3. Principles

Not all the most industrious activity by agents and promoters, or the most dedicated family planning, would necessarily have been enough to guarantee the Allegri’s survival through to their 50^th anniversary. For that, it has taken one particular association which is unique to the group, and which when it started was in many ways a pioneering venture, though it has now produced plenty of imitators. Without the Radcliffe Trust, the story of the Allegri String Quartet would be very different.

Among the dreaming spires of Oxford, the name of John Radcliffe still resonates in its history, and buildings. The Radcliffe Observatory, the Radcliffe Camera, the Radcliffe Infirmary may not in all cases be fulfilling their original purposes, but the good Doctor still has the vast John Radcliffe Hospital, named after him on its construction within living memory, to honour the original medical connection. For John Radcliffe (born Wakefield 23 Jan. 1653, died Oxford 1 Nov. 1714) was indeed a medical Doctor – but no ordinary one. In an age when medicine was still in comparative infancy, he rose to the pinnacle of his profession, and his services to Royalty brought him many other rich clients as well. A bachelor, he shrewdly put his money into land, mostly extensive estates at Wolverton and Stony Stratford on the borders of Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. His will established a Trust and directed that his considerable legacy be used to service the interests that were close to his heart in his lifetime. Thus arose the three Oxford buildings that first bore his name. The Infirmary was a pioneering hospital, on a site just to the North of the main collegiate area of Oxford, up the Banbury Road. The Observatory stood nearby and housed a powerful telescope for observing the heavens. And on a magical site, bounded on its four sides by the University Church of St. Mary’s, Brasenose College, the Bodleian Library and All Souls’ College respectively, a vast Palladian-style rotunda was built to house Oxford’s first science library. The Radcliffe Camera is still there, still inducing a mild sense of awe in the reader entering for the first time.

For the best part of 200 years, the Trust though vital to Oxford was something of a backwater, and the Radcliffe Trustees, grandees of various sorts usually with one or more titles to their name, had little to do apart from attending an annual meeting and basking in the honour, often for life. But then came seismic events back at the ranch. The Wolverton Estate had easily accommodated the advent of the steam age and, in the 19^th century, the passage through its lands of the main railway line to the North. Accommodating a New Town was less easy. But it became clear in the 1960s, when such initiatives were seen as an essential way of relieving population and housing pressures, that an area enclosing the Estate was a highly appropriate site, not least precisely because of the existing good transport access. Faced with an unstoppable tide that would have involved compulsory purchase orders if necessary, the Trust decided to collaborate with rather than to oppose the scheme. The New Town of Milton Keynes now stands on much of the land once owned by Dr. John Radcliffe.

Financially, the impact can scarcely be exaggerated. Overnight, the Trust had money in the bank, lots of it, at the same time as its raison d’être in Oxford was at vanishing point. It needed to reinvent itself. Under their chairman, the far-sighted Sir Ralph Verney, the Trustees suddenly had work to do. After self-scrutiny and considerable research, they identified arts and crafts as an area in need of support. Paradoxically, it was a scientist among the Trustees, Sir Fred Hoyle, appointed for his starry achievements in astronomy, who seems to have suggested the next step. While successful initiatives were indeed undertaken on the craft front, and ever since have successfully continued in, for instance, the vital area of building conservation, the arts side was then narrowed down to music, and then further still, to chamber music.

How did this happen? Partly because there was an obvious gap that needed to be filled, partly also because some wheels began to set in motion other wheels which gathered momentum in their turn. Fred Hoyle was a music-lover. Ralph Verney was married to a concert pianist, Mary Verney (later to become well-known as a pioneer of early keyboard instruments). The Allegri had given concerts at the Verney seat of Claydon House, a National Trust property, and post-concert discussions had not simply identified the challenges faced by all chamber music professionals, but had also explored possible solutions. Later they would contribute significantly to a formal discussion document, drawn up at Verney’s request by an advisor to the Trust, Barbara Whatmore, with proposals that developed the idea of an ensemble-in-residence to a pitch never previously imaginable. Energetic, resourceful, imaginative, ‘Barbie’ Whatmore became for twenty years the driving force behind the practical implementation of the Radcliffe scheme.

And education was seen as a major ingredient. Listening is a talent, as much as composing and performing. A new and larger audience for chamber music would only grow if the tree was nourished at its roots, not just in the specialist music colleges and academies which could perhaps be left to look after themselves, but in schools and more especially in those educational establishments catering for the older student, the Universities.

Thus was born the notion of the Radcliffe Trust committing funds to support a scheme for chamber music at British universities. This entailed a great deal more than the straightforward concert series the Amadeus had just begun at York or the Aeolians at East Anglia. To fulfil the educational brief properly, the professionals would not just give recitals, but would be on hand for days at a time, to talk about the music, lead master classes and open rehearsals, coach student groups, offer lessons, organise seminars, discuss and try out student compositions, work with the academic staff on research projects, perform lesser-known works before knowledgeable audiences and debate them afterwards, participate in lecture-recitals, commission new works from associated composers, and whatever else took their fancy – it felt like a Brave New World.

Benjamin Britten did not agree. The Trustees had decided that they needed big name support, or at least reassurance that they were on the right track. At a meeting in September 1967, documented in a history of the Radcliffe Trust by its long-time secretary Ivor Guest, Britten’s attitude is described tersely as “very negative.” This was a setback, particularly as the ideals to which the Trust had moulded their proposal corresponded almost blow for blow with Britten’s own insistence on the vital triangle of composer – performer – listener. But after much deliberation, and some refinements to the scheme, it was decided to persevere, not least because some of the Universities who had been consulted were more than enthusiastic, and the Allegri Quartet were willing to be the guinea-pigs.

The rest is history – except that it is still very much on-going, still after 35 years or more an absolutely vital part of the Allegri’s activities and of campus musical life in those Universities which have been involved. Over the years, some have gone and some have come and some have remained remarkably consistent: Oxford, first and foremost, where the historic Holywell Music Room attached to one of Oxford’s most attractive colleges, Wadham, is practically an Allegri spiritual home. Holywell is the perfect size and shape for the intimate communication, verbal as well as musical, that the Radcliffe Music Scheme has always envisaged. Southampton, Liverpool, Sussex and Hull were the other first participants, while later entrants have included, Bristol, Durham, Nottingham, Leeds and institutions such as Dartington College of Arts or, since 1992, Morley College in the London Borough of Lambeth. Also under the scheme, coaching weekends for an adventurous project at Biddick Farm in Washington, Tyne & Wear, featured for a few years. The Midland Arts Centre, strategically placed at Cannon Hill in Birmingham, played host to something similar.

The financial stability the Allegri have derived from their long link with the Radcliffe Trust has been an incomparable boon. But let there be no illusion that the traffic is one-way only. A moment’s reflection will reveal that, just at the level of concert-giving, three recitals a term in a three-year undergraduate cycle means 27 concerts and makes considerable repertoire demands if repetition is taboo! Then, the diverse forms of musical activity outlined above, though they will never displace the Quartet’s primary function of playing concerts to the absolute peak of their ability, are in many ways equally challenging and exhausting, and sometimes more so. The Allegri, though, have always been deeply aware of the stimulus they get, from students and teachers alike, and will doubtless always remain so.

To cite just one area in particular. Many of the academic staff at the various universities involved in the scheme over the years have become personal friends. The Allegri got a social life back! Many have also explored their particular musical interests with the group; some have even been composers. Denis Arnold challenged them on Beethoven at Oxford. Peter Evans, Professor at Southampton when the Scheme was inaugurated and a tower of strength throughout his tenure, was a leading authority on Britten and encouraged them to perform that composer in the fine new Turner Sims Concert Hall. David Brown of the same university had written a definitive study of Tchaikovsky. Robert Pascall, first in Nottingham then at Bangor, was and is an enthusiast for all things 19^th century, Brahms especially, and also encouraged them to explore Franz Schmidt’s music. John Tyrell in Nottingham was a world authority on Janáček. In Hull, Brian Newbould was a skilled practitioner of the lecture-recital, and also pushed the Allegri into the byways of his speciality, Schubert. Also in Hull they encountered Robert Marchant who had founded the Music Department, and brought lots of live music to the University and now conducted the University choir and orchestra and was an inspirational lecturer; he was also much involved in local music-making and was a composer. Jeremy Dibble at Durham knows all that is to be known about British music, and so the Allegri ended up playing a Stanford quartet. And so on.

Many of the composers on their first performance list  - see the Appendix! - have had connections with the universities where the Allegri have been based, particularly with the rise of composer-in-residence schemes alongside artists-in-residence: some have even been Professors. Anthony Hedges in Hull was particularly responsive to the Allegri allure, writing over the course of time not only a pair of quartets but quintets with clarinet and bassoon, and a Rhapsody for violin and piano dedicated to David Roth. At the same university, the Allegri premièred a quartet by Robert Marchant. From Robert Sherlaw Johnson at Oxford in the early days and his successor Robert Saxton to, latterly, Martyn Harry at Durham, a pupil of Alexander Goehr, they have all without exception promised challenging pieces and sometimes even delivered them on time!  All would emphasise their gratitude – as would numerous fortunate students, both composers and string players.

Intimately bound up with the Radcliffe scheme at the universities was a related exercise designed to foster an increase in new music for string quartet. The Radcliffe Music Award, for new pieces involving, though not always confined to, the quartet medium, was a mixture of competition and commission. A panel read through submitted scores and then invited four composers to write works on commission, which the Allegri would learn and perform before jury and audience on a university campus. There were six competitions in all, between 1969 and 1980, involving a great deal of work for the judging panel: entries peaked at 114 in the first year, were still a healthy 66 in 1975 but dropped to 32 two years later. Part of the appeal of the idea was that the winning work or works would repay the effort involved for the Allegri in learning them by being toured to half a dozen other guaranteed venues, i.e. the campuses participating in the wider scheme. By common consent, the Award in that first year was an outstanding success. The jury was so impressed by the high standard of the entries (anonymous, though the handwriting gave away the identity of at least one distinguished entrant) that in the end, not only were the four new works not placed in any hierarchy, but the Trust agreed to sponsor a commercial recording. Thus the Maguire-Roth-Ireland-Schrecker version of the Allegri recorded pieces by Sebastian Forbes, Elizabeth Maconchy, Robert Sherlaw Johnson and the Australian, Peter Sculthorpe, on an Argo LP that was something of a beacon in its day.

Inevitably, not all the products of the Radcliffe Music Award were as attractive as these. This was, after all, the heyday of modernism, in music as in all the other arts. No holds were barred. In a later year, one distinguished composer-juror, no mean Schoenbergian himself, was apoplectic when the top Award went to Barry Guy, because the instructions to the performers (who this year included a singer, the heroic Jane Manning who had four scores to learn) were almost as long as the piece itself. The Trust’s historian Ivor Guest also records laconically that “at one competition, at which one of the commissioned works required percussive effects, the Allegri Quartet brought along their second-best instruments, not wishing to damage the precious instruments on which they usually played.”[1] Nevertheless, before the Trust decided that the Radcliffe Music Award had served its day, it was abundantly clear that a crisp signal had been given to composers that the string quartet as such was alive and well, and hungry for new music.

Although on a national league scale, the Radcliffe was still a relatively modest private charitable trust, the arrival of the Millennium in 2000 saw the Trust overall in good shape. Its activities, and its support for the Allegri, as well as for an impressive variety of smaller-scale and unrelated music projects up and down the country – a grand piano for a village hall, backing for a new edition of the Haydn symphonies, grants for music therapy or the National Children’s Orchestra or a new Handel museum – look set for the foreseeable future. They are, though, sure to change and develop.

With education so much part of their bloodstream, it is not surprising that the Allegri have sometimes been happy to take part in ventures outside the Radcliffe Scheme. Coaching amateur quartets at summer schools is a regular activity for an increasing number of professional ensembles; the Allegri were among the first. Long weekends in country house hotels with chamber music in the evenings sometimes allowed the Quartet to plan mini-series that could accommodate for instance some of the Haydn six-part sets, and thus give opus 20 or opus 33 a full outing. The opus 50 set are a tougher nut altogether, but perhaps for that reason, lecture-recitalists such as Hans Keller in the old days or more recently Robert Hanson at Morley College have often liked to discuss them. The author of this present history vividly remembers his first Allegri encounter. It was in the Gardner Arts Centre at the University of Sussex, in May 1971, when Hans Keller came down with the Allegri of the time for a lecture-recital, and performed a spell-binding dissection of the two antithetical Mozart quintets, K. 515 in C and K. 516, the G minor. “Only the violas are not muted in the slow movement. Violas, as Mozart knew – he played the instrument himself – are naturally muted anyway!” Alas, the identity of the second viola player is beyond recall, but it was probably Cecil Aronowitz. A Third Programme broadcast was equally provocative, with the challenging title ‘Is the Arrangement Better?’

And so, in the never-ending search to find new audiences, to open people’s ears, to explore new pieces, and to investigate the shock of the old quite as much as the shock of the new, the Allegri have often been at the forefront. Since 1967, and the advent into their lives of the Radcliffe Trust, it has been one of their guiding principles.