As one who has been a member of the Havergal Brian Society for some years now, and values his membership greatly, I hope I shall not risk expulsion for expressing some disquiet at the uniformly eulogistic tone that pervades all critical commentary on Brian’s music in your columns.

I am not a practising musician but I am, I hope, a reasonably knowledgeable listener, and I possess on record or tape, and have frequently played, more than twenty of Brian’s symphonies and much else. And I find his output not only very uneven, but uneven in a special way. I am put in mind of the famous satire on Wordsworth which I will quote as well as I can remember it:

To me, the peak of his output, as I have heard it, belongs without any question to the few years after World War II when he first resumed composition. It is as if a vast amount of bottled-up experience were waiting to come out, and I find symphonies 6-9 at least almost flawless, among the best things written by any British composer in this century. But after that, the vision begins to fade.

All too often, I feel that Brian’s music adds up to less than the sum of its parts. This is most notably true of The Tigers which after repeated hearings I still cannot come to grips with. It is extremely difficult to write a genuine comic opera, let alone one with some satirical intent. It requires a consummate sense of timing and, above all, knowing when the joke is over. In a word: self-discipline. Britten got away with it — just — in Albert Herring. It is not a matter of length — the later symphonies are not long — but of relevance.

As Voltaire said: It is very easy to be a bore; just leave nothing out. If you are a Bruckner or a Mahler you sometimes get away with it, but for lesser mortals that is not possible So there are often compelling passages and flashes of great beauty, but which simply fail to cohere; and, in different ways and for different reasons, this mostly happens early and late.

At the start, Brian was probably quite aware where his weaknesses lay. Eventually however they became ingrained and the composer himself was unconscious of them. The result, as I see it, is that passages and sometimes whole movements got through that another composer, after due consideration, would have scrapped or totally rewritten. Sometimes the structure itself is faulty; more often, the musical invention is not of a quality to carry the structural weight it is called upon to bear.

In saying all this I am fully aware that one of the hallmarks of Brian’s mature style is not only the juxtaposition but the intercalation of musical ideas that apparently have nothing in common. The effect is often startling and, at its best, can open up a whole new dimension of musical experience. To me, it is the distinctive feature of the Symphonies from No 7 onwards. But it is an extremely difficult card to play and real success is rare. It needs more care and concentration than Brian, especially in his later years, was always prepared to give it. Despite the compelling power of Malcolm MacDonald’s prose, I am not persuaded that all Brian’s effects are intentional, or that he always succeeded in conveying what he actually meant to say.

To say all this, even to quote a satire that invites comparison with Wordsworth, is of course to judge Brian by the highest standards. I don’t think we have a choice. Some composers are naturally mellifluous, and if their most serious works are flawed they will survive for a mass of simple, approachable music that is excellent of its kind. For Brian, as for Mahler, that fall-back position is absent. It is greatness or nothing.

And I do not deny Brian’s greatness, surprising as that admission may seem at this point. But I think it is greatness of a special sort. We all know Brian was untutored. He remained all his life, I think, an amateur composer, deprived of all the facilities a formal training might have taught him but also able to hang on, as for 80 years he did hang on, to a totally personal vision like nobody else’s. Brian, to me, is the archetype, perhaps the only exemplar, of the composer of limited talent who by sheer application forces himself to become a genius. The price was very great. It is only in a handful of works that that genius finds full expression; everything else is more or less flawed. But we should be very such the poorer for not having it.

Performances were few and far between, and when given here, played by orchestras and conductors usually quite out of sympathy with the music. I well remember nearly 30 years ago — my then very young head full of this received view — hearing a broadcast of the fifth symphony that seemed to bear it out 100%. It was not until Barbirolli’s recording appeared that I really appreciated the greatness of the work (I know others had appeared, but that was the one that did it for me).

We must all rely on our ears, of course, but until we hear many performances of a work we cannot really begin to discern it itself through all those performances. Until that happens we must perforce rely on those who know the scores themselves, and the number of people who can really appreciate a work’s quality solely by reading the score is small.