The world of music is full of curiosities and anecdotes, and classical music is no exception. One of its most remarkable figures is Havergal Brian, an English composer who holds the record for having written the longest symphony in history, lasting approximately two hours. It is titled Symphony No. 1 in D Minor because it was the first symphony he composed—his later ones are shorter—though it is better known as The Gothic Symphony.

Havergal Brian was born in 1876 in Dresden—not the German city, but a district of Stoke-on-Trent, a conurbation in Staffordshire, England, which has also produced other notable figures, such as Edward John Smith (the captain of the Titanic). Interestingly, several of its prominent natives have also been musicians, including singer Robbie Williams and Motörhead bassist Lemmy Kilmister. Brian’s real name was actually William; he adopted the name Havergal from a local family of musicians who composed religious hymns.

Coming from a working-class background, he attended only primary school before having to start working and never received formal musical training. However, following his passion, he taught himself and eventually became an organist at a church. In 1895, he was mesmerized when he attended a performance of King Olaf by the then highly successful Edward Elgar, which sparked his interest in the new wave of classical music emerging at the time, including works by Richard Strauss and Granville Bantock (with whom he became friends).

He then began composing his own works. His first success was the English Suite, which gained particular recognition when it was selected to be performed at the Proms (a series of daily orchestral concerts held at the Royal Albert Hall—though back then, they were at Queen’s Hall—during the second half of summer; they remain highly popular as they feature not only classical music but also themes from film and television). In fact, Brian became a notable rising musician, but he struggled to sustain his career due to his somewhat misanthropic and complex personality.

Havergal Brian longest symphony history
Havergal Brian around 1900. Credit: Public domain / Wikimedia Commons

For the time being, however, he was at the peak of his career, receiving numerous offers. One of them came in 1907 from the magnate Herbert Minton, offering a lucrative deal on the condition that he devote himself exclusively to composing. Brian accepted and immersed himself in the task but failed to manage his success wisely, soon postponing his work to indulge in the pleasures that his affluent position afforded him. His life then became a whirlwind of travel, banquets, and leisure until an affair with a maid named Hilda Mary Hayward led to a crisis.

His marriage fell apart, and much of his income had to be allocated to alimony payments for his ex-wife (since 1898, he had been married to Isabel Priestley, with whom he had five children). However, in return, his relationship with Hilda became stable, and he married her in 1933, having five more children with her. This new situation of financial constraints forced him to focus on composing again, shifting from abandoning works midway to writing tirelessly.

As a result, he is now considered one of the most prolific composers in history (although not the most prolific, as that record belongs to the 18th-century German composer Georg Philipp Telemann, who wrote over 3,000 works). Settled in London, he only interrupted his compositional pace to attempt to enlist in the army when World War I broke out, but a hand injury delayed this goal until 1915, when he joined the Canadian Expeditionary Force as an auditor. After the war, faced with a lack of offers, he redirected his career by working as a music critic.

He carried out this work in specialized publications such as the newspaper The British Bandsman or the magazine Musical Opinion, where he became editor in 1927. He was good at writing, and his style was sarcastic, which has led to comparisons with Bernard Shaw. However, his work as a critic did not prevent him from continuing to compose. In fact, before focusing on words instead of notes, the war served as inspiration for him to compose an opera, The Tigers; it would not be the only one, as decades later he would compose four more.

After retiring in 1940, he returned to composing and produced all kinds of works, including violin and cello concertos, songs, piano and chamber orchestra concertos, and suites. However, he felt most comfortable with the symphony, as evidenced by the thirty-two he composed. Most of them—twenty-two—were written late in his life, from the second half of the 1950s onward, following the success of his Symphony No. 8 in B-flat in 1949, after it was rediscovered and programmed by the BBC. By then, however, his symphonies had become shorter, consisting of just one or two movements.

This fact is important because, as mentioned earlier, his previous symphonies were very long. The first one, the Gothic, was the most extreme example, consisting of six movements divided into two parts. He worked on it between 1919 and 1927, following a conversation with the director of the Proms, Henry Wood, in which they discussed writing a suite that would revive obsolete musical instruments. To write everything he envisioned, Brian required enormous scores, with staves larger than usual. He had to present the movements separately, and curiously, the first three won prizes in a competition.

Foreshadowing the romantic and ambitious orchestration style that would characterize the composer—an influence of Mahler’s Symphony No. 8, nicknamed Of the Thousand due to the large number of musicians required—the Gothic is a colossal choral work thematically referencing the eponymous artistic style of the Late Middle Ages, with its great Gothic cathedrals and its impact on the cultural development of humanity. It is also indebted to Goethe’s Faust, and at the end, there is a dedication to Richard Strauss.

The first part is purely instrumental, performed by an orchestra of about a hundred musicians, lasting around forty-five uninterrupted minutes. The second part, which lasts an hour, incorporates choirs to perform a grand Te Deum, which, in addition to an orchestra, requires an organ and other instruments that had fallen out of use, along with past musical styles such as fauxbourdon and medieval polyphony. This vast scale makes the Gothic a difficult work to perform, and when it is played, the number of musicians is often reduced.

Perhaps for this reason, its premiere had to wait until 1961, at Westminster Central Hall, although it was a rather amateur performance. The first professional performance took place five years later at the Royal Albert Hall, and the BBC broadcast it on the radio, bringing the composer back into the public eye. His music then experienced a second golden age, with recordings, concerts, studies on his work, and even the publication of a couple of biographies. However, this revival was not widespread among the general public but rather limited to a certain number of devoted followers.

Among them, there was only one fellow composer: Leopold Stokowski. The rest regarded Brian as a competent composer but little more, too indebted to classical figures such as Wagner, Mahler, Bach, Bruckner, and others, as well as to Victorian military and popular music—though always behind Elgar in that regard. In any case, by the time Brian was rediscovered in 1966, he was already in his nineties, and it is possible that part of his late success was due to the sympathy inspired by a venerable old man. In fact, after his death in 1972, he faded into the background again, even though some of his works were still being premiered at that time. However, he still holds the record for the longest symphony.

This article was first published on our Spanish Edition on September 28, 2018: Havergal Brian, el músico autodidacta que compuso la sinfonía más larga de la Historia

SOURCES

Jürgen Schaarwächter, Two Centuries of British Symphonism: From the beginnings to 1945

Kenneth Eastaugh, Havergal Brian, the making of a composer

Malcolm MacDonald, The symphonies of Havergal Brian

Havergal Brian Society

Wikipedia, Havergal Brian

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