Sir Thomas Beecham

Sir Thomas Beecham was one of the most charismatic orchestral conductors of the 20^th century. Not only was he a top-rate musician and creator of orchestras, but he also had a way with words that has cemented his reputation as a great English “character”.

Early life and career

He was born in St Helens, Lancashire, on 29^th April 1879. His grandfather had made the family fortune as the inventor and manufacturer of “Beecham’s pills”, which proved to be an excellent patent remedy for indigestion (parodied as: “Hark the herald angels sing, Beecham’s pills are just the thing …”).

His father had followed in the family business, but was also musical, and it was the latter trait that Thomas inherited. He went to Oxford University, but was frequently absent attending concerts and opera performances, and he left without taking a degree.

His first experience of conducting was with the local St Helens Musical Society, but at the age of 20 he was given the opportunity to guest-conduct the famous Hallé Orchestra, which inspired him to greater things.

He moved to London to seek a career in music, although any hope he had of becoming a concert pianist was ruined by an injury to his hand at the age of 25. He married in 1903, but the marriage was not a happy one. He later had an affair with Lady “Emerald” Cunard that was to last until 1943.

Founder of orchestras and world-renowned conductor

He started a small orchestra, which was later expanded to become the New Symphony Orchestra, and this was followed by the Beecham Symphony Orchestra. He met the composer Frederick Delius and they became firm friends. Beecham was to become the great champion of Delius’s works, bringing many of them to public attention for the first time.

With his father’s help he was able to present operas and ballets at Covent Garden, including working with Diaghilev and Nijinsky.

When war broke out in 1914, Covent Garden was closed, but Beecham was able to renew his association with the Hallé Orchestra, giving many concerts with them, and also with the Royal Philharmonic Society. In 1916 he was knighted in his own right, although he was due to inherit his father’s baronetcy in any case.

His father had bought the Covent Garden estate, with a view to giving his son a home for his Beecham Opera Company. However, he died in October 1916, the day before his will was due to be finalised. This caused huge problems for Thomas, who was forced into virtual retirement from the musical scene for three years while the financial affairs were sorted out.

In the 1920s he guest-conducted a number of orchestras, and spent a short time in New York, but his real wish was to have a full-sized orchestra of his own. He made many approaches to musicians whom he admired, and eventually recruited enough to start a new venture, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which played its first concert in the Queen’s Hall in 1932. The quality of the orchestra was clear for all to see and hear, and the LPO, and its conductor, were soon recognized as major forces on the British musical scene.

In 1936 he took the LPO on a short tour of Nazi Germany, but engineered things so that he able to avoid having to salute the arrival of Adolf Hitler into the concert hall. After meeting Hitler, he made the percipient remark, “Now I know what’s wrong with Germany”.

In 1941 the Queen’s Hall was bombed and many of the LPO’s instruments were destroyed. However, the players found other instruments and continued to give concerts in the Royal Albert Hall.

Beecham spent much of the war in America, where he not only gave many concerts, especially with the Seattle Orchestra, but arranged a divorce from the first Lady Beecham and married Betty Humby, a pianist.

On his return to Britain after the war, Beecham founded yet another orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic (RPO), which toured both in the UK and abroad to huge acclaim. He continued to champion the works of Delius, and also those of Berlioz, Sibelius and Richard Strauss.

Throughout his career he combined operatic and orchestral work, and was particularly renowned for his interpretations of Wagner. His career coincided with the 20^th century development of music recording, and in his later years he was to produce some of the finest early stereo recordings.

He continued to conduct until ill-health caught up with him in 1960. He died of a thrombosis on 8^th March 1961, at the age of 81. In 1991 his remains were re-buried next to those of Frederick Delius.

Wit and wisdom

No account of Beecham’s life would be complete without mention of his many witticisms and put-downs, that were long remembered by those who first heard them and, indeed, were the victims of them. For example, although Beecham and Malcolm Sargent were good friends who had much mutual respect, that did not stop “Tommy” from referring to Herbert von Karajan as “a kind of musical Malcolm Sargent”.

Here are some of his best one-liners, several of them making very incisive comments on the nature of music and how it is appreciated:

• A musicologist is a man who can read music but can’t hear it
• Brass bands are all very well in their place – outdoors and several miles away
• Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle
• It is quite untrue that the British don’t appreciate music. They may not understand it but they love the noise it makes
• I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it
• There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn’t give a damn what goes on in between
• All the arts in America are run by unscrupulous men for unhealthy women
• Great music penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory
• Film music is just noise … even more painful than my sciatica
• Beethoven’s last quartets were written by a deaf man and should only be listened to by a deaf man
• A harpsichord sounds like two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm
• Try everything once, except incest and folk dancing
• The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought

However, sometimes his remarks were more accidental than intentional. For example, he was once irritated by the performance of a lady cellist whose efforts were not of the best. In all innocence, we must assume, he announced, “Madam, you have between your legs an instrument that is capable of giving pleasure to thousands, and all you can do is scratch it”.

At a social function, he found himself talking to a lady whom he felt he knew from somewhere, but could not quite place. Their conversation went:

He:  How are you? How’s your family?

She: I’m very well, thank you, although my brother has not been well of late.

He: Oh yes, your brother. Is he still doing the same job?

She: Yes, he’s still the King.

© John Welford

The legacy of George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was not a one-hit wonder. However, one of his hits is of such towering importance, and represents such a huge proportion of his legacy, that it deserves far more attention than anything else. But before considering The Messiah, let’s have a look at what else he has left us.

Handel was one of the three baroque greats who lived virtually parallel lives in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries, the other two being Bach and Vivaldi. Handel had already achieved considerable fame as a composer of operas and sacred works before he left the court of the Elector of Hanover to settle in England in 1712. When the Elector became King George I in 1714, Handel was able to resume his duties as master of the king’s music.

One product of these duties was the Water Music suite, a set of dance movements composed for a royal function on the River Thames in 1717. Handel and his 50 musicians sailed with the king from Whitehall to Chelsea and back, playing as they went. The king liked the music so much that he asked for the whole lot to be played three times. The event lasted well into the night, and it was nearly dawn before the exhausted players were allowed ashore.

Coupled with the Water Music, in considering Handel’s legacy, will always be the Music for the Royal Fireworks, although the latter suite was a much later offering, dating from 1749 when the king was George II and the event celebrated was the ending of the War of the Austrian Succession. Our legacy is obviously the music itself, but the first performance was a far more dramatic event than anything likely to occur today, with the temporary building in which it was performed catching fire. Indeed, the rehearsal six days previously had seen a near riot as 12,000 people rushed to the venue and three deaths were reported.

Handel’s vast output of operas and oratorios, mostly on Biblical and classical subjects, is now largely forgotten, although we still hear a number of arias and other excerpts that have justly survived to the present day. For example, the aria “Ombre mai fu” has long outlived the opera Serse, and “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba” is a welcome survival from the oratorio Samson.

Handel composed four coronation anthems for King George II, but it is fortunate that we do not have to wait for a new monarch to come along before we hear “Zadok the Priest”, as it is regularly performed and recorded.

However, it is for The Messiah that Handel is most revered, and rightly so. Composed in only a few weeks (there are disputes over exactly how many), it is the product of a genius who was overflowing with brilliant ideas as to how to get the most out of limited resources. Handel was at heart a showman, and he knew exactly how make an impression on an audience. For him, there was not a lot of difference between an opera and an oratorio in terms of musical effect, and it is a fact that he reused many good tunes and musical ideas – if an opera flopped but had a particularly good aria or chorus, it was likely to re-appear somewhere else, and that is one reason why The Messiah could be composed so quickly, and why it still comes across as being so fresh more than 250 years later.

The Messiah was an immediate success, as evidenced by the famous instance of King George standing in admiration during the “Hallelujah Chorus”, at which the rest of the audience felt honour bound to follow suit. It is always possible that George was merely suffering from cramp, but the custom has persisted to the present day.

I would suggest that Handel’s true legacy with The Messiah has much to do with factors other than the brilliance of the music. It is the only major piece of church music that is more often performed today by amateur choirs than professional ones. Baroque music was designed for smaller ensembles to perform than that of later periods, and it is quite possible for a choir of 30, plus soloists and a small group of musicians, to produce a very satisfying performance.

The music is spectacular and challenging, but it is not impossible! The choral pieces are all scored within the vocal ranges of most singers, the “twiddly bits” are soon mastered with a bit of practice, and the thrill of belting out “For Unto Us a Child is Born” and “All We Like Sheep”, (and not going astray during “… have gone astray …”!) is an experience worth having.

Indeed, it has become common practice, at least in the UK, for performances of “Messiah from Scratch” to be held. Everyone turns up, at village/town hall or church, has an afternoon in which to rehearse, and then performs in front of an audience in the evening. If you can read music, fine, if not – stand next to someone who can!

That is Handel’s legacy – music that ordinary people want to listen to and perform centuries later, when our world is very different from his.

© John Welford

A Ceremony of Carols, by Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten’s “A Ceremony of Carols” is regularly heard around Christmas time, either in churches or performed by choirs and other music groups in secular surroundings. The complete work takes around 22 minutes to perform and is best heard in its entirety, although it is possible to extract individual carols and sing them out of context.

The work was written in very unusual circumstances. Benjamin Britten (1913-76) and his collaborator and lover, the tenor Peter Pears (1910-86), had spent three very successful years in North America while the Second World War was beginning in Europe. They decided to return to Great Britain in 1942 and undertook a long and hazardous sea voyage aboard a Swedish cargo vessel, the “Axel Johnson”. Although Sweden’s neutrality, and the Atlantic convoy system, would have afforded some protection against German U-boat attacks, the ship’s safety could never have been guaranteed.

During the voyage, which took nearly a month as the ship visited other ports before making the final crossing, Britten completed his “Hymn to St Celicia” and had hoped to finish another work (for the jazz musician  Benny Goodman) but this was confiscated by customs officials who feared that the score could contain a hidden code of some sort.

Britten therefore had time on his hands. When the ship docked at Halifax, Nova Scotia, he came across a book of early English poems (The English Galaxy of Shorter Poems), and these formed the text which inspired him to write “A Ceremony of Carols”. Britten had also become interested in writing for the harp and intended to write a harp concerto. It was therefore a natural progression to write a work for a small boys’ choir with harp accompaniment.

By the time the ship docked in England Britten had written settings for seven carols, the words of one of which (“Balulalow”) had been hand-written on the flyleaf of the copy that Britten had bought.

Britten later added two further carols and an arrangement of the plainchant “Hodie Christmas” that frames the piece as a processional and recessional. There is also an instrumental interlude for the harp on its own. Two carols are linked together such that they are normally numbered 4a and 4b. The pieces are therefore numbered from 1 to 11, although there are ten individual carols.

The first performance of the Ceremony was on 4^th December 1943, given by the Morriston Boys’ Choir at the Wigmore Hall, London. This choir later made the first recording of the piece. A version for a four-part choir was made in 1955 by Julius Harrison.

After the processional mentioned above, the choir sings the lively “Wolcum Yole” accompanied by plucked chords on the harp. “There is no Rose” is a gently melodic carol sung by the choir before a carol sung as a treble solo, namely “That yonge child”, which describes Mary singing a lullaby to Jesus. This leads naturally into “Balulalow” which is a lullaby, sung at first by the soloist and then the full choir. The next carol, “As dew in April” raises the tempo to allegro, which is preparation for the lively presto of “This little babe”.

After a short harp solo, the carols resume with “In freezing winter night”, with its starkly atmospheric harmonies that would make one shiver even on the hottest day, followed naturally by a carol that takes the listener out of winter and into spring. “Spring carol” gives thanks to God for the blessings of spring and makes no mention of Christmas at all. The ceremony reaches a climax with “Deo Gracias” in which the voices finally tumble over each other like a peal of bells as they sing words that link the Nativity to the Fall of Man – “And all was for an appil, An appil that he tok, As clerkès finden written in their book”. The recessional to “Hodie Christmas” concludes the Ceremony.

Many people would say that they find Benjamin Britten’s music challenging, but he was a composer who was adept in many different fields and styles and much of what he wrote is extremely easy on the ear of even the most unsophisticated listener, even when the music presents considerable challenges to the performers. That is certainly the case with “A Ceremony of Carols” which takes considerable skill and talent to perform well but, when this is achieved, offers an experience of real pleasure and spiritual uplift.

© John Welford