Sir Arnold Bax Society

Conductor Vernon Handley in an interview with Ian Lace as printed in The British Music Society Newsletter – Dec 1995
“I came across (BAX) when I was a student learning the repertory and a lot of British music. I took out a study score of The Garden of Fand from Enfield Public Library. I was so impressed that I felt that I must learn more about this composer so I bought, begged and borrowed miniature scores and all that I could find. And so I became determined to work for him as much as I could when I became…

About the Author: Dr Claire Colebourn is a Consultant Critical Care Physician at University Hospitals Oxford and the current President of the British Society of Echocardiography. This article is based on a scientific article being published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

When a story is retold enough times, there comes a point when you stop asking yourself, but is it true?

This was one of the deepest lessons I learnt when I was training in medicine. I was told a story about a man who…

Introduction:  Arnold Bax’s Concerto, later the Phantasy, for viola and orchestra, was written for, and dedicated to, the violist Lionel Tertis. It was premiered by him during a Philharmonic Society concert on 17 November 1921. The Phantasy was played several times in the ensuing years but was then largely forgotten until its revival in 1989 by Vernon Handley and Rivka Golani. This essay will examine the context, provide a non-technical description of the music, and examine the reaction to the premiere…

Discography (adapted from Graham Parlett)
(1) Iris Loveridge. Lyrita LP: RCS 10 (m); Musical Heritage Society LP: MHS 7011 (m); CD: REAM 3113 (m). (2) Frank Merrick. Frank Merrick Society LP: FMS 7 (m). (3) James Roche. Sound News Productions LP (probably from the 1970s and not for sale). (4) Joyce Hatto. Revolution LP: RCF 010; Concert Artist/Fidelio TC: FED-TC-011; Concert Artist CD: CACD 9011-2―announced in 2003 but not issued. (5) Eric Parkin. Chandos LP: ABRD 1206; TC: ABTD 1206; CD: CHAN 8496; CHAN…

When in 1996 I created the Sir Arnold Bax Website, I knew immediately the first couple of luminaries I wanted to interview.  Vernon (Tod) Handley was my initial preference, but the media-shy conductor turned out to be very evasive; so I pursued my second choice, who was at that time was the curator of Asian Art at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and who during his off hours was intensively involved in research on the life and music of Sir Arnold Bax.

I had become familiar with Graham Parlett’s…

Note: Arnold Bax spent at least two months on the Skarzhinska Estate at Kruglik, near Lubny in Ukraine between May and July 1910.  Alan Sutton recently visited Lubny and Kruglik and found some interesting historical background to the Skarzhinska family and to pre-revolutionary Lubny, impressions of which Bax took back with him and incorporated into later works.

“Fair and smiling is the Ukrainian land, a fecund Slavonic Demeter”, wrote Bax at the opening of this section in “Farewell, My Youth”. Ukraine was…

In 1911 Bax fulfilled his long-cherished dream of living in Ireland, and for nearly three years he and his wife rented a house on the outskirts of Dublin, where he became friends with many of the leading lights of the Irish literary revival. As is well known, he even contributed to it himself, writing plays, short stories, and poetry under the pseudonym ‘Dermot O’Byrne’, and distinguished figures such as George Russell (AE), Padraic and Molly Colum, James Stephens, and Ernest Boyd were regular guests at his…

Editor’s Note: William B. Hannam is a part-time professor of music appreciation and musicology at Kent State University. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 2008, was titled “Arnold Bax and the Poetry of ‘Tintagel'” and won Kent State University’s 2009 Dissertation Award, and he has written and had published multiple papers on the composer.

Writing in December of 1947, Sir Arnold Bax was less than excited by the prospect of composing music for director David Lean’s Oliver Twist. He described the…

If Bax’s name means anything to the average concert-goer, it will most likely be for one work alone – Tintagel. This fifteen minute tone poem has been the first port of call for many who have gone on to chart a course through heavier Baxian seas, and it’s hardly an exaggeration to say that during the thirty years following his death Bax was Tintagel, and Tintagel Bax.

I – HISTORY

Nowadays, with three complete cycles of the symphonies and a plethora of tone poems readily available on CD, it’s tempting to…

Bax’s dislike of writing music for the cinema is well documented, and it was with considerable reluctance that he embarked on his first film score, for the twenty-minute documentary Malta , G.C., in the summer of 1942. ‘Have just finished my Malta film music’, he later wrote to May Harrison . ‘It has been nothing but a worry from beginning to end—and very hard work’. His difficulty with film music seems to have lain in the way in which it was used on the soundtrack: ‘I do not think the medium is at present…