tonal by achieving a smooth and logical transition from one to the other.