21 - Scenes from Provincial Life

Summary

Realising that I could no longer leave my financial survival to fate, and persuaded by my good friend, John Denison, of the Arts Council, I allowed my name to be put forward for the post of Music Director and Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO). After an enjoyable and very well received trial concert I was offered the job. It was a daunting prospect: fifty concerts a year, a huge number of rehearsals, much travelling around the countryside for out-of-town performances, heavy administrative duties, including the engagement of soloists and orchestral players, and social appearances as well. To take on this catalogue of responsibilities I would again have to say goodbye to my manuscript paper. A London orchestra would have been less demanding and the London Symphony Orchestra had indeed made tentative enquiries, but this was too remote a prospect. If I could not soon show myself solvent, I might fail to qualify for British naturalisation.

My eventual acceptance of the Birmingham offer resolved my pecuniary problems, but was the death knell for my marriage. Scarlett, after her glamorous life in London, was repelled by the idea of living in what she described as a ‘dull provincial Midland city’. She refused to come to Birmingham with me, even for a single concert. Grateful as I was for Scarlett's courageous participation in my escape, she had contributed to many of the problems that were keeping me away from composition and had never outgrown her hunger for admiring words and constant attention. Her desire for my success did not arise from any belief in what I was trying to do, but because it would provide the social position she felt she needed to shine at her brightest. If she was an unsuitable sort of wife for a tunnel-visioned, dedicated composer, I was equally the most ill-fitted sort of husband to assist her in her social ambitions. Even if I would be lonely, it would be a major relief to escape from our endless quarrels.

The management of the CBSO wanted me to sign a contract for three years, but I explained to them how little I had been able to compose since I had come to Britain, and they most mercifully agreed to two years with an option to renew.