Havergal Brian


Havergal Brian was a British classical composer.
Brian was extremely prolific, his body of work including 32 symphonies, many of them extremely long and ambitious works for massive orchestral forces. Stylistically, he wrote in a late romantic idiom, exhibiting the influence of Gustav Mahler in his ambitious orchestration and progressive tonality.
Brian enjoyed a period of significant popularity earlier in his career and rediscovery in the 1950s, though his music fell out of favour and since the 1970s he is very rarely studied and performed. Still, he continued to be extremely productive late into his career, composing large works even into his nineties, many of which remain unperformed. Today, he is often remembered for his First Symphony which calls for the largest orchestral force demanded by any conventionally structured concert work.

Biography

William Brian was born in Dresden, a suburb of Longton in Stoke-on-Trent, and was one of a very small number of composers to originate from the English working class. After attending an elementary school he had difficulty finding any congenial work, and taught himself the rudiments of music. For a time he was organist of Odd Rode Church just across the border in Cheshire. In 1895, he heard a choir rehearsing Elgar's King Olaf, attended the first performance and became a fervent enthusiast of the new music being produced by Richard Strauss and the British composers of the day. Through attending music festivals he made the lifelong friendship of his near-contemporary composer Granville Bantock.
In 1907 his first English Suite attracted the attention of Henry J. Wood, who performed it at the London Proms. It was an overnight success and Brian obtained a publisher and performances for his next few orchestral works. Why he never succeeded in maintaining his success is a matter for debate, but it was probably due to his shyness with strangers and lack of confidence on public occasions. Whatever it was, the offers of performance soon dried up.
In 1898, Brian married Isabel Priestley, by whom he had five children. One of his sons was named Sterndale after the English composer Sir William Sterndale Bennett. At this point a development unusual in British 20th century musical history transformed Brian's life; whether for better or for worse has never been decided. He was offered a yearly income of £500 by a local wealthy businessman, Herbert Minton Robinson, to enable him to devote all his time to composition. It seems Robinson expected Brian soon to become successful and financially independent on the strength of his compositions. This never happened. For a while Brian worked on a number of ambitious large-scale choral and orchestral works, but felt no urgency to finish them, and began to indulge in hitherto-undreamt-of pleasures, such as expensive foods and a trip to Italy.
Arguments over the money and an affair with a young servant, Hilda Mary Hayward, led to the collapse of his first marriage in 1913. Brian fled to London and, although Robinson deeply disapproved of the incident, he continued to provide Brian with money until his own death, though most of the allowance went to Brian's estranged wife. The affair with Hilda turned into a lifelong relationship: Brian and she began living together as man and wife, and after Isabel's death in 1933 they were married. Hilda had already borne him another five children. In London, Brian began composing copiously, to alleviate the fact of living in conditions of the most basic poverty. On the outbreak of World War I he volunteered for the Honourable Artillery Company but saw no service before he was invalided out with a hand injury. He subsequently worked at the Audit Office of the Canadian Expeditionary Force until December 1915. The family then moved to Erdington, near Birmingham, Warwickshire, until May 1919 and then spent several years in various locations in Sussex. Brian eventually obtained work of a musical kind, copying and arranging, and writing for the journal The British Bandsman. In 1927, he became assistant editor of the journal Musical Opinion and moved back to London. In 1940 he retired, and from then on devoted himself to composition, living firstly in London, and then in Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex.
His brief war service gave him the material for his first opera The Tigers. In the 1920s he turned to composing symphonies, though he had written more than ten before one of them was first performed in the early 1950s. Their eventual performance was due to his being discovered by Robert Simpson, himself a significant composer and BBC Music Producer, who asked Sir Adrian Boult to programme the Eighth Symphony in 1954. From then on Brian composed another twenty-two symphonies, many of the later ones short, single or two-movement works, and several other pieces.

Music

In 1961, Brian's largest surviving work, the Gothic Symphony, which had been written between 1919 and 1927, was first performed at Westminster Central Hall, in a partly amateur performance conducted by Bryan Fairfax, and in 1966 the first fully professional performance was given at the Royal Albert Hall conducted by Boult. The latter performance was broadcast live and many people heard their first music of Brian that evening. This encouraged considerable interest, and by his death six years later several of his works had been performed and the first commercial recordings had begun to appear. For a few years after Brian's death, while Simpson still had influence at the BBC, there was a revival of interest with a number of recordings and performances; two biographies and a three-volume study of his symphonies appeared. The reputation of his music has always been restricted to enthusiasts and it has never achieved great popularity.
Only one of the great international virtuoso conductors showed any interest in Brian's music. Leopold Stokowski heard the Sinfonia Tragica and let it be known that he would like to perform a Brian work. The upshot was the world premiere in 1973 of the 28th Symphony, in a BBC broadcast produced by Robert Simpson in Maida Vale Studio 1, and played by the New Philharmonia Orchestra. Anthony Payne in his Daily Telegraph review wrote: "It was fascinating to contemplate the uniqueness of the event – a 91-year-old conductor learning a new work by a 91-year-old composer."
Brian's music owes much to Wagner, Bruckner, Elgar, Strauss, Mahler and Bach. Like Bach and Bruckner, Brian was an organist, and the organ repertoire influenced his musical habits. Other sources of influence are brass and military bands, and late Victorian street music. Brian's music often includes a violin solo, like Vaughan Williams's music, but whereas with Vaughan Williams the solo violin writing is long, sustained and eloquent and usually sets the lyric seal to the music, with Brian the violin solos are often poignant and brief and swept aside by the turbulent currents of the music.
However, as with the music of Robert Simpson, Brian's great champion, in certain passages the music does suddenly verge on the pastoral.
The only music that Brian's could reasonably be mistaken for is some of the work of Arnold Bax, particularly Bax's violent early symphonies. However, while Bax's music sounds on first hearing more eloquent and connected, and more lyrical, some assert that Brian's music has a greater flow and, despite its apparent fragmentary structure, a greater symphonic cohesion.
Brian's music has several recognisable hallmarks: the liking of extreme dotted rhythms, deep brass notes, and various uncharacteristic harp, piano and percussion timbres, and other sounds than no one else has conjured from the orchestra. Also typical are moments of stillness, such as the slow harp arpeggio that is heard near the beginning and ending of the Eighth Symphony. But its most notable characteristics is its restlessness: rarely does one mood persist for long before it is contrasted, often abruptly, with another. Even in Brian’s slow movements, lyrical meditation does not often structure the music for long before restless thoughts intrude. Brian’s music is basically always tonal though capable of a great sense of violence. Sometimes, for example at the end of the 3rd Symphony, Brian seems to be celebrating violence and the brute power of the music, but on repeated listening his music seems wiser than this – Brian seems to be enjoying making us think his music worships brutality, although its composer does not. This is his comment on the world of the 1930s, racing towards world war.
However fragmentary Brian’s music is, it is never directionless; he maintains strong symphonic cohesion by long-term tonal processes. Although the fragmentary nature of his music militates against classical thematic unity, he often employs structural blocks of sound, where similar rhythms and thematic material allude to previous passages.
Brian’s symphonies start off with the colossal Gothic Symphony, and most of the early ones are large scale. He usually alludes to the classical four-movement structure of the symphony, even in single-movement works. As he progressed through his life his symphonies become shorter and more compact, and often sound Haydnesque, though the orchestra they employ is usually still large. The Gothic Symphony lasts for nearly two hours, the last symphony of all, No. 32, barely twenty minutes, and yet it is no less substantial. This symphony is an extremely compressed contrapuntal unfolding of ideas that owes as much to Bach as to Romanticism, and includes the classical four movements – the finale is reminiscent of the last movement of Mozart's Symphony No. 41.
In 1997, Brian's 1951 opera in eight scenes The Cenci, based on the 1819 play by Percy Bysshe Shelley, was premiered in a concert performance by the Millennium Sinfonia, conducted by James Kelleher, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
These lists follow the Havergal Brian Society's Extant Works :

Operas

The first commercial recording of Havergal Brian's music was made by the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra in 1972, when Symphonies Nos. 10 and 21, conducted by James Loughran and Eric Pinkett respectively, were recorded at the De Montfort Hall, Leicester. The producer was Robert Simpson. The LP was released by Unicorn Records in 1973. A special edition of the television programme Aquarius called The Unknown Warrior gave considerable coverage to the recording session and a camera crew joined members of the orchestra during a visit they made to the composer's home in Shoreham.
During the 1970s a number of unofficial releases of Brian symphonies were made. These generally were of BBC recordings, and the recordings were released under fictitious names. Several have now had official releasees.
In 1979, Cameo Classics embarked on a project to record all of Brian's orchestral music in collaboration with the Havergal Brian Society. It started with the English Suite No. 1, Doctor Merryheart, and Fantastic Variations on an Old Rhyme. In 1980 came the second LP containing In Memoriam, For Valour, and Festal Dance. The project was completed in 1981 with the recordings of Burlesque Variations on an Original Theme, and Two Herrick Songs, Requiem for the Rose and The Hag. The recordings were produced by David Kent-Watson with the Hull Youth Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Heald-Smith. For the recording of Brian's complete piano music, Cameo Classics employed digital technology. Peter Hill's performances on a Bösendorfer Imperial at the Northern College of Music earned high praise from John Ogdon in his review for Tempo.
More of Brian's works have been published since the 1980s and '90s, and the scarcity of well-rehearsed performances or mature interpretations that had previously made the quality of his music difficult to assess has been partially corrected through the series of professional recordings of many of Brian's symphonies that have been issued by the Marco Polo record label on CD. Many of the original recordings on various labels are being reissued, and by the end of 2018 all of Brian's symphonies had at least one official recording, although not necessarily in print.
In August 2010, the Dutton CD label issued three works taken from 1959 BBC broadcasts: the Comedy Overture Doctor Merryheart and 11th Symphony and the 9th Symphony. This release followed on from Testament's reissue of the live recording of the 1966 Boult performance in the Royal Albert Hall of Brian's Gothic Symphony. In the 2011 Proms concert season the symphony was conducted by Martyn Brabbins in the Royal Albert Hall; the performance is now available on a commercial recording.
In July 2012, a documentary film, "The Curse of the Gothic Symphony" was released in Australian cinemas. Directed by Randall Wood, it is a dramatised documentary of the trials and tribulations of staging Brian's Gothic Symphony in Brisbane, Queensland. Filmed over five years, the enormous task of gathering 200 musicians and 400 choristers came to fruition in 2010 in a triumphal performance and standing ovation in Brisbane's Performing Arts centre.

Recordings of the symphonies

Here is a partial list of known recordings for Havergal Brian's symphonies; many are out of print, others have never been released commercially; some have been released in bootleg format or exist in BBC archives:
No.Key/nameConductorOrchestraRecording DateCD version
No. 1D minor, "The Gothic"Adrian BoultBBCSO1966Yes
No. 1D minor, "The Gothic"Ondrej LenárdSlovak Philharmonic Orchestra, Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra1989Yes
No. 1D minor, "The Gothic"Martyn BrabbinsBBC National Chorus of Wales, BBC Concert Orchestra2010Yes
No. 2E minorAnthony RoweMoscow Symphony Orchestra2007Yes
No. 2E minorMartyn BrabbinsRoyal Scottish National Orchestra2016Yes
No. 3C-sharp minorLionel FriendBBCSO1988Yes
No. 4"Das Siegeslied" Adrian LeaperSlovak Radio Symphony Orchestra2007Yes
No. 5"The Wine of Summer"Martyn BrabbinsRoyal Scottish National Orchestra2015Yes
No. 6"Sinfonia Tragica"Myer FredmanLondon Philharmonic Orchestra1975Yes
No. 6"Sinfonia Tragica"Alexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2014Yes
No. 7C majorCharles MackerrasRoyal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra1978Yes
No. 8B-flat minorCharles GrovesRLPO1978Yes
No. 8B-flat minorAlexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2017Yes
No. 8B-flat minorRudolf SchwarzBBCSO1958Web
No. 9A minorNorman Del MarLSO1959Yes
No. 9A minorCharles GrovesRLPO1978Yes
No. 10C minorStanley PopePhilharmonia Orchestra1958Web
No. 10C minorMartyn BrabbinsRoyal Scottish National Orchestra2010Yes
No. 10C minorJames LoughranLeicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra1973Yes
No. 11untitledHarry NewstoneLSO1959Yes
No. 11untitledAdrian LeaperNational Symphony Orchestra of Ireland1993Yes
No. 12untitledAdrian LeaperCSR Symphony Orchestra 1992Yes
No. 12untitledHarry NewstoneLSO1959Web
No. 13C majorMartyn BrabbinsRoyal Scottish National Orchestra2012Yes
No. 14F minorEdward DownesLSO&1969
No. 14F minorAnthony RoweNational Symphony Orchestra of Ireland1997Yes
No. 14F minorMartyn BrabbinsRoyal Scottish National Orchestra2016Yes
No. 15untitledAnthony RoweRTÉ National Symphony Orchestra1997Yes
No. 16untitledMyer FredmanLondon Philharmonic Orchestra1973Yes
No. 17untitledAdrian LeaperNational Symphony Orchestra of Ireland1992Yes
No. 18untitledLionel FriendBBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra1993Yes
No. 19E minorJohn CanarinaBBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra&1976
No. 19E minorMartyn BrabbinsRoyal Scottish National Orchestra2015Yes
No. 20C-sharp minorAndrew PennyNational Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine1994Yes
No. 21E-flatEric PinkettLeicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra1973Yes
No. 21E-flatAlexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2017Yes
No. 22"Symphonia Brevis"László HeltayLeicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra &1974Yes
No. 22"Symphonia Brevis"Alexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2012Yes
No. 23untitledAlexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2012Yes
No. 24D majorMyer FredmanLPO &&1975
No. 24D majorAlexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2012Yes
No. 25A minorAndrew PennyNSO Ukraine1994Yes
No. 26untitledVernon HandleyNew Philharmonia Orchestra &&&1976
No. 26untitledAlexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2017Yes
No. 27C minorCharles MackerrasPhilharmonia Orchestra&&&&1979
No. 27C minorMartyn BrabbinsRoyal Scottish National Orchestra2015Yes
No. 28C minorAlexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2014Yes
No. 29E-flatNicholas SmithNorth Staffordshire Symphony Orchestra&&&&1976-
No. 29E-flatAlexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2014Yes
No. 30B-flat minorMartyn BrabbinsRSNO2010Yes
No. 31untitledCharles MackerrasRLPO1987Yes
No. 31untitledAlexander WalkerNew Russia State Symphony Orchestra2014Yes
No. 32untitledAdrian LeaperNational Symphony Orchestra of Ireland1992Yes

&=out of print LP

&&=released on a pirated LP with apocryphal attributions to Horst Werner/ Hamburg Philharmonic

&&&= released in a LP box-set with apocryphal attributions to John Freedman / Edinburgh Youth Symphony Orchestras

&&&&=recording from original BBC broadcast exists, not commercially released

&&&&&=recording from BBC radio 3 exists, not commercially released; a pirated LP with apocryphal attributions to Horst Werner / Hamburg Philharmonic is reported and refers to this Stokowski performance

d=cd was made, but is now deleted from catalogue

e'''=recording is in the public domain and is available from the Havergal Brian Society webpage

Both the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra recordings have been remastered and rereleased.

Many of the BBC recordings are freely available for download with registration.

Books

The Unknown Warrior A documentary featuring the LSSO recording session of symphonies Nos. 10 and 21 and an informal interview with the composer
Rehearsal of Symphony No.10 by the LSSO reunion orchestra in 1998