Alan Rawsthorne
Most celebrated as a Hollywood film composer, this urbane, sophisticated man about town was born in Haslingden, Lancashire on the 2nd of May 1905. When the family moved to Sykeside House on edge of town in 1908, their home at Deardengate House was sold to the corporation and was later demolished.
Alan was born into an affluent and close-knit family and was the second child of Hubert and Janet Rawsthorne. Hubert qualified as a doctor and practised medicine briefly during World War One. He subsequently gave up his practice to supervise the family lands and properties. The Rawsthornes of Rossendale were middle class, rural landowners with substantial farms, properties, and land and business interests in the sheep and wool trade. Over the years, in order to provide an income for the family, they had gradually sold off large parts of their estates.
An idyllic childhood was provided by a financially, emotionally secure and very affectionate household. His mother Janet was 10 years younger than her husband. Her good looks, optimistic outlook on life and gentle kindness, endeared hers to everyone she ever met. Both husband and wife concerned themselves with the affairs of the community. Hubert was actively involved with the local Choral and Orchestral Society, church and council affairs, and local politics. His Liberal political views and great integrity were inherited and appreciated by his children. Although he was a somewhat reserved and cautious man, he was most meticulous and devoted to his to wife and children.
Alan’s sister Barbara, four years his elder, has written a memoir of their childhood: ‘Diary of an Edwardian Childhood’, which was published by Rossendale Borough Council in 1995. She describes the hard working environment of mills, churches and houses set against a landscape of moorland hills and green valleys, with its expanse of blue sky in the summer and thick coating of snow in winter: ‘If it’s going to snow anywhere in winter, it would be on Haslingden Parish Church, the highest point of the town’.
Perhaps the melancholy qualities of much of Rawsthorne’s music reflected the hard winters and isolation of the Rossendale moorland, its little towns and villages, woods and coppices sheltering in the folds of the land. His sister remembered the ‘whistling wind, and the clack of the cotton workers’ clogs as they went to and from work’. The children had been most delighted by the local ‘Pace-eggers’ at Easter, dancing past the house carrying coloured eggs to the fields, to roll them down the hills, and the ‘Coconutters’, a group of dancing men, like Morris dancers, who attached coconuts to their elbows, knees and hands. She also recalled the visits of an Italian organ grinder with his monkey ‘dressed in red coat and cap’.
Both children were sent to dancing lessons in a neighbouring town and enjoyed children’s parties and an annual seaside holiday. In a childhood full of imagination, Alan and Barbara created games and characters, plays and entertainments for family and friends. Barbara organised a whole week of fun and amusement for all ages, for Alan’s 21st birthday. He was always surrounded by laughter and merriment, and was much loved for his ability to lift the spirits of any gathering. A family trip to London in 1912, provided a first experience of motorcars, the zoo, walks in the grand parks and a magic show. There was also much excitement on the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Haslingden, in 1913.
Suffering from rheumatism as a child, meant that the young Alan missed a substantial amount of schooling. His parents provided lessons in reading and writing and he was often tutored by visiting governesses. Janet and Hubert were always very protective of children and their health. These childhood maladies must have given the adult Rawsthorne a certain physical robustness, as his bohemian lifestyle would lead him to neglect his health.
As children, both Alan and Barbara enjoyed writing. Barbara’s newsletter ‘Pockets for Women’ was a delightfully witty parody of the suffragette movement, complete with letters to the Prime Minister and his supposed reply ‘Dear Madames…How dare you tell me to leave the matter to you, and take off the tax on Women’s pockets?’ Alan’s play ‘King George V’ is a brilliant lampoon of Shakespeare’s ‘King Henry V’, which he was studying at school. His precocious appreciation of politics and the personalities involved in World War One is amazing. A motorbike dispatch rider brings a telegram from King George’s ‘Uncle of Exeter’
K. Geo. By my faith! Sad news indeed for me!
Cousin the Count of Hoen hath declared
A war of France, and that he may invade
That fair countree he hath marched through the land
Of Albert, King of Bell. My uncle of Exeter
Adviseth me in strong, potential language,
For to declare a war on him in turn,
Nichol, the Grand Duke of Russ doth march
Against my cous, whom I did think was nice,
Lords, good is Uncle Exeter’s advice. [Exeunt]
His ability to assimilate the style and technique of famous authors was also revealed in his terrifying tales of pirate adventures, written as verse-melodramas with footnotes in the style of educational editions of the classics. He also wrote a parody of Longfellow’s ‘Hiawatha’, a ‘Pickwick Papers’ version of the casket scene from ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘Captain Black’ another piratical adventure story, which contained a gruesome description of the Witch of Serophis.
In 1914, the family moved to Southport. Alan attended Winterclyne School, which was run by women teachers, who gave their pupils a good grounding in Latin Grammar and Maths. The regime was harsh but fair but when Alan moved to moved to Southport’s Sandringham School in 1918, he found the Headmaster most scornful of his piano studies, and the masters he described as ‘a mixture of Bill Sykes and Groucho Marx.’ His health suffered and he had to leave, resuming his home studies with private tutors.
He learnt to play the cello and played in Southport’s Amateur Orchestral Society. His love of chamber music was enhanced by the occasional visits of recitalists and in 1918, he attended a recital by the renowned contralto Clara Butt. His impressions were most amusing: ‘she did sing ‘Abide with me’…sort of swathed in a golden and white bit of stuff, the gold being at about the angle of a Highlander’s plaid. Above this was an enormous amount of her manly chest. Below this stretched her beefy arms, and for a skirt she had long strips of yellow over white…she had a long train. The pianist looked exactly like a small beetle crawling out after her.’
None of his music has survived from these years. In a 1962 BBC radio interview he claimed that his interest in composing had developed since childhood: ‘I used to compose a good deal. In fact I once started to write an opera when I was about eleven but I didn’t get very far. It was on the subject of Siegfried and I suddenly found that Wagner had already written an opera called Siegfried, so I abandoned mine and I’ve never written an opera since!’
For a local concert in 1919, he performed Beethoven pieces with two of his own settings of poems by de la Mare and Blake. A local review credited him as ‘a clever young pianist, whose achievements give promise of a very successful future.’ His parents however were not keen on encouraging a professional career in the insecure musical world, and there was no tradition of musical talent in family. They were genuinely concerned for his welfare and future prospects.
His ‘wilderness years’ involved studying Dentistry followed by Architecture at Liverpool University. Neither course of study was successful and he would later claim that he never practised dentistry ‘even as a hobby.’ A letter to his sister from his holiday in Kettlewell, Yorkshire, expresses his prevailing mood.
‘I have a curious feeling about Kettlewell . . . There is no brilliant haze of sunshine, and though it is quite warm enough for my liking, the air has a sharpness about it that to me is quite ominous… like the breath of some demon of the moors who is doomed to hide himself until October. I should like to come here in the late autumn, when such forces are re-appearing. I am sure they would be cruel, and catch people who strayed on to the hills at night, like the Marsh King in Hans Andersen's story. All this sounds very absurd; but no one can deny that such influences exist, any more than they can that human influences exist. And if one finds it difficult to conceive metaphysical force or energy as such, why not imagine it as personified? Indeed, it is not apparent why, if we are permitted to have bodies, such spirits as these (perhaps far more powerful than ours) should not have them too. It's all a question of the trinity of everything.’
After four terms of unsuccessful architecture studies, his family allowed him to go to Royal Manchester College of Music. From 1925 he studied piano with Frank Merrick and cello with Carl Fuchs and composition. Although inspired by Haydn and Chopin and an early admiration of Brahms, he determined to follow own path in music. He looked away from the to English school, towards more continental influences and was particularly inspired by the restraint and economy of the art of William Blake.
The Rawsthorne family had encountered the work of Blake through their involvement in Swedenborgian religion. Blake had been a Swedenborgian, having frequently experienced visions, like the religion’s founder’s Emanuel Swedenborg. The teachings, missionary work and interpretations of biblical revelation of this 18th Century scientist, philosopher and prophet, with a strong emphasis of Christian Liberalism and community fellowship, acquired a wide following and is still present in East Lancashire. Alan’s paternal grandfather was a Swedenborgian minister from Salford, who ran a school in Accrington and later moved to London to teach and write books. Although both their parents were practising Swedenborgians, Alan and his sister were not.
The death of his mother in 1927 was a serious disruption of his promising and active musical life at college. It was a tremendous upset for this mutually devoted family. The haunted quality and use of ghostly waltzes in many of Rawsthorne’s compositions may have resulted from the memory of this experience, which never left him. Alan moved to Fallowfield in Manchester with his sister, in 1929. Three years later their father retired permanently to Colwyn Bay dying there in 1943.
At the RMCM, fellow student and life long friend Gordon Green described Rawsthorne as:
‘strikingly handsome; slim, with blonde hair, pale complexion, exceptionally broad forehead and an oval face narrowing steeply towards the chin…the face was Chopin-like, but… without the disfigurement of Chopin's too large aquiline nose…. I found him willing to talk about most subjects; his general reading was wider than mine. . .during our student days, and for many following years, we discussed a wide variety of topics—gossip not excluded—usually at a very late hour; in fact, overall the years, one of the characteristics of my friendship with Alan was a reluctance to go to bed and, certainly in the summer months, bed-time was usually indicated only by the singing of birds.’
It was also during his college years that Rawsthorne met first wife, violinist Jessie Hinchcliffe. A very self-discipline and reserved young woman; a total contrast to Alan’s bohemian and unconventional personality. His works were beginning to be performed in student concerts, including ‘Three Songs’ with texts of de la Mare, Shakespeare and Villon, a Violin Sonata, a Ballade for piano and the Tzu-Yeh Songs, settings of Chinese texts. The majority of his vocal music was written at this time, yet he returned to writing for the voice again in his last years.
Rawsthorne left the RMCM, in 1929 with performer's and teacher's diplomas, and having won prizes for both composition and piano. Intending to forge a career as a pianist, he went to continue his studies with the great pianist Egon Petri in Zakopane, Poland. He wrote many letters home to friends and family but one letter to a cousin in July 1930, describes a highly amusing experience of a journey in a ‘droshky’:
‘As to the number of wheels on a droshky, there should be at least one: indeed it is more comfortable to ride in when there are two. Also these wheels should be circular in shape, and of more or less the same size, but this is not essential - what is essential is that the horse which draws the vehicle should be a savage and self-willed brute and the driver either drunk or a lunatic. I have only driven in one once - in fact, I believe that most people only drive in them once, the survivors being too unnerved for a second attempt. There is a sanatorium in Zakopane with a cemetery attached especially built, I believe, for people who have been for rides in droshkies.’
Expecting 'music, the mountains, reading and thinking about various things . . . a rather introspective and self-conscious period', he found Zakopane more sophisticated and bohemian, with the 'extremely easy relations' between Petri's pupils and dancing at “Morskies", often returning with the dawn. During his stay he began to suffer from deep periods of depression, convinced that he would never play the piano again. In a letter home he reflected, ‘It is an extra-ordinary thing that human beings if they are not actively oppressed by poverty or disease or cruelty of the usual 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ must invent nameless phantasies to be miserable about. I suppose it is a matter of temperament rather than circumstances'
Petri, a former pupil and famous interpreter of the composer Busoni, introduced Rawsthorne to the evasive and often introspective music of this Italian master, which would influence him all his life. In Berlin, he went to a Schoenberg concert and recognised the deep influence of this music on every contemporary composer, whether or not they followed this method; ‘you don’t have to be a Robespierre to be aware that a French Revolution is taking place.’
On his return to England he shared a flat in London with another fellow student of the RMCM, Harry Blech. He wrote a variety of minor works including songs with a variety of text sources. This includes the 1932 setting for soprano and small orchestra of ‘Come unto these yellow sands’. It is uncharacteristic of Rawsthorne’s work in its overt use of folk-like melodies, yet its shifting tonality and imaginative use of 6/8 time in the orchestral part against a vocal line in 2/4 is typical of his mature style. Although he would later use many dance or jig-like sequences in his work, they were never as obvious as in this song.
In the same year, he took a teaching post at Dartington Hall School and was employed as a pianist for the School of Dance Mime in Devon. He provided a variety of compositions for them and played for their productions and public shows. The frequent parties and entourage of nubile, young women dancers compensated for the less than salubrious surroundings. It was in this environment that he composed ‘Six Songs’ with texts by Herrick, Hardy and Shakespeare, for voice and piano, and a String Quartet, which gained him his first London performance. When the company left Dartington in 1934, Rawsthorne returned to London.
Following a car accident he married Jessie in July. He composed two violin sonatas for her; one of which includes section of ‘oom-pah’ music, in the style of Poulenc rather than a northern brass band. However when he was asked why he had included this kind of music, he replied, it was a bit of ‘North Country vulgarity – people expect that sort of thing from me.’
In London, he devoted his time to composing. His Concertante No2 for violin and piano was his first publication, produced by a small publishing firm ‘Cecilian Press’ in 1937. This was later republished by OUP as ‘Concertante’ in 1968. It was at the 1938 ISCM Festival, that he would achieved a wider recognition with his “Theme and Variations” for two violins. Over the next few years, his career developed with commissions and arrangements for BBC. His wife was a violinist in the BBC Symphony Orchestra and introduced him to the conductor Iris Lemare and violinist, Anne Macnaghten.
The growing political and social unrest across Europe influenced and inspired artistic and social movements. Rawsthorne along with many British artists supported the Spanish Republican cause. This was the generation of Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’. The rise of Hitler, Mussolini and Mosley and the revelations of the Jarrow hunger marches, were the subject of the new ‘documentary films’. Rawsthorne’s film music career began in 1939 with two documentaries for the GPO (the Post Office).
His ’Symphonic Studies’ premiered in the UK by the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Sir Adrian Boult conducting, launched his international career. But the outbreak of World War Two brought it to an abrupt halt. His somewhat anarchistic attitude to life and society and mistrust of Government was tempered by his innate pacifism. His bohemian lifestyle and drinking habit actually saved his life, when he and Jesse had moved to Bristol and their home was bombed during the blitz. Being at the pub at the time meant they were unhurt, but some of Rawsthorne’s new manuscripts were lost. Jessie’s upset was not soothed by Alan’s total lack of concern. A friend lent them a country house in Chew Magna until Alan’s was called up for military service in 1941.
Feeling the war was justified, he was not a conscientious objector, but his military experience was not a happy one and it left him emotional strained. Gunner Rawsthorne was put into the Royal Artillery and the Quartermaster’s stores, but the army were at a loss as to how a composer could be usefully employed. They had initially listed him as a ‘compositor‘ and assumed he would be most useful in repairing tanks. He would most probably have taken the vehicles apart and not enlightened anyone that he could not reassemble them. However his lack of technical skills was soon discovered and he was moved to the Education Corps.
Here his attempts to form a military band and symphony orchestra were frustrated, and eventually he was asked to compose ‘useful’ music for special occasions. The BBC commissioned his music for radio plays and he signed a formal agreement with OUP for exclusive publication rights. William Walton had recommended Rawsthorne to OUP, knowing they would be sensitive to his cash needs and determined to keep him from the ‘clutches’ of Boosey & Hawkes.
The Ministry of Information commission his ‘Salute to the Red Army’ for the pageant written by Louis MacNeice. He also wrote an orchestral and choral setting of Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Khan’, various songs and a piano duet entitled ‘The Creel’, which the Rawsthorne Society uses as the title of their journal. The music for the documentary film ‘Burma victory’ in 1945 is among his best screen scores of this period. His first piano concerto was premiered with soloist Louis Kentner at the Proms in 1942; he conducted the London Philharmonic Orchestra himself.
Just as the war was coming to an end, the Rawsthorne’s home was bombed again. This time their London flat at Ormonde Terrace was hit by a doodlebug. Jessie was at home but managed to escape uninjured. With his return to civilian life in 1945, Rawsthorne began a period of intense composing; in five years he composed four concertos, a symphony, several chamber works and a body of film music. His deeply moving and evocative song “Carol” was composed in 1947. It was originally for voice and small orchestra for a radio play ‘Circle on Circle’. He arranged it for piano and voice in 1948. Its dark winter atmosphere sensitively combines bleakness and warmth.
He also returned to his bohemian lifestyle and his attraction to women would become part of his legend. He was almost a permanent fixture at the ‘George’ pub, which was frequented by many BBC people, and affectionately called ‘The Gluepot’. Most of the literary and musical world met here including John Ireland, William Walton, Louis MacNeice and Dylan Thomas. Fortunately it was never bombed or a whole generation of great artists could have been wiped out.
Rawsthorne’s favourite pastime, boozing and womanising, caused the eventually break down of his marriage. Jessie left him in 1947, but remain a loyal friend and supporter. The social whirl of restaurants, shows, concerts and parties encouraged his weaknesses were tempered by his gentleness, but he was always a concern to his friends.
His teaching was limited to a few lessons composers; Gerard Schurmann became more of a friend and protégé than a pupil. He never took up a regular academic appointment, but occasionally gave lectures at the summer schools at Bryanston and Dartington, discussing the music of Haydn and Chopin, and gave composition lessons. His radio broadcast talks were very popular:
‘There seems to be a vague idea that composers are people who sit twiddling their thumbs in some world of their own until they arc seized by something called ‘inspiration', and that they then scribble something down in a moment of hysterical abandon and resume the thumb-twiddling until it all happens again. It is also considered that the composer-ought to live in a draughty attic with no money - this view, by the way, is rarely held by composers themselves.’
‘This country, unfortunately, has very little interest, from an official point of view, in cultural matters altogether. In fact it seems to me a pretty barbarous situation, which I don't think would be thinkable in France or Germany or other countries as regards public support and recognition, not only of the art itself but also of artists. Here it seemed to be considered still rather indecorous for the composer to want to eat, let alone drink.’
His reputation for film music developed from his documentary experience, and his first assay into the medium began with ‘School for Secrets’, written and directed by Peter Ustinov, whom he had met in the Army Education Corps. He was then commissioned to write the score for ‘The Captive Heart’ in 1946 and most successfully for ‘Uncle Silas’ 1947, writing the brilliant and powerful music for this gothic drama starring Jean Simmons. In 1948 he composed ‘Sarabande for Dead lovers’ for Ealing Studios’ first colour film, a period tragedy. The mystery and doom-laden romance of ‘Pandora and the Flying Dutchman’ (1950,) starring Ava Gardner, was brilliantly portrayed in Rawsthorne’s score for this visually luxuriant film.
His second Piano Concerto was commissioned by Arts Council for the 1951 Festival of Britain. It gave him instant success and celebrity and a commissioned choral work for the coronation in 1952. His ‘Rose for Lidice’ in memory of the Czech mining town wiped out by the Nazis during the war, was written to commemorate the opening of a memorial rose garden at the site of the village, which was rebuilt. This hauntingly beautiful music was premiered at Thaxted by Imogen Holst in 1956.
Film work continued with ‘Where No Vultures Fly’ in 1951 and its sequel ‘West of Zanzibar’ in 1953. The most famous score of this period was for the box office hit ‘The Cruel Sea’ 1952, starring Jack Hawkins. ‘The Man Who Never Was’ was less successful but his wonderfully evocative music for ‘Lease of Life’ (1954) about poverty stricken Yorkshire parson, was received with great critical acclaim.
When Constant Lambert died in 1951, Rawsthorne was deeply saddened. His friendship with Lambert’s widow Isabel, an outstandingly accomplished painter, grew into a more passionate compatibility and they found happiness together. They moved to a the country to Sudbury Cottage in Essex, where their hospitable and friendly household with its prolific number of cats was welcome with villagers and community. Isabel’s choice language was occasionally shocking but the environment for Alan was considerably better than the city. With success his wild lifestyle at Soho clubs and drinking parties got worse. His health began to suffer and in 1953, he was hospitalised with a haemorrhage. Isabel was also heavy drinker, who could not have encouraged his abstinence, but with his reserves of determination, Rawsthorne managed to give up alcohol for three years.
For Edinburgh Festival he set TS Eliot’s ‘Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats’ for speaker and orchestra, which was followed by a String quartet, a ballet ‘Madame Chrysanthème, his last feature film ‘Floods of Fear’ (1958) and his greatest work, a Violin Sonata, which was composed for Josef Szigeti but is never known to have been played by him. His Second Symphony in 1959 had a song as its finale, which even today is most unconventional. In 1960 The Northern Sinfonia commissioned his ‘Improvisations on a theme by Constant Lambert’, which he dedicated to Isabel.
Although he was ‘making a living’, Rawsthorne was never wealthy. He continued composing for documentary films and for the theatre, including a score for a Stratford production of Hamlet. His Shakespeare music includes pieces for As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, Love’s Labours Lost, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, The Tempest, Sonnet 18 and The Passionate Pilgrim. By 1961, he had returned to drinking after being told he might drink alcohol, if he confined his drinking to wine for the rest of his life. Of course he returned to his habits of drinking to excess and became seriously ill again with a haemorrhage. His life long friend Gordon Green, wrote ‘the mature man was entirely devoid of class-consciousness. He was naturally drawn to the English pub; his misfortune was that he could never really get drunk. When companions realized that they had taken more than enough, he was not even mildly lit up, and inevitably he drank more than he should. Though he had an extraordinary capacity for remaining sober, this was, of course, not matched by an equal capacity for resisting the physical effects of alcohol '
Isabel was also a heavy drinker, yet despite their spectacular rows, they were exceptionally happy together. When Isabel was away on a trip in Africa, he wrote to her 'Dearest Girl - I love you to distraction. I think of you all the time'. Their mutual devotion and emotional security was a major factor in helping him to renew his career at this time and to produce an impressive body of work. His critical reputation reached an all time high with his Medieval Diptych for baritone and orchestra in 1962 and ‘Carmen Vitale’ for soprano, chorus and orchestra in 1963. The medieval texts celebrating the joy and misery of humanity were set in the style of an English Oratorio and the piece was given its premiere by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in October 1963.
He travelled very little; he made a few trips to European countries and crossed the Atlantic only once, to give a lecture in Toronto in 1954. His only major journey was to the Soviet Union in 1963, where he was very impressed by wealth of cultural activity in Armenia. In 1964 and 1965 he produced four concert works per year and wrote incidental music for films. His last concerto, a piece for two pianos was commissioned by the BBC for the 1968 Proms. By now his health was really suffering but his determination and the help of his friends saw him through. Among his last compositions were his orchestral work ‘Triptych’ of 1969, and an Oboe Quartet, premiered in 1970, which were well received. His ‘Elegy for guitar’ for Julian Bream, remained unfinished after he contracted pneumonia in 1971 and died of a haemorrhage in Cambridge, on the 24th of July.
That year he had received a Doctorate from Essex University, to add to those he had received from Belfast and Liverpool and he had been awarded a CBE in 1961. The last 18 years of his life were spent in the Essex countryside. Perhaps here he felt in touch with his Lancashire childhood, recreating in his music the world of imagination, which he and his sister Barbara had created in their garden at Sykeside, Haslingden. The combination of passionate romanticism and emotional reserve and wit gave him his unique voice.
Bibliography ©H Kean
‘The Concise Oxford History of Music’ G Abraham OUP 1979
‘An Extraordinary Performance’ D Hinnells OUP 1998
‘Alan Rawsthorne: Portrait of a Composer’ John Mc Cabe OUP 1999
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