Section (a) deals with his early years at Oxford, where he read
“Greats
” at New College and where a production of Berg’s Wozzeck under the baton of Sir Adrian Boult came as a revelation; then follows a short period of study in Vienna with Webern, whose direct influence did not manifest itself till later; his various war activities, teaching, distinctions, and awards round off the opening section.
Section (b) centers around the influence composers such the
“Viennese
” masters Schönberg and Webern, the
“English
” Constant Lambert, Bernard van Dieren, William Walton, and the poetess Edith Sitwell had on his work, and of his unique understanding of the work of Liszt, who left a deep influence on his work.
New horizons open up in section (c) with his exploratory compositions (opp. 1-7), and his first mature work: his
Piano Sonata, op. 21, based to a great extent on Liszt’s b-minor
Sonata.
The five Symphonies are next briefly examined, which show a tendency of moving away from Schönberg’s strictness towards
Webern’s lucidity and bareness of texture.
The penultimate section (e) deals with three solid and massive compositions for large orchestra, narrators, chorus et al.:
Gold Coast Customs (text by Edith Sitwell),
The Riverrun (based on the final section of Joyce’s
Finnegan’s Wake), and
The Shadow of Cain (poem by Edith Sitwell).
Last (section f) come the three operas:
The Diary of a Madman (based on Gogol),
The Photo of the Colonel (an adaptation of Ionesco’s
The Killer), and a dodecaphonic quasi-recitativo rendition of the greater part of Shakespeare’s
Hamlet: his most ambitious creation. Along with Elisabeth Lutyens, Searle is responsible for the introduction of the twelve-tone system into twentieth-century English music.