Musicologist Arnold Whittall died last month, at the age of ninety. Nearly sixty years ago, he was my tutor at Nottingham University.
I was only in contact with him during one year at Nottingham (1968-9), and afterwards I met him just a couple of times at conferences, so I can’t say that I really got to know him outside the pupil-teacher situation. I found him a friendly, if rather austere man, but with flashes of humour – and I was a young and not very worldly-wise student; so our encounters across the seminar table were quite formal, although I did once visit his neat house in Beeston for some kind of party and also once had a drink with him and his wife Mary in a city centre pub. He had a challenging way of teaching – making us analyse in detail, think for ourselves and come to decisions – and for that I am very grateful.
Nottingham was his first university post (I think he began his teaching career at a Cambridge technical college), and he then went on to University College Cardiff for a few years and then, until his retirement, Kings College London where he became Professor of Music Theory and Analysis. Meanwhile, he became one of the best-known writers on music of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and his trenchant and detailed studies of composers as widely ranging as Wagner, Finnissy, Britten, Schoenberg and Maxwell Davies, became a staple diet for all those interested in musical history and analysis.
In 1968 I was in my final undergraduate year at London’s Royal College of Music. It was without doubt a good place to be, but I felt I needed to know more about what was happening in my own century – so when I saw a little advertisement in the Musical Times for a course leading to the ‘MA in Contemporary Musical Analysis’ at Nottingham University, I applied and was accepted. The course turned out to be the brain-child of Arnold Whittall (always ‘Dr. Whittall’ to me) – he interviewed me, and was responsible for all the teaching on the course, though he did invite a few visiting composers such as Alexander Goehr and Alun Hoddinott. There were just three students on the course that year, the other two being Andrew Massey who became Assistant Conductor of the Cleveland Orchestra and remained in the USA all his life, and Trevor Wishart, the York-based composer of sonic art and digital audio.
In the weekly seminar sessions Arnold Whittall would introduce us to a wide spread of recent works – a lot of background study was required – and at the same time introducing a whole range of analytical and compositional techniques. We also had the opportunity to formally present our own research projects to each other, which further widened the range of music studied.
His teaching method was often focussed on the ‘compare and contrast / similarities and differences’ approach, which could sometimes bring unlikely composers into line and focus, and he carefully showed me how to draw together the strange mixture of works that I had chosen for my MA dissertation, Britten and Shostakovich, Dallapiccola, Boulez and Nono, guiding and developing both my analytical skills and also my use of English.
His picture is taken from the dust-jacket of the first edition of his book ‘Music Since the First World War’ (now renamed ‘Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century’) published in 1977. This was his second book (the first was the BBC Music Guide on Schoenberg) and it confirmed his reputation as a writer who could discuss and explain complex topics in a reader-friendly way, bringing together a wide range of music and putting it side-by-side. For Whittall, musicology was always about music first and foremost, though rigorous analysis had its part to play.
There is a personal tribute by Ian Pace here in the current Gramophone magazine, to which Arnold Whittall contributed for many years.
Musicology has of course developed enormously since I knew Arnold in the 1960s, and he not only followed its developments but was responsible for many of them. I am proud that, for a relatively brief moment in my life, I studied with him.