Two Piano Pieces (1927)

I. 'Bliss' One-Step
II. The Rout Trot (of 'White Birds')

Arthur Bliss was 23 years old on 2nd of August 1914. In that same year, Elgar was 57, Vaughan Williams 42 and Holst 40. Abroad, Debussy was 52, Stravinsky. 32. Although these were the composers who had the most decisive influence upon his musical development, Bliss, in his Cambridge years, 1910-1913, was given rigorous training in piano by Ursula Creighton, herself a pupil. Ferruccio Busoni. From her and from Edward Dent, Bliss learnt of Busoni’s pianistic and compositional theories, of the writing of music set free from a sense of definite key. In the post war years, Bliss followed the abundant, but diverse music produced by Les Six, but was more especially interested in that of the gifted Darius Milhaud, with whom he established a close friendship.

Two days after his 23rd birthday, war was declared and the settled Edwardian era abruptly gave way to a period of strife and violence. Throughout that war, Bliss served actively and experienced much of trench warfare. He was released in 1919, in his 28th year. These were years of tragic interruption for a creative artist, an artist who was to assert that to work adequately, he must not only be alone, but feel that he was so. It is a sign of the soundness of his apprenticeship, and of his powers of application, that to that he proceeded to produce, in the hedonistic years of the 1920s, a succession of works of considerable maturity; these included an Overture and Interludes for The Tempest; Rout for soprano and chamber orchestra; Conversations for chamber orchestra; two versions of his first Piano Concerto and the dignified and elemental Colour Symphony of 1922.

But the jazz idiom was in the air, and it is indicative of the interest aroused by jazz musicians that, at about the same time as Bliss was giving chamber orchestral concerts at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, Milhaud (whose Trois Rag-Caprices for piano preceded the Bliss One Step by a year) was frequently to be found at the Hammersmith Palais de Dance. To hear, ‘analyse and assimilate’ the music of Billy Arnold and his band from New York. It would have appealed to Bliss’s often quizzical sense of humour to make use of such jazz musicians’ harmonic and rhythmic stock-in-trade, to explore his own technical abilities in a different field and, in so doing, ‘throw off’ these two pastiches. His One Step is dedicated to Corelli Windeatt, conductor to the London Dance Orchestra, well known for their ragtime recordings. The Trot was written for an ambitious review called White Birds, staged at His Majesty's in May 1927 and produced by Lew Leslie, who had been so successful with the C B Cochran ‘Black Birds’ Revue at the London Pavilion: despite. an all-star cast and immense financial backing, White Birds ran for a mere 80 performances. The Trot is effectively described by the one word direction ‘Rumbustiously’ and the abrupt ending, on an unresolved coda, leaves the listener poised, the ear anticipatory.

Programme Note by George Dannatt