The ''Overture to a Picaresque Comedy'' is a

concert overture Overture (from French ''ouverture'', "opening") in music was originally the instrumental introduction to a ballet, opera, or oratorio in the 17th century. During the early Romantic era, composers such as Beethoven and Mendelssohn composed overt ...

composed by

Arnold Bax Sir Arnold Edward Trevor Bax, (8 November 1883 – 3 October 1953) was an English composer, poet, and author. His prolific output includes songs, choral music, chamber pieces, and solo piano works, but he is best known for his orchestral musi ...

in 1930. It was premiered by the Hallé Orchestra conducted by the dedicatee, Sir Hamilton Harty, in November 1931. The work is untypical of its composer, who was not usually associated with comedy in music.

Background

Bax was generally associated with music that the 1955 reference work ''

The Record Guide ''The Record Guide'' was an English reference work that listed, described, and evaluated gramophone recordings of classical music in the 1950s. It was a precursor to modern guides such as ''The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music''. Publi ...

'' called "intrinsically noble, humane, and capable of a certain melancholy grandeur". In his youth, Bax had been greatly taken with the works of

Richard Strauss Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wag ...

, before his enthusiasm was diverted to a fascination with Celtic culture. When Sir Hamilton Harty approached him in 1930 to write a short overture for the Hallé Orchestra , Bax promised him "Straussian pastiche", and produced what the composer's biographer, Lewis Foreman calls "this memorable and high-spirited score complete with lapses into waltz time."Foreman, Lewis (1987). Notes to Chandos CD 8494
OCLC 705060287
/ref> The word "picaresque" is defined by the

Oxford English Dictionary The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a com ...

as designating "a genre of narrative fiction which deals episodically with the adventures of an individual, usually a roguish and dishonest but attractive hero". Bax wrote, "This overture does not pretend to be the prelude to any particular play. It is simply a piece of music associated with some character as d'Artagnan or Casanova." Foreman comments, "From the early appearance of the theme on tuba and, towards the end, on a drunken bassoon, we may deduce that he had a certain

Falstaff Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare and is eulogised in a fourth. His significance as a fully developed character is primarily formed in the plays '' Henry IV, Part 1'' and '' Part 2'', w ...

ian weight."

Performance and reception

The score is dated 13 October 1930; the premiere was given by Harty – the dedicatee – and the Hallé on 19 November 1931. The critic

Neville Cardus Sir John Frederick Neville Cardus, CBE (2 April 188828 February 1975) was an English writer and critic. From an impoverished home background, and mainly self-educated, he became ''The Manchester Guardian''s cricket correspondent in 1919 and it ...

thought the work so appealing that to live up to the overture the putative comedy would have to be "written by Hofmannsthal and

Shaw Shaw may refer to: Places Australia *Shaw, Queensland Canada *Shaw Street, a street in Toronto England *Shaw, Berkshire, a village *Shaw, Greater Manchester, a location in the parish of Shaw and Crompton *Shaw, Swindon, a List of United Kingdom ...

in collaboration. Not often is English music so free and audacious as this, so gay and winning."Cardus, Neville. "The Halle Concert", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 20 November 1931, p, 11 ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'' 's view was that the piece was "gay and impudent, and with that tendency to vulgarity which so easily besets the instinctively refined composer determined to let himself go"."Royal Philharmonic Society", ''The Times'', 2 April 1937, p. 10

Score

The work is scored for strings; woodwind consisting of three flutes with piccolo, two oboes with cor anglais, three clarinets with bass clarinetand two bassoons with contrabassoon; a brass section of four horns, three trumpets, three trombones and tuba; harp; celeste; and a percussion section of four players.Palmer, John
"Arnold Bax: Overture to a Picaresque Comedy, for orchestra"
All Music, retrieved 20 September 2015 In between the bustling themes that begin and close the nine-minute work is a waltz in the promised Straussian pastiche, in which, Cardus commented, Strauss's characters Octavian, the Marschallin and

Till Eulenspiegel Till Eulenspiegel (; nds, Dyl Ulenspegel ) is the protagonist of a German chapbook published in 1515 (a first edition of ca. 1510/12 is preserved fragmentarily) with a possible background in earlier Middle Low German folklore. Eulenspiegel is ...

play hide and seek.

Recordings

Harty recorded the work for Columbia in 1935, conducting the

London Philharmonic Orchestra The London Philharmonic Orchestra (LPO) is one of five permanent symphony orchestras based in London. It was founded by the conductors Sir Thomas Beecham and Malcolm Sargent in 1932 as a rival to the existing London Symphony and BBC Symphony ...

.Parlett, Graham
Discography
The Sir Arnold Bax Website, retrieved 20 September 2015 Subsequent recordings have been conducted by

Dmitri Mitropoulos Dimitri Mitropoulos ( el, Δημήτρης Μητρόπουλος; The dates 18 February 1896 and 1 March 1896 both appear in the literature. Many of Mitropoulos's early interviews and program notes gave 18 February. In his later interviews, howe ...

Igor Buketoff Igor Konstantin Buketoff (29 May 19157 September 2001) was an American conductor, arranger and teacher. He had a special affinity with Russian music and with Sergei Rachmaninoff in particular. He also strongly promoted British contemporary music ...

Bryden Thomson Bryden Thomson (16 July 1928 – 14 November 1991) was a Scottish conductor remembered especially for his championship of British and Scandinavian composers. His recordings include influential surveys of the orchestral music of Hamilton Harty a ...

and David Lloyd-Jones.

Notes

Sources

*
Description at the Parlett Pages Bax Worklist
(GP 305) {{DEFAULTSORT:Overture Picaresque Comedy 1930 compositions Compositions by Arnold Bax Concert overtures