Abstract
A personal note to begin with: I first came across Peter Dickinson’s name when I was an eager teenager looking for piano duets to play with my grandfather. I found a copy of his Five Forgeries in a local music shop in 1970 and played them often during that summer. I still have the copy, dated the year I bought it, and I remember thinking just how ingenious—and how witty—the person who had created such delicious faux-Delius and Poulenc (among others) must be. Since then, I’ve come to know quite a lot of Dickinson’s work as a serious composer—and increasingly to admire the range and craft of his creative output, as well as his ability to produce a work as moving as his church drama The Judas Tree and orchestral compositions as impressive as his Organ Concerto. But it was with a delightful pang of nostalgia that I looked at the color plates in this handsomely produced book to find an illustration of Harold Lewis’s front cover design for the Five Forgeries.
This collection of articles, tributes, and reminiscences is an immensely rewarding reflection of the man himself, a literary context in which to place his work as a composer and performer, and a demonstration of the sheer exuberance with which Dickinson engages with his subjects. Published in 2016 as a belated celebration of his eightieth birthday (he was born on 15 November 1934), it is helpfully divided into sections including a memoir of his time in New York (1958–1961), writings about music (mostly composers), “Literary Connections,” Dickinson on his own music, interviews and a memoir by his sister and collaborator, the singer Meriel Dickinson, a chronological list of works and a discography.
“Writings about Music” includes an article on Ives and Copland that is full of wisdom and insight, expressed with refreshing clarity and demonstrating a wonderful knack for finding the mot juste to describe the character of a particular piece (he also knew Copland personally, and recalls an occasion when he played Copland’s Night Thoughts to him). His article about Lord Berners, originally published in the Musical Times in 1983, is all the more important for taking Berners seriously, placing his modernism in the context of other pioneering British figures such as Cyril Scott and Frank Bridge—and of continental influences such as Casella and, especially, Schoenberg and Stravinsky—the last two in piano pieces composed in 1914. “African American Influences on British Composers” is a fascinating article, originally a conference paper from 1986, in which Dickinson ranges far and wide, discussing works such as Delius’s Koanga, Walton’s Façade, Lambert’s The Rio Grande and Piano Concerto, and works by Tippett and Maxwell Davies. The chapter on “The American Concerto” takes the reader effortlessly from Macdowell to Jennifer Higdon via Copland, Cowell, Sessions, Barber and Corigliano, including several well-chosen musical examples to underline particular points. Dickinson’s chapter on “Style Modulation as a Compositional Technique” is particularly important in understanding his own music (the deliberate use stylistic pluralism is a feature of several of his compositions), but here he illustrates the concept in the music of others such as Ives, Gottschalk and Maxwell Davies. A tribute to the great historian of British music education Bernarr Rainbow is a comprehensive survey of his life, work and (evolving) educational precepts that ends with some serious reflections by Dickinson himself on the need for balance as well as open-mindedness in music teaching at every level: “We are told that we live in a multi-cultural society but we still need a core culturally and in other ways. So does the teaching of music.” This, coming from the person who was one of the first to introduce the serious study of popular music into the university curriculum at Keele University, is particularly nourishing food for thought—above all at a time when music in schools in under such threat from philistine governments who are seemingly content (whether through dogma-driven edict or bone-headed stupidity) to sacrifice the creative arts as school subjects. Dickinson saw the potential fault-lines years before this, and Rainbow before him. It’s an engrossing and properly provocative chapter. Writing about Wifrid Mellers on his 90th birthday finds Dickinson talking about rather a kindred spirit: Mellers had an extraordinarily wide range of interests, from Couperin to Bob Dylan, and there’s also a brief but useful discussion of Mellers the composer. Dickinson singles out Mellers’ Resurrection Canticle (1968), a setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins for 16 unaccompanied voices which certainly sounds like a work well worth reviving, as well as Mellers’ uncompromising but striking organ cycle Opus Alchymicum (1972). Along with composers and writers, Dickinson also includes a touching memoir of David Munrow’s short but brilliant career, from the pre-history of the Early Music Consort in Cambridge to an entertaining anecdote about their collaboration on the cult sci-fi fantasy film Zardoz (1974, its cast including Sean Connery, Charlotte Rampling and John Alderton).
“Literary Connections” begins with a survey of “Emily Dickinson and Composers” which delves deep into the recesses of the repertoire. After some illuminating comments on Copland’s Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, the subsequent discussion includes music by Vincent Persichetti, Arthur Farwell, Otto Luening, George Perle and Leon Kirchner. This is followed by a chapter on “T.S. Eliot, Stravinsky, Britten and Rawsthorne” which is most valuable for its stirring and lucidly argued defense of Britten’s last two Canticles (The Journey of the Magi and The Death of Saint Narcissus). There’s an engrossing (and typically warm-hearted) tribute to the poet Ruth Pitter (1897–1992)—admired by the likes of Yeats, Belloc, C.S. Lewis and Larkin. Her work, beautifully crafted and deeply informed by her Christian faith, deserves to be far better known than it is. Dickinson’s appreciation had me seeking out copies of some of her poems, and I have to say it was well worth the effort. As a composer of numerous vocal works (on poets including Auden, Dylan Thomas, Larkin, Hopkins, and Stevie Smith) it’s fascinating to read Dickinson’s account of his meetings with Auden (friendly and productive) which are an essential companion for anybody interested in Dickinson’s Four W.H. Auden Songs, one of his outstanding early works (from 1956). A chapter about Dickinson’s encounters with Philip Larkin includes a reminder that Leonard Bernstein was among the poet’s warmest admirers. The reaction of Kingsley Amis when he heard that Dickinson was planning Larkin’s Jazz as a tribute to the poet is blunt but hilarious (“it is hard to think of a tribute of a kind less likely to have been welcomed by its recipient”) as is the description of the subsequent meeting between Dickinson and Amis.
The section of Words and Music devoted to “Peter Dickinson on his Own Music” includes valuable comments on broad issues such as the effect of national origins on a composer, as well as very specific ones on Dickinson’s organ music (including the marvelous Organ Concerto written for Simon Preston in 1971). Dickinson’s own association with the organ was a close one, and as a student he was Organ Scholar at Queens’ College, Cambridge. After this comes “Interviews and a Memoir,” starting with an imaginary conversation with Erik Satie which is witty and delightfully unhinged. A real interview between Meriel and Peter Dickinson with Richard Baker includes some recollections of their innovative concert programs, and some endearing self-deprecation from Dickinson: when asked whether being an educator or an entertainer is more important to him, he replies: ‘It’s marvelous to do both. The best teachers have been able to keep people’s attention—this goes for talking about anything or working in any medium. If you have a sense of humor, it creeps into things. I’m not taken as seriously as I might be!’ I hope that’s not quite true: Dickinson has the liveliest sense of humor, but that shouldn’t stop him being taken entirely seriously as a composer and performer—and this book certainly does that, greatly helped by Stephen Banfield’s eloquent and sympathetic introduction. I’ve spent several months with Words and Music, returned to a number of chapters more than once, and always feel refreshed after delving into it. I commend it very warmly to anyone who aspires to have the range of Dickinson’s interests, or who simply want to know more about what has motivated and inspired this remarkable composer.
