Composer John Pickard brings to our attention the
neglected works of Peter Racine Fricker.
‘Aren’t you going to stay for the P. Racine Fricker?’
an elderly university professor asks Jim Dixon as he tries to leave
the agonisingly pretentious musical soirée depicted in Kinsgley
Amis’s 1954 comic novel Lucky Jim.
No doubt the moniker itself proved an irresistible target - the
faintly Teutonic whiff of the surname, the apparent literary pretentions
of the middle name (though Fricker was indeed a descendent of the
great French dramatist), all topped off by the severe anonymity
of a bare initial. But it also gives some idea of Fricker’s
currency in the early ‘50s making his subsequent obscurity
all the more telling.
Peter Racine Fricker was born in London in 1920. Following wartime
service in the R.A.F. he studied counterpoint with R.O. Morris and
composition with the Hungarian émigré Mátyás
Seiber. These were complementary influences; Morris’s discipline
and thoroughness were tempered by Seiber’s wide musical sympathies
(which included a deep interest in jazz) and by his cosmopolitan
outlook.
A breakthrough came with the première of Fricker’s
First Symphony at the 1950 Cheltenham Festival. The work won the
Koussevitsky Prize and a string of large-scale commissions followed,
including four more symphonies, three string quartets, several concertos
and a huge oratorio, The Vision of Judgement, written for the 1958
Leeds Festival. This last work probably represents the high-water
mark of Fricker’s reputation. Thereafter, things slowly went
into decline. Younger voices were clamouring for attention and,
with William Glock’s appointment in 1959 as BBC Controller
of Music, they duly received it - at the expense of many composers
of Fricker’s generation.
In 1964 Fricker emigrated to the United States after accepting
the post of Professor of Composition at the University of California
at Santa Barbara. Whilst offering highly congenial surroundings,
the move put a further distance between the composer and the British
musical public. By the time of his death in 1990, Fricker was pretty
much a forgotten figure back home.
With its Bartók-Schoenberg inspired harmonic language, Fricker’s
music must have initially seemed distinctly progressive in post-war
Britain, offering an exciting alternative to English pastoralism.
Yet in a wider European context, this style was already outmoded.
Compared to the early works of Stockhausen and Boulez, Fricker’s
music seems frankly conservative. Small wonder then that Fricker’s
flame should have shone so briefly.
Times change, however. Fashion always crumbles in the face of posterity
and, once the bandwagon has paused and passed, solid achievement
is the only thing that really matters.
I believe Fricker’s music is built to last and its current
neglect is regrettable. It has strength of vision, integrity of
purpose and abundant vigour. It is passionate, without being sentimental;
direct without being simplistic. Best works? For me they are the
energetic Second Symphony, the elegiac, angry Fourth Symphony (written
in memory of Seiber), the rapturous song-cycle O longs désirs
and the Laudi Concertati for Organ and Orchestra sum up all that
is best and most characteristic about this splendid composer. Fricker
composed consistently in almost all media, the music is available
(published by Schott) and it is simply too good be ignored. It certainly
deserves something better than just a walk-on part in a 1950s satirical
novel. |
