John Piper

John Piper0:00

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

John Piper0:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983.

John Piper0:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is the artist John Piper, Companion of Honor.

Presenter0:35

Mr. Piper, we're sitting in your studio in this warm and pleasant farmhouse in the Chilterns, which is your home and studio. I'm a little confused, incidentally, about which county we're in, because on our way here we seem to pass through three counties in about three minutes. We're three hundred yards in Buckinghamshire, and only three hundred, and the Post Office never lets us forget that we're not in Buckinghamshire by making us address our letters as near Henry on Tim's oxen.

John Piper0:59

Yeah.

Speaker 40:59

Uh

Presenter1:06

Have you been here a long time? Fifty years next year, which does seem rather a long time to me now, I must say. Half a century, you know, and it's awful.

Speaker 31:13

Yes, half the century.

Presenter1:16

Do you play records a lot? A great deal. While you're painting, while you're working? No. It's the only time I don't play them, because I find them too disturbing. I know you're a keen amateur musician. You play the piano. Oh, very little. I'm a pure amateur, but very fond of music, and I've done a lot about it at one time or another, or tried to. You used to play in a dance band? Yes, a three-piece number. It wasn't very interesting when I was about nineteen, twenty, that sort of time. We had a saxon and drums, and uh I strummed on the piano. That's all, yes.

John Piper1:23

Do distill

Speaker 31:24

Uh

Speaker 31:34

Yeah.

Presenter1:49

Were you a success? We were locally all right. We made two guineas a night, about once a month, you know.

Presenter1:56

At what stage in your career was that, when you were an undergraduate? Oh, n yes, not even an undergraduate, left school and was uh in my father's office in London.

Presenter2:07

I know you've picked your eight records for the Desert Island. What's the first one? The first one is uh by Scriabin, who.

Presenter2:15

I discovered early in life I can't remember quite how except that my father had a if it's not a bore give you a little histoire my father had one of those old-fashioned pianolas that pushed onto a piano and he allowed me to choose all the roles which we got to play on this pianola from the Aeolian company in Bond Street as they then were many many years ago and I've discovered Scriabin who I thought was a marvellous composer all those years ago when I was about sixteen I suppose that'd be nineteen nineteen twenty that sort of date. And what is this work of Scriabin's?

John Piper2:40

Do you hear that?

Presenter2:55

It's one of his early sonatas, number three, and it's just the beginning of it. Who's playing on this occasion? Vladimir Ashkenazi.

Presenter4:05

The opening of Scriabin's third sonata played by Vladimir Ashkenazi.

Presenter4:11

Buckinghamshire isn't your native county, is it? No, I was born at Epsom in Surrey and uh lived there for the first twenty odd years of my life. You went to Epsom College, which has a reputation for turning out doctors, I believe. Well, it was founded as a school for the sons of doctors. And a terrible reprobate lot they were, I found. Learnt all sorts of funny things from them. But I had the luck to be a day boy, so I bicycled home to lunch every day. Your father was a solicitor. My father was a Westminster solicitor, yes.

John Piper4:42

Your father was a solicitor.

Presenter4:46

What were your interests as a boy? Oh, sketching, really, and a bit of music, and trying to play the piano. You were fascinated by the countryside and by building. Cycling. I loved cycling.

John Piper4:56

Yeah, so

Presenter4:59

I looked at nearly all the churches in Surrey on my bike before I was about fourteen or fifteen. And you used to scare them? Oh, yes. You were also fascinated by the ballet at a very early age. Well, that was a bit later, yes, but I certainly was. As soon as Diagilev started bringing

Presenter5:17

His company to England to the old Lambra. I was there queuing, but that was really when I was a law student in my father's office. Your interests were in the arts, but you started your career in your father's firm. How did you find the law? Were you interested? I was rather. I found criminal law especially interesting. Oh, you had that as well, as the ordinary conveyancing and what? Oh, yes. We were a conveyancing firm, I'm afraid, but I loved learning about uh what was the definition of burglary and all that sort of thing. I think I would like to might have liked to have been a criminal lawyer if I hadn't had ideas in other directions. Well, one of your uh ideas, while an article clerk, you published a book of poems.

Speaker 35:47

Yeah.

Presenter6:00

Yes, they were pretty ridiculous. I don't uh really claim much for them. In fact, I claim nothing. And you also illustrated a book? Yes, that's so. What was the book that you illustrated? Well, I illustrated a book of my my father wrote, a book called Sixty Three Not Out, which was his age. I did rather Lovett Fraser-ish things. Lovert Fraser designed the Beggars' Opera when I was young and uh I was rather mad about him, so I did little illustrations in in the style of Lobert Fraser.

John Piper6:26

Yeah.

Presenter6:33

What impelled you to leave the law?

Presenter6:36

Oh, I never wanted to be in the law. It was simply a way of appeasing my father, who said that he would pay for me to go to an art school, if necessary, in Paris, as long as I qualified as a solicitor. Did you ever do that? I failed in the final the first time, at which point my father died, I'm sorry to say, and not, I think, entirely because of my having failed. In fact, I don't think he knew that I had failed. But my mother took pity on me and she thought I was looking a bit neurotic and I b ought to go to an art school.

John Piper6:58

Yeah.

Presenter7:12

She saw that I did.

Presenter7:14

Your second record? Prokofiev. The reason of for choosing it dates from a good deal later in my life. I've come to think that Prokofiev was one of the great composers of my youth who I didn't take enough notice of then, I think, and it's uh part of the Fifth Symphony, the Second Movement.

Presenter8:33

part of the second movement of the Prokofia Fifth Symphony, Andrei Prebin conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. So you didn't pursue your law studies again, you were able to study out

Presenter8:46

You were helping things along financially by doing some journalism at that time. Yes, I made nearly all the money that I did make by writing bits and pieces about art and theatre and one thing and another. Some theatre criticism.

John Piper8:59

Yes, some theatre criticism.

Presenter9:02

Your friend John Betterman was very helpful in keeping you going. Yes, in every way, you might say, keeping me going. Mostly laughing and seeing the funny side of life and and of course his sensibility was a great um benefit to me. I wasn't used to that kind of acute constructive sensibility that John's always had. He was editing the Shell Guides at that time. Yes, he was. He was employed by that character he was pleased to call Beddy Old Man, who was a great man, really, called Jack Beddington, who was in charge of publicity at Shell. And he uh Jack Beddington employed not only John but Evelyn Waugh and

Presenter9:41

Peter Quindell and all those prince of my youth, you know, who were very important in A real patron of the arts. A real patron of the arts. You wrote a Shell Guide, didn't you? I did. I wrote Oxfordshire, I'm proud to say, yes, for John in nineteen thirty seven, I think.

John Piper9:47

We are

Presenter9:56

Your painting in your early years, in the thirties, was non figurative, abstract. That's right. Yes, about that time. Yes, I started being an abstract painter about nineteen thirty four, I think. Who were your influences?

John Piper10:08

Who would

Presenter10:11

Oh, well Mondrian, Elion, Kandinsky, all the you know, the French painters who were in the public eye, then Leger, Braque, Picasso, they were all all the influences. And you were exhibiting your work. Were you selling it?

Presenter10:27

No, indeed I wasn't. I think I sold one abstract picture in the whole of my career for fifteen pounds, and that quite a big one. Well, that was a very good investment on somebody's part. Do you know what happened to it? Yes, I know exactly what happened to it. It was bought by a friend of mine and his widow.

Presenter10:45

still owns it, and she's lending it to the exhibition in the Tate.

Presenter10:50

Now you became

Presenter10:51

Disenchanted, understandably, with the abstract, you began painting rather dramatic landscapes. I wasn't really disenchanted. I never intended to continue being an abstract painter all my life. I knew that I had to have some connection with nature and natural appearances and things and architecture and everything in the long run. But abstraction was simply for me

Presenter11:15

a way of trying to teach myself how to paint and how to use colour. Part of a logical progression. Yes, I think so. And it was very useful.

Presenter11:25

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

Presenter11:27

Well, it's Rachmaninoff, who became really quite an obsession with me in later life. I got round to Rachmaninoff somehow at the age of about fifty, I think. I said to Benjamin Britton, who became rather a friend, and he had been for some time already, I hesitate to mention him, but what about Rachmaninoff? and he said, Ah, there's a great composer. And then I never looked back, I bought all the records I could find of Rachmaninoff. And I thought it was absolutely essential in Desert Island Discs to have one of the big tunes.

John Piper11:53

It's

Speaker 311:53

Yeah.

John Piper11:53

Pods

Presenter12:00

And I thought a lot about which one, and I finally decided on the big tune in the Paganini variations, which is where the theme is reversed, you get it upside down, which is rather exciting, but it comes out in a very different and wonderfully opulent manner.

Presenter13:15

An excerpt from the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, and a big tune indeed, Ashkenazi with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted again by Andrei Previn.

Presenter13:28

Now, Don, the war started and you became part of Kenneth Clarke's war artist scheme. Yes, I did. What was that? Well, it was uh a parallel to the war artist scheme that had happened in the first war, which produced uh rather splendid works by Paul Nash and John Nash and uh Henry Lamb. And uh I think that Kenneth Clarke thought that it was an important thing to happen and it took him quite a long time to get it off the ground. But uh I'm glad to say he included me in his scheme and I remained a war artist. Not sort of fully employed by them, but enough to be reserved from serving in the RAF which I'd volunteered for and in fact had been accepted for. But, you know, I was lucky enough to be in it.

Speaker 314:13

Yeah.

Presenter14:16

You painted many historical buildings uh and a lot of blitz damage. Yes. I started doing blitz damage and then went on to other things. The scheme eventually grew into something much bigger, Recording Britain. Recording Britain preceded the actual War Artist Advisory Committee work. That was quite early in the war, because people were worried about um monuments being bombed and they thought there would be no record of them. So I started off on that really before UNISTAR had got the war artists off the ground.

Presenter14:49

An important commission for you were some drawings of Windsor Castle.

Presenter14:54

Yes, it was indeed an important commission, yes. I enjoyed that a great deal. I did a number of pictures, I think twenty four altogether, of the Queen, now the Queen mother, who was awfully nice and seemed to be very pleased with them, and she still has them, and

Speaker 315:03

And

John Piper15:03

Brother.

Presenter15:10

Proud to say?

Presenter15:11

They were in your dramatic style, with lowering clouds.

Presenter15:16

You did, in fact, take them to Windsor to show the king and queen yourself.

Presenter15:21

Yes, that's true, on a Sunday morning, very bright nice Sunday morning it was too, I remember. And the the king looked at them without really the the queen was very appreciative throughout and she said, Oh, I like that very much and I like that very much and king didn't really speak a word until we got to the end and then he said, You seem to have been very unlucky with the weather. I I suppose it is awfully funny, but it seemed to me perfectly natural because you show up uh rather pale coloured buildings in the fleeting sunlight by putting black skies behind them. It seemed to me quite obvious. It's all what you ought to do with buildings. Nothing seemed to me more natural.

Presenter16:04

Let's have record number four.

Presenter16:07

Record number four is a ballard by Foray r piece I'm very fond of. Why do you choose it?

Presenter16:15

Well, I'm a great one for French music, really. I love French music. I really love the French when they're nice. And I particularly love Foray.

Presenter17:28

The foray Ballade

Presenter17:30

John Ogden with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Louis Fremeau.

Presenter17:36

John, we were talking about that phase in your career when your painting was dramatic in style. In fact, the theatre has always been very important to you. You've designed a number of productions. Yes, I did some amateur productions when I was quite young. But it was the Diagonv Ballet that really got my theatre goat or whatever it is, you know, got me excited about the theatre, because I thought that it was so wonderful to have this combination of good painters, good musicians and good choreographers. It was a trio of art which was irresistible and I used to cue.

Presenter18:11

for all the early performances as Diagre brought them over from Paris to London. Some of the Benjamin Britton operas were were almost family affairs because your wife my family wrote the libretti for some of them and you did the designs. That's quite true, yes. I did the designs for most of Ben's operas after Peter Grimes. I didn't design that. But we opened Gleinborn after the war when the Germans couldn't be got back yet and uh we opened it with the Rape Lucretia which was one of Ben's early operas and I designed that. Yes. That was followed by Albert Herring which was produced by Friedrich Ashton in the following year.

John Piper18:38

Uh Uh

Speaker 318:45

Yeah.

Presenter18:51

And then later we did Gloriana, Billy Budd,

Presenter18:55

And then my wife and family got involved in writing libretti for Ben and she wrote um The Turn of the Screw, which I also designed, so it became a family affair. For the opera Death in Venice, you went with Britain to Venice to sort out some ideas? Yes, we did. We went as a quartet, really. It was me as the chauffeur and Peter Peirce as the map reader and General Courier and advisor. Is he good at map reading? Very good, extremely good, yes. And uh McFamy and Ben sat in the back and wrote their opera. And that was very enjoyable indeed. Yes. We really went because Ben loved Venice anyway, but we thought it was a good idea to get the atmosphere of the whole thing. Well, it was

John Piper19:12

Uh

John Piper19:21

Yeah.

Speaker 319:33

Right.

John Piper19:33

Yeah.

Speaker 319:33

Yeah.

Presenter19:41

In progress. And of course, there were many other operas and ballets at the Royal Opera House in Sadler's Wells and Glinebourne that you've done. Quite a lot of those, especially with John Cranco, whom I was very fond, the young choreographer who came over from South Africa. And we did ballets at Sadler's Wells and Coven Garden before he tragically died much too young. You've also been a theatrical lessee. Well, yes, that was at the Henley Theatre, the little Kenton Theatre in Henley, which is a very old established theatre, one of the oldest established in England. How did you do as a manager? Rather badly. We lost a bit of money. Oh, dear. We went into partnership with a local doctor, and we both lost a bit of money, but not too badly, and it was well worth it. We've got your fifth record.

Presenter20:30

The fifth record is Benjamin Britton. It's difficult to represent my views of Ben on one record, as you might imagine, because they're very strong and very long-standing. And I thought perhaps it would be fun to have a song from that song cycle called Winter Words to poems by Thomas Hardy, which incidentally no interest outside of the family, but they were in fact dedicated to Venery, my wife, and myself. Which of the songs shall we hear? We're going to hear one called Wagtail and Baby.

Speaker 421:06

O wagtail gates, but falter not in dip and sip and breathe.

Speaker 421:29

The wagtail in a winking with terror rolls and disappear.

Speaker 421:37

A baby fell a sleep.

Presenter22:06

Wagtail and Baby from Benjamin Britton's Winter Words, sung by Peter Pears.

Presenter22:12

You've designed quite a lot of stained glass, I know. Yes, indeed I have, since about nineteen sixty. Well, yet a little earlier than that, actually. Starting with the Aundal windows in Arundel College Chapel and then going on with the baptistery window at Coventry in the new cathedral.

Speaker 322:21

Yeah.

Presenter22:29

It must have been especially rewarding during that Coventry window because you had painted the ruins of the cathedral a matter of days after it had been bombed and the reconstruction.

John Piper22:37

And then screws.

Presenter22:42

And there was also a Britain window. Yes, that's a good deal later. It's the Benjamin Britton Memorial window after he died, and it's in Aldborough Church. I didn't know what to do, and my wife suggested that I should do the three church parables, which were the nearest he ever really got to uh extensive pieces of church music.

John Piper22:45

Yeah, sir.

Presenter23:04

They were Kolio River, a burning fiery furnace, and the Prodigal Son, of course. And it had three lances, so that seemed very convenient. That's what I did.

John Piper23:13

Okay.

Presenter23:14

Stained glass is a rather arduous and complicated choice, isn't it? Terribly difficult to do. I of course don't make stained glass. I simply design it. There have been tapestries and mosaics. You've done a mosaic for the B B C. I have. Uh I'm very proud of it. It's rather large and very abstract, but there it is. And it's still there in Television Centre.

Presenter23:37

Record number six. Record number six is uh Poulanc, a composer which you might call in my middle period of musical appreciation, if it doesn't sound too swanky, was very important to me because he appeared in those Diagilef ballets in a very important position, especially with that piece called Les Biche, which had scenery by Marie Laurent and wonderful choreographer. It was a great piece altogether. But the piece I have chosen is something called La Belle Masque, which was written for the Vicomtes de Novais, I think for a birthday present in the late twenties or early thirties. And a fragment of it appears on the next record, sung by Dietrich Fischer Disco and the orchestra is conducted by Svalisch.

Speaker 424:29

Uh

Speaker 424:43

Unifers est la tool.

John Piper24:45

Yeah.

Speaker 424:47

Oh, Reya

Speaker 424:52

Calameto de Isab.

Presenter25:27

Malvina from Poulanck's La Balmasque, Dietrich Fischer Diskow, with solos to the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Wolfgang Savalisch.

Presenter25:37

During your career, a number of books have been written about your work. Now, there's a splendid new one about your topographical work, Piper's Places. Glad you find it splendid. I find it beautifully produced. Lovely. I think they've done us proud, I must say, the printers and publishers. And Richard Ingrams has done some of the writing. Great fun working with him. It's marvellous. Very enjoyable for me.

John Piper25:49

I find it beautifully produced. Lovely.

Presenter26:01

And a book almost as big is the catalogue of the big retrospective exhibition of your work at the Tate. Yes. Now this incredibly is to celebrate your eightieth birthday. Now there are two other exhibitions to run concurrently, so you've got three at once. Yes, isn't it awful? Deservedly. But there's no money in retrospectives, you see. We mm we have to live somehow. So Marlborough Fine Art offered me a selling exhibition at the same time, so I jumped at it and I've done a lot of work all this year on it. That is all recent. That's all recent work, yes, entirely. Sixty pictures no less. And um the other little exhibition is being put on by the Olympus Gallery, which is uh a a new, a rather splendid gallery in Princes Street, which is out of Hanover Square. And it's a really splendid gallery for exhibiting photographs. And I have a photographic show. Is photography a new interest of yours or have you done it? No, I've done it ever since I went to look at those old churches on my bike at fifteen. I've used a camera. So it's another topographic game. I hope I've got a bit better since then. But um yes, it is. I I develop and print everything always here. Lucky enough to have a dark room.

John Piper26:35

That's all right.

John Piper26:36

Yeah.

Speaker 326:54

Yeah.

John Piper26:54

Photographic shape.

John Piper26:57

Yeah.

John Piper27:06

I hope I've got a

Presenter27:16

Well, your eightieth birthday and you're still working as hard as ever. You're still as productive. I hope so. Yes. I hope I'll go on for another few months, anyway.

John Piper27:21

I hope

Presenter27:26

Yeah.

Presenter27:27

And your seventh record.

Presenter27:30

My seventh record is T for Two in two different versions. One by that great pianist, as I think, Earl Hines, who I used to try and imitate when I was in that amateur jazz band which I spoke to you about earlier. And the other version is by Shostakovich. And they are here one after the other. Earl Hines first, uh Shostakovich second.

Speaker 327:36

One

John Piper27:47

Uh

Speaker 327:47

Yeah.

Presenter27:57

Yes, you're really choosing nine records, aren't you, Darling? Sort of. As it's your birthday, we'll let you get away with it.

John Piper28:01

Uh

John Piper28:02

Well as it draws it or is it

John Piper28:06

And

John Piper28:07

Yeah.

Speaker 328:08

Get away.

Presenter29:48

Two versions of T for Two, one by Earl Heinz at the piano, and one conducted by Rozdesvenski, an arrangement by Shostakovich which he called Tahiti Trot.

Presenter30:01

Let's talk about some practical handicrafts now. For survival on a desert island, could you build a shelter?

Presenter30:09

I doubt it. I'd be awfully bad at it. I'm not a DIY man. You've done quite a lot of camping out, I believe, at various. Yes, I have done that. I can put a tent up, if if I've got a tent. Harkness, you're a bit doubtful about it. I'm very doubtful, indeed. What about food? Have you done some fishing?

Presenter30:26

Not enough to matter, but I dare say I could take it up, if necessary. Yes, I'm not worried about fishing. I think I could in an emergency. Right. Now, obviously, you could design a craft. Could you navigate one? And could you build one?

Speaker 330:31

Yeah.

John Piper30:31

Uh

Speaker 330:31

We don't

John Piper30:32

Uh

John Piper30:34

Right.

Presenter30:41

I certainly couldn't build one. Would you try to escape? No, I shouldn't I don't know. Yes, it depends on the cirques, I think. I don't think I can. All right. A r a rather cautious possibly. Yes, possibly. That's fair enough. Yes, good. Your last record is number eight.

Speaker 330:50

Yeah.

John Piper30:53

Yeah.

Presenter30:58

Well, my last record is my favourite composer, really, in in the long run, though I don't like to rule out Mozart, but it is in fact Haydn. Because in the last resort I'd rather be left with all Haydn's symphonies, I think, than all the works of Mozart, because I think they're very down to earth, very matter of fact, and about my standard in music finally. And which symphonies of Haydn which I've chosen, the last movement of number eighty-nine.

John Piper31:22

Symphony is

Speaker 331:58

Uh

Presenter32:30

The beginning of the last movement of Haydn's symphony number eighty-nine in F, Anto Dorati conducting the Philharmonia Hungarica.

Presenter32:39

If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've chosen, which would it be?

Presenter32:44

It's awfully difficult, but I think the rack man enough. And one luxury to take with you, one object of no practical use whatever, something you would like to have with you. Well, reverting to something I said to you earlier in this programme, I think it would be a pianola.

Presenter32:58

Because I find w with a piano

Presenter33:02

You can not only play I it would have to have a lot of roles with it, of course, all Beethoven sonatas, a great many of Mozart's symphonies, which I have omitted to play in this series, but uh I think it would be lovely to have a piano. Yes. And one book. You already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Yes, I think it would have to be another great love of mine, which we haven't mentioned because there's been no reason to. It would be the complete works of William Blake. Right. Prose and poetry. That we can arrange. Thank you. And thank you, John Piper, for letting us hear your desert island discs. Well, thank you right plumbly for asking me. Goodbye, everyone.

John Piper33:37

Right, but

John Piper34:10

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