Music and Empire in Britain and India

Identity, Internationalism, and Cross-Cultural Communication

Bob van der Linden

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137311641
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Music has been neglected by imperial historians, but this book shows that music is an essential aspect of identity formation and cross-cultural exchange. It explores the ways in which rational, moral, and aesthetic motives underlying the institutionalization of "classical" music converged and diverged in Britain and India from 1880-1940.

1

Cyril Scott: “The Father of Modern British Music” and the Occult

Cyril Scott versus the British music establishment

It is to those who find orthodox religious creeds too illogical or sentimental, and materialism too unsatisfactory and negative, that occult philosophy will prove acceptable, for it renders life vastly more interesting, more intriguing and more romantic. It shows cosmic life to be other than that mechanical “order of things” which the materialist postulates, and it shows personal life as the “adventure magnificent” which does not merely begin with the cradle and end with the grave. Furthermore, it shows the raison d’être for all religions worthy of the name, for cults, movements, philosophies, arts and sciences, their evolution and various phases. It explains the apparently unexplainable without making impossible demands upon faith, advocating reason as the most reliable stepping-stone to knowledge.

(Cyril Scott, An Outline of Modern Occultism, 1935)¹

Cyril Scott showed early musical talent and, in 1891, at the age of 12, his fairly wealthy parents sent him to the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany, where he studied for 18 months and during a second stint from 1895 to 1898. He became known as a member of the so-called Frankfurt Group of five British composers, including Percy Grainger and Roger Quilter (figure 1.1), who “stood apart in outlook and education from the mainstream of the conservative British musical establishment,”² though they were united, not so much by a common musicality, as by a common dislike of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. All of them were interested in pre-Raphaelite art, which often had Orientalist overtones, and the work of William Morris, the spiritual leader of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Scott introduced the others to the work of the Belgian Symbolist and philosopher Maurice Maeterlinck, whose play Palléas et Mélisande (1892) inspired composers throughout Western Europe, among whom were Claude Debussy in 1902, Arnold Schoenberg in 1903, and, indeed, earlier in 1900, Scott himself. Also, he made them familiar with the work of the German poet Stefan George, with whom he had become friends in Frankfurt (he actually translated a volume of George’s poetry into English in 1910 and wrote a book in German on his life and work in 1952). According to J. W. Burrow, George’s world touched, on the one hand, “the esoteric, ineffable mysteries of the French-bred aesthetics of the Symbolist movement in poetry and drama” and, on the other, “the more down-to-earth German world of Ariosophic occultism,”³ being a fusion of Theosophy, including the notion of an ancient Aryan wisdom, and German folklore and mythology.

Figure 1.1 Percy Grainger, Cyril Scott, and Roger Quilter, Harrogate, 1929 (Courtesy of the Percy Grainger Museum, University of Melbourne).

After his return to Britain, Scott established a considerable name for himself as a virtuosic pianist and modernist composer. In particular, his First Piano Sonata (1909), which Grainger ardently performed until the 1950s, was innovative because his attempt to use multimetricism consistently demonstrated “a rhythmic freedom never seen before in any piano sonata.”⁴ Among others, he was admired by his friend George Bernard Shaw and Edward Elgar, who was seen by the national music orthodoxy as the quintessential English composer, although there is still much debate about his “imperialism.”⁵ Generally, Scott became known as “the English Debussy.” His friend Eugene Goossens, the famous conductor and composer, even hailed “this exotic personality and lovable but aloof man,”⁶ “the father of modern British music.” In 1904, Scott signed a contract with Elkin to produce numerous short songs and piano pieces, which were very successful in the emergent mass music market. At the same time, his music was played at the Promenade Concerts (Second Symphony in 1903 and the patriotic Britain’s War March in 1914),⁷ as well as conducted or performed by such celebrities as Thomas Beecham, Goossens, Grainger, Fritz Kreisler, Henry Wood, and, during Scott’s piano tour through the United States in 1920, Leopold Stokowski. As a cosmopolitan composer, Scott was acquainted with and praised by famous contemporary composers like Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Ravel, Igor Stravinsky, and indeed, Debussy, who wrote the following well-known endorsement:

Cyril Scott is one of the rarest artists of the present generation. His rhythmical experiments, his technique, even his style of writing, may at first sight appear strange and disconcerting. Inflexible severity, however, compels him to carry out to the full his particular system of aesthetics, and his only. The music unfolds somewhat after the manner of the Javanese rhapsodies which, instead of being confined within traditional forms, are the outcome of imagination displaying itself in innumerable arabesques; and the incessantly changing aspects of the inner melody are intoxication for the ear—are, in fact, irresistible. All those qualities are more than sufficient to justify confidence in this musician, so exceptionally equipped.

From the very beginning, however, there were recurring hesitant reviews of Scott’s works in the British press, in which he was depicted as an enfant terrible rather than a musical pioneer. To his own frustration, what he called his “trifles” received most attention in Britain, while his serious music was more appreciated in Germany, and was published with Schott. That said, at the time his First Symphony (1899) was premièred in Darmstadt during the South African Boer War period, when the British were very unpopular in Germany, Scott’s fellow student in Frankfurt, Henry Balfour Gardiner, overheard one member of the audience say: “They should play that to the Boers, and then they would run to the Equator!” ⁸ Since the late 1920s, Scott mostly composed larger works. Only a handful of his roughly 215 solo piano pieces and almost 150 songs were written after 1930, a fact that obviously had much to do with the ending of his contract with Elkin. By this time, nonetheless, performing organizations were generally reluctant to program his works, and he almost single-handedly had to bring his music before the public. Though Scott continued composing until his death in 1970, there were few notable performances of his works since the 1940s, and he wrote bitterly about the injustice done to him and his work in his second autobiography, Bone of Contention (1969).

All in all, Scott’s oeuvre cannot be seen simply in disagreement with what was propagated by the British national music establishment. Although, unlike such contemporaries as Grainger, Gustav Holst, and Ralph Vaughan Williams, he was not involved in the English folk song movement, some of his early music did refer to English, Irish, and Scottish folk music: Gentle Maiden (1912) and Irish Suite (1917), both for violin and piano, are only two examples. Also he made several (orchestral) arrangements of folk songs, including the Ballad of Fair Helen of Kirkconnell (1925), Lord Randall (1926), and Early One Morning (1931). As remarked above, his music was regularly performed at official celebrations and praised by Elgar. So why did Scott, “the father of modern British music,” not make it into the modern British music canon? Was he simply not patriotic enough? Was it his commercialism, musical modernism, or all-roundedness as a composer? To begin with, there was his social background. Akin to the Roman Catholic Elgar, he did not belong to the elitist circle of the British music establishment educated at Oxford, Cambridge, the Royal Academy of Music, or the Royal College of Music. Perhaps of some importance also was the fact that he was a northerner, whereas Elgar, Holst, and Vaughan Williams, for example, came from Gloucestershire and Worcestershire. In addition, Scott never strove to belong to any group or institution and largely kept to his own, although throughout his life he stayed in contact with the members of the Frankfurt Group, especially Grainger. Particularly during the last 30 years of his life, when he lived in the English countryside, he did not cosy up to influential people or socialize at the right parties, and only went up to London when he absolutely had to. At the same time, his complaints about the neglect of his work, which he continued until the end of his life, show that he pined for an appreciative audience. Then again, Scott was not much good at selling himself (unlike Grainger, who was a master at it). His outspoken interest in occultism undeniably played a role as well in his overall decline in popularity. Had he been less “otherworldly,” he might have had more drive and ambition to get his work performed.

Scott’s occultist beliefs are difficult to summarize because he was anything but dogmatic and often changed his views. Following a Church of England upbringing, he called himself an agnostic for a few years, but in his early 20s his focus turned variously to Vedanta, Christian Science, spiritualism, and ultimately, occultism. After attending a lecture by Annie Besant in London in 1903, he became interested in Theosophy and, over the years, he read numerous books by Besant, Helena Blavatsky, C. W. Leadbeater, and other Theosophists. In addition, he developed a general fascination for Hindu philosophy and, among others writings, studied books by Swami Vivekananda, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, and Max Müller’s The Sacred Books of the East.⁹ Actually, he became a firm believer in karma (fate as the consequence of previous acts) and reincarnation. In 1914, Scott joined the Theosophical Society, though he always remained critical of any sectarianism within the movement.¹⁰ “Just as psycho-analysis has contributed much to explain the vagaries of Man’s nature,” he argued, “Theosophy has contributed even more to explain Man’s nature itself.”¹¹ As he explained further:

Although the spiritualists are proving to the satisfaction of ever-increasing numbers that a human being does not merely consist of a body but also possesses an immortal soul, the Theosophists, or rather the Leaders of the Society, go further, and, as a result of assiduous clairvoyant investigation, have been enabled to give forth specific knowledge regarding the actual constitution of that soul and its relationship to the body and the higher planes of consciousness.¹²

Over the years, Scott published around 40 books, among which only four are on music, and numerous articles in such disparate fields as occultism, homeopathy, poetry, literary translation, theology, ethics, and music. Most probably he is the only composer who has written two autobiographies, which were published 45 years apart.¹³ His occult writings have numerous references to seers, initiates, and Yogis, who he had met, either through their writings or clairvoyance, or turned to for guidance. Appearing under the pseudonym “His Pupil” was the immensely successful “occult” The Initiate trilogy (1920, 1927, and 1932) and, under his own name, An Outline of Modern Occultism (1935), and its sequel The Greater Awareness (1936). Partly because of the teachings of Besant, Master Koot Hoomi (see later) and his pupil Nelsa Chaplin, and other “enlightened souls,” Scott came to believe that most of humanity lived in a state of unending childishness, with selfishness, jealousy, and vanity as prime motivating forces. He wrote two books on the subject: Childishness: A Study in Adult Conduct (1930) and Man Is My Theme: A Study of National and Individual Conduct (1939). Also, he often complained against the moral repressiveness of British Victorian society. Like many of his contemporaries, he was dissatisfied with the organized Christian church. As he wrote in one of his anonymously published books, The Adept of Galilee (1920):

there is no denying that a large proportion of the clergy can barely be regarded as the epitome of spirituality, seeing they are steeped in bigotry and intolerance, and what we may term a certain pious stupidity, utterly at variance with the teachings of Jesus, or any Initiate, who has, or ever will, grace the physical plane.¹⁴

In congruence with the Theosophical theory that the “spiritual” development of individuals is or can be guided by a secret set of Masters living in Tibet, he presented the idea that Jesus was a Yogi living in the Himalayas. In An Outline of Modern Occultism, then, he wrote how Christ would return among men “in an aeroplane from His retreat in Tibet,” though the “great glory” would only be perceptible “to those...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction
• 1 Cyril Scott: “The Father of Modern British Music” and the Occult
• 2 Percy Grainger: Kipling, Racialism, and All the World’s Folk Music
• 3 John Foulds and Maud MacCarthy: Internationalism, Theosophy, and Indian Music
• 4 Rabindranath Tagore and Arnold Bake: Modernist Aesthetics and Cross-Cultural Communication in Bengali Folk Music
• 5 Sikh Sacred Music: Identity, Aesthetics, and Historical Change
• Coda
• Notes
• Chronology
• Glossary of Indian Terms
• Selected Discography
• Works Cited
• Index