Peter Dickinson and ‘Freda’s Blues’

The 2017 Journal contained the score of my piano piece Freda’s Blues, which I wrote as a tribute to the late Lady Berkeley. I gave the first performance at the well-attended Memorial Concert for Freda at the Tabernacle Theatre, Notting Hill, on 11 October 2016. The piece is based on Lennox’s song How Love Came In, which was a particular favourite of Freda’s. In 1955 it was recorded by Pears and Britten, and is still available in various reissues (although the Spotify site says it was composed by Britten!). The most recent recording is the Chandos CD made by James Gilchrist and Anna Tilbrook for the Society in 2008.¹

How Love Came In sets a charming poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674). We don’t know exactly when the song was written – probably in about 1935, though there is no record of it in the Parisian concert listings of the time. It was published in 1936 by Winthrop Rogers, before Chester’s had become Lennox’s principal publisher.

The song is very short – all over in a minute and a half. The melody is distinctly memorable and consists of a rising and falling minor third. The accompaniment has the same rhythm throughout in every bar. The minor third figure comes six times in the voice, actually as a three-bar phrase, and twice in the piano, but only once as the full three bars. It’s very clear in my piece where Lennox’s melody appears: in phrases in slow notes but without harmony, then each time the blues takes over. For my ending I have used Lennox’s final cadence, and throughout the piece my blues sections are dominated by one of his favourite chords – the dominant major thirteenth. In my tribute to Freda Berkeley in the 2017 LBS Journal, I imagined Lennox going to a nightclub with Ravel and hearing blues, then going back to work on his song the next day.

There is now a recording of Freda’s Blues on the Prima Facie label. The sessions were booked at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester last November, but, at a week’s notice a pianist had to re-schedule. Fortunately I was in practice and so I was able to play the three short piano pieces which are at the end of the disc.²

The full contents of the CD are: Sonatina for recorder and piano (1956), Lullaby for clarinet and piano (1967/82), Translations for recorder, gamba and harpsichord (1971), Threnody for cello and piano (1956), Four Duos for flute and cello (1962), Fantasy for clarinet and piano (1956), Sonatina for solo bassoon (1966), Waltz for Elliott Schwartz for piano (2016), Freda’s Blues for piano (2016), and Lullaby from ‘The Unicorns’ for piano (1967/2016). Three of these pieces were written when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge – a long time ago. I first met Lennox probably in later 1956, and my Fantasy for clarinet and piano, which was written under his spell, shows the influence of the lyrical interludes in the finale of his Piano Sonata. I had been playing his music since my schooldays – and struggling with the demands of that Piano Sonata.

Do other Berkeley pupils show the influence of his sound? This is a separate subject worthy of investigation. It should never be assumed that all influences in this period of British music come from Britten, or Tippett. I have found the Berkeley sound in some of Nicholas Maw, in the lyrical and religious qualities of John Tavener, and in the non-serial pieces and film music of Richard Rodney Bennett.

When I was invited by the Swiss-British Society to give some lectures in Switzerland in May 1994 my subject was Lennox Berkeley and his Pupils – Nicholas Maw, Richard Rodney Bennett, John Tavener, Michael Berkeley and Peter Dickinson. I gave my illustrated lecture three times – in Basel, Zurich and Berne. The illustrations I chose were short recorded extracts or piano pieces – Berkeley Serenade for Strings (1st movement), and Preludes for piano 1, 4, 5, 6; Maw Scenes and Arias, and Odyssey; Bennett A Week of Birthdays No. 1, Tango after Syrinx (both for piano), Concerto for Stan Getz; Tavener The Whale, Mandoodles for a Young Pianist, The Protecting Veil; Michael Berkeley Strange Meeting for piano, Clarinet Concerto; Dickinson, Concerto Rag for piano, Piano Concerto.