173-404: Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax KCVO (8 November 1883 – 3 October 1953) was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music , chamber pieces , and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral music. In addition to a series of symphonic poems , he wrote seven symphonies and was for a time widely regarded as the leading British symphonist. Bax
346-411: A 1911 interview with Henry Malherbe : I have made mysterious Nature my religion ... When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvellous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening
519-789: A Celtic setting. During the war Bax began an affair with the pianist Harriet Cohen , for whom he left his wife and children. Musically, she was his muse for the rest of his life; he wrote numerous pieces for her, and she was the dedicatee of eighteen of his works. He took a flat in Swiss Cottage , London, where he lived until the start of the Second World War. He sketched many of his mature works there, often taking them in short score to his favoured rural retreats, Glencolmcille in Ulster , Ireland, and then from 1928 onwards Morar in Scotland, to work on
692-603: A Nordic tradition, being inspired by the Norwegian poet Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and Icelandic sagas. Bax's Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra (1917) is seen by the musicologist Julian Herbage as the turning-point from the Celtic to the Nordic in Bax's oeuvre; Herbage views it as a further indication of the shift that Winter Legends , composed thirteen years later, has a Nordic rather than
865-625: A brief visit to London, the couple returned to Paris in September, buying a house in a courtyard development off the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne (now Avenue Foch ), Debussy's home for the rest of his life. In October 1905 La mer , Debussy's most substantial orchestral work, was premiered in Paris by the Orchestre Lamoureux under the direction of Camille Chevillard ; the reception was mixed. Some praised
1038-551: A cloud-cuckoo dream to become an actuality". He added "Happily, it never has!", but he left a complete piano sketch, which was orchestrated in 2012–13 by Martin Yates , and recorded for the Dutton Vocalion label; it lasts for 77 minutes. The four-movement work, more conventional in structure than his completed symphonies, shows a strong Russian influence in its material. Bax wrote his seven completed symphonies between 1921 and 1939. In
1211-427: A contrary view that the accolade belongs to the ballet score Jeux . The latter failed as a ballet because of what Jann Pasler describes as a banal scenario, and the score was neglected for some years. Recent analysts have found it a link between traditional continuity and thematic growth within a score and the desire to create discontinuity in a way mirrored in later 20th century music. In this piece, Debussy abandoned
1384-412: A deeper sort". In a 2004 study, Mark DeVoto comments that Debussy's early works are harmonically no more adventurous than existing music by Fauré; in a 2007 book about the piano works, Margery Halford observes that Two Arabesques (1888–1891) and "Rêverie" (1890) have "the fluidity and warmth of Debussy's later style" but are not harmonically innovative. Halford cites the popular "Clair de Lune" (1890),
1557-483: A definitely Celtic curve. Bax in his memoirs, 1943 Musically, Bax veered away from the influence of Wagner and Strauss, and deliberately adopted what he conceived of as a Celtic idiom. In 1908 he began a cycle of tone poems called Eire , described by his biographer Lewis Foreman as the beginning of the composer's truly mature style. The first of these pieces, Into the Twilight , was premiered by Thomas Beecham and
1730-455: A dozen years of my youth I wallowed in Wagner's music to the almost total exclusion – until I became aware of Richard Strauss – of any other". Bax also discovered and privately studied the works of Debussy , whose music, like that of Strauss, was frowned on by the largely conservative faculty of the academy. Although Bax won a Macfarren Scholarship for composition and other important prizes, and
1903-454: A five-act musical play to a text by Gabriele D'Annunzio that took nearly five hours in performance, was not a success, and the music is now more often heard in a concert (or studio) adaptation with narrator, or as an orchestral suite of "Fragments symphoniques". Debussy enlisted the help of André Caplet in orchestrating and arranging the score. Two late stage works, the ballets Khamma (1912) and La boîte à joujoux (1913), were left with
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#17328836995652076-468: A flat in a different arrondissement . On 14 October, five days before their fifth wedding anniversary, Lilly Debussy attempted suicide, shooting herself in the chest with a revolver; she survived, although the bullet remained lodged in her vertebrae for the rest of her life. The ensuing scandal caused Bardac's family to disown her, and Debussy lost many good friends including Dukas and Messager. His relations with Ravel, never close, were exacerbated when
2249-581: A full-scale conventional concerto. It calls for a smaller orchestra than he customarily employed, with no trombones or tuba, and no percussion apart from timpani. Foreman points to many subtleties of scoring, but notes that it has never ranked high among the composer's mature works. The Violin Concerto (1937–38) is, like the last symphony, in a more relaxed vein than most of Bax's earlier music. Cardus singled it out as "unusually fine", although Heifetz may have felt it not virtuosic enough. The composer described it as in
2422-413: A general rule, individuals can derive precedence from their fathers or husbands, but not from their mothers or wives. appointment age age age Claude Debussy ( Achille ) Claude Debussy ( French: [aʃil klod dəbysi] ; 22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected
2595-524: A genuine nobilmente theme in the best Elgarian tradition". Bax's third and last cinema score was for a ten-minute short film Journey into History in 1952. Other orchestral works include Overture, Elegy and Rondo (1927) – a lightweight piece, according to Grove . The Overture to a Picaresque Comedy (1930), was for a time one of his most popular works. It was described by the composer as "Straussian pastiche" and by The Times as "gay and impudent, and with that tendency to vulgarity which so easily besets
2768-410: A great blow when another turn in his private life caused a scandal the following year. One of his pupils was Raoul Bardac , son of Emma and her husband, Parisian banker Sigismond Bardac. Raoul introduced his teacher to his mother, to whom Debussy quickly became greatly attracted. She was sophisticated, a brilliant conversationalist, an accomplished singer, and relaxed about marital fidelity, having been
2941-695: A grocer". Among his compositions from the period was the Violin Concerto (1938). Although not written to commission, he had composed it with the violin virtuoso Jascha Heifetz in mind. Heifetz never played it, and it was premiered in 1942 by Eda Kersey with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Wood. After the death of the Master of the King's Music , Sir Walford Davies , in 1941, Bax was appointed to succeed him. The choice surprised many. Bax, despite his knighthood,
3114-669: A higher level of medal or be appointed to a grade of the order itself, they may continue to wear their original medal along with the new insignia. The order's ribbon is blue with red-white-red stripe edging, the only difference being that for foreigners appointed into the society, their ribbon bears an additional central white stripe. For Knights Grand Cross, the ribbon is 82.5 millimetres (3.25 in) wide, for Dames Grand Cross 57.1 millimetres (2.25 in), for Knights and Dames Commander 44.4 millimetres (1.75 in), and for all other members 31.7 millimetres (1.25 in). At formal events, or collar days , of which there are 34 throughout
3287-584: A house in Rathgar , a well-to-do suburb of Dublin. They had two children, Dermot (1912–1976) and Maeve Astrid (1913–1987). Bax became known in Dublin literary circles under the pseudonym "Dermot O'Byrne"; he mixed with the writer George William Russell and his associates, and published stories, verses and a play. Reviewing a selection of the prose and poetry reissued in 1980, Stephen Banfield found most of Bax's earlier poems "like his early music, over-written, cluttered with
3460-507: A job as pianist in the household of Nadezhda von Meck , the patroness of Tchaikovsky . He travelled with her family for the summers of 1880 to 1882, staying at various places in France, Switzerland and Italy, as well as at her home in Moscow. He composed his Piano Trio in G major for von Meck's ensemble, and made a transcription for piano duet of three dances from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake . At
3633-478: A kind of art, in fact, which seemed to reach out into all aspects of experience". In 1988 the composer and scholar Wilfrid Mellers wrote of Debussy: Because of, rather than in spite of, his preoccupation with chords in themselves, he deprived music of the sense of harmonic progression, broke down three centuries' dominance of harmonic tonality, and showed how the melodic conceptions of tonality typical of primitive folk-music and of medieval music might be relevant to
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#17328836995653806-565: A large-scale composition. He wrote in 1952, "I doubt whether I shall write anything else … I have said all I have to say and it is of no use to repeat myself." Celebrations were planned by the Hallé Orchestra and others to celebrate Bax's seventieth birthday in November 1953. The celebrations became memorials: while visiting Cork in October 1953 Bax died suddenly of heart failure aged 69. He
3979-564: A more restrained style. He wrote his own poems for the Proses lyriques (1892–1893) but, in the view of the musical scholar Robert Orledge , "his literary talents were not on a par with his musical imagination". The musicologist Jacques-Gabriel Prod'homme wrote that, together with La Demoiselle élue , the Ariettes oubliées and the Cinq poèmes de Charles Baudelaire (1889) show "the new, strange way which
4152-499: A new ballet score, Jeux . That, and the three Images , premiered the following year, were the composer's last orchestral works. Jeux was unfortunate in its timing: two weeks after the premiere, in March 1913, Diaghilev presented the first performance of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring , a sensational event that monopolised discussion in musical circles, and effectively sidelined Jeux along with Fauré's Pénélope , which had opened
4325-567: A pedagogic exterior, these 12 pieces explore abstract intervals, or – in the last five – the sonorities and timbres peculiar to the piano." In 1914 Debussy started work on a planned set of six sonatas for various instruments . His fatal illness prevented him from completing the set, but those for cello and piano (1915), flute, viola and harp (1915), and violin and piano (1917 – his last completed work) are all concise, three-movement pieces, more diatonic in nature than some of his other late works. Le Martyre de saint Sébastien (1911), originally
4498-522: A playwright and essayist. Alfred Bax was a barrister of the Middle Temple , but having a private income he did not practise. In 1896 the family moved to a mansion in Hampstead . Bax later wrote that although it would have been good to be raised in the country, the large gardens of the family house were the next best thing. He was a musical child: "I cannot remember the long-lost day when I was unable to play
4671-598: A printing factory. In 1870, to escape the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War , Debussy's pregnant mother took him and his sister Adèle to their paternal aunt's home in Cannes , where they remained until the following year. During his stay in Cannes, the seven-year-old Debussy had his first piano lessons; his aunt paid for him to study with an Italian musician, Jean Cerutti. Manuel Debussy remained in Paris and joined
4844-460: A prominent civil servant, and much younger than her husband. She soon became Debussy's lover as well as his muse. Whether Vasnier was content to tolerate his wife's affair with the young student or was simply unaware of it is not clear, but he and Debussy remained on excellent terms, and he continued to encourage the composer in his career. At the Conservatoire, Debussy incurred the disapproval of
5017-444: A railway station, and, once inside, would mistake it for a Turkish bath"), conductors (" Nikisch is a unique virtuoso, so much so that his virtuosity seems to make him forget the claims of good taste"), musical politics ("The English actually think that a musician can manage an opera house successfully!"), and audiences ("their almost drugged expression of boredom, indifference and even stupidity"). He later collected his criticisms with
5190-532: A second short film, Journey into History (1952). His other works from the period include the short Morning Song for piano and orchestra, and the Left-Hand Concertante (1949), both written for Cohen. Bax and the Poet Laureate , John Masefield , worked on a pageant, The Play of Saint George in 1947, but the project was not completed. In his last years, Bax maintained a contented retirement for much of
5363-572: A simpler, sparer style. The composer and musicologist Anthony Payne considered that Bax's best works date from the period between 1910 and 1925: he instances The Garden of Fand , Tintagel , November Woods , the Second Piano Sonata, Viola Sonata, and first two symphonies. By the 1930s Bax's music ceased to be regarded as new and difficult, and towards the end of that decade it was attracting less attention than before. The conductor Vernon Handley , long associated with Bax's music, commented that
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5536-538: A strong influence on his early development. In the years before the First World War he lived in Ireland and became a member of Dublin literary circles, writing fiction and verse under the pseudonym Dermot O'Byrne . Later, he developed an affinity with Nordic culture, which for a time superseded his Celtic influences in the years after the First World War. Between 1910 and 1920 Bax wrote a large amount of music, including
5709-404: A study of the seven, David Cox wrote in 1967 that they were "often dismissed as amorphous by those who imagine that Bax consists only of Celtic mistiness and 'atmosphere'. In fact they have considerable strength and frequent astringence; and formally the thematic material is presented with consistency and purpose." In Herbage's view, the cycle can be seen to fall into two groups – the first three and
5882-537: A substantial number of choral works, mostly secular but some religious. He was a nominal member of the Church of England , but in the view of the critic Paul Spicer, "None of Bax's choral music can be described as devotional or even suitable for church use … Here is a secular composer writing voluptuous music." The choral works with religious texts include his largest-scale unaccompanied vocal piece, Mater ora Filium (1921), inspired by William Byrd 's Five Part Mass ; it
6055-601: A superfluous note"; Pierre Boulez observed, "Modern music was awakened by Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ". Most of the major works for which Debussy is best known were written between the mid-1890s and the mid-1900s. They include the String Quartet (1893), Pelléas et Mélisande (1893–1902), the Nocturnes for Orchestra (1899) and La mer (1903–1905). The suite Pour le piano (1894–1901) is, in Halford's view, one of
6228-584: A variety of styles and have varied sharply in their popularity. His impressionistic tone poem In the Faëry Hills is described by Grove as "a succinct and attractive piece". It was modestly successful, but Spring Fire (1913) is instanced by Foreman as a difficult work; it was not performed in Bax's lifetime. During the First World War Bax wrote three tone poems, two of which – The Garden of Fand (1913–16) and November Woods (1917) – have remained on
6401-540: A view to their publication as a book; it was published after his death as Monsieur Croche, Antidilettante . In January 1902 rehearsals began at the Opéra-Comique for the opening of Pelléas et Mélisande . For three months, Debussy attended rehearsals practically every day. In February there was conflict between Maeterlinck on the one hand and Debussy, Messager and Carré on the other about the casting of Mélisande. Maeterlinck wanted his mistress, Georgette Leblanc , to sing
6574-440: A week before. In 1915 Debussy underwent one of the earliest colostomy operations. It achieved only a temporary respite, and occasioned him considerable frustration ("There are mornings when the effort of dressing seems like one of the twelve labours of Hercules"). He also had a fierce enemy at this period in the form of Camille Saint-Saëns , who in a letter to Fauré condemned Debussy's En blanc et noir : "It's incredible, and
6747-429: A year, succumbing to the diphtheria epidemic of 1919. Mary Garden said, "I honestly don't know if Debussy ever loved anybody really. He loved his music – and perhaps himself. I think he was wrapped up in his genius", but biographers are agreed that whatever his relations with lovers and friends, Debussy was devoted to his daughter. Debussy and Emma Bardac eventually married in 1908, their troubled union enduring for
6920-469: Is La Damoiselle élue , recasting the traditional form for oratorios and cantatas, using a chamber orchestra and a small body of choral tone and using new or long-neglected scales and harmonies. His early mélodies , inspired by Marie Vasnier, are more virtuosic in character than his later works in the genre, with extensive wordless vocalise ; from the Ariettes oubliées (1885–1887) onwards he developed
7093-478: Is a setting of a medieval carol from a manuscript held by Balliol College, Oxford . The composer Patrick Hadley considered it "an unsurpassed example of modern unaccompanied vocal writing". Bax's other choral works include settings of words by Shelley ( Enchanted Summer , 1910), Henry Vaughan ( The Morning Watch , 1935), Masefield ( To Russia , 1944), and Spenser ( Epithalamium , 1947). In his overview of Bax's earlier chamber works, Evans identifies as among
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7266-489: Is not certain that Debussy, who was apt to skip classes, actually attended these. At the Conservatoire, Debussy initially made good progress. Marmontel said of him, "A charming child, a truly artistic temperament; much can be expected of him". Another teacher was less impressed: Émile Durand wrote in a report, "Debussy would be an excellent pupil if he were less sketchy and less cavalier." A year later he described Debussy as "desperately careless". In July 1874 Debussy received
7439-481: Is seen throughout the composer's work. For piano duo Bax composed two tone poems, Moy Mell (1917) and Red Autumn (1931). His shorter piano pieces include picturesque miniatures such as In a Vodka Shop (1915), A Hill Tune (1920) and Water Music (1929). In his later years Bax's music fell into neglect. Sir John Barbirolli wrote, "I think he felt keenly that his richly wrought and masterly scores were no longer 'fashionable' to-day, but nothing could deter him from
7612-476: Is the badge, which is a Maltese cross with a central medallion depicting on a red background the Royal Cypher of Queen Victoria surrounded by a blue ring bearing the motto of the order – victoria (victory) – and surmounted by a Tudor crown . However, there are variations on the badge for each grade of the order: Knights and Dames Grand Cross on certain formal occasions (see below) wear the badge suspended from
7785-541: Is the sovereign of the order. The order's motto is Victoria. The order's official day is 20 June. The order's chapel is the Savoy Chapel in London . There is no limit on the number of individuals honoured at any grade. Admission is at the sole discretion of the monarch. Each of the order's five grades represent different levels of service, as does the medal, which has three levels of service. While all those honoured may use
7958-468: Is to say, there is no direct unfolding of an individual state of mind or soul as we find in Elgar or Gustav Mahler. Yet there is no mistaking the Bax physiognomy or psychology: always through the gloom and thickets of the symphonies the warm rays of an approachable, lovable man and nature may be felt. York Bowen thought it regrettable that Bax's orchestral works frequently call for exceptionally large forces: "When
8131-633: The Fantaisie for piano and orchestra, which was heavily based on Franck's music and was eventually withdrawn by Debussy. The Academy chided him for writing music that was "bizarre, incomprehensible and unperformable". Although Debussy's works showed the influence of Jules Massenet , the latter concluded, "He is an enigma". During his years in Rome Debussy composed – not for the Academy – most of his Verlaine cycle, Ariettes oubliées , which made little impact at
8304-663: The Fifth and Sixth . The Fifth is, for Herbage, "the greatest tour-de-force "; the Sixth stands out for its "magnificent final movement", which the critic Peter J. Pirie said "tears the earth up by its roots"; and the Seventh , in the view of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , has an elegiac tone, its simplicity far removed from the discursive and complex music of Bax's earlier years. Bax's first work for solo instrument and orchestra
8477-492: The Irish republican cause, and the government censor prohibited their publication. At the beginning of the war Bax returned to England. A heart complaint, from which he suffered intermittently throughout his life, made him unfit for military service; he acted as a special constable for a period. At a time when fellow composers including Vaughan Williams, Arthur Bliss , George Butterworth and Ivor Gurney were serving overseas, Bax
8650-557: The New Symphony Orchestra in April 1909, and the following year, at Elgar's instigation, Henry Wood , commissioned the second in the cycle, In the Faëry Hills . The work received mixed notices. The Manchester Guardian ' s reviewer wrote, "Mr Bax has happily suggested the appropriate atmosphere of mystery"; The Observer found the piece "very undeterminate and unsatisfying, but not difficult to follow". The Times commented on
8823-516: The Russian Empire in 1910. He was in pursuit of Natalia Skarginska , a young Ukrainian whom he had met in London – one of several women with whom he fell in love over the years. The visit eventually proved a failure from the romantic point of view but musically enriched him. In Saint Petersburg he discovered and immediately loved ballet; he absorbed Russian musical influences that inspired material for
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#17328836995658996-457: The Trocadéro , fulfilling his wish to rest "among the trees and the birds"; his wife and daughter are buried with him. In a survey of Debussy's oeuvre shortly after the composer's death, the critic Ernest Newman wrote, "It would be hardly too much to say that Debussy spent a third of his life in the discovery of himself, a third in the free and happy realisation of himself, and the final third in
9169-669: The lieutenant governors . The practice of notifying the Prime Minister of Canada of nominees ended in 1982, to distance the order as far from politics as possible. It was reported in 2008 that some in the Chancellery of Honours at Rideau Hall wished to eliminate the Royal Victorian Order from the Canadian honours system and sometimes contested when a Canadian was appointed; however, no formal changes were ever planned. In Canada,
9342-552: The whole-tone scale he had often favoured previously in favour of the octatonic scale with what the Debussy scholar François Lesure describes as its tonal ambiguities. Among the late piano works are two books of Préludes (1909–10, 1911–13), short pieces that depict a wide range of subjects. Lesure comments that they range from the frolics of minstrels at Eastbourne in 1905 and the American acrobat "General Lavine" "to dead leaves and
9515-447: The "rather second-hand language" at some points, derivative of Wagner and Debussy, although "there is still a great deal which is wholly individual". The Musical Times praised "a mystic glamour that could not fail to be felt by the listener" although the coherence of the piece "was not instantly discernible". A third work in the cycle, Roscatha , was not performed in the composer's lifetime. Bax's private means enabled him to travel to
9688-458: The 14 performances in the first run), were loud in their support; the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire tried in vain to stop its students from seeing the opera. The vocal score was published in early May, and the full orchestral score in 1904. In 1903 there was public recognition of Debussy's stature when he was appointed a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur , but his social standing suffered
9861-505: The 20th century". The composer Olivier Messiaen was fascinated by its "extraordinary harmonic qualities and ... transparent instrumental texture". The opera is composed in what Alan Blyth describes as a sustained and heightened recitative style, with "sensuous, intimate" vocal lines. It influenced composers as different as Stravinsky and Puccini . Orledge describes the Nocturnes as exceptionally varied in texture, "ranging from
10034-422: The Conservatoire's conservative professors. He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande . Debussy's orchestral works include Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894), Nocturnes (1897–1899) and Images (1905–1912). His music was to a considerable extent a reaction against Wagner and
10207-516: The Easter rising; the work was not played until 1998. Bax reused the main melody for his incidental music to Oliver Twist (1948). Oliver Twist was the second of Bax's film scores. The first was for a short wartime propaganda film, Malta, G. C. . A four-movement suite was published after the release of the latter, containing what The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music calls "a notable March with
10380-450: The Faith), and Ind. Imp. ( Empress of India ). The chain supports a larger octagonal medallion with a blue enamel surface edged in red and charged with a saltire , over which is an effigy of Queen Victoria; members of the order suspend from this medallion their insignia as a badge apendant . Though after the death of a Knight or Dame Grand Cross their insignia may be retained by their family,
10553-602: The First Piano Sonata, the piano pieces, "May Night in the Ukraine" and "Gopak", and the First Violin Sonata, dedicated to Skarginska. Foreman describes him in this period as "a musical magpie, celebrating his latest discoveries in new compositions"; Foreman adds that Bax's own musical personality was strong enough for him to assimilate his influences and make them into his own. Russian music continued to influence him until
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#173288369956510726-623: The First World War. An unfinished ballet Tamara , "a little-Russian fairy tale in action and dance", provided material the composer reused in post-war works. Having given up his pursuit of Skarginska, Bax returned to England; in January 1911 he married the pianist Elsita Luisa Sobrino (b. 1885 or 1886), daughter of the teacher and pianist, Carlos Sobrino, and his wife, Luise, née Schmitz, a singer. Bax and his wife lived first in Chester Terrace, Regent's Park , London, and then moved to Ireland, taking
10899-541: The German musical tradition. He regarded the classical symphony as obsolete and sought an alternative in his "symphonic sketches", La mer (1903–1905). His piano works include sets of 24 Préludes and 12 Études . Throughout his career he wrote mélodies based on a wide variety of poetry, including his own. He was greatly influenced by the Symbolist poetic movement of the later 19th century. A small number of works, including
11072-499: The King's Chapel of the Savoy is ex officio the Chaplain to the Royal Victorian Order. The current incumbent is Canon Thomas Woodhouse. Membership in the Royal Victorian Order is conferred by the monarch without ministerial advice on those who have performed personal service for the sovereign. Foreign members will generally be admitted as honorary members of the Royal Victorian Order when
11245-466: The Maltese cross is rendered in white enamel with gold edging, while that for Knights and Dames Commander (on the star) and Members (the badge itself) is in silver. Further, the size of the badge varies by rank, that for the higher classes being larger, and Knights and Dames Grand Cross and Knights and Dames Commander have their crosses surrounded by a star: for the former, an eight-pointed silver star, and for
11418-575: The Mayor of Nice being the first foreigners to receive the honour in 1896. The reigning monarch is at the apex of the Royal Victorian Order as its Sovereign, followed by the Grand Master ; the latter position was created in 1937 and was occupied by Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) from that date until her death in 2002. Queen Elizabeth II then appointed her daughter, Anne, Princess Royal , to
11591-580: The Musorgskian start of 'Nuages', through the approaching brass band procession in 'Fêtes', to the wordless female chorus in 'Sirènes ' ". Orledge considers the last a pre-echo of the marine textures of La mer . Estampes for piano (1903) gives impressions of exotic locations, with further echoes of the gamelan in its pentatonic structures. Debussy believed that since Beethoven, the traditional symphonic form had become formulaic, repetitive and obsolete. The three-part, cyclic symphony by César Franck (1888)
11764-470: The Order's collar (chain), but otherwise on a sash passing from the right shoulder to the left hip; Knight Commanders and male Commanders wear the badge on a ribbon at the neck; male Lieutenants and Members wear the badge from a ribbon on the left chest; and women in all grades below Dame Grand Cross wear the badge on a bow pinned at the left shoulder. For Knights and Dames Grand Cross, Commanders, and Lieutenants,
11937-471: The Royal Victorian Order as a junior and personal order of knighthood that allowed her to bestow directly to an empire-wide community honours for personal services. The organisation was founded a year before Victoria's Diamond Jubilee , so as to give the Queen time to complete a list of first inductees. The order's official day was made 20 June of each year, marking the anniversary of Queen Victoria's accession to
12110-409: The Savoy chapel can no longer accommodate the gathering of members held every four years, and St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle is now employed for the event. The Sovereign and Knights and Dames Grand Cross of the order are allotted stalls in the Savoy chapel's choir, and on the back of each stall is affixed a brass plate displaying the occupant's name, coat of arms , and date of admission into
12283-516: The White Horse Hotel, Storrington , where he lived for the rest of his life. He abandoned composition and completed a book of memoirs about his early years, Farewell, My Youth . The Times found it at times waspish, at times reticent, surprising in parts, and regrettably short. Later in the war Bax was persuaded to contribute incidental music for a short film, Malta G. C. ; he subsequently wrote music for David Lean 's Oliver Twist (1948) and
12456-460: The assessors at the Conservatoire first applied it, opprobriously, to his early work Printemps . Langham Smith comments that Debussy wrote many piano pieces with titles evocative of nature – "Reflets dans l'eau" (1905), "Les Sons et les parfums tournent dans l'air du soir" (1910) and "Brouillards" (1913) – and suggests that the Impressionist painters' use of brush-strokes and dots is paralleled in
12629-418: The award of deuxième accessit for his performance as soloist in the first movement of Chopin's Second Piano Concerto at the Conservatoire's annual competition. He was a fine pianist and an outstanding sight reader , who could have had a professional career had he wished, but he was only intermittently diligent in his studies. He advanced to premier accessit in 1875 and second prize in 1877, but failed at
12802-450: The collar must be returned. Knights and Dames Grand Cross also wear a mantle of dark blue satin edged with red satin and lined with white satin, bearing a representation of the order's star on the left side. Since 1938, the chapel of the Royal Victorian Order has been the King's Chapel of the Savoy , in central London , England . However, the population of the order has grown to the point that
12975-508: The coming of spring. Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order The Royal Victorian Order ( French : Ordre royal de Victoria ) is a dynastic order of knighthood established in 1896 by Queen Victoria . It recognises distinguished personal service to the monarch, members of the royal family, or to any viceroy or senior representative of the monarch. The present monarch, King Charles III ,
13148-751: The committee of the Société Nationale de Musique in 1893. His String Quartet was premiered by the Ysaÿe string quartet at the Société Nationale in the same year. In May 1893 Debussy attended a theatrical event that was of key importance to his later career – the premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck 's play Pelléas et Mélisande , which he immediately determined to turn into an opera. He travelled to Maeterlinck's home in Ghent in November to secure his consent to an operatic adaptation. In February 1894 Debussy completed
13321-632: The competitions in 1878 and 1879. These failures made him ineligible to continue in the Conservatoire's piano classes, but he remained a student for harmony, solfège and, later, composition. With Marmontel's help Debussy secured a summer vacation job in 1879 as resident pianist at the Château de Chenonceau , where he rapidly acquired a taste for luxury that was to remain with him all his life. His first compositions date from this period, two settings of poems by Alfred de Musset : "Ballade à la lune" and "Madrid, princesse des Espagnes". The following year he secured
13494-476: The composer's influences include Rachmaninoff and Sibelius as well as Richard Strauss and Wagner: "He was aware of jazz and many more composers on the European scene than we are now. That finds its way into a person's psyche and personality and into his technique as a musician." The critic Neville Cardus wrote of Bax's music: The paradox is that Bax's methods, his idiom and tonal atmosphere are impersonal: that
13667-399: The composer's most popular works. In the mid-1920s, while his affair with Cohen continued, Bax met the twenty-three-year-old Mary Gleaves, and for more than two decades he maintained relationships with both women. His affair with Cohen ripened into warm friendship and continuing musical partnership. Gleaves became his companion from the later 1920s until his death. In the 1930s, Bax composed
13840-492: The composer. This too made an impression on him, and its harmonic freedom and non-Teutonic tone colours influenced his own developing musical style. Marie Vasnier ended her liaison with Debussy soon after his final return from Rome, although they remained on good enough terms for him to dedicate to her one more song, "Mandoline", in 1890. Later in 1890 Debussy met Erik Satie , who proved a kindred spirit in his experimental approach to composition. Both were bohemians , enjoying
14013-608: The discipline to express his imagination to the greatest effect. After leaving the Academy Bax visited Dresden, where he saw the original production of Strauss's Salome , and first heard the music of Mahler , which he found "eccentric, long-winded, muddle-headed, and yet always interesting". Among the influences on the young Bax was the Irish poet W. B. Yeats ; Bax's brother Clifford introduced him to Yeats's poetry and to Ireland. Influenced by Yeats's The Wanderings of Oisin , Bax visited
14186-522: The door of the Institut [de France] must at all costs be barred against a man capable of such atrocities". Saint-Saëns had been a member of the Institut since 1881: Debussy never became one. His health continued to decline; he gave his final concert on 14 September 1917 and became bedridden in early 1918. Debussy died of colon cancer on 25 March 1918 at his home. The First World War was still raging and Paris
14359-453: The early La Damoiselle élue and the late Le Martyre de saint Sébastien have important parts for chorus. In his final years, he focused on chamber music, completing three of six planned sonatas for different combinations of instruments . With early influences including Russian and Far Eastern music and works by Chopin , Debussy developed his own style of harmony and orchestral colouring, derided – and unsuccessfully resisted – by much of
14532-549: The emphasis is on the overall impression rather than outline or clarity of detail, as in works by Monet , Pissarro , Renoir and others. Langham Smith writes that the term became transferred to the compositions of Debussy and others which were "concerned with the representation of landscape or natural phenomena, particularly the water and light imagery dear to Impressionists, through subtle textures suffused with instrumental colour". Among painters, Debussy particularly admired Turner , but also drew inspiration from Whistler . With
14705-406: The end of 1880 Debussy, while continuing his studies at the Conservatoire, was engaged as accompanist for Marie Moreau-Sainti's singing class; he took this role for four years. Among the members of the class was Marie Vasnier; Debussy was greatly taken with her, and she inspired him to compose: he wrote 27 songs dedicated to her during their seven-year relationship. She was the wife of Henri Vasnier,
14878-610: The faculty, particularly his composition teacher, Guiraud, for his failure to follow the orthodox rules of composition then prevailing. Nevertheless, in 1884 Debussy won France's most prestigious musical award, the Prix de Rome , with his cantata L'enfant prodigue . The Prix carried with it a residence at the Villa Medici , the French Academy in Rome , to further the winner's studies. Debussy
15051-480: The first draft of Pelléas and began efforts to get it staged. In May 1898 he made his first contacts with André Messager and Albert Carré , respectively the musical director and general manager of the Opéra-Comique , Paris, about presenting the opera. Debussy abandoned Dupont for her friend Marie-Rosalie Texier, known as "Lilly", whom he married in October 1899, after threatening suicide if she refused him. She
15224-429: The first draft of Act I of his operatic version of Pelléas et Mélisande , and for most of the year worked to complete the work. While still living with Dupont, he had an affair with the singer Thérèse Roger, and in 1894 he announced their engagement. His behaviour was widely condemned; anonymous letters circulated denouncing his treatment of both women, as well as his financial irresponsibility and debts. The engagement
15397-786: The first examples of the mature Debussy as a composer for the piano: "a major landmark ... and an enlargement of the use of piano sonorities". In the String Quartet (1893), the gamelan sonorities Debussy had heard four years earlier are recalled in the pizzicatos and cross-rhythms of the scherzo . Debussy's biographer Edward Lockspeiser comments that this movement shows the composer's rejection of "the traditional dictum that string instruments should be predominantly lyrical". The work influenced Ravel, whose own String Quartet , written ten years later, has noticeably Debussian features. The academic and journalist Stephen Walsh calls Pelléas et Mélisande (begun 1893, staged 1902) "a key work for
15570-417: The first movement. The reviews were sharply divided. Some critics thought the treatment less subtle and less mysterious than his previous works, and even a step backward; others praised its "power and charm", its "extraordinary verve and brilliant fantasy", and its strong colours and definite lines. Of the later orchestral works, Images (1905–1912) is better known than Jeux (1913). The former follows
15743-459: The following year. Like many other composers of the time, Debussy supplemented his income by teaching and writing. For most of 1901 he had a sideline as music critic of La Revue Blanche , adopting the pen name "Monsieur Croche". He expressed trenchant views on composers ("I hate sentimentality – his name is Camille Saint-Saëns "), institutions (on the Paris Opéra: "A stranger would take it for
15916-496: The forces of the Commune ; after its defeat by French government troops in 1871 he was sentenced to four years' imprisonment, of which he only served one year. His fellow Communard prisoners included his friend Charles de Sivry, a musician. Sivry's mother, Antoinette Mauté de Fleurville, gave piano lessons, and at his instigation the young Debussy became one of her pupils. Debussy's talents soon became evident, and in 1872, aged ten, he
16089-423: The fringes of the modern repertoire, and a third – Tintagel (1917–19) – which in the decade after his death was the only work by which Bax was known to the public. Grove characterises all three as musical evocations of nature, with little expression of subjective personal response. The orchestral piece that was neglected longest was In memoriam (1917), a lament for Patrick Pearse , who was shot for his part in
16262-584: The full score at leisure. In a study of Bax in 1919 his friend and confidante, the critic Edwin Evans, commented on the waning of the Celtic influence in the composer's music and the emergence of "a more austere, abstract art". From the 1920s onwards Bax seldom turned to poetic legend for inspiration. In Foreman's view, in the post-war years Bax was recognised for the first time as an important, though isolated, figure in British music. The many substantial works he wrote during
16435-562: The gift of the monarch, the appointment of Canadians to the order resumed in 1972 and eligibility was extended to those who render services to the monarch's representatives in the country; officials within the provincial spheres being included after 1984. Originally, the sovereign chose inductees personally, though the Governor General of Canada and the Canadian Secretary to the King could provide suggestions, some passed to them by
16608-438: The grades of Lieutenant and Member were classified as Members (fourth class) and Members (fifth class) , respectively, but both with the post-nominals MVO . On 31 December of that year, Queen Elizabeth II declared that those in the grade of Member (fourth class) would henceforth be Lieutenants with the post-nominals LVO . Upon admission into the Royal Victorian Order, members are given various insignia. Common for all members
16781-644: The group has, since 2008, gathered biennially. As the Royal Victorian Order is open to the citizens of fifteen countries, each with their own system of orders, decorations, and medals, the RVO's place of precedence varies from country to country. Some are as follows: In the United Kingdom, the wives of male members of all classes also feature on the order of precedence, as do sons, daughters and daughters-in-law of Knights Grand Cross and Knights Commanders; relatives of Dames, however, are not assigned any special precedence. As
16954-547: The instinctively refined composer determined to let himself go", Cardus thought the work so appealing that to live up to the overture the putative comedy would have to be "written by Hofmannsthal and Shaw in collaboration. Not often is English music so free and audacious as this, so gay and winning." The critic Peter Latham remarked that he was surprised that Bax had never set any of Yeats's poems to music. Bax replied, "What, I? I should never dare!". Latham added that Bax's sensitiveness to poetic values made him "painfully aware of
17127-408: The last four of his seven symphonies. Other works from the decade include the popular Overture to a Picaresque Comedy (1930), several works for chamber groups, including a nonet (1930), a string quintet (1933), an octet for horn, piano, and strings (1934) and his third and last string quartet (1936). The Cello Concerto (1932) was commissioned by and dedicated to Gaspar Cassadó , who quickly dropped
17300-538: The last three – with the Fourth Symphony as "an extrovert interlude between these largely introspective works". Handley agreed that the first three could be grouped together; Foreman sees a Celtic influence in all three, with Bax's emotions about the Easter rising and its aftermath discernible. The Fourth is generally regarded as a more optimistic work than its predecessors and successors. Handley calls it "festive", but comments that its ideas developed into darker mood in
17473-400: The latter in mind the composer wrote to the violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in 1894 describing the orchestral Nocturnes as "an experiment in the different combinations that can be obtained from one colour – what a study in grey would be in painting." Debussy strongly objected to the use of the word "Impressionism" for his (or anybody else's) music, but it has continually been attached to him since
17646-570: The latter joined other former friends of Debussy in contributing to a fund to support the deserted Lilly. The Bardacs divorced in May 1905. Finding the hostility in Paris intolerable, Debussy and Emma (now pregnant) went to England. They stayed at the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne in July and August, where Debussy corrected the proofs of his symphonic sketches La mer , celebrating his divorce on 2 August. After
17819-596: The latter, an eight-pointed silver Maltese cross with silver rays between each arm. The medal bears the effigy and name of the reigning sovereign at the time of its awarding, as well as the phrase DEI • GRATIA • REX (or REGINA) • F.D. (by the grace of God, King (or Queen), Defender of the Faith ), and on the reverse is the Royal Cypher upon an ornamental shield within a laurel wreath . Bars may be awarded to each class of medal for further services, and should recipients be awarded
17992-504: The martyrs fell. From Bax's poem "A Dublin Ballad", 1916. During his time in Dublin, Bax had made many republican friends. The Easter rising in April 1916 and the subsequent execution of the ringleaders shocked him deeply. He expressed his feelings in some of his music such as the orchestral In Memoriam and the "Elegiac Trio" for flute, viola, and harp (1916), as well as in his poetry. In addition to his Irish influences, Bax also drew on
18165-606: The meadow, the gentle grass-carpeted earth, ... and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. In contrast to the "impressionistic" characterisation of Debussy's music, several writers have suggested that he structured at least some of his music on rigorous mathematical lines. In 1983 the pianist and scholar Roy Howat published a book contending that certain of Debussy's works are proportioned using mathematical models, even while using an apparent classical structure such as sonata form . Howat suggests that some of Debussy's pieces can be divided into sections that reflect
18338-604: The mistress and muse of Gabriel Fauré a few years earlier. After despatching Lilly to her parental home at Bichain in Villeneuve-la-Guyard on 15 July 1904, Debussy took Emma away, staying incognito in Jersey and then at Pourville in Normandy. He wrote to his wife on 11 August from Dieppe , telling her that their marriage was over, but still making no mention of Bardac. When he returned to Paris he set up home on his own, taking
18511-652: The most successful the Phantasy for viola, the Trio for piano, violin, and viola and "a String Quintet of such difficulty that an adequate performance has seldom if ever been possible". He rates the Second Violin Sonata (1915) as the composer's most individual work to that date. For Evans, the culminating point of Bax's early chamber music was the Piano Quintet, a work "of such richness of invention that it would be an ornament to
18684-620: The music of Debussy. Although Debussy said that anyone using the term (whether about painting or music) was an imbecile, some Debussy scholars have taken a less absolutist line. Lockspeiser calls La mer "the greatest example of an orchestral Impressionist work", and more recently in The Cambridge Companion to Debussy Nigel Simeone comments, "It does not seem unduly far-fetched to see a parallel in Monet's seascapes". In this context may be placed Debussy's pantheistic eulogy to Nature, in
18857-480: The musical establishment of the day. His works have strongly influenced a wide range of composers including Béla Bartók , Olivier Messiaen , George Benjamin , and the jazz pianist and composer Bill Evans . Debussy died from cancer at his home in Paris at the age of 55 after a composing career of a little more than 30 years. Debussy was born on 22 August 1862 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye , Seine-et-Oise , on
19030-644: The musical literature of any country or period". Foreman makes particular mention of the First String Quartet (1918 – "a classical clarity of texture and form to its Celtic inspiration", and the "grittier" Second Quartet (1925), the Viola Sonata (1922), the Phantasy Sonata for viola and harp (1927) and the Sonata for Flute and Harp (1928). The composer and musical scholar Christopher Palmer points out that Bax
19203-607: The next few years Debussy developed his personal style, without, at this stage, breaking sharply away from French musical traditions. Much of his music from this period is on a small scale, such as the Two Arabesques , Valse romantique , Suite bergamasque , and the first set of Fêtes galantes . Newman remarked that, like Chopin , the Debussy of this period appears as a liberator from Germanic styles of composition – offering instead "an exquisite, pellucid style" capable of conveying "not only gaiety and whimsicality but emotion of
19376-517: The north-west fringes of Paris. He was the eldest of the five children of Manuel-Achille Debussy and his wife, Victorine, née Manoury. Debussy senior ran a china shop and his wife was a seamstress. The shop was unsuccessful, and closed in 1864; the family moved to Paris, first living with Victorine's mother, in Clichy , and, from 1868, in their own apartment in the Rue Saint-Honoré . Manuel worked in
19549-448: The orchestration incomplete, and were completed by Charles Koechlin and Caplet, respectively. The application of the term "Impressionist" to Debussy and the music he influenced has been much debated, both during his lifetime and since. The analyst Richard Langham Smith writes that Impressionism was originally a term coined to describe a style of late 19th-century French painting , typically scenes suffused with reflected light in which
19722-534: The order has come to be colloquially dubbed as the "Royal Visit Order", as the majority of appointments had been made by the then sovereign during her tours of the country . The Royal Victorian Order Association of Canada exists for all Canadians appointed to the order or who have received the Royal Victorian Medal; it is the only such organisation in the Commonwealth realms . Founded by Michael Jackson,
19895-408: The order, divided into five levels: the highest two conferring accolades of knighthood and all having post-nominal letters and, lastly, the holders of the Royal Victorian Medal in gold, silver or bronze. Foreigners may be admitted as honorary members. There are no limits to the number of any grade, and promotion is possible. The styles of knighthood are not used by princes, princesses, or peers in
20068-583: The organisation. Upon the occupant's death, the plate is retained, leaving the stalls festooned with a record of the order's Knights and Dames Grand Cross since 1938. The only heraldic banners normally on display in the chapel are those of the Sovereign of the Royal Victorian Order and of the Grand Master of the Royal Victorian Order as there is insufficient space in the chapel for more knights' and dames' banners or other heraldic devices. The Chaplain of
20241-464: The partial, painful loss of himself". Later commentators have rated some of the late works more highly than Newman and other contemporaries did, but much of the music for which Debussy is best known is from the middle years of his career. The analyst David Cox wrote in 1974 that Debussy, admiring Wagner's attempts to combine all the creative arts, "created a new, instinctive, dreamlike world of music, lyrical and pantheistic, contemplative and objective –
20414-593: The path of complete honesty and sincerity in his musical thought." The neglect became more complete after the composer's death. He had always sustained a Romantic outlook, distancing himself from musical modernism and especially Arnold Schoenberg 's serialism , of which Bax wrote in 1951: I believe that there is little probability that the twelve-note scale will ever produce anything more than morbid or entirely cerebral growths. It might deal successfully with neuroses of various kinds, but I cannot imagine it associated with any healthy and happy concept such as young love or
20587-501: The path which it ordains as the only right one. But there is no help for it! I am too enamoured of my freedom, too fond of my own ideas!" Debussy finally composed four pieces that were submitted to the Academy: the symphonic ode Zuleima (based on a text by Heinrich Heine ); the orchestral piece Printemps ; the cantata La Damoiselle élue (1887–1888), the first piece in which the stylistic features of his later music began to emerge; and
20760-689: The piano – inaccurately". After a preparatory school in Balham , Bax attended the Hampstead Conservatoire during the 1890s. The establishment was run – "with considerable personal pomp", according to Bax – by Cecil Sharp , whose passion for English folk-song and folk-dance excited no response in his pupil. An enthusiasm for folk music was widespread among British composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Parry , Stanford , Vaughan Williams and Holst ; Sullivan and Elgar stood aloof, as did Bax, who later put into general circulation
20933-645: The poet William Sharp ). Among the post-war songs, Hold considers Bax's "In the Morning" (1926) to be one of the best of all settings of Housman's works, "and it makes you wish that Bax had made further explorations into the Shropshire landscape." Hold classes that song, together with "Across the Door" (1921), "Rann of Exile" (1922) and "Watching the Needleboats" (1932), as "truly modern, 20th-century masterpieces of song". Bax wrote
21106-1100: The position in 2007. Below the Grand Master are five officials of the organisation: the Chancellor , held by the Lord Chamberlain ; the Secretary , held by the Keeper of the Privy Purse and Treasurer to the King; the Registrar, held by the Secretary to the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood ; the Chaplain , held by the Chaplain of the King's Chapel of the Savoy ; and the Genealogist . Thereafter follow those honoured with different grades of
21279-485: The prescribed styles of the order – the top two grades grant titles of knighthood, and all grades accord distinct post-nominal letters – the Royal Victorian Order's precedence amongst other honours differs from realm to realm and admission to some grades may be barred to citizens of those realms by government policy. Prior to the close of the 19th century, most general honours within the British Empire were bestowed by
21452-454: The rest of his life. The following year began well, when at Fauré's invitation, Debussy became a member of the governing council of the Conservatoire. His success in London was consolidated in April 1909, when he conducted Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune and the Nocturnes at the Queen's Hall ; in May he was present at the first London production of Pelléas et Mélisande , at Covent Garden . In
21625-566: The role, and was incensed when she was passed over in favour of the Scottish soprano Mary Garden . The opera opened on 30 April 1902, and although the first-night audience was divided between admirers and sceptics, the work quickly became a success. It made Debussy a well-known name in France and abroad; The Times commented that the opera had "provoked more discussion than any work of modern times, excepting, of course, those of Richard Strauss ". The Apaches, led by Ravel (who attended every one of
21798-476: The romantic tradition of Joachim Raff . Among the minor concertante works is Variations on the Name Gabriel Fauré (1949) for harp and strings, in a style more neoclassical than most of Bax's music. Bax's last concertante piece was a short work for piano and orchestra (1947) written in his capacity as Master of the King's Music, marking Princess Elizabeth 's twenty-first birthday. Bax's tone poems are in
21971-437: The same café society and struggling to survive financially. In the same year Debussy began a relationship with Gabrielle (Gaby) Dupont, a tailor's daughter from Lisieux ; in July 1893 they began living together. Debussy continued to compose songs, piano pieces and other works, some of which were publicly performed, but his music made only a modest impact, although his fellow composers recognised his potential by electing him to
22144-524: The same year, Debussy was diagnosed with colorectal cancer , from which he was to die nine years later. Debussy's works began to feature increasingly in concert programmes at home and overseas. In 1910 Gustav Mahler conducted the Nocturnes and Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune in New York in successive months. In the same year, visiting Budapest, Debussy commented that his works were better known there than in Paris. In 1912 Sergei Diaghilev commissioned
22317-459: The saying, "You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk-dancing." In 1900 Bax moved on to the Royal Academy of Music , where he remained until 1905, studying composition with Frederick Corder and piano with Tobias Matthay . Corder was a devotee of the works of Wagner , whose music was Bax's principal inspiration in his early years. He later observed, "For
22490-628: The score demands such luxuries as triple or quadruple woodwind, six horns, three or four trumpets, extra percussion and perhaps organ, it is undoubtedly throwing extra difficulties in the way of performance." The composer Eric Coates commented that Bax's music appealed greatly to orchestral players: "whichever instrument he wrote for, it was as if he played that instrument himself, so well did he seem to write for it". While in Dresden in 1907 Bax began work on what he later called "a colossal symphony which would have occupied quite an hour in performance, were such
22663-438: The secondhand lumber of early Yeats, though the weakness is one of loosely chosen language rather than complexity." Banfield had better things to say of the later poems, where Bax "focuses matters, whether laconically and colloquially upon the grim futility of the 1916 Easter Uprising ... or pungently upon his recurrent disillusionment about love." Some of Bax's writings as O'Byrne were regarded as subversively sympathetic to
22836-442: The simpler "The White Peace" (1907), one of his most popular songs. The musical analyst Trevor Hold writes that the piano "goes berserk" in "Glamour" (1920). Among the poets whose verses Bax set were his brother Clifford, Burns , Chaucer , Hardy , Housman , Joyce , Synge and Tennyson . The composer himself singled out for mention in his Who's Who article "A Celtic Song-Cycle" (1904) to words by "Fiona Macleod" (a pen name of
23009-467: The sounds and scents of the evening air". En blanc et noir (In white and black, 1915), a three-movement work for two pianos, is a predominantly sombre piece, reflecting the war and national danger. The Études (1915) for piano have divided opinion. Writing soon after Debussy's death, Newman found them laboured – "a strange last chapter in a great artist's life"; Lesure, writing eighty years later, rates them among Debussy's greatest late works: "Behind
23182-550: The sovereign is making a state visit to the individual's country or a head of state is paying a state visit to the United Kingdom. As admission to the top two levels of the organisation provides for an honorary prefix, Canadians are not normally appointed to these levels as long as the monarch's Canadian ministry adheres to the Nickle Resolution of 1919. As it was deemed by the Canadian Cabinet to be an honour within
23355-716: The sovereign on the advice of her British ministers , who sometimes forwarded advice from ministers of the Crown in the Dominions and colonies (appointments to the then most senior orders of chivalry, the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Thistle , had been made on ministerial advice since the 18th century and were not restored to the personal gift of the sovereign until 1946 and 1947, respectively ). Queen Victoria thus established on 21 April 1896
23528-506: The symphonic poem Tintagel , his best-known work. During this period he formed a lifelong association with the pianist Harriet Cohen – at first an affair, then a friendship, and always a close professional relationship. In the 1920s he began the series of seven symphonies which form the heart of his orchestral output. In 1942 Bax was appointed Master of the King's Music , but composed little in that capacity. In his last years he found his music regarded as old-fashioned, and after his death it
23701-464: The term. He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris . He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of
23874-424: The third of the four movements of Suite Bergamasque , as a transitional work pointing towards the composer's mature style. Musicians from Debussy's time onwards have regarded Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1894) as his first orchestral masterpiece. Newman considered it "completely original in idea, absolutely personal in style, and logical and coherent from first to last, without a superfluous bar or even
24047-547: The throne. In 1902, King Edward VII created the Royal Victorian Chain "as a personal decoration for royal personages and a few eminent British subjects" and it was the highest class of the Royal Victorian Order. It is today distinct from the order, though it is officially issued by the chancery of the Royal Victorian Order. The order was open to foreigners from its inception, with the Prefect of Alpes-Maritimes and
24220-519: The time but was successfully republished in 1903 after the composer had become well known. A week after his return to Paris in 1887, Debussy heard the first act of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde at the Concerts Lamoureux , and judged it "decidedly the finest thing I know". In 1888 and 1889 he went to the annual festivals of Wagner's operas at Bayreuth . He responded positively to Wagner's sensuousness, mastery of form, and striking harmonies, and
24393-444: The time. Walton commented, "an important cricket match at Lord's would bring him hurrying up to town from his pub at Storrington with much greater excitement than a performance of one of his works". In 1950, after hearing his Third Symphony played at Bournemouth , he said, "I ought perhaps to be thinking of an eighth", but by this time he had begun to drink quite heavily, which aged him rapidly and impaired his ability to concentrate on
24566-402: The tripartite form established in the Nocturnes and La mer , but differs in employing traditional British and French folk tunes, and in making the central movement, "Ibéria", far longer than the outer ones, and subdividing it into three parts, all inspired by scenes from Spanish life. Although considering Images "the pinnacle of Debussy's achievement as a composer for orchestra", Trezise notes
24739-457: The twentieth century Debussy did not give his works opus numbers , apart from his String Quartet, Op. 10 in G minor (also the only work where the composer's title included a key ). His works were catalogued and indexed by the musicologist François Lesure in 1977 (revised in 2003) and their Lesure number ("L" followed by a number) is sometimes used as a suffix to their title in concert programmes and recordings. Debussy's musical development
24912-528: The uppermost ranks of the society, save for when their names are written in their fullest forms for the most official occasions. Retiring Deans of the Royal Peculiars of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle and Westminster Abbey are customarily inducted as Knights Commander; clergymen appointed to the higher levels of the Royal Victorian Order do not use the associated styles, however, and honorary members are not permitted to hold them at all. Prior to 1984,
25085-451: The violence that even the best musical setting must do to a poem". Eventually this feeling caused him to give up song-writing completely. At the start of his composing career, songs, together with piano music, formed the core of Bax's work. Some of the songs, mainly the early ones, are conspicuous for the virtuosity of their piano parts, which tend to overwhelm the voice. Grove contrasts the virtuoso accompaniment of "The Fairies" (1905) with
25258-433: The war years were heard in public, and he started writing symphonies. Few English composers had so far written symphonies that occupied a secure place in the repertoire, the best known being Elgar ( A ♭ and E ♭ symphonies) and Vaughan Williams ( Sea , London and Pastoral symphonies). During the 1920s and into the 1930s Bax was seen by many as the leading British symphonist. Bax's First Symphony
25431-516: The west coast of Ireland in 1902, and found that "in a moment the Celt within me stood revealed". His first composition to be performed – at an academy concert in 1902 – was an Irish dialect song called "The Grand Match". I worked very hard at the Irish language and steeped myself in its history and saga, folk-tale and fairy-lore. ... Under this domination, my musical style became strengthened ... I began to write Irishly, using figures and melodies of
25604-453: The work from his repertoire. Although Beatrice Harrison championed the concerto in the 1930s and 40s, Bax said, "The fact that nobody has ever taken up this work has been one of the major disappointments of my musical life". Bax was knighted in 1937; he had neither expected nor sought the honour, and was more surprised than delighted to receive it. As the decade progressed, he became less prolific; he commented that he wanted to "retire, like
25777-404: The work, but Pierre Lalo , critic of Le Temps , hitherto an admirer of Debussy, wrote, "I do not hear, I do not see, I do not smell the sea". In the same month the composer's only child was born at their home. Claude-Emma, affectionately known as "Chouchou", was a musical inspiration to the composer (she was the dedicatee of his Children's Corner suite). She outlived her father by scarcely
25950-460: The year, such as New Year's Day and royal anniversaries, Knights and Dames Grand Cross wear the Royal Victorian Order's livery collar , consisting of an alternating string of octagonal gold pieces depicting a gold rose on a blue field and gold oblong frames within which are one of four inscriptions: Victoria , Britt. Reg. (Queen of the Britons), Def. Fid. ( fidei defensor , or Defender of
26123-423: The young musician will hereafter follow". Newman concurred: "There is a good deal of Wagner, especially of Tristan , in the idiom. But the work as a whole is distinctive, and the first in which we get a hint of the Debussy we were to know later – the lover of vague outlines, of half-lights, of mysterious consonances and dissonances of colour, the apostle of languor, the exclusivist in thought and in style." During
26296-445: Was "a fount of music", whose "spontaneous and inexhaustible outpourings", unique among his contemporaries, were comparable to those of Schubert and Dvořák . Evans has suggested that Bax's music paradoxically combines robustness and wistfulness, a view that later commentators including Herbage have endorsed. The early music is often instrumentally difficult or orchestrally and harmonically complex; from about 1913 onwards he moved towards
26469-472: Was able to produce a large body of music, finding, in Foreman's phrase, "his technical and artistic maturity" in his early thirties. Among his better-known works from the period are the orchestral tone poems November Woods (1916) and Tintagel (1917–19). And when the devil's made us wise Each in his own peculiar hell With desert hearts and drunken eyes We're free to sentimentalise By corners where
26642-420: Was admitted to the Conservatoire de Paris , where he remained a student for the next eleven years. He first joined the piano class of Antoine François Marmontel , and studied solfège with Albert Lavignac and, later, composition with Ernest Guiraud , harmony with Émile Durand , and organ with César Franck . The course included music history and theory studies with Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray , but it
26815-549: Was affectionate, practical, straightforward, and well liked by Debussy's friends and associates, but he became increasingly irritated by her intellectual limitations and lack of musical sensitivity. The marriage lasted barely five years. From around 1900 Debussy's music became a focus and inspiration for an informal group of innovative young artists, poets, critics, and musicians who began meeting in Paris. They called themselves Les Apaches – roughly "The Hooligans" – to represent their status as "artistic outcasts". The membership
26988-460: Was born in the London suburb of Streatham to a prosperous family. He was encouraged by his parents to pursue a career in music, and his private income enabled him to follow his own path as a composer without regard for fashion or orthodoxy. Consequently, he came to be regarded in musical circles as an important but isolated figure. While still a student at the Royal Academy of Music Bax became fascinated with Ireland and Celtic culture, which became
27161-665: Was briefly influenced by them, but, unlike some other French composers of his generation, he concluded that there was no future in attempting to adopt and develop Wagner's style. He commented in 1903 that Wagner was "a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn". In 1889, at the Paris Exposition Universelle , Debussy first heard Javanese gamelan music. The gamelan scales, melodies, rhythms, and ensemble textures appealed to him, and echoes of them are heard in "Pagodes" in his piano suite Estampes . He also attended two concerts of Rimsky-Korsakov 's music, conducted by
27334-469: Was broken off, and several of Debussy's friends and supporters disowned him, including Ernest Chausson , hitherto one of his strongest supporters. In terms of musical recognition, Debussy made a step forward in December 1894, when the symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune , based on Stéphane Mallarmé 's poem, was premiered at a concert of the Société Nationale. The following year he completed
27507-405: Was fluid, but at various times included Maurice Ravel , Ricardo Viñes , Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla . In the same year the first two of Debussy's three orchestral Nocturnes were first performed. Although they did not make any great impact with the public they were well reviewed by musicians including Paul Dukas , Alfred Bruneau and Pierre de Bréville . The complete set was given
27680-526: Was generally neglected. From the 1960s onwards, mainly through a growing number of commercial recordings, his music was gradually rediscovered, although little of it is regularly heard in the concert hall. Bax was born on 8 November 1883 in the London suburb of Streatham , Surrey, to a prosperous Victorian family. He was the eldest son of Alfred Ridley Bax (1844–1918) and his wife, Charlotte Ellen (1860–1940), daughter of Rev. William Knibb Lea, of Amoy , China. The couple's youngest son, Clifford Lea Bax , became
27853-549: Was interred in St. Finbarr's Cemetery , Cork. Bax's music is never simply rhapsodic or formless ... but the tendency to be diffuse, to a point where the listener's attention insists on wandering, the love of picaresque construction and the absence of clear outlines—these faults account for the general apathy towards music that is intrinsically noble, humane, and capable of a certain melancholy grandeur. The Record Guide , 1955 Bax's fellow composer Arthur Benjamin wrote that Bax
28026-602: Was known for his exceptional ability to read complex modern scores on sight, he attracted less recognition than his contemporaries Benjamin Dale and York Bowen . His keyboard technique was formidable, but he had no desire for a career as a soloist. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he had private means that made him free to pursue his musical career as he chose, without the necessity of earning an income. The Times considered that Bax's independence and disinclination to heed his teachers ultimately damaged his art, because he did not develop
28199-473: Was more to his liking, and its influence can be found in La mer (1905); this uses a quasi-symphonic form, its three sections making up a giant sonata-form movement with, as Orledge observes, a cyclic theme, in the manner of Franck. The central "Jeux de vagues" section has the function of a symphonic development section leading into the final "Dialogue du vent et de la mer", "a powerful essay in orchestral colour and sonority" (Orledge) which reworks themes from
28372-451: Was much more impressed by the music of the 16th-century composers Palestrina and Lassus , which he heard at Santa Maria dell'Anima : "The only church music I will accept". He was often depressed and unable to compose, but he was inspired by Franz Liszt , who visited the students and played for them. In June 1885, Debussy wrote of his desire to follow his own way, saying, "I am sure the Institute would not approve, for, naturally it regards
28545-457: Was not an Establishment figure; he himself had expressed a disinclination to "shuffle around in knee-breeches". In the opinion of The Times the appointment was not a good one: "Bax was not cut out for official duties and found their performance irksome". Nonetheless, Bax wrote a handful of occasional pieces for royal events, including a march for the Coronation in 1953. After the Second World War began, Bax moved to Sussex, taking up residence at
28718-423: Was originally planned as a large-scale piano sonata in E ♭ (1921); the manuscript score of the latter came to light in the early 1980s and was performed for the first time in 1983. Bax's own virtuosity as a pianist is reflected in the demands of many of his piano pieces. Palmer cites Chopin and Liszt as major influences on Bax's piano style as well as Balakirev and the other Russians whose influence
28891-466: Was sardonic. The Manchester Guardian noted the severity of the work, but declared it "a truly great English symphony". The work was a box-office attraction at the Proms for several years after the premiere. In Foreman's view, Bax was at his musical peak for a fairly short time, and his reputation was overtaken by those of Vaughan Williams and William Walton . The Third Symphony was completed in 1929 and, championed by Wood, remained for some time among
29064-402: Was slow, and as a student he was adept enough to produce for his teachers at the Conservatoire works that would conform to their conservative precepts. His friend Georges Jean-Aubry commented that Debussy "admirably imitated Massenet's melodic turns of phrase" in the cantata L'enfant prodigue (1884) which won him the Prix de Rome. A more characteristically Debussian work from his early years
29237-400: Was the 50-minute Symphonic Variations in E ♭ (1919), written for Harriet Cohen. The Times considered it "like one of those deeds of recklessness which in the Army may be followed either by a Court-martial or a V.C. We incline to favour the Court-martial, and to award the V.C. to Miss Harriet Cohen for her part in the enterprise." The Cello Concerto (1932) was Bax's first attempt at
29410-419: Was there from January 1885 to March 1887, with three or possibly four absences of several weeks when he returned to France, chiefly to see Marie Vasnier. Initially Debussy found the artistic atmosphere of the Villa Medici stifling, the company boorish, the food bad, and the accommodation "abominable". Neither did he delight in Italian opera, as he found the operas of Donizetti and Verdi not to his taste. He
29583-407: Was under German aerial and artillery bombardment . The military situation did not permit the honour of a public funeral with ceremonious graveside orations. The funeral procession made its way through deserted streets to a temporary grave at Père Lachaise Cemetery as the German guns bombarded the city. Debussy's body was reinterred the following year in the small Passy Cemetery sequestered behind
29756-406: Was unusual among British composers in composing a substantial oeuvre for solo piano. Bax published four piano sonatas (1910–32), which are, in Palmer's view, as central to the composer's piano music as the symphonies are to the orchestral output. The first two sonatas are each in a single movement, of about twenty minutes; the third and fourth are in conventional three-movement form. The First Symphony
29929-409: Was written in 1921–22, and when first given it was a great success, despite its ferocity of tone. The critics found the work dark and severe. The Daily News commented, "It is full of arrogant, almost blatant, virility. Its prevailing tone colour is dark, very dark – thick clouds with only here and there a ray of sunlight." The Daily Telegraph suggested that if there was any humour in the piece, it
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