Everyone looks at Joe, who until this time has been standing quietly to one side. Hildegarde pours Elgar some champagne, who drinks it in one swallow. Elgar then gets up and starts to sing…and dance

ELGAR (Singing): Champagne Charlie is me name,
Champagne drinking is me game
Etc…

Elgar tries to dance with Hildegarde but only makes her spill champagne. Elgar then dances off to one side, and with a change of lighting becomes slightly isolated. In the background we hear Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius …

JELKA: That will be all, Hildegarde.

HILDEGARDE: Sorry about spilling the champagne, madam.

JELKA: Oh, do not worry, my dear. Now, take Joe with you and make sure he has something to eat, it is a long drive back to Paris.

HILDEGARDE: Yes, madam.

Exit Hildegarde. Then, as Joe exits…

JOE: Ain’t she the one though, ain’t she?

Joe exits

ELGAR: See what I mean? Such lovely people. I think I might move to America? They were very kind to me when I was last there.

JELKA: A toast.

ELGAR: A splendid idea. Who to?

DELIUS: Hildegarde’s father.

They all toast Hildegarde’s father. The lights change to isolate Elgar further, but a dim spot remains on Delius and Jelka. The music grows louder

ELGAR ( Calling): Alice? Alice? Quickly, my dear, what do you think of this?

Enter Alice Elgar, Edward’s wife. She is wearing a typical Edwardian dress, with her hair piled high. She is carrying a broken wine glass.

ALICE: She really will have to go, Edo, this is the sixth piece she has broken in the last two weeks.

ELGAR: What? No! Listen, what do you think?

ALICE: I think I cannot allow it to go on. The whole set was given to father when he retired from the regiment - each piece is engraved with an officer’s name.

ELGAR ( With exasperation): Alice! Listen. What do you think?

Alice finally listens, and hears the music, which builds…

ALICE: It is the Newman, oh Edo, it is wonderful.

ELGAR: It is for you, my dear. I know how much the Cardinal’s poem means to you, although I have to say I’ve taken out some of the weaker parts, tightened it up considerably.

Elgar and Alice listen for a few moments

ALICE: It is a masterpiece. This will show them I am married to a genius, and not a shopkeeper’s son. (Pause) Oh, Edo, I’m sorry.

ELGAR: Don’t worry, my dear. (Pause) Is that what they really think? That I am an ill educated tradesman’s son, and a self taught tune-smith? Is that what they really think and say?

ALICE: It is not what they say, my dear. But it is what they mean, I fear.

ELGAR: Damn them, damn them all!

ALICE: Edo, you must retain your faith. I did not marry a man who gives up.

ELGAR: You certainly married beneath yourself. My god they even cut your miserable allowance when you married me. And when did you last have a letter from your mother?

ALICE: Edo, enough.

ELGAR: Sorry, my dear, that was unkind. (Pause) Alice, your support has been pivotal, I couldn’t have carried on without you, of that I’m sure. But alas, I fear the stupid British public will not understand the poetic and musical subtleties of Gerontius?

ALICE: Oh, Edo, they will, given a little time. You must remember the British lack imagination when it comes to the arts, they want everything spelled out for them. But they will see the greatness in your work, look how they’ve taken to the Variations. You must be patient.

ELGAR (Angrily): Patient? I am forty two years old, I cannot afford to be patient much longer, and the Variations are simply an elaboration of a good tune, a jolly good one mind you, but a tune, nothing more. Do they have the patience for a longer work, and one based around a Roman Catholic priest’s darker moods?

ALICE: Of course they do, and you know it. They must be shown the way, they must see that Britain, no England, has produced its own Beethoven. Look how poor Delius struggles, even in Paris, a city built upon the very idea of art and music.

ELGAR: A fine composer, a unique voice.

ALICE: Edo, I do wish you would stop referring to your age. I am fifty-one, but you do not hear me constantly referring to the passing years.

ELGAR: Sorry. Sorry, chick.

The music fades in volume a little…

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When Sir Paul’s tone Poem Standing Stone was first premiered, and then released as a CD in 1997, it attracted a very mixed reception, which is fair enough. In fact I rather like to see the musical purists get their underwear in a bit of a twist when they try to tell us how bad something is, how derivative, how shallow, how it sounds as if it has been written by a committee, and, how dare you step over the musical boundaries and try your hand at ’serious’ music. In other words elitism at its worst. And believe me if there was a decree from No 10 and the White House tomorrow that all music be left in the hands of the purists, then music, all music, would die very quickly, and good riddance because none of it would be worth listening to.

And McCartney’s Standing Stone is worth listening to, and more than once.

Sir Paul’s first recorded effort at ’serious’ composing (as if composing hundreds of popular songs was not serious for goodness sake) was his 1991 Liverpool Oratorio which I remember as a tremendously moving piece of work that quite naturally showed the influence of Elgar (who made the oratorio his own in the early 20th century), but to my ears much more that of Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, plus a good helping of John Tavener and Malcolm Arnold, who were, and are, masters of assimilation, as is McCartney - you only have to listen to Sgt Pepper, the early Wings recordings, and some recent solo McCartney, to understand what I’m getting at; and without assimilation art, any art, cannot move ahead, cannot be creative.

And it’s the same with Standing Stone, McCartney’s first real stab at a symphonic piece. It worked in October 1997 when it was premiered and released, and it worked last night when, with Hilary, I listened to it again.

This is what McCartney has to say about Standing Stone in the liner notes to the CD…

” I’ve spent much of the last four years composing what has now become my second large-scale classical work, the symphonic poem Standing Stone. Unlike the Liverpool Oratorio which features prominent roles for four solo singers, Standing Stone relies entirely on colours and effects drawn from the orchestral and choral forces. With no soloists to propel the “story” and to help keep me on track throughout the writing of about 75 minutes of music I wrote a poem in which I try to describe the way Celtic man might have wondered about the origins of life and the mystery of human existence…”

And it is there that we have the secret of this piece of wonderful music - that of man wondering what life is all about. It’s the same secret we discover when we look at Anthony Gormley’s 100 iron men looking out to sea from Crosby beach - their solitariness, their stillness and their fortitude. It is what we hear in this music, especially in Part 9, where McCartney introduces a melody of such simplicity and beauty that it almost breaks your heart (which has come from a good deal of contemplation and experience), and what we hear too in the music of Sir Malcolm Arnold who, like McCartney, was criticised by those damned purists for being popular. And the more I listen to Standing Stone the more I realise that Arnold has undoubtedly been a greater influence (consciously or subconsciously) than any other composer on McCartney’s symphonic music, but not in a negative sense. The underlying echoes of Arnold (Sir Paul might disagree) come through to me as a kind of homage to a man who shared many of Sir Paul’s ideals and beliefs, and, like Paul, wrote music from the heart.

Then it occurred to Hilary - who has recently started a campaign to save Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ at Crosby - that McCartney’s Standing Stone is effectively the soundtrack to Gormley’s magnificent work on that haunted, industrial, almost derelict beach, and that McCartney’s wonderfully evocative, emotional music must, somehow, be performed there.

Any thoughts on how we can make it happen?

Standing Stone, recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra, and conducted by Lawrence Foster, is available on EMI Classics (USA link or UK link).

Sir Paul McCartney’s latest classical work, Ecce Cor Meum, Behold My Heart, a work for chorus and orchestra, will be premiered on Friday 3rd of November at the Royal Albert Hall, London. It is also available on EMI Classics.

Steve Newman

1921 - 2006

With the death of Sir Malcolm Arnold the musical world, and not least the English musical world, lost a composer of huge vision and inclusiveness who was also the last link with those composers who came to prominence in the first half of the 20th century, most notably (in respect to their influence on the young Arnold) Vaughan Williams, Arnold Bax, William Walton, and perhaps to a lesser extent Edward Elgar - although in Arnold’s lush orchestrations and his ability to move from boisterousness to slow melancholy - which matched his own unstable schizophrenic nature - we do hear the influence of the Worcester born composer.

But there was another and perhaps more important musical influence on the Northampton born Arnold, namely that of Louis Armstrong who he managed to see and hear in Bournemouth in the 1930s when that most famous of jazz musicians was on a European tour fronting a band made up of British and European players. Such was the influence on the youngster that he persuaded his father (a wealthy Methodist shoe manufacturer) to buy him a trumpet.

Such was his ability with the instrument that when Arnold won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in 1938 he decided that, apart from studying composition, he would also make the trumpet his main academic pre-occupation, and a means of earning a few bob when he sat in with a few jazz bands in the evening.

After graduating from the RCM he joined the London Philharmonic and soon became their principle trumpet.

Although a fine player Arnold’s main ambition, and passion, was to become a composer, an ambition that had been encouraged by Duke Ellington who’d met Arnold in a Bournemouth tea shop (the seaside resort was a major pre-war venue for visiting American jazz musicians) in the 1930s. And we can hear in Arnold’s work that wonderful freedom of expression that inhabits the best of jazz, plus the ability and ingenuity to do what might appear at first listening to be musically incorrect (as the case with Ellington) plus humour - which is a hallmark of both Arnold’s and Ellington’s work. What we also hear in Arnold’s work - a skill he would use to good effect in his film music - is that of tight section work (another jazz element) and an ability to swing like the devil when he needs too (with the trumpet often leading) which is something most classical composers fail so miserably at.

At the outbreak of World War II Arnold registered as a conscientious objector, but in 1944 changed his mind and joined the army where, after months of hard training, he was found to be unfit for active duty and attached to a home regiment as a cornet player in the band.

Such was Arnold’s indignation at not being allowed to fight (and having to play in such a lowly outfit as an army band after the dizzy heights of the London Philharmonic) that he shot himself in the foot (a serious offence that could have put him in a tough army prison for a couple of years), which brought about his discharge. It was also one of the first signs of what became increasing bouts of clinical depression and attempts at suicide.

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I remember as a child taking part in a country dancing competition put on by a handful of Warwickshire schools as part of the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations in Stratford, a competition judged by Vaughan Williams, who I remember as a large elderly man slumped in a chair on the Bancroft Gardens outside the Memorial Theatre. I also remember that he tapped his walking stick in time to the music being played by a motley bunch of local musicians from several Morris Dancing groups. The point is he actually seemed to be enjoying himself, which is more than could be said for me. All I wanted was for it to be finished so I could get home and see that evening’s episode of The Cisco Kid. But the image of that old man - who had a much younger woman at his side - tapping his walking stick in time to music I now realise he must have known intimately, has remained with me.

And the abiding image we have of RVW is one of an old man, it is an image we have come across on LP and CD covers eversince his death in 1958. Much less often do we see images, or remember him, as a tall young man with passion and vision, a young man who, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, travelled the countryside collecting English folk songs whose melodies and constructions he used again and again. Seldom, if ever, are we reminded that he was the musical director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in 1912 at the height of Benson’s fame, or that he risked his life along with millions of others ( including Benson) in the trenches of France and Salonika during the First World War, an experience that changed his music forever after 1918, filling it with irony and even more humanity, but also with a new sound: that of the very bloodied early 20th century quite literally on the move.

All of this was in the future. In the 1880s, the decade after RVW’s birth, one of the most respected principles of living at Leith Hill Place - and something RVW the child learned very early on - was that you would never, ever, show disrespect toward the servants - and there were many servants - plus, you must always be direct in your conversation (no lies or gossip), have an independence of spirit (and be prepared to argue your corner), and always be extremely industrious, attributes that should nevertheless also be mixed with charm and dignity (all traits of the Wedgwood, Darwin, Williams, and Vaughan families), which the young RVW inherited and learned by the bucketful.

As an eight year old he also taught himself to play the organ, a great beast of a thing that lived in the hallway of Leith Hill Place (which was no semi), persuading the servants to work the bellows as he filled the house with music, and this was usually around five in the morning, so no one slept late. Some biographers of RVW have suggested that his upbringing was no different from other children of his time and class. I don’t really agree. I think RVW’s home life was an extraordinary in its freedom, and for its time, extremely happy and unrestricted whereas most artists and writers of his generation seem to have been brought up in dreadfully restricted homes, with parents who either ignored their children completely, or tried to destroy whatever spark of creativity they had with corporal punishment.

In 1882 the already tall RVW was sent to a preparatory school in Rottingdene, where he learned piano under the forward looking educationalist C.T. West who, as James Day reminds us, “…introduced him to the music of Bach, and continued his violin lessons (which he practised in the evenings, so there wasn‘t much sleep in the Leith Hill Place household) under the Irishman, W.M. Quirke, a well known Brighton teacher of those days…” with the high light of the young RVW’s school musical career coming when “…Quirke’s young charge performed Raff’s Cavatina…”, ‘double- stops and all’, as Vaughan Williams insisted in later life.

He was a born musician.

To Be Continued…

Steve Newman