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| In memoriam
 Charles Hubert Hastings Parry 1848–1918
by Robin H. Legge
In the musical profession are many joys, many sorrows.
The joys are chiefly those that come to us from the outside, from
other members of the same profession, never mind how rare they may
be: perhaps they are all the dearer and sweeter because of this
very rarity. The sorrows all too often are of ourselves. Hubert
Parry was a joy of my musical life. It seems impossible even now
to believe that never more will one see that cheery, honest, open,
beaming countenance, and ye gods! how rare are these things in our
profession. If only that profession would endeavour to base its
conduct on the example he provided, what worlds away from to –
day! If I were left to myself I would sit and smoke my pipe and
dream of the days that are no more and that can never be again,
because Parry is gone. But though I lay no claim whatever to have
known him well, most certainly I knew him well enough to realise
that, were he here again among us in the flesh, the reward of what
he would have designated a complete waste of time in sitting and
mentally examining him, would have been a hearty punch in the ribs.
For Parry was a doer of deeds, not a talker about them: and so the
influence he exerted, as I think even more through his wonderful
personality than through his music, will survive among a section
of the public which, were it dependent upon a knowledge of his music,
would simply forget him; while for that other section of the public,
the musicians, there is always the suggestion of Dr. Johnson as
to providing the argument, but it was none of his business to provide
also the brains to see it. Even those who in the comparatively long
past led the anti – Parry musical campaign must have realised
that Parry had set out merely to provide the argument, and merry
and merry must have been his laughter in those days when one group
of critics described him as the ‘greatest British composer
since Purcell,’ whilst another group would have none of him.
Of course precisely the same thing will occur to the end of the
chapter. But nevertheless, and with all due deference, we have no
Parry now, even if we have those others who are ready to spend their
lives in arguing about him. Above all things Parry was a man, and
a man of very like passions with the rest of his kind. It has always
seemed to me to be a thousand pities that the world at large –
the English world, I mean – was kept so severely in the dark
in respect of Parry’s manfulness, for I am still, after well
over a third of a century, as firmly convinced as ever that had
this world known more of Parry the man, Parry the musician would,
as such, have occupied a larger place in their esteem: he would
have come more into their lives than was permitted by those who
stood sponsor and, as it were, took him – of all people! –
under their care, and persisted everlastingly upon his musicianship,
his descent, so to say, from Purcell.
 Parry
was precisely the type of man who, had he been freed from this kind
of critical influence – influence thrust upon his work, not
upon him – might easily have become the ‘household word.’
He was a man very much after the English public idea of what a man,
and especially an Englishman, should be. No doubt many sincere music
– lovers hold him in high esteem because he began his musical
career at about ten years of age by playing the accompaniments to
a large quantity of parish anthems, ‘a kind of feeble four
– part harmony exercise,’ and perhaps more because he
graduated Mus. Bac. Oxon. by examination while he was still at Eton.
But all this kind of thing is more or less common to musicians out
of the ordinary rut. As the years passed and cantata after cantata
poured from his generous pen and fertile brain, undoubtedly the
host of Parryites, as we used to call them thirty years or so ago,
waxed more and more numerous. Parry, then, became a veritable centre
of argument, a fact of which it is reasonable to suppose he himself
was completely ignorant. In the smoking – rooms of the various
hotels where the critics in those times did congregate to talk over
the day’s work, anything new by Parry was a fruitful object
of discussion, and very heated the arguments usually were. He came
– he, ye gods! – to be regarded by some as the central
figure of a clique to destroy which was clearly the duty of the
infallible among us, that is the younger brethren. No doubt there
was a mass of prejudice on both sides, the Parryites urging more
than they could support by evidence or their own (not Parry’s)
argument, the others, with equal force and vigour, protesting that
no man born in the purple could possibly be so gifted musically
by the gods as to be a ‘truly great composer.’ Looking
away down the long avenue of time it is pleasant to recall these
‘arguments.’ We were all young then, and no doubt if our
judgement, was it pro or was it con Parry, was at times in error
as undeniably as it was often prejudiced, yet it often emanated
from youngsters of intense sincerity, taking them all in all. Moreover,
Parry himself became something of a god to several to whom his music
bore no kind of message at all. His faculty for putting himself
outside his music when he could be induced to discuss it, or any
particular point in it, endeared him to us all. I remember on the
occasion of the production of a Mahler Symphony at Queen’s
Hall some years ago, when certain sections of the musical Cosmos
were endeavouring to raise Mahler to the dignity of an idol, Parry,
who never lost an opportunity for hearing all that was new, however
much he may have disliked it, broke into a circle of critics who
were eagerly discussing the virtues of Mahler’s music; a lusty
crack in the ribs for one of them, and the remark followed that
‘whatever you fellows may think of this music, at least it
is the music of an ill – conditioned man.’ A burst of
hearty, cheery laughter, and Parry was at Oxford Circus before he
could be captured for further argument. Mahler was ill – conditioned.
It fell to my lot in my earlier career to be brought a great deal
in contact with him, and I knew at once that Parry was right; and
his way of expressing his opinion was delightfully characteristic.
 Now
I firmly believe that had Parry, the man, been permitted, as it were,
to speak more for himself, had his music not been so overpraised by
some and so underrated by others, Parry would have gone to his grave
not the disappointed composer I am told he was in his last years,
but a composer far nearer the ‘household word’ order. As
a fact the present generation can know almost nothing of his music,
for even in the not very remote past several of his more important
works which were produced at one or other of the provincial Festivals
never came to a hearing in London, or if they were heard once here,
suffered the fate of most British music and were never repeated. Metropolitan
choral societies leave his music severely alone. Last year when I
wrote to point out how pianist after pianist ignored native music,
as did teacher after teacher, I received a score of replies inviting
me to name any such music fit for concert purposes. And yet Dannreuther
did not disdain to play in public the early Pianoforte Concerto, and
now that Parry is dead I hear of a forthcoming performance of his
‘Theme and XIX. Variations.’ But what is this? What has
become of the chamber music and of nearly all the choral music? Who
of to – day can be said really to know it? Parry, now that he
is no longer with us, may yet be discovered, or, if you like, re –
discovered. But I maintain that his music need not have passed over
a whole generation, so to speak, had the circumstances been different,
as they might so easily, and, as I think, should most certainly have
been!
Throughout this music, it is not too much to say, breathes every
ounce of the composer’s marvellous vitality and energy. He
might have stood for the personification of energy, and that is
precisely the quality that would have endeared him to the vast majority
of his fellow – countrymen, had they been afforded the opportunity
for discovering it. He loved his fellow – men, and he did all
that he did with might and main. I shall never forget either his
demeanour or his words as he delivered his great speech on the occasion
of the opening of the organ in the Shire Hall at Gloucester, which
he himself had presented at a Three Choirs Meeting in that city,
now many years ago. It was Parry, the Liberal (not politician, but
man), who spoke, and I can recall even now his fiery eloquence,
which convinced me that Parry could have started a riot there, or
in Hyde Park or elsewhere, had he been so disposed. Convinced himself
that all things were not as they should be, the main point of his
speech was that music was too much the prerogative of the well –
to – do, and was not brought sufficiently within the bounds
of possibility of the other classes, to remedy which he had presented
or rebuilt the organ at his own charges. He easily convinced most
of his more thoughtful hearers. It was the man who spoke, and I
repeat that if that same man had ‘spoken’ for himself
more frequently, and not almost invariably through the mouths of
(or pens) of prophets, he would have become to the multitude a vastly
greater power than he was. His fund of fun was never allowed to
make the most of itself. It was a proud boast that he was in the
van of the ‘moderns’ in music in virtue of his having
been the first to make use of a group of motor – horns in a
full score! But how many knew that! On the serious side, how many
folk, other then those directly interested, had, or have even now,
any idea of the fact that he was the very life and soul of the Professional
Classes War Relief Committee? His light seems always to have been
kept under a bushel. Sir Homewood Crawford, writing to The Times
on the day after the funeral at St. Paul’s Cathedral, said
that Parry not only joined the Council but at once accepted the
chairmanship of the Music – in – War – Time Committee.
‘For upwards of four years Sir Hubert Parry gave the Committee
the benefit of his valuable services, presiding over all committee
meetings, and personally investigating and supervising every detail
of the work entrusted to the Committee. When I state,’ continues
Sir Homewood, ‘that the Joint Committee of the British Red
Cross Society and the Order of St. John have left to our Committee
the organization of hospital concerts throughout England and Wales,
it will be readily understood that the task has not been light.
Moreover, the alleviation of distress among hundreds of musicians
has necessarily involved the Committee – and especially their
chairman – in much arduous and anxious work. Sir Hubert Parry
never spared himself: and I owe it to his revered memory to make
known publicly the increased indebtedness under which the musical
profession remains for the never – ending interest taken by
him in its welfare.’
Again the man! It was the man that was foremost in all that Parry
did, in all that Parry was. It is the man that stands out in his
life, whether as footballer or musician, yachtsman or speaker or
writer: it is essentially the man that speaks in his music. Its
bigness of conception, its robustness, its vigour, its humour, tenderness,
gentleness, – it is all the man Parry. Maybe he was potentially
a greater man than musician. At least he was a man first, a very
real man, and a very true Briton. If only it had been allowed to
be known to the multitude in the beginning! But our musical conditions
made it otherwise, and he was a terrible victim of these conditions.
Imagine Parry, ‘the greatest British composer since Purcell,’
wasting his precious time, that belonged to the world, over the
revision of 3,000 examination papers – an appalling thought!
He was born both a gentleman and a musician, and had he been left
to himself and his creative instincts he might have done infinitely
greater things in his art. But, being placed at the head of the
musical profession, Principal of the Royal College of Music, chairman
of anything and everything connected with music and musicians (including
charities and examinations as aforesaid), his art was clearly stifled
in no small measure by the absurd demands of his administrative
position. Between Parry and the mass of the musical profession there
was a huge gap, and he stood miles away from, and outside of, the
musical – commercial questions that interested them. But education
as he saw it, and all its dire responsibilities, sat heavily upon
him in its very worst form, and he felt it his duty to succumb to
it. Now, no artistic spirit could survive the limelight on presidential
chairs. Think of it, Parry and office work of the conventional routine
order – examination papers, all the petty commonplaces of the
clerk at thirty shillings a week or so, which made up the toll of
his daily life! And he was Parry!
And Parry was the ‘greatest British composer since Purcell’!
Indeed he may have been. Yet those who thought of this and who stated
it loudest were precisely those who kept him – not to say us
– from inheriting his kingdom. How, in good sooth, may the
born composer contrive a dozen debts to pay? A composer who counts
is rare enough anywhere, any time. Do not try to use him as a mixture
of university don, cabinet minister, city magnate, useful hack,
or a dozen things besides. A great blow was delivered against English
music when Parry was appointed to succeed Sir George Grove as director
of the R.C.M. It follows, to my mind, that if Parry’s successor
in the post is to be a composer, then he must be a composer who
counts for nothing, one whom we can do without. Parry was half –
paralysed from the beginning of his directorate by its multifarious
duties, and that half – ruined his opportunity for being of
greatest significance to British music. Parry, in spite of all that
he achieved, died a Might – Have – Been!
Musical Times, November 1918
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