Sir Arthur Bliss – Standing out from the Crowd
by Paul Spicer
Published 2023
384 pages, including appendices and index.
With colour and black & white illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-7198-1633-8
Paperback
Robert Hale/The Crowood Press
In 2015 Paul Spicer published a very fine biography of Sir George Dyson (review). At the end of my review, I wrote the following: “I believe that Spicer is now working on a similar project devoted to Sir Arthur Bliss. When it appears that, surely, will be as welcome as his championship of Dyson in this important book.”
When I started to read the book, my eye was caught almost immediately by a statement in the preface. Spicer admits that when he was approached to write the book, he realised how little he knew about either the composer or his music. “What I did know generally failed to excite me, and I felt so agnostic about the project that I seriously questioned whether I was the right person to undertake it.” Let me immediately reassure potential readers of this book that Spicer’s initial agnosticism has not prevented him from writing an excellent biography of Bliss. In fact, I think that agnosticism has probably produced a better book than might have been the case if its author had started from the stance of an out and out admirer. Spicer is able to view both man and music objectively and he’s not afraid to pass critical judgements on some of the music he surveys. That said, when he admires a piece, you can tell that the admiration is justified. One thing that I noticed was the enthusiasm which Spicer displays for some of Bliss’s later works. Indeed, towards the end of the book he says “Bliss’s Indian summer, his final composing period, has been a revelation to me in the quality and inspiration that persisted despite his age and earlier thoughts of retirement.”
Starting off as a self-confessed Bliss agnostic, Spicer adopts an interesting approach. At the very start of Chapter 1, he quotes a remark which Bliss made late in life: ‘If you want to know about me, listen to my music’. So, Spicer sets off, as he says, on a detective story; his aim is to uncover the real Arthur Bliss.
The portrait that emerges is a complex but fascinating one. He takes us through Bliss’s early life, born into a prosperous family. His father, Frank, was a successful American businessman, whose work took him to England, where Arthur was born. His father’s background is important in several respects. It gave young Arthur and his siblings the security of a comfortable upbringing. It also led to Bliss meeting, in 1924, Trudy Hoffman, who was to become his wife, when Arthur accompanied his father on what was to be Frank Bliss’s last return to the USA: he settled there and lived his final years back in the States, until his death in 1930. Crucially, Arthur inherited a set of values from his father; what Spicer describes as “his father’s rock-like New England principles”.
Spicer takes us through Bliss’s war service. The experiences he had in France and, above all, the loss of his brother Kennard, were to have a profound effect on Bliss’s creative output. It is well known that Bliss’s first undoubted masterpiece, Morning Heroes was a cathartic work in which Bliss memorialised his brother. What I hadn’t appreciated until I read this book is the significance of the Clarinet Quintet, written a couple of years after Morning Heroes. Spicer points out that Kennard Bliss played the clarinet and suggests, plausibly, that the Quintet may have been Arthur’s ultimate tribute to his slain brother. One important point emerges about Morning Heroes: its universality. Spicer quotes a review published in the Musical Times shortly after the 1930 premiere in which the reviewer says this: ‘Bliss has never set patriotic bounds to his imagination: “Morning Heroes” could be sung in Germany without hurt to national pride…’ That’s a very perceptive contemporary point which Spicer backs up with the observation that the work is “in a very real sense, an elegy to war which is boundless and timeless”. So, it seems Morning Heroes is as universal a piece as Britten’s War Requiem, a work which I’ve long felt rather unfairly overshadows Bliss’s eloquent work.
By the time Morning Heroes was written Bliss had already had a high-profile commission: at the instigation of Elgar, Bliss had been invited to compose A Colour Symphony for the 1922 Three Choirs Festival, held in Gloucester. In many ways, this was an astonishing work; nothing in Bliss’s previous output really prepares the listener for such things as the assurance in handling a huge orchestra, for example. As well as discussing the music well, Spicer relates that Elgar, having instigated the commission was very cool in his response to the work and that caused a rift in their relationship which was only healed when Bliss dedicated Pastoral (1929) to Elgar. Bliss substantially revised three of the symphony’s four movements (but not movement 3) before Boult conducted the work in 1932. I wasn’t aware until I read it here that part of the revision included a new reference, in the second movement, to music that is heard in the last movement of Morning Heroes at the words ‘Why speak they not of heroes that went under?’ Incidentally, one detail mentioned by Spicer caused me to smile wryly. The symphony’s premiere took place in Gloucester Cathedral at a Three Choirs Festival concert. The stage was packed – a substantial choir was in place to sing other music – and it proved to be too much of a squash to accommodate Bliss’s large orchestral forces. The solution? An unbelievable last-minute decision to exclude some players, including the tuba (which has an important part). That detail caught my eye because as I write this review the 2023 Three Choirs Festival is in full swing – again in Gloucester. I’m attending several large-scale concerts during the week; I’m confident that they will organise things significantly better on the platform than was the case in 1922.
Bliss wrote the music for several films, though, as Paul Spicer records very thoroughly, these weren’t often happy experiences. He’s particularly enlightening about the background to the music for Things to Come. He was invited to write the score by H G Wells himself and thereby got caught up in the often-fraught relations between Wells and the makers of the film. Much of the tension sprang from Wells’ close involvement in the film, even though he had no prior experience of the medium. Wells was determined that the music should be integral to the film rather than tagged on at the end, a view which Bliss, similarly inexperienced in films, was happy to endorse. In the end, the music had to be hacked around in order to fit within the film. Undaunted, Bliss returned to film music later in his career.
Spicer is also very good in his sections on Bliss’s ballets. His first and biggest success in the field was Checkmate (1937). Spicer writes an excellent description of both the ballet scenario and the music. He deals with other balletic experiences very well, not least in demonstrating how deeply involved Bliss was in each project. I was delighted to find that Spicer rates very highly the 1955 Meditations on a Theme by John Blow. He gives an excellent, insightful description of the work. I’ve long considered this work to be one of Bliss’s greatest achievements but Spicer’s view of how it stands in relation to Bliss as a man has given me a far deeper appreciation of the work. In his discussion of the work, Spicer reverts to his ‘detective story’ idea; he regards the Blow Mediations as a significant piece in the detective story jigsaw and persuasively explains why he sees the work as something of a creative testament and “a rare glimpse of the real Bliss”.
He’s frank in his assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of Bliss’s only full-scale opera, The Olympians. He comments that“Bliss’s stye loses its personality at so many points” and poses the pertinent question: was Bliss better at writing for the orchestra than for voices? It’s hard to disagree with his view that the opera feels “distinctly old-fashioned”. For the 1972 semi-staged Brian Fairfax performance (which I have on CD) Bliss made lots of cuts in an attempt to address some of the criticisms. As Spicer observes, a staged revival looks unlikely. I think this is one of the most valuable sections in the book.
One theme that keeps recurring in the book is an assessment, shared by other writers who Spicer quotes, that a lot of Bliss’s music lacks true melodic memorability. I must admit, this wasn’t a point which had fully registered with me previously but reflection prompted by this book persuades me that there’s substance in the point. For example, I realise now that the two most effective movements in Morning Heroes, a work I greatly admire, are those for narrator and orchestra. Of course, there’s no suggestion that Bliss’s music is devoid of melody; it’s just that his melodic gift is not so pronounced or natural as is the case with, say, Elgar or Vaughan Williams. That said, Spicer does identify some examples of Bliss as an engaging melodist, among them Mary of Magdala, The Enchantress, and the third variation of the Belmont Variations for Brass Band.
Before leaving the music itself, mention must be made of The Beatitudes, the choral/orchestral work commissioned as part of the festival to mark the opening of Coventry Cathedral in 1962. Spicer outlines the difficult gestation of the work and, in particular, the notorious relegation of the premiere out of the cathedral and into the wholly unsuitable Coventry Theatre. (A recording of the broadcast of that first performance, issued in 2013 – the work’s first appearance on CD – wasn’t quite as bad as I’d feared (review).) Spicer declares that The Beatitudes “lacks an overall inspirational spark”, though it has its moments. I think that’s a very fair assessment. He records that Coventry Cathedral “made amends” with a performance of The Beatitudes in 2012 as part of the celebrations to mark the 50th anniversary of the consecration of the Cathedral. I attended that performance. Towards the end of my review of the concert I said this: “Is The Beatitudes a neglected masterpiece? I don’t honestly think so, even though I admire the work very much. Regrettably, I doubt it will ever become a repertoire piece….It won’t be to all tastes – the elderly gentleman in the seat next to me was clearly unimpressed. However, it is a work of no little stature, as was confirmed tonight, and the almost total neglect it has suffered is unjustified.” It’s only fair to note that this concert attracted a less-than-full house whereas a performance of Britten’s War Requiem a few months earlier had been a sell-out.
As well as the music, Paul Spicer gives us a very rounded picture of Arthur Bliss in other respects. A critically important feature of his life was his long and happy marriage to Trudy. They married in June 1925 and were only parted by Sir Arthur’s death in 1975, three months short of their Golden Wedding. They met in Santa Barbara, where Trudy’s family lived, in 1924; he was 21 and she was a year younger. They married in June 1925 and returned to London to set up home. As Spicer observes, London in the 1920s must have been quite a shock for a young American woman used to sunny California. Yet, as he relates, she rolled her sleeves up from the outset, determined to become assimilated. This willingness extended to attendance at the Royal College of Music to study with R O Morris and to take singing lessons. Trudy Bliss’s accomplishments were far from insignificant: as Spicer points out, she was widely read, became a skilled broadcaster and was a fine cook. Her literary interests were especially manifest in her acclaimed publication of the correspondence between Thomas Carlyle and his wife in 1953. Bliss supported her in everything she did but, as Spicer observes, “she never felt herself to be of any significance except in relation to him”. This remarkable woman gave her husband unstinting support for fifty years and then, after his death, kept the flame alive until her own death in 2008.
Another key to understanding Arthur Bliss is his record of public service. Most famous, perhaps, was his work for the BBC during the Second World War. It was Bliss’s way of ‘doing his bit’. Spicer gives a thorough overview of his work for the Corporation. He started work in June 1941 as the Deputy to the Director of Overseas Music (as opposed to the Home Service). Soon, he was seeking a more senior role, suggesting to Sir Adrian Boult that he should become Director of Music, leaving Boult free to concentrate on conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. But this was no power grab: as he wrote to Trudy, “I want more power as I have a lot to give which my comparatively minor post does not allow me to use fully”. There was internal resistance, not least from Sir Hugh Allen who feared that Bliss would foster an excessive amount of modern music – Allen was right about that. Bliss made it clear that ‘the directorship of music is not for me a glittering prize that I have schemed to get, but the very opposite’ and he stated his intention to leave after the War. He got the job in March 1942. He proved energetic in the role, which he occupied for two years, and Spicer comments that “the hallmark of his influence was the number of premieres of new British music or first British performances which were broadcast by the BBC Symphony Orchestra”. When Bliss left the BBC in March 1944 he did so with personal regrets, though he was keen to rescue his career of composing and conducting.
Spicer ensures his readers get a good flavour of Bliss’s other public service roles. One such was the Presidency of the Performing Rights Society, which he held from 1954 until his death. He was the first composer to get that job and the way Bliss undertook it made the role anything but a sinecure. Indeed, it’s clear from Spicer’s narrative that whenever Bliss agreed to take on a public or committee role, he took it seriously. An example is the way in which he deepened his connections with the British Council in 1947. In his autobiography, As I Remember, Bliss said this of his willingness to take on administrative roles: ‘If from my mother I inherited a creative gift, from my father I acquired the need to do some practical, administrative work, to organise and plan, to see theories put into practice.’
Another role which he took very seriously was that of Master of the Queen’s Musick (he liked the archaic spelling, complete with the final letter k). When Sir Arnold Bax died in 1953, Bliss succeeded him and he embraced the role. For one thing, it gave him additional scope for a compositional genre at which he was exceptionally skilled; the writing of ceremonial fanfares. As Spicer says, as early as 1945 “Bliss was now recognised as the go-to composer for these ceremonial musical gestures”. It appears that he got on well with Queen Elizabeth II and that his musical contributions were valued by her and the Royal Family.
As Bliss advanced in seniority as a composer and as a public servant, honours and recognition increasingly came his way. He was knighted in June 1950. The Queen honoured him by making him a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO) in 1969, an award which Spicer indicates, showed the monarch’s personal regard for Sir Arthur after 15 years as Master of the Queen’s Music. He was further honoured as a Companion of Honour in 1971 when he turned 80. A host of universities awarded him honorary degrees and it must have given him particular pleasure when Pembroke College, Cambridge, his old college, made him an Honorary Fellow. And besides these accolades came signs of respect within the musical world. The LSO made him their President in 1958. However, Spicer records something of a snub from the orchestra in 1965 when they took part in a film about Bliss for the BBC. He notes that scarcely any section principals bothered to turn up for the filming and that the orchestra look bored on the film. On a happier note, a friendship with Shostakovich, which began in 1956 when Bliss led a British Council tour of the USSR, led to an invitation from the Soviet composer for Bliss to serve on the jury of the inaugural Tchaikovsky Competition in 1958. Four years later, in 1962, Bliss chaired the jury at the first Leeds International Piano Competition. It’s abundantly clear from Spicer’s book that here was a man of substance who earned widespread respect.
Bliss wrote his autobiography, As I Remember, which, as Paul Spicer mentions, took up most of his time in 1966. Spicer rightly uses the book as a source at many points during his own narrative. However, there are a couple of drawbacks with As I Remember. One is that Sir Arthur consciously drew his story to a close at the point where he reached the age of 75; thus it doesn’t cover his Indian summer, which was fruitful, as Spicer shows. Secondly, Bliss is tactful and diplomatic about some incidents in his life – the marginalisation of The Beatitudes at Coventry in 1962 is such an example – and he also omits to mention some matters. Spicer rectifies all that. Consequently, his book complements but, crucially, extends the picture of Bliss that is contained in the autobiography.
I’ve been a fan of the music of Sir Arthur Bliss for many years. However, reading this book made me realise how superficial was my knowledge of Bliss the man. As an example, I hadn’t appreciated the personal regard that Benjamin Britten had for Bliss: Spicer reproduces a very warm personal tribute that Britten wrote to Bliss on the occasion of the latter’s 75th birthday. Also, it was Britten’s suggestion, behind the scenes, that led to Bliss being invited to compose a short choral work for the opening of the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1966. This admiration on the part of Britten helps us to appreciate also the role of Peter Pears in commissioning and selecting the words for The World is Charged with the Grandeur of God (1969), a work about which Spicer writes admiringly. As well as expanding my knowledge of Bliss the man, Spicer has enhanced my understanding and appreciation of many of Bliss’s compositions; I’ve highlighted a few such examples in this revew.
Paul Spicer has written an excellent biography of Sir Arthur Bliss in which, as I hoped, he has achieved what he achieved in his earlier George Dyson biography. Referring back to the author’s idea of detective work to uncover the real Bliss, I’d say that Detective Inspector Spicer has nailed his man. He paints a comprehensive and vivid picture of his subject. He also writes illuminatingly about the music; he is unafraid to highlight weaknesses but, equally, he enthuses whenever it is justified – and that’s often. This is a book which deserves to be widely read, not just by existing devotees of Bliss’s music but also – and perhaps more importantly – by those who do not yet know the output of this fine composer.
The book is nicely presented. My only slight quibble is with the selection of black and white photos. Mostly, these are reproduced four to a page and, really, they’re too small. In particular the tiny pictures of the Bliss’s country home, Pen Pits, don’t help very much in giving us a sense of the building. On the other hand, the selection of colour pictures is much more satisfactorily reproduced.
Partway through the book, Paul Spicer quotes extensively from a warm and generous tribute which Bliss wrote when Sir Arnold Bax died in 1953.Spicer adds this comment: “Bliss could very well have been writing his own musical obituary, for his music has suffered the same fate at the hands of fashion and awaits its own rehabilitation when its remarkable strengths will be realized and appreciated by a new generation of music lovers.” I believe that this fine new biography will be major factor in the re-evaluation of the music of Sir Arthur Bliss.
John Quinn
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