Lennox Berkeley celebration Merton College Oxford 2019
A celebration of Lennox Berkeley’s years at Merton College in the Twenties with a talk by Selina Hastings, an address by his biographer Tony Scotland and an Evensong of his music.
At the kind invitation of the Director of Music at Merton, Benjamin Nicholas, the Lennox Berkeley Society held a study day in the College on 2 March 2019. The tone was set by Petroc Trelawny, president of the Society, who chaired the AGM in the T. S. Eliot Theatre with engaging brio.
The Chairman of the Society, Adam Pounds, reviewed the events and achievements of the year and thanked those responsible. In a passionate address he spoke of the plight of music education in state schools which was likely to have an impact on all forms of music-making, both amateur and professional. As a practising composer, performer and conductor himself, he said that music should be placed firmly back in the state education curriculum, and as a former pupil of Berkeley, he said that young performers should be encouraged to take an interest in Berkeley’s music.
He spoke of the Society’s collaboration with Chester Music on the re-publication of some of the Berkeley scores. From his experience as a music copyist at the BBC he knew that dyeline and ink reproductions soon deteriorated and he applauded Chester’s use of new computerised scores which would be of great benefit to orchestral musicians.
The guest lecturer was the writer Selina Hastings, author of a number of classic biographies including one of Evelyn Waugh, whose Brideshead Revisited has become one of the most famous fictional portrayals of life at Oxford. Selina gave a brilliant, revealing and funny talk about Berkeley and his Oxford contemporaries, which is reprinted elsewhere in the Journal.
After tea in the Eliot Theatre, kindly provided by the College, members of the Society and friends walked through the Fellows’ Garden in the spring sunshine, feeling something of the peace and quiet of Lennox’s own time there a hundred years earlier.
In the Chapel, Petroc introduced Iain Simcock, formerly organist of Westminster Cathedral, who gave a virtuoso recital on the new Dobson organ. He played Bach’s double-pedal chorale prelude Aus tiefer Not (BWV 686), and Berkeley’s dazzling Three Pieces for Organ. Ben Nicholas, the College’s own organist, then played ‘Improvisation’ from Three Pieces for Organ by Berkeley’s teacher, Nadia Boulanger. This led straight into Choral Evensong, conducted by the Chaplain, the Rev. Canon Dr Simon Jones, who intoned Responses by Matthew Martin. Ben directed the College Choir in Berkeley’s Chichester Canticles, his anthem, The Lord Is My Shepherd, and Stravinsky’s settings of the Ave Maria and Pater noster. It was a special privilege to hear Berkeley’s sacred music in its proper liturgical setting – and sung so wonderfully well.
Following the Anthem, I gave a short address about Berkeley and the Christian faith he shared with his Paris friends, the Orthodox Stravinsky and the Catholic Poulenc (this too is reprinted in this current Journal), and the service ended with Merton’s senior organ scholar, Alex Little, playing Maurice Besly’s arrangement of the finale of Stravinsky’s ballet suite, L’oiseau de feu.
This moving and beautiful service was a fitting climax to an unforgettable Merton Day, provided so generously by the Warden, the Chaplain, the Director of Music and the College Events Team.