Searle, Humphrey (1915 - 1982)

[ahinton]

Today is the centenary of the birth of Humphrey Searle.

Has anyone noticed the sheer plethora of performances and broadcasts of his work this year, especially in UK? The BBC in general and the Proms in particular are so awash with his music that it's a wonder that the 150th anniversaries of Sibelius and Nielsen get a look in!

Erm...

[Keraulophone]

Scathing sarcasm of Sorabjian subtlety.

(Justified!)

[french frank]

Scathing sarcasm of Sorabjian subtlety.

(Justified!)

I was going to say there was still time for it to be played on Breakfast (ahinton having posted early enough for the producers/presenter to read and act on it). Anyone?

[Roehre]

I was going to say there was still time for it to be played on Breakfast (ahinton having posted early enough for the producers/presenter to read and act on it). Anyone?

Night Music, Aubade for horn and strings, or even just a variation on a Elisabethan theme (plus all the others by different composrs)?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Today is the centenary of the birth of Humphrey Searle.

Has anyone noticed the sheer plethora of performances and broadcasts of his work this year, especially in UK? The BBC in general and the Proms in particular are so awash with his music that it's a wonder that the 150th anniversaries of Sibelius and Nielsen get a look in!

Erm...

Thank you for drawing attention to this apparent omission. Perhaps those with personal reminiscences of this composer could add a few words on this most welcome of threads.

[ahinton]

Thank you for drawing attention to this apparent omission. Perhaps those with personal reminiscences of this composer could add a few words on this most welcome of threads.

Thank you. Well, let me respond to your kind invitation. Since Sorabji is referred to in Keraulophone's post #2 above, what I'm about to write relates principally to my experience of discussing the music of that composer with him way back when. He helped to foster my interest in Sorabji by lending me his precious copy of the even then long out of print copy of the composer's second book of essays, the somewhat forbiddingly titled Mi Contra Fa: The Immoralisings of a Machiavellian Musician (1947). This was during the time when I was fortunate to study with Searle at a time when the music of Sorabji was almost never heard in public and the handful of his scores that had been published between 1919 and 1931 (and had in 1936 come under the exclusive selling agency of Oxford University Press) used to sell in mere dribs and drabs; Sorabji had retired as a professional music critic at the end of WWII and so his public profile had reached a pertty low ebb by the time I met Searle.

Searle was one of a very small number of musicians who had at least some knowledge of Sorabji and his work in those days. Another, the composer Edmund Rubbra, had thought highly enough of Sorabji to publish a favourable review of the publication of the score of Opus Clavicembalisticum (Monthly Music Record, 1931) and later presented to him a signed copy of the published score of his second piano concerto (now in The Sorabji Archive). Searle had almost certainly become acquainted with Rubbra through his then teacher John Ireland (a friend of Sorabji since around 1923); Rubbra spoke to him of the importance of Sorabji’s work and encouraged him to attend any performance that might occur. A few years later, Searle did indeed attend what appears to have been the dismayingly inadequate performance in London of Opus Clavicembalisticum's Pars Prima by the doubtless well-meaning but evidently haplessly equipped John Tobin which may well have turned out to be a principal catalyst for Sorabji's expressed desire for his work no longer to be performed in public on the grounds that, in his own words, "no performance at all is vastly better than an obscene travesty".

According to a list prepared on the evening of the performance by Felix Aprahamian, Rubbra himself was also at that performance, as were a number of other distinguished musicians including composers Stanley Bate, Alan Rawsthorne, Christian Darnton, Benjamin Frankel, Alan Bush (who later became a friend of Sorabji) and even Ralph Vaughan Williams (although I've yet to be able to find corroboration of this), the pianists and teachers Frank Merrick and Arthur Alexander and the writers/critics/musicologists Arthur Henry Fox-Strangways, Michel-Dmitri Calvocoressi, Frank Howes, Edwin Evans, Jack Westrup, Ernest Newman and Sorabji's friend Clinton Gray-Fisk.

Searle was aged only 20 at the time and presumably not known to Aprahamian, so his name is absent from that list. Legend (supported and probably also spread by Sorabji himself) long had it that Sorabji's grave doubts about the event had led him to decline to attend or indeed lend the performance his support; however, according to his friend Mervyn Vicars in conversation with me in 1989, he (Vicars) dragged Sorabji to it against his will and better judgement and had to admit, along with the composer, that the presentation on this occasion felt so far short of what it should have been as to be almost unrecognisable and a number of other reports of the event seem to corroborate that what was played had been distended to around twice its proper duration.

In 1969, Searle recounted to me his experience of this occasion. He had no recollection of Sorabji's presence there but presumably did not look out for him as Sorabji had already made it known that he would not attend. He told me that, with Rubbra's encouragement, he had made at least some study of the score in advance of the performance but was deeply disappointed by what he heard, finding it to bear scant relation to the music on the page. He noted that what he had expected to be exciting in many ways came across as listless (no pun intended, I hope!) and lifeless, confused and confusing and with little sense of structure or momentum - just handfuls upon handfuls of notes, "not many of them sounding as though they were right!". He also noted that, as a consequence of the inadequacy of Tobin's traversal, the audience response was largely very negative but that, as far as he could tell, it was the music rather than the playing that came under critical fire; he warned me that, when a performer or performers wreak havoc on one's work, the audience usually blames the composer!

When in 1982 I sought and obtained Rubbra's permission to quote from his published review of the work in the material for Geoffrey Douglas Madge's first complete public performance of it for more than half a century (the only other one having been the composer's 1930 première in Glasgow prior to its publication), he alluded in a telephone conversation to Tobin's performance and that he had wondered if the pianist had made an unadvertised last-minute substitution for his programme, since what was played bore no resemblance to the score that he (Rubbra) had reviewed five years earlier; clearly, he was far from alone in his view and, when I spoke to Alan Bush about it shortly after this, Bush took the same view, describing it as a featureless misrepresentation of a work whose sheer vibrancy and inventiveness seemed altogether to have passed the pianist by.

To return to my conversations with Searle about Sorabji, he it was, along with my other teacher Stephen Savage, who encouraged me to find out as much as I could about the composer and seek out whatever scores I could find; each, however, quite rightly warned me of the difficulty of this task! Savage also pointed out the obvious to me - namely that I would never be able to play any of this music - and so encouraged me to try instead to "do" something about it, not least to endeavour to contact the composer, try to get to know him and, hopefully, engage his thoughts about the future fate of his music. I eventually wrote to Sorabji in 1972 and met him for the first time several months later, one week after his 80th birthday. Thanks to performers, editors, musicologists, record companies and others, the rest, as the cliché has it, is history.

A noted authority on Liszt, Searle was also greatly interested in Alkan, most of whose work was practically unknown in England in his youth; he published an article about Alkan in the 1930s to try to draw attention to his music. His involvment in the inauguration of the Liszt Society (along with Sorabji's friends Sacheverell Sitwell and William Walton) encouraged him further to foster interest in Alkan and, at that time, he introduced the pianist Ronald Smith to his music and urged him to prepare and perform it - an important historical step in the rehabilitation of the composer. When I was his student, he lent me his vast collection of Alkan's piano music that he'd purchased for peanuts in Paris just before WWI and which had later gone out of print. We have much for which to thank Searle for the greatly raised profiles of Liszt and Alkan today, as well as for his own music.

I've written far too much already! Over to someone else...

[Dave2002]

Maybe this will help www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCmNZa3Pv3o

Not sure which version it is, as can't check right now. The Growltiger one is also fun. It should be on Spotify. I've not found it on YouTube - yet!

He seemed to have a thing about cats -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Variations-clarinet-piano-theme-Prokofievs/dp/0571501303/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1440588918&sr=8-1-fkmr1&keywords=humphrey+searle+practical+cats

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Pussy-Cat-speaker-guitar-Edward-Score/dp/B0000D33CW/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1440588918&sr=8-3-fkmr1&keywords=humphrey+searle+practical+cats

Also note

Alexander Glazunov (1865-1936) (150 years) and

Robert Kahn (1865-1951) also 150 years.

The former could at least have a few of his symphonies performed this year.

http://richardbratby.co.uk/2015/08/10/throwback-monday-happy-150th-birthday-alexander-glazunov/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kahn_(composer)

We have missed both their birthdays - though Glazunov's was earlier this month.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Thank you. Well, let me respond to your kind invitation. . .

I hoped you would, but I never expected such breadth or anything so informative.

Many thanks.

[Beef Oven!]

Today is the centenary of the birth of Humphrey Searle.

Has anyone noticed the sheer plethora of performances and broadcasts of his work this year, especially in UK? The BBC in general and the Proms in particular are so awash with his music that it's a wonder that the 150th anniversaries of Sibelius and Nielsen get a look in!

Erm...

I think you are mistaken, ahinton. This centenary has passed by without any real mention.

However, as far as I'm concerned, I will dig out the couple of CDs that I have of his symphonies and give them a whirl.

Thanks for the heads-up!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

irony
[ˈʌɪrəni]

NOUN
the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect:
"‘Don't go overboard with the gratitude,’ he rejoined with heavy irony"
synonyms: sarcasm · sardonicism · dryness · causticity · sharpness ·

[Beef Oven!]

irony
[ˈʌɪrəni]

NOUN
the expression of one's meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect:
"‘Don't go overboard with the gratitude,’ he rejoined with heavy irony"
synonyms: sarcasm · sardonicism · dryness · causticity · sharpness ·

Indeed, I was being ironic - well spotted.

But I will play those CDs today at some point before tonight's amazing Prom.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl41oPwsCds

[EdgeleyRob]

Ahinton,post #6,many thanks for taking the time and trouble,interesting read.

Searle's 'a plea for Alkan' has gone some way towards the increase in interest I think.
We should have our own HS fest on here

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl41oPwsCds

Many thanks for that link, Alpie - I notice, too, that Boult's recording of the First Symphony is also available from youTube.

That Alun Francis cycle is a wonderful set of recordings (as has been mentioned on another Thread today). I am grateful to ahinton for reminding us (me) of today's anniversary - Searle's complete neglect on R3 today is inexplicable (this Music isn't so difficult, after all!) but not unprecedented - back in 2006, I wrote to Nicholas Kenyon to protest about the absence of any Music by Elisabeth Lutyens at the Proms that year. He replied (!) saying that he was personally a great admirer of Lutyens, but that I shouldn't complain as there was a work by Thea Musgrave in that year's season!

Lutyens had at least the consolation prize of a Composer of the Week slot. I so hope that Searle is given his due in this respect at least.

[ahinton]

Ahinton,post #6,many thanks for taking the time and trouble,interesting read.

Searle's 'a plea for Alkan' has gone some way towards the increase in interest I think.
We should have our own HS fest on here

That was the article to which I referred, of course - and many thanks for your mention of it; it did indeed help greatly towards the rehabilitation of Alkan. Searle was not even a pianist but his sterling championing of Liszt and Alkan - like this sonata - suggests very strongly that he was one nevertheless, as did his interest in Sorabji. The sonata that you post here has so very much of Busoni about it, too - and the suggestion of Sorabjian influence isn't far off, either.

Once again, many thanks - oh, and Happy Birthday, Humphrey! And yes, let's indeed have an HS fest here; who in UK at that time was thinking as he did?