Moorland Symphonies (Lyrita) - MusicWeb International

Moorland Symphonies – An Introduction to the Music of Arthur Butterworth
by Paul Conway
164 pp.
ISBN978-1-7393857-0-5
Paperback
Published 2023
Lyrita Recorded Edition SRCD9415

Thomas Hardy in one of his finest Wessex poems recalled the “… years defaced and lost”. Incidentally, the poem in which those words figure, was set by both Finzi and Boughton. In those ‘lost’ years – for me, the start of the 1970s – my musical preoccupations were fed by various books. One of these was Frank Howes’ ramrod stiff “The English Musical Renaissance” (1966) and another was A L Bacharach’s British Music of Our Time (1946 rev 1951, a Penguin book), both bought secondhand. Of similar value and packed with hard information were the publications of Thames and of Alan Poulton’s Bravura Press (Alwyn, Bush, Rawsthorne). A ‘late lark’, and a controversial yet readable one, was Peter J Pirie’s The English Musical Renaissance (1980) – an antidote, and a delightfully violent and opinionated one, to the Frank Howes book of the same name.

“Tall poppies” beyond these volumes were the books of Lewis Foreman’s Triad Press. Triad specialised in appetising areas, published, often in typescript – days before widespread domestic word processing – with delightful substance and admirable design. The subjects included Havergal Brian, Stokowski, Hadley, Warlock, Foulds, Holmboe, Moeran, Gurney, Rubbra, Baines and Quilter; whatever happened to their intended book on Glière?

The present book from Lyrita continues that line. It canters rather than plods or sprints through the life and music of the British composer Arthur Butterworth (1923-2014). His tonal works and his integrity intersected in the concert hall, brass band venue, moorlands and Nordic outlands. He had no truck with the opera and little with the silver screen, piano stool, song recital or organ loft. It’s a welcome and welcoming book, not forbidding in any way. The composer’s music occupies a distinctive place alongside the works of Simpson, Wordsworth, Lloyd, Arnell and Rubbra. In what is, avowedly, “An Introduction” rather than anything grander or more lumbering, it does extremely well to introduce the man and the music.

The author, Paul Conway has a name familiar for his finely probing and urgently communicative notes for many Lyrita and other CDs issued since 2010. He continues to make his contribution – advocacy and criticism – in the media, specialising in twentieth-century and contemporary British music.

The book itself has stiff card covers with pages using paper that has a lustrous (not glossy-reflective) surface. The font is clear and of a decent readable point size. There are no blank end or opening papers: it’s a case of straight to business and when the book’s task is done, after some illuminating appendices, a snappy end is reached. The only minor minus is the book’s eccentric dimensions. At 18.25cm wide by 24.5cm tall it will sit awkwardly on many a bookshelf.

Butterworth, was as affable – but not bland – in life as his cover portrait suggests. Here is a man radiating a warmly smiling character, even at age 76. He suffuses intelligence and bonhomie in equal measure and there is no subterfuge about him. If he has controversial views they are stated rather than diplomatised. Paul Conway confers on us quite a bit of detail enough to satisfy most appetites and to raise the questing beast of exploration. On that front the discography at pages 146-7 plays its facilitating role. There is a sparing spatter of music examples and these form part and parcel of the text. There’s no cloyingly academic analysis, something with which some of Lyrita’s original LP-sleeve-writers saddled records of superb music. The book uses the occasional footnote.

There is a group of seven photos (two in colour) selected to show Butterworth at all stages in his life from 1934 to 2010. Two from 2010 are photographs taken by Lewis Foreman. The composer’s standard large poodle is shown sitting high in the moors with his master and reflects Butterworth’s love for dogs. Otherwise, he is often portrayed here with his instrument, the trumpet.

Lyrita’s name is illustrious as a long-established record label, palatially pre-occupied with British music. They may, over the years, have produced the occasional promotional wall-poster but this Butterworth volume bathes a piercing light on one of ‘their’ composers (review of Lyrita CD of Butterworth symphonies) and is an agreeable departure and not, I hope, the last. The famous Lyrita logo smiles out from the book spine.

As handbook and introduction, it is no stranger to depth of information. Its functions are enhanced by two pages of a winged chronology. These are placed usefully at the start. There is no overarching index (which is a pity) but two pages of selective personalia include lists of page numbers and chapters. Each of the chapters starts with a year range/title and recounts salient events during particular years e.g. 1923-42, 1947-55 and so on until 2001-2014. The chapter titles list the principal works for those years. Chapters 1-10 methodically cover the passage of the years and are followed by chapters 11 and 12. These include a reflective survey, “Style and Characteristics”, which bridges the years. There’s then a short chapter comprising what would have been the Butterworth interview in Murray Schafer’s “British Composers in Interview” (Faber & Faber, 1963) but which never made it to the final book.

Among Butterworth’s works there are certain overarching themes. There is only one opera (Miss Julie) but other genres are represented across some 150 opus-numbered works. Recurrent subjects in his work-list include the Moors (mostly Yorkshire, but Devon and Exmoor are not neglected), Sibelius, Scandinavia and the Brass Band. Brahms is also a presence with Butterworth’s 1991 Passacaglia (part of the Hamburg composer’s Fourth Symphony) and to match up to Rubbra’s own arrangement of the Handel theme Variations (as recorded by Ormandy on LP CBS BRG 72295) and Butterworth’s brass band transcription of the same work. The list details the essentials for each work: title, forces used, publisher, duration dates and dates of premieres. It is followed by a necessarily brief bibliography and discography. Brief the latter may be, but it still shows no fewer than four recordings of Butterworth’s Fourth Symphony. It’s a shame that we still await first recordings of the last two numbered symphonies (6 and 7) and the Moorland Symphony itself.

Of the seven numbered symphonies, only five of which have been commercially recorded, Mr Conway mentions that the Fourth was performed in 1998 at the Warwick Arts Centre in the Centre’s Butterworth Hall (that amused Arthur). It so happens that this concert was promoted by MusicWeb International. This followed Dr Len Mullenger’s visit to the conductor Colin Touchin with tapes from the composer. Butterworth was generous with those cassettes; he sent me quite a few and they helped carry his name and musical-emotional message far and wide. Paul Conway benefited in the same way but he put the cassettes to better and more practically effective use. This, for him, resulted in interviews and ultimately in this book.

This is not, of course, an autobiography but you can muster much of that material and Arthur Butterworth’s attitudes, reflections and evaluations from chapters 1-10 and his four essays in appendix E. The other essays – and there are many – can be read at the MWI Archive website. From the worklist we gather that he wrote some thirty works for brass band or wind band (mostly brass). He had an enduring affection for the brass band, both intrinsically and as a training ground for young players. However, he deprecated the shallow arrangements, marches and ‘fluff’ that were part and parcel of the brass band competition movement. This seemed to him to show a tendency towards parading display rather than substance. Of course there are grander contributions to the Brass Band literature such as those by Bliss, Howells, Simpson, Lloyd, Jacob, Johnstone, McCabe and Butterworth himself, but shallow display was still very much the order of the day. Elgar also figures in his roll of honour. Elgar is celebrated in some depth in one of the appendices. Butterworth (and others) arranged Elgar’s music for brass band, including manuscript scores of his arrangements of the Introduction and Allegro and the ‘Canto Popolare’ from In The South — why not the whole exuberant work? Butterworth lays about him like Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, wielding his mace at Hastings in 1066. In this he shows himself a controversialist. This was not because he wanted to cause ‘sturt and strife’ but because he felt that he had something he felt compelled to say and a situation he would have liked to change for the better.

There is much substance atomised and aerated amongst the enthusiasm. Accordingly, I left this book wanting recordings of the last two symphonies, Tarka (two works), Northern Summer Nights, Legend, Devonshire Suite, Elegy for Diana (Butterworth’s wife), Solent Forts, Odin, Ukko and Tundra, Beowulf, the many and various concert marches including Mancunians and the splendiferous Mancunian Way, the concertos for cello and for violin (the latter championed one-off by the young Nigel Kennedy) and A Moorland Symphony. You will have your own list by the time you have finished.