The Composers' XI

Michael Henderson

Photo by Samuel Sianipar on Unsplash

An English summer without cricket is unimaginable. But summer is about many other wonderful things, which may be related to cricket, however tangentially. The game emerged from the English landscape, and a summer’s journey takes the curious traveller along the highways and byways of the shires, each with its own colour and tone.

Which is how this happy wanderer found himself this week in Chipping Campden. There is never a bad time of year to visit the Gloucestershire town and in May, when there is a two-week music festival, and a book festival that follows, it is particularly handsome. The ginkco tree near the Lygon Arms is in bloom, and the Eight Bells, down from St James’s Church, offers toothsome ales from three different counties. There is also an excellent second-hand bookshop in Sheep Street. Kazuo Ishiguro, a local resident, has been known to pop in.

It is the church which stages the music festival, established 21 years ago by Charlie Bennett, erstwhile wine merchant and keen amateur pianist. Since then he has persuaded many of the world’s most celebrated musicians to perform in Chipping. Alfred Brendel included the town on his year-long farewell to concert life in 2008, and he returns regularly as a listener. He was in the audience this week to hear Emanuel Ax play Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto with the Festival Orchestra, and to present a master class to young string quartets.

He also heard his son, Adrian, play the second cello in Schubert’s majestic C major quintet. As the first half was given over to Beethoven’s A minor quartet, the Op 132, it was quite a night. The concert, said a wag, featured the greatest music composed for four instruments, followed by the greatest music composed for five! How would we live without Ludwig and Franz? Think of what Chester Kallman said of life without Wystan Auden: ‘unmanageable, unimaginable’.

It was a concert Neville Cardus would have accepted as his birthright. ‘NC’ wrote about cricket and music for the Manchester Guardian in those dim and distant days when that paper was truly liberal and proudly provincial, but it was Samuel Langford, his predecessor in the music critic’s chair, who wrote the most haunting lines about the Op 132 quartet, which Beethoven composed in 1825 when he was recovering from a life-threatening condition. If it took suffering to produce such a work, Langford wrote, then perhaps there is something to be said even for illness. ‘It is quite something to belong to the same race as Beethoven’.

The least of us can claim that much.

Cardus, wearing both hats, wrote a book about a Composers’ XI, and a pretty feeble team he came up with. He found room for Cesar Franck, but not for Debussy or Ravel, whose match-winning performances make a more compelling case for inclusion. So who should represent the human race in a five-match Test series against those fabled men from the moon? The team could look like this:

JS Bach (Saxony)

The Jack Hobbs of western music, who synthesised all that had come before to supply mankind with music for keyboard and voice that can never be surpassed. As Daniel Barenboim has said of The Well Tempered Clavier, those 48 preludes and fugues for every major and minor key, it contains everything that had been written up to that point, and everything that would be. Beethoven, noting Bach’s name, offered a witticism: ‘not so much a stream as an ocean’. The sea of life.

J Haydn (Esterhazy)

The father of the symphony (he composed 104) and the string quartet, he also tutored the young Beethoven. Bach and Haydn at the top of the order has a reassuring ring to it. Like Hutton and Washbrook, or Pinky and Perky.

F Schubert (Vienna)

Immortal Franz was the most vulnerable of men, much loved by his friends, who joined him for evenings round the piano. There was only one public performance of his own music in his lifetime, and he died of typhoid fever at 31. In his final year, however, he wrote some of the most beautiful (and resolutely unsentimental) music known to man. He was a romantic immersed in the classical traditions, and is therefore suited to the No 3 spot. A strokeplayer for all conditions.

L van Beethoven (Westphalia)

‘This music will always sound contemporary’, Stravinsky said of the late quartets. ‘His music represents the conscience of mankind’, said Yehudi Menuhin. Beethoven was poet and philosopher. The once and future king. How will anybody get him out?

J Brahms (Hamburg)

He composed music, it is said, with the profound regret of a man who had not been born 30 years earlier. But he composed masterpieces in every form, and made big scores when he got in.

P Tchaikovsky (St Petersburg)

Batting at six, he balances the team admirably. The Russian excelled in the symphony, the ballet and the opera, so he has the game for all seasons. A gloomy character, though, who needs careful handling. Best to keep him away from rivers at high tide.

A Dvorak (Bohemia)

We can entrust the gloves to the cheerful Bohemian, whose even temper and comradely spirit will keep his team-mates buoyant. Handy with the bat, too, when runs are needed. In the evening, when the glee club convenes, he can potter off to spot trains. Wicketkeepers are different.

M Ravel (Paris)

We need a younger chap to bat at 8, to freshen the bloom, and who better than the Parisian dandy? Good enough to bowl second change, off a long or a short run, with variations of pace and flight. Audacious strokeplayer, who finds startling ways of piercing the field. A sloppy fielder, who may have to be hidden. Best kept away from mirrors in the dressing room. 

G Verdi (Parma)

Capable of bowling long spells, and maintaining his pace, though his bouncer is not always effective. Available for selection at all times, however weary. A solid citizen.

R Wagner (Saxony)

The loud-mouthed Bavarian has won more matches than any other fast bowler; in his imagination, at least. Like FS Trueman he bludgeoned batsmen into submission through sheer force of personality (‘five more for me!’), though Fred never wore silk knickers.

WA Mozart (Salzburg)

A left arm spinner in the manner of Bishen Singh Bedi, who lured batsmen to their doom. In those lonely hours, awaiting his turn to bat, the boy wonder could dash off a piano concerto. Another one, just like the other one.

John Woodcock (Hampshire) can write up the play the old-fashioned way for the Times of London. Michael Atherton (Failsworth) can act as copy-boy. Fortnum and Mason of Piccadilly will look after the victuals. Zac Crawley (Lonesomeville) can carry the bags. He’s got to be good for something.