Mastery and Mystery
(Brass Band World - 1991)
‘Courage was mine, and I had mystery, Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery’. This couplet from Wilfred Owen's 'Strange Meeting', the poem that for many people defines the First World War, seemed to me especially appropriate when writing about Wilfred Heaton, and man of mastery and mystery, courage and wisdom. What was inappropriate about his situation were the men of mediocrity and boredom, cowardice and ignorance who pulled him down, knocked him back and tried to suffocate his music. Out of his personal war was born music that will seem self-evidently great to all, when fashion and gimmickry have all fallen away.
Growing up musically in the Salvation Army was a mixed blessing for a youngster in the late forties and early fifties. There must be more to music than listening to yards of deeply felt selections, and routine marches!
As time passed, the occasional piece of extra-special music would puncture the gloom like a brilliant ray of light: I can still remember the occasion of hearing Wilfred Heaton's march "Praise" for the first time...a huge door swung open! What compelling rhythms - I had never experienced such force before in a piece of brass music! What magical chords! Looking at the score revealed the extraordinary fact that something so entrancing could also be rather simple. The rhythms were in fact straightforward, and the harmonies quite normal: it was the way they were arranged.
I then waited and waited for the next "Heaton", in the way that one hopes for a special letter. But nothing more appeared from the pen of this writer: most SA composers were officers or at least full Bandmasters, all with feet on the various predictable rungs of the Army's strict musical ladder. Albert Jakeway’s programme and rehearsal notes in the score were quite friendly to the piece, but contained a coded warning about the piece being "interesting"... not entirely a safe word in Army circles. How could someone who was just a Deputy Bandmaster have leapt out from this solid mass of worthies to immediately disappear without trace, yet having left such a special mark? Where had he gone? "Praise" was in fact only one of a series of revelations that eventually led me to musical freedom, but its first impact on me from so long ago is still completely fresh in my mind and still as compelling. Soon I was moving on, so that no other music by Wilfred Heaton came my way.
Only decades later did I learn that the young Heaton had indeed been pouring compositions out in the direction of the Army music editorial chiefs. But receiving, in his own words to me, an occasional acknowledgement of a work's receipt, rarely a returned score, and scarcest of all, publication and use. To put it simply, a great deal of his music must have disappeared into the Judd Street dustbins, as he surmised to me one day in conversation. I've often wondered whether jealousy was to blame, when lesser mortals were faced with the unmistakeable (and perhaps unpalatable) sparkle and glow of real talent... whether it was the Army music chiefs calculating that this sort of stuff would save no souls, and be too hard to play anyway for many run-of-the-mill bands... or whether it was Tell Me The Old Old Story of mediocrity being unable to recognise anything above itself.
When, in the early seventies, the Nationals rejected Contest Music as too advanced for the tastes of bandsmen, it must have seemed to Wilfred Heaton like the very last straw. Totally unlike the modern breed of composer, who is generally as skilled in the craft of self-promotion as in the art of composition, Heaton is completely absorbed in the spiritual and artistic elements of music. When I began involvement in banding in the very late seventies, one of my first actions was to search out anything further by this still enigmatic composer which might have escaped into the outside world. Securing a manuscript set of Contest Music enabled me to make contact with him, and so began one of my most interesting and enjoyable friendships.
I came into possession of a score entitled Partita, and having approached the composer with the suggestion of performing it, I learnt that this was a simplified and emasculated version, originally produced in the hope that someone somewhere would find it acceptable! It was also headed by a pseudonym, Paul Krask. Heaton’s response was to come back to me, very quickly, with a vastly expanded version of the work.... in fact very close to the original, which was an orchestral work. It contained a particularly impressive Scherzo, demonic in both character and difficulty. Parts were made and after the composer had listened to a run through, a first performance took place recorded by the BBC in April 1986, with myself and Desford Band. The impact of the piece, on all who played and heard it, was memorable. The one exception to this was the composer, who still today regards the piece as unsatisfactory.
When we discuss his music together, it seems that he has genuinely turned his back on his past creations: once a work is completed he professes little or no further interest in it. It was during this period, in the aftermath of the Partita performance, that he mentioned a cornet piece to me, for which he had some old sketches. I have always respected his views on his works in spite of disagreeing with his dismissive valuations of them, so my response was naturally to express a strong interest, but certainly not to press: composition had obviously moved out of the centre of his interests, and while I had come to appreciate that while Heaton's personality was of the warmest and friendliest, his sense of discrimination was equally intense. In short he would only take up his pen if he felt impelled to do so. Most important of all, I have always felt that there was a great deal more to his creative personality than I could ever fully understand, added to which there is an imperious guality to his mind which I do not think would brook too much in the way of glib attempts at persuasion! Yet in conversation with my wife during a stay with us, he confided that his compositions were his babies. The contradiction feels painful as if there is very deep bruising, deeper than will ever be cured.
On the practical side of composition, and beyond his reluctance to publicly care about his works once they are launched, he has always insisted that his music does not really come out the way he wants it. He says he would like to write controlled, disciplined music in which emotion... "out of date", he says... is kept firmly in its' place. What comes out is as cool as white-hot lava from a very active volcano! (I've always commented that he should simply write it, and let us decide whether it is any good!) Yet in my opinion his control is close to absolute, both in the overall planning and in the details. In rehearsal nothing escapes his ear! His scoring, which I've always regarded as quite exhilarating in its imagination, is calculated to a whisker. Only the other day I was talking to a former Dyke player who was in that Band during Heaton's brief period as conductor. His impression was exactly the same as mine: musicality and control perfectly balanced. Mystery and Mastery.
So when, in mid-December 1990, Wilfred's usual Christmas card arrived with a brief message to the effect that he had finished a Sinfonia Concertante for Cornet and Band, and would I like to see it, I was all agog. I had not harboured any great hopes of the piece being completed, sensing that his interest in the sketches may have waned even further with the passing years. The score promptly arrived, well over a hundred pages in handwriting as neat and precise as ever. I have to say that I gasped at it: without doubt it was the most difficult piece for cornet that I had ever seen. Without any doubt it is the Everest of cornet repertoire. Furthermore I know nothing in the trumpet literature which can compare with it in the scope of its demands. Many modern works require technical virtuosity: the Sinfonia equally requires musical depth.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man! Martin Winter, who has been connected with me for some eleven years, was doing a spell for me as Principal Cornet at Foden/Britannia. I thought I knew his playing upside down and inside out, but I wondered if even he could manage to play it. So complete are Martin Winter's skills of learning and retaining, and as Heaton later said, his lovely free unstilted lyricism together with a technique that recognises no limit, that the piece, while stretching his skills and nerve tremendously, only served to improve them further.
In short, almost a year after the excitement of first seeing the score, its pages were transformed into commanding and engrossing sound, firstly in rehearsal, then in Studio Seven in Manchester. Paul Hindmarsh at the BBC... as much a Heaton fan as I am... was instrumental in having an excellent set of parts made up, and produced the recording, which took place on December 5th 1991. I can only suggest in the strongest possible terms, that you, dear reader, listen to the Broadcast. It is quite possible that the piece will puzzle you on first aquaintance: it is long, it will not tickle your palate with sugary sounds or self-regarding facility. It will certainly astonish you. There is no doubt in my mind that you will be hearing a work written at the summit of the composer's genius, and played by a soloist who ascends to the highest peaks quite wonderfully. You will be in the presence of a masterwork.
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