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52-477: In its first year Musical Opinion critically reviewed Brahms' new Second Symphony, and in 1879 his Violin Concerto. The October 1936 issue carried an interview with Rachmaninov and championed the young William Walton as Britain's most exciting young composer. In 1927, when the editor and proprietor was Arthur W. Fitzsimmons (d. 1948), the composer Havergal Brian became assistant editor of Musical Opinion . He held

104-629: A choirboy ; he sang in the choir at St James' church in Longton. In 1887 he and other choristers from his home town participated in a concert in Lichfield Cathedral marking the Jubilee of Queen Victoria. This experience gave the boy an interest in large-scale musical effects. At the age of 12, after leaving the elementary school attached to the church, he started work (he tried a variety of trades). In his spare time, he continued to study music including

156-429: A mosaic inlay. The font is also in alabaster, and is in the shape of a chalice . The reredos is a memorial to Randle Wilbraham III and his wife, and is based on The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci . The stained glass in the east window is a memorial to Randle Wilbraham IV. It was made in 1864 by the O'Connor firm, and the west window is a Jesse window by C. E. Kempe dated 1908. The bells for

208-459: A church in Odd Rode. He had previously bought an old chapel in the parish for the purpose, but this was too small, and in 1861 he commissioned Scott to design a new church. Building began in 1863, but Wilbraham died during the first year of construction, and the church was completed and paid for by his son, Randle Wilbraham IV. It cost nearly £5,914, and was dedicated in 1864. The pipe organ

260-534: A composition for soloists, choir and orchestra by Edward Elgar . Now one of the composer's lesser-known works, King Olaf was commissioned for the North Staffordshire Music Festival of 1896, where it was well received. Brian sent a sample composition to Elgar who gave him encouragement. Brian became a fervent enthusiast of the new music being produced by Richard Strauss and the British composers of

312-568: A designated Grade II* listed building . The church continues to be active, and works in association with the other churches in the parish, the Church of the Good Shepherd, Rode Heath , and St Luke's Mission Church, Mow Cop. The church was built in 1863–64 and designed by George Gilbert Scott . It was commissioned by Randle Wilbraham III of Rode Hall . The family had worshipped at St Mary's Church, Astbury , but Wilbraham wanted to have

364-606: A documentary film, "The Curse of the Gothic Symphony" was released in Australian cinemas. Directed by Randall Wood, it is a dramatised documentary of the trials and tribulations of staging Brian's Gothic Symphony in Brisbane, Queensland. Filmed over five years, the enormous task of gathering 200 musicians and 400 choristers came to fruition in 2010 in a triumphal performance and standing ovation in Brisbane's Performing Arts centre. Here

416-486: A number of other orchestral works, as well as songs, choral music and a small amount of chamber music. Brian enjoyed a period of popularity earlier in his career and rediscovery in the 1950s, but public performances of his music have remained rare and he has been described as a cult composer . He continued to be extremely productive late into his career, composing large works even into his nineties, most of which remained unperformed during his lifetime. William Havergal Brian

468-579: A pirated LP (Aries LP-1607) with apocryphal attributions to Horst Werner (conductor)/ Hamburg Philharmonic is reported and refers to this Stokowski performance d =cd was made, but is now deleted from catalogue e =recording is in the public domain and is available from the Havergal Brian Society webpage Both the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra recordings have been remastered and rereleased. Many of

520-511: A quarterly publication—with regular subscribers being kept up to date with information and reviews in the intervening months by means of 'Supplements' posted to them. In 2000 these supplements were reduced from two per quarter to one. In 2003, however, Musical Opinion abandoned the idea of posted 'Supplements' and once more became a straightforward 'newsstand' publication appearing quarterly. Havergal Brian William Havergal Brian (29 January 1876 – 28 November 1972)

572-471: A range of forms, Brian's most famous legacy are his 32 symphonies. His first canonical symphony – an earlier Fantastic Symphony was withdrawn – is the colossal Gothic Symphony , a performance of which last almost two hours and requires enormous orchestral and choral forces. It was completed in 1927. Although the Gothic is by far Brian's best-known work, and perhaps the work by which he has come to be defined, it

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624-631: A rediscovery, in part due to the efforts of Robert Simpson , himself a significant composer and BBC Music Producer, who asked Sir Adrian Boult to programme the Eighth Symphony in 1954. A number of Brian works received their public premieres during this time, including the Gothic Symphony . Written decades earlier between 1919 and 1927, it was premiered in a partly amateur performance in 1961 at Westminster Central Hall , conducted by Bryan Fairfax . A fully professional performance followed in 1966 at

676-469: A sister magazine, The Organ . Between 1984 and 2009, Musical Opinion was edited by Denby Richards . As of April 2009 its editor is Robert Matthew-Walker (who is editor of the Organ in addition). From the time of its first issue (September 1877), Musical Opinion appeared monthly; but in the 1990s increasing production and postal costs threatened the magazine's survival. In 1994 Musical Opinion became

728-483: A small number of enthusiasts rather than enjoying a more general popularity, and continues to divide opinion. To Mark Morris, writing in his Guide to Twentieth Century Composers , in the Gothic Symphony Brian achieved "one of the world's artistic masterpieces, in vision, grandeur, and in the combination of complexity and luminosity worthy to stand alongside the great cathedrals of the age that inspired it... [it]

780-413: A southwest porch, and a northeast vestry . The west end of the nave is symmetrical and is in three bays divided by buttresses with offsets. In the centre is a doorway with a moulded surround that includes small pillars, and above it is a hood mould , the label stops of which are carved with figureheads, one male, one female. Over the doorway is a gablet with a roundel containing a flower. Above this

832-618: A three-volume study of his symphonies appeared. Renowned conductor Leopold Stokowski heard the Sinfonia Tragica (No. 6) and let it be known that he would like to perform a Brian work. The result was the world premiere in 1973 of the 28th Symphony, in a BBC broadcast produced by Robert Simpson in Maida Vale Studio 1, and played by the New Philharmonia Orchestra . Anthony Payne in his Daily Telegraph review wrote: "It

884-766: A trip to Italy . Arguments over the money and an affair with a young servant, Hilda Mary Hayward (1894-1980), led to the collapse of his first marriage in 1913. Brian fled to London and, although Robinson (who disapproved of the incident) continued to provide him with money until his own death, most of the allowance went to Brian's estranged wife after 1913. The affair with Hilda turned into a lifelong relationship: Brian and she began living together as man and wife, and after Isabel's death in 1933 they were married, by which point Hilda had already borne him another five children. No longer able to rely on Robinson's support, in London Brian began composing copiously whilst living in poverty. On

936-615: A work that lasts nearly two hours, the music is surprisingly short-winded." In 2022 Brian's Legend for violin and piano was featured in the BBC Proms. These lists follow the Havergal Brian Society's Extant Works (ordered by type): The first commercial recording of Havergal Brian's music was made by the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra in 1972, when Symphonies Nos. 10 and 21, conducted by James Loughran and Eric Pinkett respectively, were recorded at

988-400: Is a gable containing an octofoil and surmounted by a cross finial . The sides of the church are in four bays divided by buttresses, and each bay contains a two-light window, other than the second bay of the aisle which contains a porch. The porch is gabled and has a pointed arch with semi-octagonal colonettes , a hood mould with figurehead label stops, and a cross finial. On the south side of

1040-754: Is a partial list of known recordings for Havergal Brian's symphonies; many are out of print, others have never been released commercially; some have been released in bootleg format or exist in BBC archives: & =out of print LP && =released on a pirated LP with apocryphal attributions to Horst Werner (conductor)/ Hamburg Philharmonic &&& = released in a (pirated) LP box-set with (presumed) apocryphal attributions to John Freedman (conductor)/ Edinburgh Youth Symphony Orchestras &&&& =recording from original BBC broadcast exists, not commercially released &&&&& =recording from BBC radio 3 exists, not commercially released;

1092-407: Is a three-light window, and over that is a canopied niche containing a statue of Christ. At the top of the bay there is a double bellcote under a gablet containing a trefoil and surmounted by a weathercock . The lateral bays of the west end of the nave contain lancet windows , and at the corners are buttresses. The west end of the aisle is recessed and contains a three-light window. At its top

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1144-575: Is arguably, more than any other late-Romantic work, the climax of the Romantic age.". Writing in The Spectator in 2016, Damian Thompson claimed that if Brian's 30th symphony were premiered today as the work of a 25-year-old composer, it "might even be hailed as the triumphant reinvention of tonality". Others have been more critical, however. Reviewing the 2011 performance of the Gothic Symphony at

1196-446: Is fundamentally tonal rather than atonal and shows little or no influence of dodecaphony ; however, it is often punctuated with violent and occasionally dissonant passages. Brian's music has several recognisable hallmarks: the liking of extreme dotted rhythms, deep brass notes, and various uncharacteristic harp, piano and percussion timbres, and other unusual orchestral sounds and textures. Also typical are moments of stillness, such as

1248-438: Is not representative of his symphonies as a whole. Few of Brian's symphonies call for larger forces than a typical 20th-century symphony orchestra – although No. 4 ( Das Siegeslied ) calls for a large choir and soprano soloist – and a typical Brian symphony lasts approximately 20 minutes in performance. Brian usually alludes to the classical four-movement structure of the symphony, even in single-movement works. His sixth symphony

1300-538: The BBC Proms David Nice of The Arts Desk described the work as a "terrible, inchoate mess" and "Big, long, and very short on great ideas"; writing in The Guardian , Andrew Clements described it as featuring "moments of striking originality, particularly the sparer, more spectral ideas, but much more is either entirely unmemorable or simply grotesquely odd, and often hopelessly over-scored. Ideas come and go; for

1352-606: The De Montfort Hall , Leicester . The producer was Robert Simpson . The LP was released by Unicorn Records in 1973. A special edition of the television programme Aquarius called The Unknown Warrior gave considerable coverage to the recording session and a camera crew joined members of the orchestra during a visit they made to the composer's home in Shoreham . During the 1970s a number of unofficial releases of Brian symphonies were made. These generally were of BBC recordings, and

1404-588: The Marco Polo record label on CD. Many of the original recordings on various labels are being reissued, and by the end of 2018 all of Brian's symphonies had at least one official recording, although not necessarily in print. In August 2010, the Dutton CD label issued three works taken from 1959 BBC broadcasts: the Comedy Overture Doctor Merryheart and 11th Symphony (with Harry Newstone conducting

1456-515: The Royal Albert Hall , conducted by Boult. The latter performance was broadcast live, encouraging considerable interest, and by his death six years later several of his works had been performed, along with the first commercial recordings of Brian's music. For a few years after Brian's death there was a revival of interest in Brian with a number of further recordings and performances; two biographies and

1508-682: The 1819 play by Percy Bysshe Shelley , was premiered in a concert performance by the Millennium Sinfonia, conducted by James Kelleher, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall , London. Brian's musical influence was limited by the fact that so little of his music was performed or recorded until after his death, by which time his stylistic idiom could be considered anachronistic. Nonetheless, he was held in high regard by composers such as Robert Simpson and some of his contemporaries, such as Granville Bantock . His music has generally been championed by

1560-493: The BBC recordings are freely available for download with registration. All Saints Church, Scholar Green All Saints Church is in the village of Scholar Green in the parish of Odd Rode , Cheshire , England. It is an Anglican parish church in the deanery of Congleton, the archdeaconry of Macclesfield, and the diocese of Chester . The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as

1612-595: The London Symphony Orchestra) and the 9th Symphony (Norman del Mar and the LSO). This release followed on from Testament's reissue of the live recording of the 1966 Boult performance in the Royal Albert Hall of Brian's Gothic Symphony . In the 2011 Proms concert season the symphony was conducted by Martyn Brabbins in the Royal Albert Hall; the performance is now available on a commercial recording. In July 2012,

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1664-498: The Northern College of Music earned high praise from John Ogdon in his review for Tempo . More of Brian's works have been published since the 1980s and '90s, and the scarcity of well-rehearsed performances or mature interpretations that had previously made the quality of his music difficult to assess has been partially corrected through the series of professional recordings of many of Brian's symphonies that have been issued by

1716-472: The bellcote were made by Taylor of Loughborough . All Saints Church was designated as a Grade II* listed building on 14 February 1967. Grade II* is the middle of the three grades of listing, and is applied to "particularly important buildings of more than special interest". The architectural historian Goodhart-Rendel said of the church "Taking things all round, I like this best of any Scott church I have seen ... Everything seems to me

1768-424: The chancel is a chapel with a doorway, and on the north side is a gabled vestry. The east window has five lights, the label stops of its hood mould being carved with a bishop and a queen. The arcade between the nave and the aisle is carried on quatrefoil piers , and the aisle has a barrel vaulted roof. The chancel arch is flanked by marble columns with foliate capitals . There are more marble columns flanking

1820-638: The day. Through attending music festivals he began a lifelong friendship with composer Granville Bantock (1868–1946). In 1898, Brian married Isabel Priestley, by whom he had five children. One of his sons was named Sterndale after the English composer Sir William Sterndale Bennett . In 1907 Brian was offered a yearly income of £500 (then a respectable lower-middle-class salary) by a local wealthy businessman, Herbert Minton Robinson, to enable him to devote all his time to composition. It seems Robinson expected Brian soon to become successful and financially independent on

1872-413: The east window, and between the chancel and the chapel. Also between the chancel and the chapel is a wrought iron screen with three arched openings. This was made by Skidmore of Coventry . A niche in the chapel contains a terracotta bust of Randle Wilbraham III, carved by A. Carrier-Belleuse in 1854. The octagonal pulpit is in alabaster and has arcades with marble columns containing

1924-411: The fragmentary nature of his music militates against classical thematic unity, he often employs structural blocks of sound, where similar rhythms and thematic material allude to previous passages (as opposed to classical statement and recapitulation). However fragmentary Brian's music is, he maintains symphonic cohesion by long-term tonal processes (similar to Carl Nielsen 's "progressive tonality"), where

1976-613: The material for his first opera The Tigers . In the 1920s he turned to composing symphonies, though he had written more than ten before one of them was first performed in the early 1950s. Brian eventually obtained work of a musical kind, copying and arranging, and writing for the journal The British Bandsman . In 1927, he became assistant editor of the journal Musical Opinion and moved back to London. In 1940 he retired, living firstly in London, and then in Shoreham-by-Sea , Sussex. Freed from

2028-524: The music is aiming towards a key, rather than being in a home key and returning to it. Like Bach and Bruckner, Brian was an organist, and the organ repertoire influenced his musical habits (and the organ appears in several of his symphonies). Other sources of influence are late Victorian street music, and particularly brass and military bands: although he composed little dedicated music for brass band, brass instruments are often prominent in Brian's orchestral music, as are marches . Although he wrote music in

2080-464: The organ for which he showed talent at a young age; as a composer he was virtually self-taught. From 1896 he was organist of All Saints' , a Gothic Revival church in Odd Rode, just across the county border in Cheshire . The post involved playing at Sunday services; his main job at this time was with a timber company. Around the time he started at All Saints', he was influenced by hearing King Olaf ,

2132-677: The outbreak of World War I he volunteered for the Honourable Artillery Company but saw no service before he was invalided out with a hand injury. He subsequently worked at the Audit Office of the Canadian Expeditionary Force until December 1915. The family then moved to Erdington , near Birmingham , Warwickshire , until May 1919 and then spent several years in various locations in Sussex . His brief war service gave him

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2184-515: The post until 1940. This period could be said to have been its heyday: it was then a leading journal in its field, with each issue comprising over 100 large-format pages and a wide range of subject-matter (including much contemporary music) being covered by some of the most prominent British writers on music of the time. Regular contributors included Gerald Abraham , Eric Blom , Dmitri Calvocoressi , Eaglefield Hull , Alfred Kalmus , Basil Maine and Percy Scholes . In 1921 Musical Opinion launched

2236-497: The recordings were released under fictitious names. Several have now had official releases. In 1979, Cameo Classics embarked on a project to record all of Brian's orchestral music in collaboration with the Havergal Brian Society. It started with the English Suite No. 1 , Doctor Merryheart , and Fantastic Variations on an Old Rhyme . In 1980 came the second LP containing In Memoriam , For Valour , and Festal Dance . The project

2288-462: The requirement to work to make a living, he was able to devote all of his time to composition, and the bulk of his compositional output belongs to the last three decades of his life, including four of the five operas (composed between 1951 and 1957) and twenty-seven of the thirty-two symphonies (composed from 1948 onwards). Through most of the 1960s, Brian composed two or three symphonies each year. This late flurry of activity coincided with something of

2340-400: The slow harp arpeggio that is heard near the beginning and ending of the Eighth Symphony. Arguably, his music's most notable characteristic however is its restlessness: rarely does one mood persist for long before it is contrasted, often abruptly, with another. Even in Brian's slow movements, lyrical meditation does not often structure the music for long before restless thoughts intrude. Although

2392-594: The strength of his compositions, and initially Brian indeed found success: his first English Suite attracted the attention of Henry J. Wood , who performed it at the London Proms in 1907. The work proved popular and Brian obtained a publisher and performances for his next few orchestral works, although this initial success was not maintained. For a while Brian worked on a number of ambitious large-scale choral and orchestral works, but felt no urgency to finish them, and began to indulge in pleasures such as expensive foods and

2444-433: Was a prominent 20th-century English composer , librettist , and church organist . He is best known for having composed 32 symphonies , an unusually high number amongst his contemporaries, 25 of them after the age of 70. His best-known work is his Symphony No. 1, The Gothic , which calls for some of the largest orchestral forces demanded by a conventionally structured concert work. He also composed five operas and

2496-663: Was born on 29 January 1876 in Dresden , in the Potteries district of Staffordshire , near the Stoke-on-Trent suburb of Longton . He was one of a very small number of composers to originate from the English working class . Brian's middle name Havergal, by which he went beginning at a young age, was named after Frances Ridley Havergal of the prominent Havergal hymn-writing family. Brian's earliest musical education appears to have been as

2548-531: Was completed in 1981 with the recordings of Burlesque Variations on an Original Theme , and Two Herrick Songs , Requiem for the Rose and The Hag . The recordings were produced by David Kent-Watson with the Hull Youth Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Heald-Smith. For the recording of Brian's complete piano music, Cameo Classics employed digital technology. Peter Hill 's performances on a Bösendorfer Imperial at

2600-415: Was composed at the age of 72, and the majority of Brian's symphonies were composed in rapid succession in the last two decades of his life, in his 80s and even into his 90s. Most were unperformed during Brian's own life, although all 32 have since been recorded. In addition to symphonies, Brian also composed several large operas in the 1950s. In 1997, Brian's 1951 opera in eight scenes The Cenci , based on

2652-672: Was fascinating to contemplate the uniqueness of the event – a 91-year-old conductor learning a new work by a 91-year-old composer." Stylistically, Brian's music could broadly be described as being in a late romantic idiom, exhibiting the influence of Gustav Mahler in his ambitious orchestration and progressive tonality . A Germanophile – the text of the Psalms in his fourth symphony is sung in German – Brian's main musical influences are primarily Germanic composers like Wagner , Bruckner , Strauss , Mahler and Bach , as well as Elgar . Brian's music

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2704-451: Was made in 1887 by Wadsworth at a cost of £280. From 1896 until 1906, the organist was Havergal Brian . Brian was born in Longton , and around the time he started at All Saints he set out to become a composer. He wrote a large number of symphonies. All Saints is constructed in rubble with ashlar dressings, and has a tiled roof. Its plan consists of a nave , a south aisle , a chancel ,

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