The time for surfing is upon us. I refer to the sea, not the internet, and the activity I am thinking about is now called body-surfing.  You don’t stand up, where you can wait in the water for some considerable time for a big wave which may or may not come, and if you miss it then you have to go on waiting. I prefer to enjoy many waves in a big surf nearer the shore, lying down with the sea lashing around you. I have only once in my life worn a wetsuit and that was at the beginning of this month, kayaking off the Pembrokeshire coast at Fishguard.   We capsized.

Some years ago, a bass member of the Royal Choral Society sadly died from cancer, but he had time to enjoy sponsoring a concert which we gave in Salisbury Cathedral. He had some ideas about programme content, one of which, as a nod to my Cornish upbringing, was for the orchestra to play Arnold Bax’s symphonic poem Tintagel. I shall be near Tintagel next week (in the sea again), and it seems a timely moment to talk about it.

There are some pieces which may not be of the highest quality but which are nevertheless stirring by association or capturing a mood. My Cornish upbringing was enriched by summer holidays going to the north coast and experiencing its ever-changing moods, not forgetting the ever-changing moods of my siblings and parents, 8 of us crammed into our black upright Ford Anglia HXT 479.  Five on the back seat, and in the front my parents with youngest on mother’s knee. There was usually a fight for prime position behind my father’s open window, in the hope that the flow of air would reduce the inevitable feeling of car-sickness as we lurched, gears grinding, around the Cornish lanes. Did one try to get to the top of the hill in 2^nd gear, or wait till the car nearly stalled before a desperate lunge to get into bottom gear (down left and push hard, ignoring the cries of pain coming from the gearbox), with us five in the back, wide-eyed with ‘we-are-doomed’ expressions on our faces?  

Bax’s symphonic poem Tintagel evokes the wild rocky north coast setting for King Arthur’s famous castle, and home of the legends of King Mark, and Tristan and Isolde. Bax was in Cornwall for 6 weeks in the summer of 1917, and his visit to Tintagel immediately inspired him to write this orchestral movement. It is heavily scored for full orchestra, and epic in its depiction of the crashing waves, the great expansive view across the sea and the ruined castle remains on the craggy rocks.  It has a lush melody for violins which Bax says refers to the associated legends. He was in Cornwall and involved in a passionate romance with the pianist Harriet Cohen, to whom he also dedicated the work. One can also imagine that this melody was a love theme for her, if not as explicitly stated as Berlioz’s theme in his Symphonie Fantastique concerning his lover Harriet Smithson. Too many Harriets, maybe.  

Those who know the north coast of Cornwall, and especially the scenery at Tintagel, will be aware of its rugged and dramatic nature, especially in a storm when the huge waves thrash against the rocks. Bax wrote that his work ‘is intended to evoke a tone-picture of the castle-crowned cliff of Tintagel, and more particularly the wide distances of the Atlantic as seen from the cliffs of Cornwall on a sunny, but not windless, summer day’.   He goes on to state that the middle section, with increasing tumult in the sea, arouses memories of the traditional historical legends. Tintagel is a symphonic poem in concept, but not following any specific or detailed ‘programme’. The opening and closing sections are more diatonic (castle and sea), and the extended and more chromatic central section is associated with the legends and historic traditions. 

The opening depicts the ‘windless summer day’, with the brass section representing, as Bax again stated, the ruined castle. I can’t help feeling the general scene rather more, the waves splashing against the rocks, while the sea birds circle around in the woodwind.  The first twenty bars are based on a chord of B major with the keynote held most of the time in the double basses, contra-bassoon and timpani. There is a brief lull before the waves come back with various hints of Wagner – I’ll mention him again later – and Debussy’s La Mer. The second part of the first section then introduces the long violin ‘Harriet’ theme (my title!). There are hints of Ravel and Debussy here too (or was it Rachmaninoff?). It certainly has passion whichever way you consider it.

The music then breaks away and develops in a more complex way – ‘a more restless mood begins to assert itself as though the sea were rising’ (Bax again). There are references from the previous violin melody, and the action speeds up, eventually leading to a great climax before subsiding again to reintroduce the brass music from the opening, and the beginning of the final section.  This eventually settles back into the opening key of B major and there is a powerful return to the earlier long violin theme, reinforced by the four horns in unison. All is not quite done as the music subsides and the short chromatic theme (more a one-bar motif than a theme) from the central section is again quoted one more time at half its previous speed.  The ending is rather unexpected with the opening brass chords crescendoing through just four bars to a climax, followed by a final three bars of B major chords.

Though it pains my Cornish roots to say it, I would not take this work to my desert island.  It is tremendous fun and girds the loins. Perhaps it tries too hard to say what it says, and the orchestration is congested and dense for much of the time, harking back to the 19th century full blended orchestral sound with everything thrown in together. It does not have the transparency of Mahler and the other great orchestrators of the early 20th century such as Stravinsky. One could imagine the outer sections as background music to a blockbuster film from the wild west – ‘big country’, much as I feel its Cornish heart also beats strongly. There are thoughts of the grand moments of Wagner and Bruckner. The opening bars on the B major chord are similar in concept to the opening of Wagner’s Das Rheingold with its long-held E flat major chord. Bax quotes a theme from the first act of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, the Cornish legend.

A ‘not windless summer day?’ One might think he had witnessed a dramatic howling gale, the sea crashing more than splashing. One can be aware of its weaknesses, sometimes seemingly ‘over-the-top’, occasional sea-sickness and then its rather anti-climactical ending, but one can sit back and enjoy it for its drama. The good bits are inspirational and Tintagel has kept its place as Bax’s most popular work. I’m very grateful for having had the chance to conduct it that day in Salisbury Cathedral, and to a ‘local’ the title is evocative.

Here is a rather good performance conducted by British conductor Adrian Leaper with a Spanish orchestra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3lPDkk-8Mk

or you can follow the score with this performance conducted by Vernon ‘Tod’ Handley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erw06L4U6ks

or on Spotify with the Scottish National Orchetsra conducted by David Lloyd Jones
https://open.spotify.com/track/4bjAQljq5vfoB8YUTUC05l?si=LrzkAvu2S0GpmQUvPz-_YA

Sadly no Cornish versions available, but I hope you will enjoy listening to this evocative music!

Richard