Walter Allum
Walter Allum was born in Wheatley, near Oxford, in 1895, and his first job on leaving school was with the Oxford electrical contractors Hill & Upton. From them he went to the Birmingham firm of Crabtree (Switches) and then to GEC, with whom he spent the rest of his working life. From the age of 16 he had been interested in poetry and music, and started his first tentative [composition] efforts at that time. After his retirement from GEC he began to submit poems and compositions (piano solo and voice and piano) to the Cheltenham Competitive Musical Festivals, with great satisfaction, from 1951 onwards. In 1973 he won first and second prizes: in the following three years he won the Challenge Cup. Besides his poetry and music, Walter is an excellent draughtsman. Reginald Nettel
The dark clouds of the 1914-1918 war were obscuring the skies when I first met Havergal Brian at Mrs Valentine’s house, known as Naerodal, at 73 Gravelly Hill North, Erdington, Birmingham, where I had lodgings. Brian was given Mrs Valentine’s address by the Dunlop Company, by whom he was employed at that time. I personally have no record of the exact date of this meeting, and the evidence relating to it is indeterminate. In a letter to me dated 14 February 1968, Brian writes; ‘Thank you for your letter and also for your generous gift (bottle of Bristol Cream Sherry) which appropriately enough arrived this morning - Valentine’s Day, for it was at Mrs Valentine’s house that we met years ago at Erdington. 50 years is a long time...’
This dates the meeting as having taken place in February 1918, which date is recorded by Reginald Nettel in Havergal Brian: the Man and his Music (Denis Dobson). It was from Mrs Valentine’s house that Brian moved to 97 Edwards Rd., Erdington, where I visited him on several occasions. Contrary statements made elsewhere relating to this move are incorrect. Brian again refers to the date of our meeting in a letter written from West Dulwich dated May 1939. This letter indicates 1917 as the year in question. He writes: ‘I’ve often thought of you and wondered what you were doing. But letter writing has become a bore and I never write unless compelled.’ (The letter covers nine closely written pages - quarto size: ) ‘Those months we spent together under the same roof are vividly recalled in your book Music on the Wing: a Pilgrimage. I’ve no criticism to offer...I’ve no wish to alter anything you have said about me. I think it is just as it should be.’ Since the elusive date is of no importance, one can perhaps the more readily adopt Brian’s philosophic motto ‘Nothing matters’ - a sentiment echoed by Ernest Newman when he concluded one of his letters to me with the phrase ‘Culture in England is dead anyhow, so what does it all matter?’
But what of Brian at this time? This question I will answer by quoting an abridged extract from Music on the Wing which I wrote in 1936:
‘From being a musical waif hugging about me the tattered remnants of my musical compositions, I now began to feel the beneficial effects of a friendship which enriched my musical thought and by so doing stimulated my desire to compose. It was a kindly fate which directed Brian to Mrs Valentine’s house where I lodged, for this man was none other than the composer Havergal Brian, described by Gerald Cumberland as a fire-eating genius from the Potteries in his book Set down in Malice. I have to dispute this description since I found Brian to be not so much a fire-eater as a fire-worshipper, especially on wintry nights when ‘icicles hang by the wall’. Nor did I find in him a fiery dragon of a man such as Cumberland’s appellation might have led one to expect. Instead I found a keen musical intelligence allied to a homely wit and a refreshing outlook. At all times Brian would gaze into the future through the eyes of an idealist - a dreamer of dreams. It can be said at once that Brian owed little to convention, either in personal affairs or in his musical work, which at one time was said to compare with Erik Satie when in mischievous mood. It may be remarked however in passing that Brian refrained from associating himself with Satie’s notes in red ink and staves without bar-lines, even in such a freakishly droll trifle published under the title Three Illuminations, in which I feel Brian’s sense of humour placed a lamentable strain upon his musicianship.
But it is in large-scale works that Brian comes into his own and at the time of which I write he had already produced his (First) English Suite (1904); By the Waters of Babylon (1905); The Vision of Cleopatra (1907); In Memoriam (1910); also the contrasting Comedy Overture Dr Merryheart (1912) and the (Second) English Suite (1515) and several other works. Brian’s mind revels in the complexities of orchestral scoring, characteristically abounding in adventurous harmonies and unorthodox transitions vitalized by intricate cross-rhythms. When Brian played the piano in embracing his Muse, nothing less than full orchestral tone was demanded in his crescendos - a fact confirmed by Gerald Cumberland - whilst the tutti passages were something to be feared’.... yet in Brian’s music tender moments are by no means uncommon. Many instances bearing witness to this tenderness are to be found in his songs and no less in the most passionate utterances where they steal into his orchestral music.’
As I write I have in mind one such theme, laden it would seem with haunting sorrow. It stirs into life in Brian’s 6th, the Sinfonia Tragica, the passage being marked `Lento espress. solenne’. Of this, Malcolm MacDonald, in The Symphonies of Havergal Brian Vol. 1 (Kahn & Averill) writes as follows: ‘... the long theme that now unfolds on muted violins - infinitely sad yet instinct with a nobility and tenderness of feeling that no words can convey - could only be the work of a melodist of the first rank and can surely stand comparison with the finest inspirations of Elgar or Vaughan Williams.’
I well recall an amusing incident when on one occasion Brian took advantage of Mrs Valentine’s absence to try something out on the piano (he would only do so if we were alone in the house) and Mrs Valentine returned earlier than had been expected. Brian was ‘banging away’ as usual, with vocal obbligato, when a startled face appeared in the doorway. It was that of our landlady anxiously enquiring ‘Whatever is the matter?’ Fortunately I was able to motion her to beat a hasty retreat and Brian played on - blissfully unaware of the intrusion. My book of reminiscences was never published, largely owing to difficulties arising from the Second World War and a waning interest on my part - but Brian thought well of it (as did Dr Ernest Walker) and had the book gone to press it would have included an introduction by him in which he had proposed tracing a line from medieval music to the present day, advancing the theory that music is not so young an art as the official historians state and that it did not begin in the 16th century. In letter he writes: ‘I am not sure whether I don’t derive so much pleasure from reading the works of a great Flemish monk - Josquin des Pres (1445 - 1521) for instance, as I do In listening to a Beethoven symphony...’ But I digress.
When Mrs Valentine informed me that a man was coming from the Dunlop Company to occupy the annex (used as a surgery during Mr Valentine’s lifetime) and that his name was Havergal Brian, the news was not without interest, for as a reader of musical journals the name was not unknown to me, But the prospect of the person of whom I had read coming to Naerodal seemed so improbable that I dismissed the possibility from my thought - regarding the duplication of names as coincidental. The expected lodger duly arrived, and since his bedroom was adjacent to my own it was inevitable that we should meet and exchange nods, if nothing more. But the day arrived when Brian remarked that he had heard me playing the piano, adding that he assumed that I had been playing ‘my own stuff’, I conceded this, saying that it had to be ‘my own stuff’ since I could not play anything else - or words to that effect. This was perhaps a slight over-statement, I having worked for some years to acquire a reasonable technique, helped along in this matter by Clarinda Mallol - a gifted pupil of Arthur de Greef, the Belgian pianist and close friend of Grieg. But the fact that I was playing ‘my own stuff’ evidently aroused Brian’s interest, for he suggested that we should meet and have a talk - a proposal to which I readily agreed. In the abridged extract from Music on the Wing already quoted, I have very briefly recorded my impression of Brian at that time, but I can add that his general demeanour was quiet but by no means subdued. He appeared to be temperate in his habits, an inveterate pipe-smoker, and one seemingly not discontented with life. I judged that he normally elected to retreat behind a defensive barrier, but when the defences fell, one’s heart warmed to him in friendship.
Looking back on those far-off days it is now known of course that at the time under review Brian was involved in prolonged marital problems and financial difficulties, and it is to his credit that he refrained from wearing these troubles on his sleeve. He seemed to be motivated by the sole desire to help me with my musical work and poetry. At his suggestion the poems were read to him aloud. Happily none of these poems have survived the test of time. If Brian was bored (as I fear he must have been on occasion) he gave no indication of it, and invariably urged me to ‘go on writing’. The same advice was given with regard to composition – ‘go on composing’ at least a little every day, this being necessary in his opinion to further the development of musical fluency. Chopin was cited as a model of fluent writing, it being maintained that any of his parts (treble, alto, etc.) could sing. But let it be remembered that Chopin, as a perfectionist, paid dearly in terms of emotional stress when engaged in composition - even when his creations were initially spontaneous. George Sand recounts how he would sometimes isolate himself for days, weeping in torment and on occasion taking weeks over a single page, subjecting his ideas to endless revision, yet liable to return when all was spent to the original version: truly this was genius in travail. In later years Brian wrote that his three fugues were not composed for the piano, although they were published by Augener as such - they were written to develop flexibility in technique for writing the Te Deum forming part of the Gothic Symphony.
In conversation with Brian it was immediately apparent that he intended to follow the star of destiny which indicated that he should devote his life, as far as possible, to music and literature. By comparison, my own aspirations were positively mundane. My star was nearer to Mother Earth - although I too had my dreams and visions, loving the arts, music, poetry, painting - embracing these pleasures, being well content to share them with my friends in leisure hours. Brian was familiar with all that was best in these various fields, with particular emphasis on Bach (whom he venerated), Elgar (his one-time talisman), Strauss, Schubert and Dowland. In a letter dated May 1923 Brian wrote: ‘Do you know the work of Malipiero, Goossens or Bliss? There is a great deal of fine work in all these men. Goossens is in my opinion the most promising young figure in contemporary music today. Some of his work contains long sustained flights in continuous thinking and his language is not that of any other man than Goossens - and as modern as either Stravinsky or Malipiero. Brian also studied the scores of Berlioz and Wagner, whilst in the field of poetry he held in high esteem Shakespeare, Shelley, Blake, Yeats, Goethe, Heine and the early English poets such as Herrick and Donne. By no means least he was greatly attracted by the writers of Greek tragedy. In letters, Euripides and Aristophanes are mentioned, whilst it will be remembered that Agamemnon, Brian’s opera in one act, was based on the tragedy by Aeschylus.
In discussing music of the future one was left in no doubt that Brian had no great liking for the 12 note chromatic scale although he was well aware of current developments. If some of his early works tend to reflect the influence of ‘modern’ idioms - that of Schoenberg for instance, whom paradoxically he greatly admired - his later works usually identify with a firm, if shifting, tonal base. It is not surprising, therefore, that he held definite views on the subject of Temperament, writing : ‘...all these fads arc of no use to me. Bach settled the matter for all time when he adopted Equal Temperament.’ And mention must also be made of his regard for Bantock’s music. Writing in December 1946 (a quote from Musical Opinion) - ‘As a master of the orchestra, Bantock has no superior. Not only in Omar but in the song cycle Ferishta’s Pancies and The Great God Pan, Bantock’s orchestral metier has a seductive, sensual quality, with an effortless improvisatory style of melodic invention, unusual in English music and unlike that of any other composer.’
Brian seldom spoke of his own music but there was one notable exception, and this relates to his setting of Psalm 137 By the Waters of Babylon. At our first meeting he produced the vocal score, explaining the general lay-out and how certain passages had been treated and developed. This was my first confrontation with Brian’s music, and as he took me through the work I became acutely aware of the unorthodox melodic line and harmonic modulations which in pianistic terms (beyond the horizons of which I had not journeyed) would, I felt be uncomfortably discordant. It was not sufficiently appreciated that a combination of timbres from different groups of instruments - strings, woodwind and brass - could render discords less abrasive than when produced on a piano, which after all is a percussion instrument. It is my belief that Brian’s heartstrings had been deeply touched by the poetic imagery and dramatic savagery of this Psalm, which presented a huge canvas against which, from his musical palette, a composer could fling his most resplendent colours in riotous array with shattering effect.
It may well be that By the Waters of Babylon also had special significance in Brian’s mind owing to Elgar’s reaction to the work upon hearing it performed at the Music League Festival in 1909. Recalling this occasion in later years Brian wrote: ‘...After the first performance of my Psalm 137 I came out of the box and a short distance away Elgar arose from his box. He came to us and putting his hand on my wife’s shoulder said “Half this success is yours”. Turning to me he said “Brian, I never heard anything in my life like your music - you must come to us at Hereford and we will go for long walks together and throw pebbles in the Wye.” He did not write... and when he went to the Festival platform he forgot to tell the audience what he had told me. I never met him again after Liverpool though I never lost an opportunity of listening to first performances of his works whenever I could get to them’.
Elgar’s kindly gesture to Isabel (Brian’s first wife) lends credence to the belief that behind every man there stands a woman (sometimes alas several women:), but here Elgar’s Lady Alice comes readily to mind, as does Schumann’s Clara, and a salute to Hilda (Brian’s second wife) may not be out of place. Yet could these two men have for long enjoyed each other’s company? The question is very much in doubt as will be obvious from a letter written by Brian dated Feb. 1937. It reads: ‘..But he (Elgar) became very friendly when a few years afterwards he recognised I meant it - and if we drifted and relations became less cordial, well, it was my fault. I’m no clairvoyant - he had a genius for social life, and I loathe it. I’m happiest when I’m alone. My greatest craving in these later years is for silence, and how little I can get of it. There is so much of farcical or grotesque nonchalance. I wonder the whole system of life doesn’t come to a standstill.’
Brian again declares his love of silence in a letter dated 7 February 1969. He writes: ‘My last Symphony No. 32 was completed sometime in June. It is the last I do believe, for I’ve had no thought of music since and have enjoyed, and shall enjoy silence.’ In this aspiration he was attuned to the Bard of Avon who says ‘Silence is the perfectest herald of joy’. (Much Ado about Nothing). The character-revealing phrase ‘I’m happiest when I’m alone’ may suggest the warped mind of an introvert, but at no time was there evidence of this. He spoke quite freely and apparently without reserve on cultural issues. I attribute this amicable relationship in part to the fact that my interest in music was not professional.
I recall with nostalgia our all-too-infrequent escapades at the piano when Brian would teasingly test my ability to improvise on groups of notes at his dictation - the notes having no particular key relationship. These diversions included fugal subjects: He was kind enough to say that 1 had an inborn flair for the piano and composition so that I derive some pleasure from the thought that the enjoyment resulting from these meetings was mutual.
Brian spoke of Beecham’s suggestion that he should write a comic opera and I am under the Impression that he tried out some preliminary sketch work at Naerodal. He sang and played excerpts which were dramatically lively - these may well have been from The Tigers in embryo. When later I visited Brian at Edwards Road he was usually at the piano engaged in song-writing. The preliminary sketches would be written away from the piano, for he did not look to the instrument for inspiration. Indeed it may be felt that he did not write gratefully for the piano - I confess it to be a view which I share. His flair, remarkable in a man who was largely self-taught, was for orchestral scoring, and where the respective claims of piano versus orchestra arise, it seems that ‘never the twain shall meet’. There are nevertheless exceptions where composers of note have successfully wooed at the trysting gate to our delight.
I profited greatly from Brian in my approach to song-writing for this was at a time when he was particularly active and successful with settings of Blake and the early English poets. It was a field of music-making to which he never returned. It would seem that he had outgrown this medium which was to be carried away on the gathering stream of his later works - a torrent sweeping all before it when in full spate.
When visiting Brian in the months following his departure from Naerodal I could not fail to observe signs of irrational behaviour - the suspicion that somebody was entering the house whilst he was absent, interfering with papers and defacing manuscripts. Nettel, with rare insight concerning the reactions of a man such as Brian, summarizes the situation (page 101): ‘Truly there were two sides to Brian: he evidently compensated in his daring music for a certain nervousness in his thinking: his extreme sensitivity no doubt induced both responses’. Of course, the phenomenon is not new, for it is on record that whilst in Majorca, Chopin was sometimes terrified by a phantom - a figment of his own imagination whilst engaged in composition.
This sensitivity manifested itself another way. Writing from Upper Norwood in January 1937 Brian comments on the environmental conditions: ‘...Someday I shall compose again and then I’ll set some of your poems to music. But not in this house. I loathe it: ‘ On a more pleasant note Brian writes: Being in the Cotswolds you are in touch with wonderful English scenery which is now expanding into Spring growth....I listened to the nightingale for forty minutes on the borders of Hertfordshire and Middlesex. I’ve never forgotten it. A countryman I used to meet and chat with told me much of the habits of nightingales and their nests built in nettles.’ These brief extracts are indicative of the composer’s love of the countryside, as with Beethoven before him.
But Brian, in common with many composers of note, also suffered from periods of deep depression - a malaise which not infrequently follows as a reaction from the exhilaration of creative achievement. Rachmaninov, for instance, was the personification of melancholia. Tchaikovsky was unstable and a neurotic, confessing that but for music he would have gone mad. In our time that most prolific composer Benjamin Britten spoke of the agony of choosing the right note truly expressive of his emotion. Elgar, whilst subject to moods and despondency, would on occasion cheerfully indicate that he was ‘on the boil’ when composition was going well.
The shadow of tragedy darkened the Shoreham home in the last year of Brian’s life, and he was grief-stricken by the untimely death of his beloved daughter Elfreda, resident in Rhodesia. I quote briefly from his letter dated 27 April 1972: ‘... We have had a shock which seems it will never leave us. Our departed daughter was unique in many ways, as musician (in early years) and as a landscape gardener. She had the magic touch.’ I feel that the grief reflected in this letter contributed in no small measure to Brian’s failing health at this time. The last letter I received is dated 10 August 1972. It tells its own unhappy story, although the Spirit still flickers. ‘Very pleased to have your letter sometime ago. I wondered about you and your wife and that you can indulge in your loved music creations and send some to me. Sorry I cannot respond this time. I have been ill with jaundice for some weeks and am slowly recovering - but it is slow and I have many things on my table waiting for attention and hoping that I can attend to them. So, Walter, please understand and sometime later you can let me know how your creations move and I will have a look. But not yet. Wish it would clear up so that I could feel myself.’
Within the space of a few months Brian himself had passed away - the lifelong struggle for fame and fortune was over. But happily not before he had known the tide to be on the turn - many of his major works having been performed and broadcast by the BBC, largely through the advocacy of Dr Robert Simpson, himself a composer of distinction. Before this resurgence of interest in his music, down long years tangled with poverty and deprivation, Brian had, however, continued to write large-scale works without the stimulus which would have derived from the prospect of performance. In this he was obeying the dictates of the Spirit which activates all human endeavour - be it as musician, poet, painter, sculptor, or the mountaineer who deliberately attempts a climb fraught with danger just because the mountain is there. Brian had indeed followed his Star unfailingly to journey’s end and by so doing proved himself no idle dreamer of dreams.
There is but little to add. If any notes have contributed, even in small measure, to a better understanding of the composer then my purpose will have been served.
Brian frequently suffered from the ‘slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’, some of which may have been of his own fashioning, giving rise to tensions and irrational behaviour, torn as he was between the conflicting claims of compulsive composition and the need to support his family. Fortunately none of this spilled over into our friendship, proving beyond doubt that if on occasion Brian seemed to appear, in Wye folly, in the unenviable guise of an ‘awkward cuss’ or as a man ‘difficult to get on with’ - well, there was another side to his character wherein the flame of loyalty and affection burned brightly. I feel greatly privileged that some of the light from this source should have fallen on me.
Shakespeare tells us: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players’. On this stage Havergal Brian played many parts, but the role in which he should be fittingly remembered is that of a musician of rare distinction and achievement. He has in his music -symphonies, operas, choral and other large-scale works - left a uniquely rich legacy to this country and to countries beyond the seas. It now remains that this music should be increasingly brought to life in performance whereby all lovers of that which is best in music may enjoy the fruits of his labours.
© 1978 Walter Allum
Newsletter, NL 10, 1978