Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Early Closing
- 2 The Music of Northampton
- 3 A Number of Scotsmen
- 4 Olive
- 5 Union and Exile
- 6 A Purpose for Cinema
- 7 A War of his Own
- 8 Is Your Journey Really Necessary?
- 9 A Coming British Woman Composer
- 10 Towards a Festival
- 11 Questions of Inspiration
- 13 The Late Romantic
- 14 E-Day
- 15 Symphonic Reflections
- 16 Soundless Music
- 17 The Other Suffolk Composer
- 18 The Blythburgh Operas
- 19 The Stillness
- 20 Living and Learning
- 21 Precious Toy
- Epilogue
- Notes
- List of Alwyn’s Works
- Discography
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index of Alwyn’s Works
20 - Living and Learning
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Illustrations
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 Early Closing
- 2 The Music of Northampton
- 3 A Number of Scotsmen
- 4 Olive
- 5 Union and Exile
- 6 A Purpose for Cinema
- 7 A War of his Own
- 8 Is Your Journey Really Necessary?
- 9 A Coming British Woman Composer
- 10 Towards a Festival
- 11 Questions of Inspiration
- 13 The Late Romantic
- 14 E-Day
- 15 Symphonic Reflections
- 16 Soundless Music
- 17 The Other Suffolk Composer
- 18 The Blythburgh Operas
- 19 The Stillness
- 20 Living and Learning
- 21 Precious Toy
- Epilogue
- Notes
- List of Alwyn’s Works
- Discography
- Bibliography
- General Index
- Index of Alwyn’s Works
Summary
Arthritis in Alwyn’s hands made composition difficult, but by the beginning of 1980 a new drug was alleviating the pain. When a commission for a Nonet for Wind Instruments arrived he was presented with a challenge.
… alas, I am finding inspiration musically hard to come by (‘rarely, rarely cometh thou, Spirit of Delight’ ), and I am torn between a real urge to indulge my joyful obsession with painting and the rigours of musical composition. After two years break in the flow of composition it seems as though I am a naïve beginner struggling to learn the art all over again. I shall persist for another week and, if nothing results, I shall breathe a sigh of relief and return to brushes and paint and comfort myself with the thought that Sibelius gave up composing in his sixties and Rossini was quite a young man when at the height of his fame, he abandoned composition without regret and lived a life of luxury and culinary experiment and achieved immortality on the Maître d’hôtel’s menu.
A fortnight later the work was rapidly turning into a Concerto di Camera for solo flute and wind octet. After three months labour the work was named the Concerto for flute and eight wind instruments, completed in June 1980 and given its first performance by the English Chamber Orchestra Wind Ensemble. It was at this time that the recorder player John Turner, who wanted to acquire an Alwyn painting for his music-room, managed an introduction to Alwyn through his friend Thomas Pitfield, an associate of Alwyn’s at the Composers’ Guild. Turner was invited for afternoon tea at Lark Rise, but ‘Conversation between the mouthfuls of scone was not easy, as both Bill and Mary were somewhat taciturn, and I for my part was rather nonplussed by the nude paintings of an already elderly Mary on the sitting room wall’. Turner wanted Alwyn to compose a recorder work for him, but Alwyn said the Concerto for flute and eight wind instruments would be his final composition. Turner was then showed Alwyn’s sketchbook, but all the sketches were of nude women (not what Turner had anticipated for his walls).
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- Information
- The Innumerable DanceThe Life and Work of William Alwyn, pp. 256 - 266Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2008