Symphony No. 2 Symphony No. 5 Peterloo Overture

Abstract

Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five first inspired Malcolm Arnold to learn the trumpet, and he has not been ashamed to acknowledge the influence on his music of jazz, pop, brass bands and music hall. He was only 21 when he was appointed principal trumpet of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and although the war interrupted his career, he returned to orchestral playing on his discharge from the army. Before long the writing of film music allowed him to give up playing and devote himself to composition, but not before he had gained valuable experience of the practicalities of writing for orchestra. As a performer himself, he had been able to watch at close quarters the reactions of other instrumentalists to the music they were asked to play, and to observe the reactions of audiences as they listened.He had been able to hear in detail which passages were played well, which badly, and which were not played at all, and he had developed a respect and concern for his fellow musicians. When composing for orchestra he always thinks in terms of the sound of individual instruments and strives to write music which will be grateful to play. One of his greatest pleasures is to write concertos for his friends, for he delights to contrive music which is not only apt for the instrument but which also conveys some of the individual character of the artist himself. In his Clarinet Concerto No.2, for instance, completed in April 1974, he allows his friend Benny Goodman, to whom the work is dedicated, to improvise a first-movement cadenza 'as jazzy and way out as you please...'! Arnold believes that music 'is a social act of communication among people, a gesture of friendship, the strongest there is.' He has no sympathy for those members of the avant garde whose work can only be understood by a tiny minority. 'Modern' music must certainly look towards the future, but Arnold is adamant that it must be a future which concerns human beings. Music which states something sincere in the simplest terms can be enjoyed because its message is accessible, and it is by writing 'something understandable' that Arnold makes his gesture of friendship. He has no interest in the arid application of mathematical principles to create mere patterns in sound, and he sees it as a hateful contradiction that many who are avant garde in their music should be complacent in their ideas on social life. His own attitude is simple: 'When the shooting's over I'd like to be there saying something.' Arnold composed his Second Symphony in the early 1950s at a time when avant-garde composers in Europe were turning accepted musical values upside down. Arnold does not hesitate to use 20th-century techniques when they suit his purpose, and most of his later works contain serial processes, but essentially he chooses to work within a tradition which has developed over the past 200 years. He feels that within the familiar idiom of the diatonic system a tonal melody possesses both the strength and the weakness which it needs to make it expressive. Atonal music, in which these tensions are weaker, seems to Arnold to lead to a state of musical meandering.