A LECTURE GIVEN BY HENRY WOOD. NOTTINGHAM, 1901

Syllabus and transcription of the surviving pages

Section I. John Sebastian Bach: his ancestry. – Eisenach in Saxony (his birthplace), March 23, 1685. – Martin Luther living there two centuries before Bach. – His hymn and chorales as forerunners of Bach's music. – The great Lords of Thuringia pawning villages and other goods. – Ambrosius (his father) the Viol-player. – Eisenach described. – Death of his mother. – Goes to his brother at Ohrdruf. – Saxony as it was but sixty years ago. – The swineherd the last descendent of Luther. – Luther's metal jug. – The fulsomeness of biographers.

Music – Harpsichord

Section II. Sebastian steals a book. – Sets out to earn his living at Luneberg. – Visits Hamburg and hears Reinken. – Becomes organist at Arnstadt. – Walks fifty miles to Lubeck to hear Buxtehude and outstays his leave. – Receives a citation on his return. – His stubbornness. – His pretty cousin Maria Barbera [sic]. – Her daring. – Sebastian reprimanded. – Is appointed to Mulhausen. – His marriage. – Borrows a cart. – Organist at Weimar for nine years. – Is Master of the Band to the Prince of Cothen. – Has a pleasant time. – Travels with the Prince. – Death and burial of his wife during his absence.

Music – Viol da Gamba and Harpsichord.

Section III. Bach still at Cothen with his family of four children. – His Weisenfels friends. – Anna Magdalena, daughter of the Duke's Trumpeter, whom he marries. – She is twenty-one years old; he thirty-six. – After six years of office leaves Cothen. – Is installed as Cantor of Leipzig. – The busy city. – The old Rector Ernesti, 70 years old, prefers the old ways. – Bach finds the authorities ‘strange folk’. – His arduous duties. – The music-work on Sundays. – His 300 cantatas. – ‘The only Crab’.

Music – The Lute

Section IV. Bach's position at Leipzig. – Contentiousness of the officials. – His lack of humbleness. – The new Rector Gesner a friend of Bach. – Bad state of the St Thomas School. – The rebuilding. – Ten years of troubles. – House hired for Bach. – Gesner resigns.

THE PREFACE

IN 1944 Boosey & Hawkes published Henry Wood's edition of Brandenburg Concerto No. 3. The preface is his longest surviving piece of writing on the repertoire and not only reveals his motivation, some degree of his editorial process, and the influences on his interpretation, but hints at a much bigger venture: a complete edition of all the Brandenburg Concertos.

IN his lifetime Bach witnessed the reputations of his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philipp Emmanuel begin to supersede his own. This was to be expected: eighteenth-century culture favoured the latest musical trends over the preservation of past masterworks. Johann Sebastian could hardly have imagined that history would immortalise him simply as Bach. Nor could he have envisaged that devotees in London would play such a large part in the rediscovery and popularisation of his music.

The story of Bach's revival in England is not one of a sudden mass awakening to the genius of the composer, but rather a stop-start series of experiments and personal revelations. Take the year 1885. The 200th anniversary of Bach's birth offered the opportunity to focus on the composer, but Bach was still a historical curiosity, as the journalist Henry Sutherland Edwards demonstrates:

Positioning the character of Bach's compositions earlier than those of Shakespeare was a mark of antiquarianism, and despite the emerging recognition that ‘to the composers of Europe Bach is probably better known than Handel’, Handel was unsurprisingly presented as the more dominant figure of these ‘archaic’ masters:

Henry Wood's live performances were broadcast widely on the BBC from 1927, but his recorded legacy is relatively modest – particularly in comparison to those of his contemporaries such as Beecham, Mengelberg, or Weingartner. Wood's Bach discography (p. 295) shows that he recorded only two of the Brandenburg Concertos (Nos. 3 and 6), but through them many of his interpretative priorities can be identified. The recording of string-only Brandenburg concertos was probably a judicious decision to ensure the most successful and balanced studio performances in the early years of recording techniques. However, in spite of this, Wood's biographer Arthur Jacobs has insisted that in these two concertos, ‘his Bach was properly represented’. Both concertos were recorded with the British Symphony Orchestra (rather than the BBCSO) and released on the Columbia label. Concerto No. 6 was recorded on 12 June 1930 and on its release was the first complete commercial recording of the work; No. 3 followed on 16 June 1932.

Unlike his contemporaries such as Alfred Cortot or Adolf Busch, Wood did not initially set out to record a full set of the concertos, although he did make plans later for such a project on the Decca label. In a letter dated 2 April 1935 he announced his intentions to Gerald Beadle of the BBC, noting that he was ‘about to sign a very important contract with a well-known Recording Co. for a number of years, and make a fine series of classical works starting with the six Brandenburg Concertos of Bach’. In the event, although his contract with Decca went ahead, the Brandenburg project did not. The company eventually recorded the Brandenburg Concertos with Boyd Neel in 1945, but Wood's project may also have been curtailed by the 1935 Columbia release of a complete set of the concertos by Adolf Busch. Whether or not Wood had pitched his recording plan with the bespoke British Symphony Orchestra, it was the BBCSO with whom he was associated after 1930, and such live interpretations were not deemed as fashionable as those by Neel or Busch.

A comparison of Wood's British Symphony Orchestra recordings with those of contemporary conductors Eugene Goossens, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Alfred Cortot, Adolf Busch, Alois Melichar, and Paul Schmitz assists in fully assessing his approach.

ON 12 November 1930 Wood conducted a BBC Symphony Concert at Queen's Hall in which he presented all six Brandenburg Concertos, a feat that represents the zenith of his promotion of Bach:

Wood's success was acknowledged by the public and critics alike, the latter noting that ‘there was hardly anyone at Queen's Hall who did not stay spellbound all the time’, and ‘it is a long time since one has seen the press emerge from a concert hall at the close of a performance in so solid a body’. 1930 saw reinstated full cycles of the Brandenburg Concertos throughout the Proms season, and Wood's premiere recording of Brandenburg Concerto No. 6. However, 1930 also marked the beginning of a closer, but not exclusive, association with the BBCSO and a downturn in the reception of Wood's endeavours on behalf of the composer. The impact of his festival performances of the Passions and Mass in B minor had faded, so any potential legacy in Bach interpretation would lie in orchestral works.

Rosa Newmarch observed that a ‘Bach Cult’ with Wood at its centre had been growing since the mid-1920s,but throughout the 1930s others spoke of a tipping point with the public going ‘slightly mad in its devotion to Bach’. Some doubted the sincerity, the ‘genuineness and permanency’, of the movement, describing ‘cyclic ebullitions of enthusiasm more or less artificial, such as we are now witnessing on the special Bach nights at the “Proms”‘. Others challenged the quality of the repertoire, suggesting that the “works of Bach that fill Queen's Hall do not, in the main, represent him at his best’ and citing the Brandenburg Concertos as ‘examples of superficial Bach’. Expressing his scepticism towards the ‘discrimination’ of the Promenaders in 1939, Gordon Stubbs, of the Manchester University Music Department, noted a number of issues that he felt questioned the judgement of Bach audiences.

ON 26 April 1946, nearly two years after his death, Sir Henry Wood's ashes were laid to rest in the Musicians’ Chapel of St Sepulchre's, London. Musicians, colleagues, and friends – along with TV cameras – crowded the hushed church to say a final farewell. ‘Not only did he serve his day and generation: he created an institution’, eulogised Lord Jowitt, ‘and in creating it he became an institution himself.’ It was a day for dedications. Walton's setting of the Poet Laureate John Masefield's ode to Wood, Where Does the Uttered Music Go? (sometimes titled Sir Henry Wood), was premiered by the BBC Singers and Chorus, and Vaughan Williams's Serenade to Music, written for Wood's Jubilee, was performed by many of the original soloists. By all accounts it was a moving and beautiful service, but it did not include any Bach. Try as you might, you don't get to choose your legacy. Wood wanted to be remembered for more than being the ‘Conductor of the Proms’, but that is what he got – however elegantly put and well-deserved it was.

However, as part of the proceedings a new stained-glass window was unveiled above where Wood's ashes lay – and Bach is there in its jewelled light. Designed by Gerald E.R. Smith in collaboration with Frank O. Salisbury (who had painted Wood's portrait in 1943), the window (shown in Plate 50) was dedicated to Wood in the name of ‘Musicians and Friends of Music’, and the images reveal his lifelong activities in the arts.

The writer and broadcaster Alec Robertson wrote a description of the window and its symbolic meanings for the order of service. Beginning with the top pane, the luminous figure of Christ on the cross, he noted:

THE increasing number of Bach arrangements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was indicative of a growing interest in ‘old music’ presented in a modern style. The popularity of arrangements equally attracted value judgements on their authenticity and led to their categorisation as a separate genre, distinct from interpretations of Bach's original instrumentation. An anonymous letter to the Philharmonic Society describes a ‘Bach–Wood Suite’ as ‘frankly an arrangement’ which ‘must be accepted as such’, in effect applying different standards and defending Wood from criticism that might otherwise be levelled at his treatment of ‘original’ Bach. The terminology associated with a discussion of Wood's orchestral Bach is potentially problematic. The words ‘transcription’, ‘arrangement’, ‘orchestration’, ‘adaptation’, ‘version’, and ‘scoring’, are all used interchangeably by Wood, and by contemporary commentators and critics. It begs the question as to whether the labels matter. There is overlap in their meaning, but the choice of term usually implies some specific sense of the artistic process. ‘Orchestration’, ‘adaptation’, and ‘version’ are useful descriptors, but ‘transcription’ and ‘arrangement’ present more loaded meanings with regard to a third-party involvement – and also the potential artistic judgement on the final work. Contemporary discussion does not necessarily afford clarity. In his 1935 article ‘Arrangements and Transcriptions’, Evlyn Howard-Jones states: ‘Arrangements I would call a playing of the notes in another medium, transcriptions a recreation or making-over with regard to their imaginative and creative content.’ With regard to Wood, he cites ‘the transcriptions of the Organ Preludes and Fugues by Elgar, “Klenovsky,” etc., for the Orchestra’ in the same category as the piano transcriptions, stating that they are ‘no more justifiable … to those who would always rather hear an original’. His justification is that ‘any performance of a Bach Clavier work on the modern piano is practically a transcription, for although the notes remain the execution demands a definite interpretation of each and every sound in terms of an instrument of which Bach was innocent’.

SIR Henry Wood was not a man of modest gestures. But in 1938, fifty years after he had made his conducting debut, the 69-year-old quietly deposited his full collection of scores and orchestral parts at the Royal Academy of Music in London. The reason for the cloak-and-dagger approach? He was paranoid about anyone jumping to the conclusion that he was about to retire. Not only was it a storage solution for Wood, but for a small fee, the music could be made available to other conductors or students. The proceeds would go to the Henry Wood Fund to assist needy students. This was typical of Wood: he had noticed students appearing self-conscious on stage because of ‘a poor pair of shoes or the need of a new bow or strings’ and recognised the difference his fund could make.

Change came to this arrangement after Wood's death in 1944. What I will henceforth refer to as the ‘Wood Archive’, held at the Royal Academy of Music, London, was withdrawn from general access in order to preserve his markings. Nothing was hidden, but the huge number of scores were not fully catalogued on the modern library system. When I requested to look at some of Wood's marked-up scores of Bach's works, I didn't realise the full extent of what I would find.

Wood's thirst for new music, whether newly composed or newly discovered, was insatiable. He had boundless energy for producing arrangements, preparing orchestral parts and vocal scores, and revisiting old scores. But only when you actually start to turn the pages do you begin to understand the scale of his industry. The rows and rows of boxes in the archive contain scores and parts heavily annotated in his hand – they constitute a lifetime dedicated to transmitting what was then still largely unknown music to the widest possible audience.

The arboreous pairing of Wood and Bach is not one that has attracted comment in recent times. Until I completed this research, Wood's proper place in the history of Bach reception could not have been assumed. The extent of his interaction with the composer simply wasn't known. Few Bach scores had been opened; a couple had been used for performance in the days when they could be loaned out; but most had been untouched since Wood last turned the pages.