Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson,
                Lord Berners

* The Triumph of Neptune
* L'uomo dai baffi
* Valses bourgeoises^ (orch. Lane)
* Polka^ (orch. Lane)

Clive Bayley (bass)
English Northern Philharmonia, Royal Ballet Sinfonia^/David Lloyd-Jones
Total Time: 69:26
Marco Polo 8.223711

Summary for the Busy Executive:  Fun and games.

One of the great eccentrics in music - so you can imagine just how loony
he was - Lord Berners unfortunately survives as a character, rather than
as a composer.  He kept a specially-made piano in his Rolls-Royce, dyed
the pigeons on his estate all sorts of surprising colors, and was famously
ugly and a wit.  It was he who said, "I am a quarter of an hour behind the
handsomest man in Europe." Unfortunately for his reputation, he was also a
serious artist in several media.  He wrote, painted, and composed, all with
distinction.  He was the patron behind Walton and the Sitwells.  Before
he came into his money (and his title), he traveled extensively on the
Continent as part of the British diplomatic service (a respectable calling
for younger sons) and became involved with the Stravinsky-Diaghilev
circles, both in Italy and in Paris.  Most writers - although few have
tackled this subject - tend to hail him as an antidote to the "insularity"
of the British musical scene between the wars.  However, the insularity
charged to British composers largely doesn't exist (among the major
composers at any rate) except as a polemical gambit by those who wanted to
argue for certain postwar figures and could think of no other way.  Vaughan
Williams, Walton, Holst, Tippett, Britten, Berkeley, Brian, Rubbra - not to
mention Arnold and Alwyn, among others - were all well aware of new musical
currents.  The really great ones simply tried not to imitate.  If Vaughan
Williams, for example, had been less "insular," he might have become Arthur
Lourie or perhaps Alexandre Tansman.

Among the artistic movements of his time, Berners felt closest to dada
and especially to surrealism.  Writers have called him the English Satie,
and Virgil Thomson considered him a brother.  However, his music really
has little to do with either Satie or Thomson, except that it's usually
stripped down to essentials and modestly elegant in scope.  This shouldn't
surprise anyone.  All three composers use simple means but remain strongly
individual.  Thomson's simplicity deliberately invokes the pioneer and
the Great Plains as well as the formal strength of Cubism.  Behind all of
Satie's jokes stands a very solemn mystic.  It's much harder to get a fix
on Berners, mainly, I suspect, because his artistic personality lacks the
strength of the other two and also because his musical output was much
smaller.  His music, although beautifully worked, has little point.  It
closes off rather than leads anywhere.  Put it beside Walton's Facade or
any of a number of works by Poulenc, and it tends to bleach out.  And yet,
it delights, perhaps the most important thing about it, with its own very
individual harmonic sense.  Berners also provided scores to a few films,
most notably a really fine one for Cavalcanti's Nicholas Nickleby, although
it's far more Romantic than his concert music.

Berners wrote The Triumph of Neptune for Diaghilev.  He found his "themes"
in the "penny-plain and tuppence-colored" postcards of the 19th century
and in British pantomime.  It counts as one of his longer works, and it
contains one splendid joke - a spoof of "The Last Rose of Summer," sung
by a gentleman in his bath.  The CD advertises the complete score, and
certainly contains more numbers than the usual suite (at one time available
with Barry Wordsworth conducting on EMI).  One would say more accurately
that it presents all the numbers whose music has survived.  Time has not
been kind to Berners.  Very few scholars have shown an interest in him, so
it may take rather a long time for the ground to be thoroughly picked over.
At any rate, enjoy wonderful tunes and infectious rhythms in the meantime.

L'uomo dai baffi (the man with the moustache) from 1918 sounds a bit more
astringent, far closer to the "modern" music of its time, but also less
individual than the Triumph, sharing certain tropes with Stravinsky's
Pieces faciles.  Still, Berners even at this time shows the concision and
clarity that is his hallmark.  He gets off a joke on Beethoven's Fifth, but
it's rather isolated.  Once he tells it, he does little with it other than
repeat.

Philip Lane, the producer and sleeve-note writer for this CD, contributes
two of his own orchestrations of some Berners four-hand piano music, as
well as the "Polka" originally written for a Christmas pantomime.  His
orchestral sound captures the mixture of cheekiness and sendups of
pomposity that Berners shows throughout Triumph, at any rate.

David Lloyd-Jones and the English Northern Philharmonia play with style
and enjoyment, exactly what the music needs.  The recorded sound has too
much echo for my taste, but I can live with it.

Steve Schwartz