Catholic faith, sacred music and two composers

The presence of this letter in the Rubbra Archive, now held at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, set me thinking about the relationship between these two ostensibly very different English composers and the parallels between them.

On the face of it they could not be more different both in background and in compositional direction. Lennox Berkeley, born in 1903, was of aristocratic descent and, although a shy and diffident man, felt at ease in social and artistic circles. By contrast, Edmund Rubbra was born in 1901 into a poor, although artistically aware, home and, as a result, always felt rather shy and awkward within the artistic and social mileu, even at the height of his success. Surprisingly, perhaps, I think he only really felt at ease in the academic circles at Oxford University, where he taught for over twenty years, between 1947 and 1968, in spite of his lack of formal secondary education.

Their formal music training was also radically different. Most influentially, Berkeley’s was in Paris with Nadia Boulanger; Rubbra’s was with Cyril Scott and then most importantly with Holst, first at University College Reading and subsequently at the Royal College of Music, where the teaching of R.O. Morris also had a lasting influence on his development.

Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that the two men did not meet professionally until 1947 when Rubbra joined the infamous BBC Music Advisory Panel for a contracted three years. (He had initially been asked to join early in 1941, but had to resign in September of that year as a result of being called up for wartime military service). Berkeley joined the Panel in 1946, again on a similar three-year contract. He left therefore in 1949 – hence the reference in the letter – so the two men overlapped by just two years. Sadly, there is no record of the actual proceedings of these meetings, but two things must have united Berkeley and Rubbra at this time: a strong interest in, and love of, French music and their shared Roman Catholic faith.

Although Berkeley has always been regarded as the principal English composer of this period in sympathy with the music of France, Rubbra also had a profound interest and understanding of the repertoire. He first discovered Debussy as a boy visiting his uncle’s music shop in Northampton, and Rubbra often included his music and other French repertoire in his programmes as a professional pianist throughout his performing career. He had an especial fondness for Fauré and the sparseness and delicacy of his music is often reflected in Rubbra’s own writing. He was also fascinated by Messiaen’s music at a time when it was still largely unknown in this country.

Most importantly, however, it was their shared Roman Catholic faith that both united them and informed some of their best works. Berkeley had been a practising Catholic since 1929, but Rubbra’s formal conversion was in 1947, nearly twenty years later, although he had been attracted to the faith for many years beforehand. Both men subsequently became members of the Catholic Musicians’ Guild, Rubbra becoming president for five years from 1952.

Rubbra’s especial response to his conversion was his Missa in Honorem Sancti Dominici, usually known as the St Dominic Mass, of 1948. The title refers to the date of Rubbra’s reception into the Church, the Feast of St Dominic, 4 August 1947. Generally regarded as one of the finest of his many choral works, it was designed, both in its brevity and intensity, for liturgical use, and the work was soon taken up by Westminster Cathedral, where Lennox Berkeley encountered it that morning in February 1950.

From his letter, the encounter must have encouraged Berkeley to write liturgically, and he eventually composed two Mass settings, although his 5-part unaccompanied setting did not finally appear until 1964. Both composers were particularly inspired by the use of the Latin, for Berkeley culminating in his wonderful Magnificat setting of 1968. In a Listener article, written before the premiere of this work, he laments the loss of Latin in the liturgy of the Catholic Church post-Vatican II.¹ Rubbra felt similarly and continued to engage with it as far as he could, even up to his last Mass setting, the Mass In Honour of St. Teresa of Avila of 1981.

In the 1940s the other close parallel between these composers were two intense settings of religious texts written for Kathleen Ferrier. In 1947, Rubbra wrote his Three Psalms, op. 51, with piano accompaniment, whilst in the same year Berkeley composed the Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila, this time with string orchestra. (If I may be permitted a personal note here, this work would be one of my Desert Island Discs!). Both Rubbra and Berkeley seemed inspired by the intense seriousness of Ferrier’s voice to write from their common religious perspective and I understand she was especially fond of both works.

In Britain, there seems to be a particularly unfortunate tendency to compartmentalise composers and many have put Lennox Berkeley and Edmund Rubbra into quite separate boxes. I hope, however, that this brief article will do a little to change this view by highlighting similarities between aspects of two very individual composers and contemporaries. I know of no other surviving letters between them, but if there are more, I would be very glad to hear about them.