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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
Best Book on Bax, 11 Feb 2007
At long last this masterly biography of a great composer has re-immerged, now in a substantially augmented third edition. First published in 1983, this third edition has been expanded to incorporate some of the recently released correspondence between Bax and his long time lover, Harriet Cohen which is quite explicit at times.
As the title suggests, this is not just a biography of a very remarkable man, but also a commentary on the extraordinary renaissance of serious composition that occurred in England (perhaps that should be Britain!) in the first half of the twentieth century.
His privileged upbringing and studies at the Royal Academy of Music in London are vividly described. The Irish /Celtic influences, adventures in Russia and Tintagel, the beginning of the long relationship with Harriet Cohen are explored. Then that golden period, between the wars, when Bax was arguably, the finest symphonist in the country and his friendship with the man who was eventually to create the greatest British symphonic cycle, Ralph Vaughan Williams.
Finally, Master of the King's Music, and the slow Sibelian decline in composition. Incredibly, this major composer lived out his last decade, more or less unnoticed, in a Sussex Pub, the White Horse at Storrington. He died in Ireland , his spiritual homeland.
This book is a model biography, highly informative, easy to read and referenced in great detail, essential reading not only for those interested in this composer but twentieth century, European music in general.
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7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
Conundrum: a biography that is more music than life, 3 Oct 2007
I was appalled and amazed to find that the author had compressed the first seventeen years of Bax's life, the most formative part of any human's existence, into a mere ten pages. How could any modern biographer hope to present any meaningful critique of a man's life without delving into the youth that made him? We are given glimpses of a relaxed and carefree childhood, but no boy grows into a man without some inkling of a sense of tragedy. But this biography foregoes a deeper interest in the creation of the man, concentrating instead in the remaining eighteen chapters on the man as ready-made. This did not bode well for this reader in seeking to understand the man behind the music.
There is no discussion about the basis of Bax's youthful religious ideas, for instance. We are simply told that his father had a Quaker ancestry and his mother, who later converted to Roman Catholicism, was the daughter of a Congregationalist minister. The two young Bax brothers produced literature linked to Theosophy, but there is neither any explanation given to the reader about this, nor any explanation as to how the Baxes became involved. Readers seeking some background to Bax's mysticism will look in vain. The biographer talks much about this in the context of his music, but the question is left unanswered as to what Bax's real beliefs were that substantiate these musings. We are told that, "Although Bax was not a religious man in the sectarian sense, he had a deeply mystical side to his nature." But there is no real analysis of this assertion.
There are many other gaps that begged for analysis. We are told, for example, about Bax holidaying in Majorca with Holst. What did they say to each other? What did they think of each other? And I still do not feel that I know the real details of all that went on in Tintagel. Moreover, what about the children? Bax had two offspring, but whereas the pianist Myra Hess has fifteen entries in the index, Bax's son Dermot has just ... six. Just what was Bax's relationship with his children between their birth and his death? How intimate was he with them? How often did he see them? What did he think of them? We do not know. We are not told.
In a sense, Bax was not a man of his times. He appears in this volume as a man of strictly personal experience, only "concerned by events in his land of heart's desire." We hear of passing references to great events in the background - the Russian Revolution, the General Strike, the Abdication of Edward VIII - but we never hear much of how these effected Bax except in vague terms of the music that he produced. The biographer makes plain that, "Up to 1939 Bax remained supremely indifferent to world events", but nevertheless one ponders, for example, how the Wall Street Crash and the ensuing depression affected his earnings. We are told he had a significant tax demand in the early 1920s, but that's all. If the Crash had had very little effect, at least I would have liked to have known it, rather than letting the question remain hanging in my head.
Bax clearly did have strong views on some issues, such as the Great War and the Easter Rising, but inexplicably these are never clearly related. The author writes that, "Bax's reaction to conflict in Ireland was the same as it had been to war in France: to escape into dream." Later we learn that the war "had left Bax feeling profoundly anti-German." Really? In what way? We are not told. And I was left wondering whether the reason for all these gaps was due to the biographer having difficulty coming to terms with what might otherwise be interpreted as the life of a coward and a cad: a man who escaped into dreams as his friends died on the western front; a man who dared not declare his support for Irish nationalism for fear of upsetting his bourgeois and comfortable life; a man who left his wife and children for other women and seems to have taken little interest in the upbringing of his son and daughter; in short, a man who placed self above all other considerations.
I found this all strangely disturbing in a book that claims to be a biography not only of "a composer" but also of "his times". The book's subtitle should really be "His Life and Music", but, even then, the former is treated as a superficial account of times spent when and where; it is only with the latter that this book shines. For the author clearly has a firm grasp of the musical element. He knows the music inside out, not just the symphonies, tone poems and piano sonatas, but down to every song, every prelude and every dance. This is the strength of this volume, and his descriptive essays urged me to get off the sofa and put on a Bax CD and listen to the music afresh. I guess this is the highest compliment of the biographer of a composer, and in that sense - and that sense only - he has marvellously succeeded.
As for the text itself, there is constant irritation in the lack of consistency of major names. We have "Bax" or "Arnold", "Harriet" or "Miss Cohen", often in consecutive sentences. I was equally annoyed by the publisher's perverse habit of placing punctuation outside the inner justification limit. The writer's style is engaging, but there are often abrupt changes of subject-matter from one paragraph to the next. It might have been better indeed to disentangle the music criticism from the life story. Indeed, there is an argument here that the seeming utter stability of much of Bax's life might allow for a biography that was not so chronological in its approach.
The volume comes with endnotes, a bibliography, and a good index. There are also extremely comprehensive and useful catalogues of Bax's writings and compositions compiled by the author. Meanwhile, Graham Parlett provides a twenty-page discography. Yes, twenty pages! Who would have guessed thirty years ago that so much of Bax's music would have been recorded? There has truly been a renaissance in Bax studies and this author has led the way in that worthwhile endeavour. I now know more about Bax's music and the circumstances of its composition. It is just a shame that I finished this biography knowing little more of the real Arnold Bax as a man than I did before I started.
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