William Alwyn (1905-1985)
Symphonies Nos. 2 and 5 • Lyra Angelica (Harp Concerto)
William Alwyn was born in Northampton on the 7th
November 1905. He studied at the Royal Academy of
Music in London, where, at the age of 21, he was
appointed Professor of Composition, a position which he
held for nearly thirty years. Amongst his works are five
symphonies, concertos for flute, oboe, violin, and harp
and two piano concertos, various descriptive orchestral
pieces, four operas and much chamber, instrumental and
vocal music. In addition to this Alwyn contributed nearly
two hundred scores for the cinema. He began his career in
this medium in 1936, writing music for documentaries. In
1941 he wrote his first feature length score for Penn of
Pennsylvania. Other notable film scores include the
following: Desert Victory, The Way Ahead, The True
Glory, Odd Man Out, The History of Mr Polly, The
Fallen Idol, The Rocking Horse Winner, The Crimson
Pirate, The Million Pound Note, The Winslow Boy, The
Card, and A Night To Remember. In recognition of his
services to the film medium he was made a Fellow of the
British Film Academy, the only composer ever to have
received this honour. His other appointments include
serving as chairman of the Composers’ Guild of Great
Britain, which he had been instrumental in forming, in
1949, 1950 and 1954. He was a Director of the
Mechanical Copyright Protection Society, a Vice-
President of the Society for the Promotion of New Music
(S.P.N.M.) and Director of the Performing Rights
Society. For many years he was one of the panel reading
new scores for the BBC. The conductor Sir John
Barbirolli championed his first four symphonies and the
First Symphony is dedicated to him.
Alwyn spent the last 25 years of his life in
Blythbough, Suffolk, where, in those tranquil
surroundings, he concentrated on two operas, Juan, or
the Libertine and Miss Julie. In addition to chamber and
vocal music, he composed his last major orchestral
works there, the Concerto Grosso No. 3, commissioned
as a tribute to Sir Henry Wood on the centenary of his
birth in 1964 and first performed at the London
Promenade Concerts that year by the BBC Symphony
Orchestra conducted by the composer, the Sinfonietta
for String Orchestra in 1970 and the Symphony No. 5
‘Hydriotaphia’ during 1972-73. When not writing
music he spent his time painting and writing poetry and
an autobiography entitled Winged Chariot. He died on
the 11th September 1985 after various illnesses just two
months before his eightieth birthday.
Andrew Knowles
Symphony No. 2, the second of my cycle of four
symphonies, was in complete contrast to No. 1. All
vestige of classical form was abandoned. I conceived it
in one continuous movement only broken by a
momentary pause before Part II where the music
plunges into a tumultuous Allegro in contrast to the
quietly ecstatic section that preceded it. The symphony
concentrates on the development of a single main motif,
accompanied by ominous triplet interjections on the
timpani, building to a huge climax which finally
resolves into a tranquil, almost modal pianissimo coda. I
wish I could say that the work (first performed in 1953)
was an immediate success but, although warmly
received by the audience, it met with considerable
opposition from the critics who were all at sea when
faced by my symphonic innovations, neither
understanding my harmonic frankness (steadfast
adherence to the basic essentials of tonality and melody)
or the new freedom of my formal design ... [the Second
Symphony] is my favourite of the five.
(from Winged Chariot: An Essay in Autobiography
by William Alwyn)
Symphony No. 5 was commissioned by the Arts Council
for the 1973 Norfolk and Norwich Triennial Festival. A
gap of fourteen years had elapsed since the composition
of my fourth symphony; a period almost totally
occupied in the composition of my two operas, Juan, or
the Libertine and Miss Julie. During that time my
attitude to symphonic writing had radically changed.
My aim now was to compress the inordinate length of
the late-romantic four-movement symphony into a short
one-movement work while still preserving the dramatic
contrasts of the traditional symphonic form but
confining it to four brief sections.
This fifth symphony is dedicated, appropriately ‘to
the immortal memory of Sir Thomas Browne (1605-
82)’, physician, philosopher, botanist and archaeologist,
Norwich’s most famous citizen, whose great elegy on
death was first published under the title of
Hydriotaphia: Urn Burial, or a Discourse of the
Sepulchral Urns lately found in Norfolk (now more
generally known by its sub-title: Urn Burial), and whose
own mortal remains lie buried in the magnificent church
of St Peter Mancroft in the heart of the city.
Although each section is headed by a quotation
from the book, the symphony is not intended as
‘programme music’; Browne’s wonderful prose sets the
mood of each section and is an expression of my
personal indebtedness to a great man whose writings
have been a life-long source of solace and inspiration.
The upward-thrusting three-note figure of the
opening Allegro on which the entire symphony is based
can immediately be linked with the quotation: ‘Life is a
pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.’
After a momentary silence, the second section is
introduced by the sinister sound of tubular bells, muted
string harmonics and an insistent reiterated harp note:
‘But these are sad and sepulchral pitchers, which have
no joyful voices; silently expressing old mortality, the
ruins of forgotten time.’ The close of this section sinks
to a whisper of sound—a high trill on the solo violin,
brutally interrupted as the music plunges into a brief
scherzo section: ‘Simplicity flies away, and iniquity
comes at long strides upon us.’ This resolves into a
return of the initial crescendo, the three-note figure of
the opening section. Then the distant tolling of tubular
bells (pianissimo) initiates the solemn tread of a funeral
march based on a final majestic quotation: ‘Man is a
noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the
grave.’ A long and expressive melody builds to a
fortissimo climax (maestoso). As the climax fades, the
motto theme is heard for the last time, and the symphony
sinks to rest in a mood of serenity, only disturbed at the
last by the dissonant accent of muted horns.
‘Lyra Angelica’ (Angel’s Songs) was inspired by
my intense love of the seventeenth-century English
metaphysical poets, George Herbert, Richard Crashaw,
Henry Vaughan, John Donne and Thomas Traherne, of
whom Giles Fletcher is probably the least known today,
although his masterpiece, the epic poem Christ’s
Victorie and Triumph (1610), was the direct inspiration
of Milton’s Paradise Lost. My Concerto for harp and
strings is a cycle of four elegiac movements, each
illustrating a quotation from Fletcher’s text:
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1. (Adagio) ‘I looke for angel’s songs, and
hear him crie.’
2. (Adagio, ma non troppo) ‘Ah! Who was He
such pretious perils found?’
3. (Moderato) ‘And yet, how can I let Thee
singing goe,
When men incens’d with hate Thy death
foreset?’
4. (Allegro giubiloso-Andante con moto)
‘How can such joy as this want words
to speake?’
In my interpretation of these lines I have tried to
capture in musical terms the sensuous imagery and
mystical fervour of the poem as a whole. The concerto is
of symphonic proportions but free and harpsodic in
style. A detailed analysis of its complex construction in
this case is inappropriate as it might tend to distract the
listener from the rapt mood I have tried to sustain by
interweaving the solo harp and strings into a continuous
web of luminous sound.
William Alwyn
Reprinted/reproduced with permission of
the William Alwyn Foundation and
the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library.