TRINITY COLLEGE OF MUSIC. BROADWOOD

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The Musical Times

AND SINGING-CLASS CIRCULAR.
AUGUST 1, 1912.

his fellow-students were Cyril Scott, Norman O'Neill, Percy Grainger, and Roger Quilter, all of whom have achieved distinction. He studied the pianoforte under Professor Uzielli, an Italian pupil of Madame Schumann. His first experience of modern music was gained at Frankfurt. On the night of his arrival in the city he heard 'Die Walküre' perH. BALFOUR GARDINER. formed. He recalls that at that time the music We often hear nowadays of the existence and made no appeal to him-it seemed absolutely doings of what is called the Young British School incoherent and contained no melody or attraction of composers. Whether the description 'young' of harmony. He ascribes his then absolute unapplies to the school or only to the individuals receptivity to the fact that his previous training comprised in it, is uncertain, but we imagine we had been exclusively on classical lines. Later he are justified in including in the category all heard the 'Tristan' Vorspiel six times before he British musicians under forty years of age. could make anything of it. Not everyone to-day Therefore, the subject of the present sketch may who listens to modern music is so frank and sincere safely be given a niche in this Parthenon. But in recording impressions! It was at Frankfurt that what the school represents, and what community Gardiner heard with intense interest Tchaikovsky's of ideas influences its disciples, we are unable to sixth Symphony for the first time. He also heard say. We prefer to regard it as a loose classification nearly all Wagner's operas, and others of the of totally different methods and idioms that are French, German, and Italian schools. It was a simply the self-expression of a number of composers great and pregnant period in the young musician's who happen to live in the same country, but who life. As to composition his work was mostly of the have little or nothing else in common. Amongst academic and conventional kind. He was then, those who are working out their own musical as it may be said he is now, fond of experimenting salvation according to their own inward impulses, with chords he could not find elsewhere. Form we must include Mr. Gardiner, the composer was also studied, but it was at this time a strange whose brave support of British art was a feature experience. He now began to perceive that he of the 1912 London musical season.

thought, in turn, in two different harmonic systemsone, in which he was free to exercise his imagination and individuality, and one in which he worked mechanically to fit the accepted musical forms.

Mr. H. Balfour Gardiner was born in London on November 7, 1877. Direct heredity had little influence on his musical faculty, for neither of his parents was distinctively musical. His mother He says 'One phase of my early attempts died during his infancy. His father played the at composition consisted almost entirely of violoncello, and any early inclinations young experiments in harmony, though at that time Gardiner had towards music were fostered by the I was acquainted with nothing more modern occasional musical gatherings that took place at his than Schumann, excepting the "Tannhäuser" father's residence. Listening to Corelli's Trios when Overture and the Horn trio of Brahms. he was but four years of age instilled in him a desire During my school-days at Charterhouse these to learn to play the pianoforte, which he was allowed experiments were continued with increasingly to begin to do on his fifth birthday as a special strange results, to the neglect of other elements of treat. This was his only form of musical practice music; and thus I entered the Conservatorium at until he was about nine years old, when he began Frankfurt with an exuberant harmonic imagination, to compose little pieces for the violin and pianoforte. but with very little resource in other respects. I A few years later he began to learn to play the soon found that a harmonic scheme in which tonic organ under Mr. T. S. Guyer (now organist at and dominant had no place was of small use in Bexhill-on-Sea). It was this 'musician of pure solving the simple formal problems that were put and refined taste' (to quote Mr. Gardiner's grateful before me; and I was compelled accordingly to testimony) 'who developed my feeling for tone- descend to a lower and, indeed, to a primitive plane colour.' In these safe hands he remained for of musical thought in order to cope with them. several years; meantime he went to school Thus I acquired a second style-formal, practical, at Margate, next to Folkestone, and later to and less imaginative-which co-existed along with Temple Grove at East Sheen, where he won an my more intense, natural, and original efforts; and entrance scholarship to Charterhouse, which it is on the basis of this second style that my famous school he joined when he was about musical development proceeded. Looking back thirteen years of age. At Charterhouse he was on those bygone years, I cannot but feel that I taught the pianoforte by Mr. Becker, through whom paid a heavy price for the normal equipment of a Gardiner became acquainted with some of the composer in the loss of originality it entailed. classics of pianoforte literature. Whilst in this Like all other students who undergo a conventional school he won a senior scholarship. musical training instead of developing their style When he was seventeen years of age, and before at every point on their own lines, I had to take the he proceeded to the University, he spent about a bad with the good; to learn to solve problems that year studying music at Dr. Hoch's well-known would never have arisen if I had gone my own Conservatorium at Frankfurt. There he studied way; to utter things and acquire methods of composition under Professor Iwan Knorr. Amongst utterance that were essentially alien to me and I

was thus left, as all apt students invariably are left, opportunity of hearing some of his own extended with a limited imagination, and burdened with a orchestral compositions for the first time. He number of habits that had to be unlearned, and next returned to England, and resided in London will still have to be unlearned till I come to and the country for a few years. The only my own again. While saying this, I wish to professional work he has undertaken was at acknowledge to the full the efficient handling and Winchester College, where for a term he was sympathetic insight of my master, Professor Iwan junior music-master. He now spends most of his Knorr, than whose teaching, on its own lines, I time at his cottage in Berkshire.

can conceive none better.

Conversing over a wider field of musical topics, 'Those who defend the musical institutions that Mr. Gardiner remarks apropos the difficulties bring composition "within reach of all" may say of the young English school, that the craze of that I was losing myself in my own particular concert-givers for novelties is a bar to progress. cul-de-sac, and might never have become a The desire to announce that something is to be composer at all. Be it so. Let the strong'given for the first time' prevents many good overcome the difficulties they make for themselves: works from being heard again. let the weaklings go to the wall. As things now As mentioned above, Mr. Gardiner's concerts, are, all the weaklings are helped to compose of which there were four, were a feature of the and compose they do, with lamentable results. Spring season of this year. It was not only that I would have more danger, and no helping hand the programmes were almost exclusively made up outstretched; and the man with the courage, skill, from the compositions of British musicians, but and endurance to face the danger and overcome it that by a sure instinct the particular works chosen will produce finer and truer music than the man were undoubtedly interesting to the audiences. who is shown the broad and easy path that leads Enthusiasm was quite common. The following but to conventionality.' composers, besides the generous giver of the In 1895 he went to New College, Oxford, concerts, were represented :-Frederic Austin, but during the vacations he continued to study Arnold Bax, W. H. Bell, Frederick Delius, Sir at Frankfurt. Whilst still at Frankfurt, over- Edward Elgar, Percy Grainger, Hamilton Harty, practice at the pianoforte led to a partial Gustav von Holst, Norman O'Neill, Cyril Scott, Sir paralysis of his hand - muscles, and he had to relinquish any idea that he harboured of becoming a solo-pianist, and he decided to devote his whole musical mind to composition. At Oxford he secured a second in Mods, but in Greats he only 'satisfied the examiners,' and he has never ceased to wonder at their equanimity and what it was that gave them this satisfaction.

Asked whether the University environment had any formative influence in his musical development, he says:

6

As to the influence of Oxford on the musician, I should say that in my experience it was not stimulating. For it is the business of the artist as of the philosopher, to use his creative and selective faculties in defining his attitude towards his environment; and his character becomes firmer and fuller, and his expression of that character more complete, in proportion to the constancy and intensity with which he uses those faculties. His growth must be directed by impulse from within, not by imposition from without; and the imposition from without in the case of an Oxford education is such as to leave him lumbered with a mass of undigested and unassimilable facts on the one hand, and stunted on the other by lack of nourishment that is congenial to him.'

This is a strong method of describing his experience of the almost insuperable difficulties in the way of a University like Oxford providing for a young student of modern music. The study of the art is an incidental one in the general curricula of the University, and unlike many other subjects, it must be specialised in early youth.

After leaving Oxford he went again to Frankfurt, and thence to the Sondershausen Conservatorium, where he was taught conducting and had the valued

Charles Stanford, R. Vaughan Williams, and six old
English madrigal composers. Mr. Gardiner says:

'We have in this country to-day a number of composers whose claim to be heard rests on the originality of their utterance and their quite remarkable freedom from foreign influences. Unfortunately, in spite of the goodwill of our most prominent conductors, opportunities for hearing these works are few; and my concerts were designed with a view to partially remedying this defect. They will be continued, I hope, as long as the need for them exists; but nobody would be more pleased than myself to see the need disappear, by the immediate and frequent performance of each good work as it is produced.'