Sir Lennox Berkeley

Sir Lennox Berkeley0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Sir Lennox Berkeley0:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy eight and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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On our desert island this week is a composer who's quite incredibly just celebrated his seventy fifth birthday, on which we wish him many happy returns, many more years of composing and enjoying music. It's Sir Lennox Barclay.

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So Lennik, let's start straight away with your first disc. What was the first one that came to mind? What is a must?

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Well, I think it was the

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The one that we we're going to hear first, which is part of the slow movement of one of the Mozart piano concertos, a fairly late one.

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This movement has now become very well known because it was used in a film some time ago, I think but I've for a long time thought it uh one of the most beautiful things in music.

Sir Lennox Berkeley1:06

Books.

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Some people object to

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the best music being used for films, but I think that's rubbish. I think that the more they can be brought

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to the attention of people, the better.

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The slow movement of the Mozart piano concerto in C major, number twenty one, K four six seven,

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The soloist Mare Paraya.

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Now, how well do you think you could adjust yourself to a solitary life?

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Well, I don't think at all easily. I've never lived alone in ordinary circumstances, but uh I suppose one can get used to it. Apart from being away from your family and friends, what would be the worst thing? What would you miss most?

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Well, it's just a a a feeling, I think, of of other people about you.

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I think it would be very difficult to keep sane even if one were entirely alone.

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Now, your second choice. Did you adopt any plan in choosing them in the men?

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No, not really. I just uh thought of the things I liked best, uh the musical works that have meant the most to me.

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and which I felt that I most treasured in music. Uh and the uh the order of them, I think when I came to write them in an order, I rather felt them in that order. I thought that the one I'd

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Thereof.

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started with was right and the uh the ones that require possibly a little more attention about halfway through when people were already listening and possibly interested.

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Uh and the uh uh with the Ravel waltz at the end. As an X-rowing man, you'll put the weight in the middle of the boat.

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Right, what's number two?

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Well, number two is from one of the Bach Cantatas. This this I think is not a very well known work and when I thought of Bach I thought it would be a good thing to to have one of the lesser known things and uh my mind went to this one which is a duet between a soprano and a tenor.

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Father Peace.

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English Battle Soul.

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A duet from the Bach Cantata, number forty two.

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By Alexander Young and Teresa Stitch Randall.

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Now you were born in Borshill, Oxford a musical household?

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Well, not really, only to the extent that

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My father was very fond of music and he had a a pianola with all kinds of roles of classical music. This was before the days of records. Yes. And that was really my introduction to music. What sort of music did he like? Well, he liked classical music. Classical music. He was a a services man, wasn't he? Yes, he was in the Navy.

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At school, what were your best subjects? What lines did you develop along first?

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Well, uh I knew French, you see, right from the start, because I'd been brought up to be more or less bilingual, because both my parents

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families had lived in France and that that was how my father and mother met. So I I I spoke French from uh early days and I was well away with French when it came to the classroom, naturally. Yes.

Sir Lennox Berkeley6:26

Yeah.

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I liked anything to do with with literature too. I always found I could learn poetry by heart fairly quickly.

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One was um in those days often given lines to learn.

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Uh

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I can't remember really what other subjects I was I I enjoyed Latin too.

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You went up to Merton College, Oxford, naturally, and you read modern languages. That's right, yes.

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What were your extracurricular activities? We have mentioned your rowing. In fact, you you coxed your college. Yes, I started off trying to row and then I was uh I was turned into a cox after a bit. Yes, how did your aid do in your years?

Sir Lennox Berkeley6:56

But yes.

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Oh, pretty well if we were set on the river then.

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Were you mixed up in the musical side of the university very much? Well, not officially at all, but I used to go to uh chamber of music concerts in the um

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Hollywell Music Rooms at Oxford. And uh I started learning the organ there with Doctor Harris of New College. That was really the only

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only musical activity I had. What were you planning to do? What did you think was going to happen when you well, I already I already wanted to compose music. It I felt that uh

Sir Lennox Berkeley7:32

Well I will

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that it was the one thing I could do and stood a chance of getting anywhere with. Only it was a bit difficult to know how to start. How did you start? Did you consult somebody? Yes. I got um a an introduction to Ravel, who was staying in London with some friends, people I knew.

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How to do it?

Sir Lennox Berkeley7:49

Yeah

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And he was very kind to me and advised me what to do. It was he who advised me to go and work with uh Nadia Boulanger.

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Well, you couldn't have had better advice.

Sir Lennox Berkeley8:07

Well no.

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Let's have your third record. What's that?

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Well, it's the uh slow movement, one of the slow movements of the last quartet, which I think one of the most beautiful things uh in all the Beethoven works.

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The close of the third movement of Beethoven's Quartet No. sixteen in F major, opus one hundred and thirty five, played by the Juilliard Quartet.

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So, on the advice of Maurice Ravel, to Paris to study with Nadia Boulanger. Now, what was the set up? Was it a matter merely of private lessons, or had she a little teaching establishment? Well, it was private lessons, but she also had a weekly class in musical analysis.

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So it was uh it was a bit of both, really. How did you get on with her? Did you find her a daunting lady or formidable? Well, she she was rather formidable in some ways. But um

Sir Lennox Berkeley9:58

No, I've not a book.

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Very easy to talk to and get on with. She had a a sense of humour and uh uh an understanding of people.

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and this was very fascinating together with her extraordinary grasp of of music of every kind.

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She had, I think, a way of showing one.

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how to do what one was trying to do better than one did. I can't really put it in any other words, but uh she seemed to understand and to show up what was missing.

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Ravel had given you his advice. Who else did you meet among the the French composers? Well, I knew Francis Poulan, whom I went on seeing, who became a friend to me for many, many years after my Paris period. And I met the other composers who were in this group called Les Sis. I didn't know any of the others very well, but I met them. Stravinsky, of course, was a central figure then living in Paris.

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uh held very much in awe by us students. Did Madame Boulanger keep you in check, keep you to the classics rather than letting you go off to to follow Stravinsky or any of the Oh, no, she was very uh let's say she was very strict in in doing academic work.

Sir Lennox Berkeley11:18

Oh no, she

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Uh we all had to to do academic fugue and counterpoint and things like that. But when it came to composition, she liked us to be very free and uh encouraged us to uh

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to go outside the traditions if we felt capable of doing so.

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How long were you with it? Well, off and on, for about five years.

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Let's have your fourth record now.

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Well, I've chosen a uh this is again a vocal duet. Decorious, I didn't choose vocal duets on purpose, but it seems to work out that way, out of uh Verdi's Falstaff.

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This is the duet between the the young man and the girl, who come, I think, three times into the opera. They come in and do their little bit, and this provides a a romantic moment in uh an opera that's largely comic.

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There is something very typical about it, typical of late Verdi, when he'd certainly broken away from traditional Italian opera and formed his own way of writing operatic music.

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This had a good character.

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We must love fairly, remember.

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Glory to the

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We love love.

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The Jingios for singing.

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I am afraid of the world.

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Uh

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We can do a

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Get taken.

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A duet between Fenton and Nonetta from

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Verdi's Falstaff, sung by Juan Oncina and Gabriella Schutti.

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Now you were on and off with Nathia Boulanger for five years. Now obviously you'd been composing. Had you yet had anything professionally performed when you left her?

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Yes, I did have one short orchestral piece played while I was in Paris, and I think of East Chamber music too, but I can't remember what that was. But um I I waited until I got back to to England again, really, to try and get performances, because as I started rather late, I didn't feel

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That I was ready, really, for it. Yes. For family reasons, you had stayed on in France another two or three years. Yes, I had. Mm-hmm.

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Now, what was your first work looking back to make an impression? When did people start talking about young Berkeley? I think probably the first thing was, um

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I did a setting of some uh poems that were attributed to Saint Teresa of Avila in a translation in English, and um this was played uh the first time. It was one of the first things I had played when I came back to live in London, and nothing much happened at first, but uh after a bit I found that people remembered it and and then little by little it got done again, and now from time to time it gets performed fairly

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Fairly often.

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Back in the thirties you wrote a ballet suite, The Judgment of Paris, which Frederic Ashton choreographed. But you only wrote the one. You you didn't stay with ballet music. No, I didn't. I would have liked to later on, but I couldn't after that. At that moment, other things cropped up. Later on, the ballet music became very much a matter of a whole evening's ballet, and not just a one-act ballet. And I never felt very much that I wanted to do such a long work for for ballet, so I left it on one side. But I would have liked to, I still would like to, if something suitable turned up.

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During the war you joined the BBC. That's right, yes. Yes. What what was your job?

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Well, I've joined the music division and um

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I was an orchestral programme builder, uh which meant that I chose works for studio broadcasts. I was given a fairly free hand, but one had to of course to fit it into the time. Yes. And and think of the general listener rather than rather than of the things one particularly wanted oneself. The only time in your life when you've had an office job and regular architecture. You're not looking for that sort of thing again.

Sir Lennox Berkeley16:04

And that's regular ah.

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No, no, I I was prepared to escape from it, although I liked B my job in the BBC and I made a lot of friends.

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Record number five we got to.

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This is Debussy's Prelude à la Prémie de la Fun, and I think it really is a masterpiece, the perfect expression of the music of that moment, which had largely been invented by De Bussy. He brought to music at that moment a completely new voice, and this most poetic work, wonderfully scored, has remained a great favourite with me.

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An excerpt from Dubuse's La Primide d'En Thon

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Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. When did you write your first symphony?

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I think that was um

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Nineteen forty, it's the beginning of the war. Yes, it first performed at a prom.

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Yes, I think it was. And the others that there have been three so far, haven't there? And another one coming up. Yes, yes, that's right. Yes, I wrote the first one then and the second one after the war. Uh the third was about six years ago, and now I've just finished a fourth. How long did it take you?

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Oh, it took me a nearly a whole year.

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You've covered the whole spectrum of music, chamber music, songs, church music, piano music.

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Opera, of course, tell me about your operas. We haven't talked about those yet. Well, I wrote one full-length opera on Nelson, which was given at Saddler's Wells. And it was my f first attempt at opera, and I see many things wrong with it now, but it didn't do it badly. It was a romantic opera. Yes, it was, yes.

Sir Lennox Berkeley18:59

Yeah.

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And then later I wrote three one-act operas at various times which were all written for the Old Borough Festival and all first performed there. One, which is rather apropos, called The Castaway. Castaway, yes, that's right. What about Ulysses? I didn't know about this programme in those days.

Sir Lennox Berkeley19:18

What about Ulysses?

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That's it.

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And one that's very frequently performed a dinner engagement. That that's a a comedy. Yes, it is, it is. The librettos of both of them were by Paul Dane, who's a great friend of mine and a great expert at writing for the theatre and for the film.

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Accommodate

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Record number six we got to.

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I've included a bit out of a work by the Swiss composer Frank Martin. It's a work I've always admired. It's written for double string orchestra, harpsichord and piano.

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Very unusual orchestra, but he he uses this in such a way that I've always found it very interesting. It's a very moving work.

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The

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and although in a more or less contemporary idiom, one which I think makes a quick appeal to

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Uh to an audience.

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An excerpt from Franck Martin's Petit Samphonie Concertante for harp, harpsichord, piano, and two string orchestras.

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Ensemer conducting the Swiss Romonde orchestra.

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Oh that

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Any outdoor activities that interest you in particular, Sir Lannon?

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Well, I haven't got any sort of sport that I uh follow at all. What I'm getting at is there anything that's going to be useful to you on this island. Do you do any fishing, for example?

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No, I don't. I'm very unpractical. In fact, I doubt whether I should survive for long, because I'm so bad at making it I don't know whether I could make anything at all. I suppose I might be able to find some way of getting hold of food and keeping alive. Would you try to escape? As an ex-cox, you can steer a boat, at any rate. Yes, but I should have to have a boat to steer her. This would be my trouble.

Sir Lennox Berkeley22:02

This could be

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All right, let's get back to music. What's your next record? I've chosen uh an excerpt from Benjamin Britton's opera.

Sir Lennox Berkeley22:08

What's your next ring?

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The Turn of the Screw. I think this is his masterpiece. It's a most wonderful uh work, I think. And uh in this excerpt

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uh you get an idea of the style of the music.

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of its extraordinary force and meaningfulness.

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and of his wonderful use of the voice and of instrumental writing too.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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Box isn't draw.

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Fox is in draw.

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Who sketched their neighbour The unknown gesture The soft persistent world

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The unknown Jesus

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The sign of life of the night wings.

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I'm missing

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Why is the healer?

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An excerpt from Benjamin Britton's The Turn of the Screw. You heard the voices of Peter Pears and a very young David Hemmings.

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What are you writing now, Sir Lennox?

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Well, at the moment I'm writing a a a motette for the Three Choirs Festival in September. It'll be a short piece, but uh I have had to do with the Three Choirs Festival before and uh

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I'm very glad to bring something to it in this year in particular. How do you work? Do you like to work regular hours each day, or do you work in bursts of enthusiasm? Or how does it happen? No, I work regular hours and I find that

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Well, sometimes it doesn't happen, as you say, because uh everybody uh has periods when they're rather stuck. You know, I can't but I find that the only way of of making it happen or helping it to happen is to sit down and try and do it.

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And ver very often in in fiddling about with the notes you want to use, something occurs to you. I find that it's in working that that one gets ideas. How much do you use the piano in your composing?

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Well, I use it a good deal, but uh in in in working out the thing I get the ideas I want away from the piano, but I've never been able to get the final version of anything down without using the piano.

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I used to think this was a great disadvantage and I got very depressed and I thought uh some people said when I was a student that all good composers could compose away from the piano and I knew I couldn't.

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Uh but I then discovered that some of the most well known composers uh were in a similar situation, used the piano the whole time. So I thought, well, if it was good enough for them, it's good enough for me and so I've managed

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You have three sons. I know. One of them, Michael, is probably in this building somewhere at this moment. He's an announcer on Radio Three. He's composing too. Yes, he is, yes. I believe you are both represented on the same programme. Yes, we have been.

Sir Lennox Berkeley25:43

Yes

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That must be very rewarding. Yes, well, well it's very very nice to to feel something going on in the family.

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Your last record, what next?

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This is from the work called Walsnoble Santimantal. And I've chosen one waltz out of this that

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I think has a great deal of Ravel's particular

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A brand of nostalgia and charm rarely.

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A waltz from Rabel's Valze Noble Sentimental, played by Vlado Perlmutter. If you would take just one disc of the eight you played us, which would it be?

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Well, I think I'd take the franc martin.

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And you're lud to have one luxury with you, any one.

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object which would give you pleasure of no practical use.

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Yes, well, I think I'd like to take a picture.

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Uh

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And the picture I'd suggest is one by Renoir, which is of

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uh the banks of the Marne. It's I rather think it's called La Gourneuiere, after the name of a restaurant on the banks of the Marne, where um people go on

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on Sundays, and you see people of Renoir's period uh dressed in what are now rather picturesque clothes.

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A Renoir picture. And one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already there.

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And we don't allow multi-volume.

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Encyclopedias.

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I thought at first when you said one book, well I perhaps should take the whole of Proust, because that counts as one book, yes. Well, um actually

Sir Lennox Berkeley28:15

Get one work.

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I don't think so, on second thoughts. I think I'd rather take uh uh poetry, uh I think it would somehow keep alive.

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2-1 for longer. And I'd suggest taking the new Oxford book of first. Right. And thank you, Sir Lennox Barclay, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Well, thank you very much for giving me the opportunity of speaking about music that I'm fond of. Goodbye, everyone.

Sir Lennox Berkeley28:54

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.