Michael Waldron on Arthur Oldham

Released last Friday on Orchid Classics, London Choral Sinfonia's latest album Mentor sets Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings and Te Deum alongside three works by his only private pupil Arthur Oldham: the expansive 'Canticle of All Creatures' Laudes Creaturarum, and the smaller-scale Remember, O thou man and Sacerdos et Pontifex (all composed during the 1960s after Oldham had converted to Catholicism and relocated from London to Scotland, where he went on to found the Edinburgh Festival Chorus).

With the centenary of Oldham's birth coming up this September, we sat down with LCS's Artistic Director Michael Waldron to find out more about one of the most touching teacher-pupil relationships in twentieth-century music, how Oldham found his feet in the British musical world after a troubled childhood, his illustrious second career as founder and director of some of Europe's leading symphonic choruses, and why his small but perfectly formed body of choral music really deserves to get out more...

How did Arthur Oldham come onto your radar?

Purely by accident, when I was scrolling through Britten’s Wikipedia page to check some dates! In the second paragraph it says ‘Around this time Britten took on his only pupil Arthur Oldham’, and that was the first I’d heard of him!

I hadn’t registered that Britten didn’t teach, because I’m guilty of putting all those British composers in one big pool – we know that Ireland, Howells and Stanford and Finzi were all inextricably linked through teacher-pupil relationships, and because of Britten’s connection with the Royal College of Music I assumed he had his fair share of students too. But once I started looking into it, it became apparent that Oldham really was the exception rather than the rule: Britten avoided teaching, so for Oldham to come onto his radar and forge this lifelong connection is extraordinary. 

What did you discover about his early life?

The odds were really against him in childhood, and his early years were marked by great sadness and tragedy - his mother took her own life when he was in his early teens. These days there would be so much official support available for a child going through that, but back in the 1930s the people around him just did their best…

I came across a rather sweet anecdote about Oldham being summoned to the headmaster’s office once a week because he was constantly acting out, but instead of getting the cane (as was the norm back then) he’d be sent to a practice-room to write a piece as ‘punishment’...the headmaster would slip him a bit of money when he presented it and send him on his way! Thanks to some dedicated, caring people who spotted his potential, it all eventually came together: he ended up at the Royal College of Music on a scholarship, worked very hard and made the most of it.

How did the relationship with Britten develop?

Oldham had sent some scores to Britten while he was at the College because he so admired him, but hadn’t heard anything back…When he heard that Britten and Pears were doing a recital at Wigmore Hall he went along to the stage door, approached Britten as he was leaving and asked if he’d taken a look at the manuscripts. Britten said that he and Pears ‘thought they were very fine’, and those pieces developed into the Five Chinese Lyrics which Britten and Pears took into their repertoire; they recorded them in 1955, and Robin Tritschler recently included them on his wonderful album Songs for Peter Pears. 

Britten became aware that Oldham badly needed money to support his studies, so he got him a position as a copy-checker at Booseys, where he was paid a penny per page of music. Even in the 1940s that wasn’t much money, but Oldham recounts that it was invaluable: as well as providing some stable income and a foot in the door with a major publisher, it also allowed him to absorb new music by osmosis. This was at the time when the first complete Stravinsky edition was being prepared, and he learned so much simply by going through it bar-by-bar as a copyist and proofreader.

And he was working hard on his craft all the time. Britten secured him commissions for Aldeburgh and the English Opera Group, and things began to take off…so much so that Oldham got into hot water at the College because they had a ‘no professional engagements’ policy back then, so he had to step back from his scholarship in order to accept these paid engagements from Britten.

Did he hold an official position as Britten’s assistant?

I haven't read anything which suggests that he was explicitly an assistant conductor, but perhaps those sorts of roles weren’t so clearly defined back then. What is apparent is Oldham would go down to Aldeburgh for weeks at a time and sit at the table with Britten as he was working, drawing in barlines on the manuscripts and generally making himself useful. 

Every so often Britten would take a break, play through what he’d written and ask Oldham for his thoughts. In the early days Oldham was terrified to suggest anything, but when it became apparent that Britten really wanted his input he got the confidence to speak up. There are photographs of Oldham at the piano with Britten and Pears, preparing new compositions and revising others.

Do you hear Britten’s influence in his own music?

Absolutely, but it’s important to remember that they were true contemporaries: this is somebody writing organically and spontaneously at exactly the same time, rather than an acolyte pastiching the master half a generation later. The post-World War Two era was such a pivotal time for British music in that anything dissonant felt daring and new, and Oldham was absolutely swept up in that. Today we hear those dissonances and more advanced tonalities in the context of the rest of the twentieth century, but I think it would’ve been incredibly fresh at the time – I believe very strongly that his is a unique voice.

And there are sound worlds and effects in his music that I don’t think exist in anything by Britten. Take the cantata Laudes Creaturarum on our album, which is one of the bigger pieces he wrote for the cathedral choir which he led in Edinburgh in the 1960s: the way he uses the orchestra – particularly the organ within the orchestra - is to my knowledge unprecedented. 

This cantata really spoke to me, partly because it says a lot in a short space of time. It sets a text and story that people are familiar with – the prayer of St Francis of Assisi, and Oldham evokes the colours of nature and the animals in such a beautiful and inspired way.  It’s not a pick-up-and-sight-read piece, but it’s well within the reach of a competent amateur choir who have some rehearsal time; it’s no more difficult than any of those established Britten pieces like A Boy Was Born or Rejoice in the Lamb, and I’d urge any enterprising choir directors out there to give it a go!

What’s the story behind the hiatus in their relationship?

They were both very intelligent and complicated human beings, but Oldham is at pains in his autobiography to point out that it was his fault that the friendship cooled for a period. The rift happened because Oldham had written to one of Britten’s aristocratic friends who was a patron of the arts asking for money, and when Britten found out he was livid. If Britten decided to cut someone out of his life it was usually permanent, but with Oldham there was a beautiful rapprochement - they worked together again, and near the end of his life Britten wrote to Oldham expressing gratitude for the friendship, love and respect he’d shown him.

Oldham eventually carved out a hugely successful second career as a choral director - how did that come about?

In the 1950s he suffered a breakdown which amounted to an absolute failure of all his creative faculties – he later recounted that he was unable to even differentiate pitches for a long period, let alone write or play music. In his autobiography he says that it was triggered by having an incredibly heavy workload, probably exacerbated by his own exacting standards; he was an absolute perfectionist, and he just couldn’t stay on top of it all.

After his breakdown he took himself off to a monastery, where his love of choral music was rekindled. He’d prepared the choirs for various Britten premieres at Aldeburgh back in the day, and getting involved with liturgical music reawakened something in him. Somebody there picked up on his talent and introduced him to priests in Edinburgh, which secured him the job of Director of Music at St Mary’s Cathedral. 

He took the choir from a reasonable position of 25 singers to a team of 40-odd men and boys with an incredible reputation, and that led to an invitation to found the Edinburgh Festival Chorus. They were bringing in great conductors from all over the world, and his work there was such a success that he was asked to do the same thing for the Orchestre de Paris and the Concertgebouw. Wherever Oldham took over a choir or was asked to set one up they always ended up being absolutely top quality.

This work consumed an incredible amount of time and energy, because he was absolutely fastidious about preparing his choruses. He would reach out to these superstar conductors before they arrived in Edinburgh to find out what they wanted in terms of pronunciation, pauses and tempo changes etc - and in a pre-internet era that involved a lot of legwork! 

That level of preparation really set him apart in his day, and it earned him great respect from the visiting maestros. There’s a lovely story about Karajan jetting in to conduct the Bach Magnificat, and Oldham asking whether he wanted Germanic or Italianate Latin; he’d tried to get in touch to check beforehand but hadn’t been able to get past Karajan’s gatekeepers! Karajan said he was happy with whatever Oldham had taught them; when Oldham said they’d prepared both, Karajan deferred to his judgement!

'Remember, O thou man' (which appears on the album) dates from his Edinburgh years - is the style markedly different from his earlier compositions?

Aside from the solo songs which he wrote for Pears, that seems to be the one piece of his that’s stuck around – it’s appeared on a few recordings and gets out in concerts a fair bit. It uses very spare resources - just four-part choral textures with step-out solos for soprano and tenor - and its beauty lies in its simplicity. It’s a straightforward strophic setting of a psalm so on one level it’s quite repetitive, but Oldham achieves so much variety within that: he seems to have been inspired by taking simple textures, structures and forces, then digging deep into the possibilities.

Oldham was a passionate advocate of Renaissance music during his time in Edinburgh, and this piece was clearly inspired by that. This was in the 1950s and 60s, before the big Baroque revival took off. He commissioned and arranged publications of Palestrina masses and music in the Eton Choirbook tradition, and programmed early polyphony regularly at the cathedral. Music students and performers would come from far and wide to hear it, because at that point a lot of this stuff wasn’t published or performed (and it certainly wasn’t recorded). 

Is there anything else out there from that later part of his career?

The Edinburgh Festival commissioned a couple of large-scale pieces from him in the 1970s and 80s, but I’ve drawn a blank on tracking down the scores and parts…I wonder if they’re sitting in an archive somewhere, because it would seem odd to do a premiere and then just bin all the material! Let’s hope that this recording moves the needle a bit and inspires orchestras and libraries to do some digging.

Have you been in touch with any surviving relatives?

Music runs in the family – his parents had both been competent pianists in their time, and his son Tim is a record producer. I only found this out during the sessions for this album: our producer Adrian Peacock and sound engineer Dave Hinitt were saying ‘This name rings a bell - wonder if it’s Tim Oldham’s dad…’. When we reached out to him to confirm he was overjoyed and couldn’t wait to hear the recording.