CHAPTER 10

An Interlude

LT. COLONEL RODNEY BASHFORD 1917-1997

Since the 1920's one military musician above all others has essayed to carry on Colonel Somerville's developments in wind band music. The late Rodney Bashford was a valued contributor to WINDS and supporter of BASBWE, and in the 1988 Conference we reflected some of his extraordinary legacy to wind music of the second half of the century, in his commissions, his arrangements and compositions and in his writings. Who, apart from the incomparable Percy Grainger, can match Rodney's verbal wit writing about wind band repertoire?

Another subject of discussion, often with Imogen Holst, was Song of the Blacksmith in the Second Suite. 1 have always been of the opinion that most (if not all) conductors 1 have heard are apt to play the thing too fast, mostly I suspect because they can't control their bands at a truly moderate and majestic tempo as indicated. Blacksmiths work steadily and the anvil chords from the brass cannot be given full weight and deliberation at MM 100 or more. About 72 is more like it, otherwise this masterly tonepicture sounds like a quick march with off-the-beat chug-chug accompaniment. It may be fanciful on my part but 1 think Holst knew very well what he was up to for he must have watched many a smithy at work. The conductor is the hammer in the hand of the smith. He strikes the white-hot metal in silence and the hammer then falls onto the anvil creating so to speak the afterclang. Try that at march tempo.

And there is a magnificent coda, when he muses on what might have been had he purchased Holst's house, on sale in 1965 at a mere £13,000 - "far beyond my means as I could then calculate them. Within a few years that sum wouldn't have bought a dog kennel, and of course, I could have afforded such a paltry figure, had 1 known what the future held.

Perhaps it was all for the best. A spirit might have walked and ghostly strains of Saturn remind me of my own approaching senility, sinister Egdon Heath have haunted my dreams and a hammer in a massive blacksmith's brawny arm come crashing down as 1 sailed up to the top B flat."

Sheer poetry, recaptured in an exquisite letter written to The Editor of The Gramophone in December 1996 on "Fashion in Music", worth quoting in toto.

Long ago in callow youth, one's whole world concerned with conforming to current fashion - in the right mode of dress, in the right company and of ultra left-wing political stance - I was conformist to profess a love of (according to the right people) the right music.

My penchant for the music of Elgar and Vaughan Williams went unspoken, for the names of Bartok, Stravinsky and Shostakovich had as often as possible to be on one's lips. By the time I had come to love Bartok, Stravinsky and Shostakovich, one then had to he in favour of Boulez, Berio, Stockhausen and the like. Still later one had, fashionably, to give Adams, Reich and Glass a go. Never dared one admit to an abiding predilection for the English Pastorals, the cowpat school so fashionably despised by the right people. Even George Lloyd qualifies according to them. But old age does so concentrate the mind, believe me. The non-cow-pat brigade may lie on their death-beds seeking solace for their final journey off this mortal coil listening to their sequenzas and plink selon plonks. Much comfort may they derive from them. Me? I shall be wallowing beside a bank of green willow (loveliest of trees) which grows aslant a brook. Or maybe by the wild brooks of Amberley, I shall dream of Ludlow and Teme, wondering if my team is still ploughing, and on my better days perhaps a leavening of Chabrier, Poulenc and Ibert. But, at my end, 1 trust I shall find myself In Gloucestershire, a'babbling of green fields, and ascending alongside that lovely lark with my old friend and Grenadier colleague Hugh Bean's violin in attendance.

A personal letter of February 1997 finds the great man in typical form. The quotable bit on the composers of the nineties runs: "Whatever you write about this early repertory the most important music was that of Walton O'Donnell, not RVW or Holst. The real challenge that woke bands up to their future role was that he supplied what 1 consider quality music in advance of so much formula stuff being churned out today."