Ernest Tomlinson’s Life in Music

1964 was destined to be a most challenging and busy year Guild of Great time on the BBC for British composers. He was not just banging his colleagues in the music business. Fortunately for ET the secretary of the Guild, Topsy Levan*, was very efficient and knowledgeable. Her frequent letters to him kept him on track with what he had to deal with, and she became a firm

Apart from the preparation of a press campaign to highlight the situation, ET was also expected to make speeches at visited the UK. It was decided that the Guild should honour his visit by inviting him to a party. ET had already met Boulez. He wrote to a colleague, “I met the great man last night at a party given by Dr. Kalmus. All very interesting, though I suspect I was the only one there who regards counting up to twelve quite irrelevant to writing music. He had a wonderful score printed in black, green and red. As I am colour-blind anyway that didn’t help either!”

Boulez was staying (rather appropriately) at the Hotel Normandie in Knightsbridge, so ET wrote there inviting him to “a most informal affair, just a gathering of composers and friends, who will look forward very much to the opportunity of meeting you.” The party went off well. Boulez had become notorious for his powerful insistence on his modern music, particularly an orchestral work, Le Marteau Sans Maitre (The Hammer Without a Master), so he was expected to be a grim, humourless man. In fact he was very sociable and amusing, as well as being a brilliant conductor of his own and other music.

Wrestling with Guild matters made composition somewhat difficult. Various publisher letters at the time making requests for scores reflect that. From Boosey & Hawkes, “...it is just a month since I wrote inquiring how you were proceeding with the new score of the Air from the Georgian Miniatures…” From Francis, Day & Hunter, “...could you check whether you have ever had Assignments in respect of Blithe and Gay, Tinkling Tune and Jokers Wild…” And from Weinberger, “...we have not heard from you for a very long time and once again you are not represented in a session. I suppose you are very busy but perhaps you could spare the time and look in so that we can at least discuss some future contributions by you.”

One musical assignment that did get done at this time was from Charles Mackerras who phoned to ask a favour. Mackerras had a great respect for ET’s compositional and arranging skills and, due to his own increasingly busy conducting schedule, had got himself into a bit of a fix. He was no mean arranger himself and had agreed to arrange a number of folk songs for a forthcoming LP commissioned by EMI. He had only managed to finish about six and the sessions were fast approaching. The choir was from Hendon Grammar School and, naturally, they needed copies to rehearse with urgently. Could Ernest possibly see his way to arranging the remaining songs, or recommend someone else who could? There were to be two soloists as well, Elizabeth Harwood and Owen Brannigan, and the songs were to be accompanied by the Pro Arte Orchestra conducted by Charles himself. ET readily agreed as he loved arranging for voices, and it was a welcome relief from Guild matters. A weekend visit north was taken in order to attend the party commemorating the 40th anniversary of the founding of the Rossendale Male Voice Choir by his father Fred Tomlinson. March 14th happened also to be our younger sister Linda’s birthday, a date she shared with her Grandad Lancaster, so the weekend was one of various celebrations. Our second-hand Ford Zephyr had just been revamped with a new engine and re-spray and, as the new M6 had cut several hours from the journey, a weekend away didn’t seem quite such a big undertaking.

On returning from Lancashire Guild commitments took over again. A letter from Topsy reminded ET that a visit from some Russian composers had been arranged. “There was a cable in Russian someone there had done a very rough translation, from which they seemed to say that they planned to send two delegates in April; then followed MIRZOYAN MUZIKOVED KUHARSKI and the fact that they were sending material with delegates, who speak only Russian. I don’t know whether those three words mean anything to you but presumably they are the two composers. Anyway, I now pass the whole thing over to you we didn’t appoint a convenor, did you notice, so that nobody is going to feel responsible so nobody will do anything.”

Eventually the arrival date was clarified as April 27th but with no indication as to the length of stay. The Guild was not in a position to pay all the costs for hosting and entertaining the Russian visitors, so various begging letters had to be written including to the Great BritainUSSR Association. It turned out that whilst Mirzoyan was a composer, Kuharsky was a musicologist. An interpreter would be needed for the whole visit and it was expected that at least one work by Mirzoyan would be performed in a concert. Yet another thing to organise. In a letter to a colleague ET wrote, “However, the only eligible piece sent by the composer visitor was accompanied by the wrong set of parts!”

Apart from the songs for the Charles Mackerras LP my father did manage to write some background pieces. Exuberant Youth and Romantic Journey were accepted by Boosey & Hawkes (though he still hadn’t done the requested score of the Air) and a couple of other pieces were completed for different publishers at this time. As ET said in a letter to his brother Jim, “About all I am doing is more and more ‘popular’ stuff, on the principle that if you can’t beatle ‘em, join ‘em!”

In spite of having such a full schedule my father still found time to go into our local primary school and play the piano for a little entertainment at the end of term. Miss Capper, the headmistress, wrote requesting if she could “book our pianist for Monday March 28th at 11 am. I’m sorry if you’re getting tired of these entertainments but we’re not!” Although three of our teachers were adequate pianists for ordinary school assemblies, none of them were up to playing the accompaniment for Parry’s Jerusalem so that was always one of the requests on these occasions. My brother Geoffrey had also just passed the 11+ so discussion was needed as to which Grammar School would be best for him to attend in September. Ann was already at the Girls’ Grammar in Bromley so it was decided that Geoffrey should attend the Boys’ Grammar in the same town and the two could travel together on the train.

At discussions with the BBC back in December it had been agreed that my father could attend a meeting of the New Music Committee. This was responsible for assessing the suitability of new music submitted for possible broadcast. My father had been informed of various composers of note whose works, although recently performed by professional orchestras in this country and abroad, had been rejected as unsuitable. Amongst these was a symphony by John Joubert, rejected for the second time. There had already been several exchanges of letters in the Daily Telegraph and other publications between ET and representatives of the BBC about their lack of support for living composers. It was no surprise when, on March 17th, Gerald Abraham (Assistant Controller of Music) wrote to my father apologising that “an administrative oversight” had meant that he hadn’t yet been invited to attend a meeting of the New Music Committee. “Please don’t think that the BBC has gone back on its word. You will be hearing in good time before the next meeting is called.”

In early April copies of the songs for the forthcoming LP were ready from the copyist and ET picked them up to be delivered to Hendon Grammar School. That the choir was excellent can be deduced from the subsequent recording (last time I looked the songs were available to listen to on Youtube) but they must have worked hard to achieve so good a result in such a short time. The recordings were to take place on April 26th. My father attended three of the rehearsals and ended up singing tenor in the recordings to supplement the lower voices in the choir. Incidentally, he was delighted to receive a complimentary ‘Old Boys’ school tie from the Choir after the recordings! ET arranged nine songs for the LP, several of which are still popular with choirs today. Although originally written with orchestral accompaniments, the pieces were printed with piano parts too. (Early One Morning was recently performed by the Langcliffe Singers in Settle.) A couple of the arrangements did prove too difficult for the Hendon choir to get up to standard, so those were recorded just as solos with ET’s orchestral backings.

April 27th saw the arrival of the Russians, and the next two weeks were rather chaotic. Naturally, they had to be taken to visit Marx’s tomb at Highgate Cemetery, and various concerts and trips were planned for their entertainment. In fact not all the arranged outings were achievable. A big complication was that, bizarrely, the musicologist Kuharsky was to have a new artificial leg fitted whilst in this country. Presumably this was something that had been organised at a higher level. As far as I can ascertain no-one in the Composers’ Guild had any idea about it before he arrived. After a trip to Stratford on Avon to see a Shakespeare play (who, according to the Russians, was actually a very famous Russian playwright whose works had been stolen!) the preorganised trips to Oxford and Cambridge had to be called off. This caused my father more administrative time as he had to write several very apologetic letters to those who had arranged meetings in the two places. But artificial leg replacement had to take precedence, as did attending a rehearsal. The chosen opus by Mirzoyan was to be performed at a reception and concert hosted by the Guild at the Commonwealth Institute on May 8th.

The English String Quartet were booked to play Mirzoyan’s String Quartet, Shostakovich String Quartet No. 7 and, with Thea King, the Clarinet Quintet by Arthur Bliss. Although other composers (including John Gardner, Jo Horovitz and Malcolm Arnold) took on some of the attendance on the Russian visitors, a large part of the procedures naturally fell to ET. As a change from all the ‘official’ events he even brought them to Eynsford for dinner at our house. I’m assuming it was Mirzoyan who was most enthusiastic about our garden swing, even though the new artificial leg for Kuharsky seems to have been satisfactory. Perhaps swings weren’t available in Russia under the communist regime!

The interpreter, Nina, had to accompany the visitors at all times as they spoke only Russian. My father always expressed his concern for interpreters, particularly at mealtimes. As soon as one person spoke an interpretation was necessary, then the reply had to be interpreted and so on. No time to eat! And so many of the events were dinners or lunches.

Before returning home Kuharsky had a discussion interview with John Warrack about the British music scene which was later published in the Sunday Telegraph. He enthused about the opera performances he had seen at Covent Garden, and also applauded the works of Britten, Arnold and John Gardner. Of the latter he said, “His Herrick Cantata made a strong impression, an inspired work. I think you’ve neglected this composer.” My father had heard from Stanford Robinson that on May 11th there was to be a ‘stereo playback’ at the BBC of the February Gala Concert when Sinfonia ‘62 had been performed, and ET was invited to come and listen. Kuharsky must have been included in the visit as he refers to it in his interview. “I must say how impressive I found Ernest Tomlinson’s Sinfonia ‘62.”

The Russian visitors duly left and ET was ‘free’ to get on with other things. Not least of these was to sort out the arrangements for a trip to Bulgaria with composer William Wordsworth scheduled for early June. The trip, an initiative of the British Council, had been mooted for some time. Indeed, an itinerary of the Chamber Music Festival in Plovdiv they were expected to attend had been sent to the Guild in March. However, the British Council seem to have had cold feet about the proposition and decided not to fund it after all. ET wrote to the Bulgarian Legation mid-April to explain that the visit was no longer a possibility. There must have been some further talks between the Council and Bulgarians because by mid-May things were back on track and the visit was to go ahead. First Class flights had been booked for May 30th, returning on June 12th, and all accommodation and meal allowances paid for by the British Council. Both ET and WW were asked to write a report covering the specialist side of their visit and a separate account “dealing with the administrative and other aspects”

ET had been pleased to learn that there would be two broadcasts of the Gala Concert performance of Sinfonia ‘62, on June 26th and again in the morning of June 27th. Part of the concert had been the Seiber/Johnny Dankworth Improvisations for Jazz Band and Symphony Orchestra and it had been decided that ET and Dankworth would be interviewed. Their discussion was to be broadcast in the interval of the concert. This had been supposed to take place earlier in the year but was eventually arranged for May 27th.

June was to be another busy month. The press campaign highlighting BBC neglect began in earnest – forgive the pun! – and my father’s trip to Bulgaria makes, as usual, fascinating reading. Sadly, lack of space means that these and further responses to Sinfonia ‘62 will have to wait for the next instalment of Light & Lyrical!

*Topsy Levan was much involved with music and musicians. ET was always grateful for her input, and when he became Chairman of the LMS in 1966 he asked Topsy to be secretary, a role she fulfilled for a number of years. She remained a member of the society until her death and her daughter (another Hilary) is still supporting us.