Steve Schwartz responds to Christopher Rosevear:

>>. . . he is much recorded and has the great distinction of still being
>>?alive after 10 symphonies.
>
>Ten?  I thought it was only nine.

Nine orchestral symphonies, all of which are now available again in
the Irish NSO/Penny cycle on Naxos.  I have seen the Symphony for Brass
numbered as part of the canon - not inappropriately; because it shares
many of the darkling rages of the later orchestral symphonies - but as
far a i can tell, that numbering was never official.  There's also an
early Symphony for Strings.

To this writer, Sir Malcolm Arnold is one of the iconographic composers
of the postWWII era; & while this is not necessarily the same thing as
saying that he is one of the great composers of this era, i actually
believe that the later statement is also true.  More a musician than a
composer by original training (his trumpet teaching memorably complained
that he wanted to go from being a first rate trumpeter to a second rate
composer when Arnold abandoned the instrument), there's a strong
functionality within the Arnold oeuvre; with popular miniatures like the
Dances & the Padstow Lifeboat written for the pleasure of the audience
rubbing shoulders with the darker utterances of the symphonies, which
were basically written for the composer himself.

I heard a year or so back that Sir Malcolm had actually begun arranging
& composing again (he retired, basically on doctor's orders, after the
wholesale rejection of the 9th Symphony in the 1980s).  While the material
the composer is working is said to be minor - & frankly: it's almost
gratuitous to expect new masterpieces from a composer who has already
provided so much - the good part of this news was that Arnold was in good
enough health to even consider such activity again.  The nineties brought
a knighthood, a biography & a revival of interest in Arnold's music -
symbolically led by a pioneering recording on Naxos of the supposedly
unperformable 9th Symphony - but also a continuing run of appalling
health....

Live in peace
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