Composer of the Fortnight : Edmund Rubbra

It was that godsend to classical music neophytes, Pelican’s “The Symphony 2: Elgar to the Present Day”, that turned me on to Rubbra over 40 years ago, and to sum up the man I can do no better than quote from Harold Truscott’s marvellous précis:

“A strong religious belief, intellectual rather than emotional, has perhaps had the most influence of all on Rubbra’s music.” Exactly. His spirituality and sense of mysticism brings Bruckner to mind except that Bruckner’s religious belief seems to me to be an emotional one, and to be informed by the tenets of the established church. Although Rubbra was a catholic convert his spirituality was universal and influences ranged from contemporary French to Elizabethan music, metaphysical poetry to Latin verse, Teilhard de Chardin to Buddhism. With both his teacher, Holst, and his friend Cyril Scott he shared a keen interest in eastern cultures while maintaining a recognizably English voice.

Although, as with any artist, there are peaks and valleys in his output, those interested in sampling his music can dive in just about anywhere because his voice, style and mannerisms are recognizable almost from day one. His music tends to be dignified, highly concentrated, subtle. Repeated listenings are necessary to reveal its secrets. Again, I’ll quote Truscott, talking about the 5th Symphony’s second movement: “Here the feeling is happy but serious. There is much that is child-like in Rubbra’s music and that is one of his finest qualities.”

The eleven symphonies can be roughly divided into four phases. One and two are thickly scored and tend to harangue a little. That reluctance to relax and contemplate is fully resolved in the next two symphonies. The 4th has a particularly serene, other-wordly opening. In 5-8 Rubbra really hits his stride. All four are superb but my particular favourite is the sixth, a beautifully-balanced work. I’m afraid I don’t share dubrob’s, or the Gramophone’s, enthusiasm for the ninth. Half ortatorio, half symphony (Rubbra was incapable of thinking non-symphonically), for me it doesn’t succeed as either. In 10 and 11 the composer condenses his language down to pithy, almost elliptical utterances. Both last about 15 minutes and, even more than the rest of the cycle, require repeated, concentrated listening to grasp their arguments.

Rubbra through-composed his works, often starting without a clear idea of where he was going to end up. The result is a sense of organic growth and cohesion, but the unsympathetic might yearn for a little more drama and colour. In this regard he reminds me so much of the great jazz musician Bill Evans. Although the symphonies are written in one to four movements I feel Rubbra was naturally, like Bax, a three-movement composer – two weighty movements sandwiching a sort of scherzo. I find that, as with Bruckner, I just cannot get into those scherzos. To me they seem irrelevant, but then perhaps that’s what a scherzo is meant to be.

Dubrob mentioned the quartets. I haven’t heard the Naxos issue but know the second and fourth from a Dutton cd. Well worth getting to know.

Aside from the symphonies the best of Rubbra is in his choral music. There’s a wonderful Naxos disc containing his Sancti Dominici and Cantuariensis masses as well as the Tenebrae Motets. Glorious music. An ASV disc offers the Five Motets op.37, beautiful settings of some of the great metaphysical poets, as well as the Missa op.98 and St. Teresa of Avila masses. And there is a Chandos cd containing a variety of choral music both religious and secular including Inscape op.122, settings of poems by an old favourite of mine, Gerard Manley Hopkins.

It’s so heartening to come across many references to Rubbra in this forum. He has more fans than I’d thought. In an age that prefers style over substance, hyperbole to considered statement, the spectacular to the thoughtful, Rubbra’s music is unlikely to find widespread root. No matter, there are obviously still people out there who don’t have to be told what to like and can recognize worth when they hear it.

A favorite Rubbra symphony of mine is the #6.  I obtained the Lyrita LP when it was issued in 1982 along with the 8th Symphony.  It joined the other Rubbra LPs that I had already purchased -- the 2nd Symphony & Festival Overture on Lyrita (Handley conducting), two recordings of the 5th (Barbirolli and Schonzeler), Boult's recording of the 7th, and three world premieres conducted by Schonzeler (including the 10th Symphony).  Norman Del Mar conducts the 6th Symphony on Lyrita well enough but it always seemed to me that the first and fourth movements were taken a little too fast.  And then a few years ago I found a live Boult performance on an Intaglio CD.  He takes the 1st movement at 10.24 minutes and the 4th at 12.01 minutes compared to Del Mar's 9.13 and 9.35.  This makes all the difference.  No longer does the 4th movement sound that it's over before it should be.  Boult takes 37.26 minutes for the whole work, Del Mar 32.40 (Boult is also slower in the beautiful "Canto" movement - 9.14 to 8.11 minutes.)  I don't know how wide spread the availability of the Intaglio CD was but I hope others have it to compare with Del Mar (Hickox also recorded the 6th but I haven't heard it).  By the way, the Intaglio also has the world premiere performance of the 8th Symphony by Groves and the Liverpool Philharmonic but it is far less successful than the Del Mar performance.  The sound on the Boult 6th plays quite well, but you may want to turn the treble down a bit.  It was performed in London in 1971 with the Royal Philharmonic.  Maybe Rubbra was in attendance?