There was music in the Parry home from his earliest days. His father played, composed and helped organize the Three Choirs Festival but, in line with Victorian prejudices, did not greatly encourage music in his sons. Nevertheless, by 1860, 12-year-old Hubert was eagerly studying Bach’s “48”. Later, in the 1870s, he took lessons from the influential pianist Dannreuther, who became something of a mentor, opening his mind to the latest German music. With Dannreuther, Parry assiduously worked at his piano technique, though without any strong ambition to become a professional performer. By 1878, when the Theme and 19 Variations were substantially completed, he had published two Sonatas, three sets of Sonnets and Songs without Words (totalling ten pieces) and a cycle of Seven Charakterbilder. Other piano music from this period remains in manuscript. This CD project will record all the published solo works.
Post-1878, Parry wrote only the brief “Cosy” (1892) until Shulbrede Tunes and Hands Across the Centuries, published in 1914 and 1918. The posthumous 5 Romantic Pieces (1923) merely recycled some of the Sonnets and Songs but the 5 Miniatures (1928), apart from incorporating Cosy, seem to be late works, previously unpublished.
A likely explanation for this pattern is time. From the 1880s, Parry was busy providing the many music festivals with large-scale choral/orchestral works. His work as Professor at the newly founded Royal College of Music from 1883, and Director from 1895, made further demands. After the turn of the century, with the rise of a new generation of British composers, his big choral pieces were less in demand, leaving more space for smaller works.
Though Parry’s Second Sonata was completed before the First, he evidently wished it to be known as his second – and it certainly seems a logical development from the less ambitious first, which drew on earlier sketches. It was dedicated to Tora Gordon, initially to celebrate her engagement to Victor Marshall; instead, Parry seems to have fallen in love with her as the sonata progressed. She was one of several woman towards whom he felt a strong attraction as his wife Maude grew increasingly unresponsive.
The first movement is altogether remarkable. The Maestoso introduction opens with a gravely powerful chordal theme, contrasted with passages of wistful recitative. A change of key leads to a passage of striking, serene beauty (a vision of Tora?) over a pulsating accompaniment, brushed away by a dramatic reworking of the opening material. This is followed by an Allegro grazioso notable for its bewildering wealth of themes. The fragmentary horn-call is obviously the first subject, but which is the second? The chorale-like theme? The more pastoral continuation? The conversational, Mendelssohnian theme with its concluding roulades? The development, based wholly on the first theme, provides no clue. It concludes with a return to the serene music from the introduction, though with only the slightest hint of its more dramatic surroundings. The recapitulation is drastically shortened – the chorale theme and the conversational Mendelssohnian theme are omitted entirely, so we now realize that the pastoral theme was the real second subject. There may be earlier models of which I am unaware, but I know of no other case before the first movement of Sibelius’s Second Symphony where the “recapitulation” not a recapitulation but an explanation of the exposition.
The second movement combines Schubertian movement with Brahmsian warmth and even a hint of Wagner in the central build-up. At the end, the opening theme is restated in spare octaves, as though Parry is paring it down to essentials and saying “that’s what it was all about”.
The energetic Scherzo encases a Trio that, in its warm thirds and sixths, contains the most obviously Brahmsian music in the sonata. It is alluded to again in the coda.
The gentle gait of the rondo theme in the Finale seems to derive from the last movement of Beethoven’s op. 90. It is contrasted with a more heroic, striding theme and, in the central episode, a more contemplative one that makes much use of split octaves. The coda dissolves gently with Beethovenian trills.
It has been suggested that this is the finest British piano sonata of the 19th century. The claims of Sterndale Bennett’s F minor sonata, from earlier in the century, should be considered, and possible rivals by Cowen and Stanford – the latter apparently a large-scale affair – have not survived. Graded lists are of doubtful value in any case. Suffice to say that this is a British 19th century piano sonata with serious claims on the repertoire.
If the Second Sonata documents Parry’s domestic disenchantment, the second set of Sonnets and Songs without Words has its roots in the days when he was attempting to court Maude – and had been ordered off by her mother. Resignation has the air of a stoic leave-taking. As an interpretation of Milton’s poem, L’Allegro seems an unduly melancholy romance, but it must reflect his feelings at the time, as do the outer sections of Il Penseroso – though in the central section, reminiscent of a Field Nocturne, he perhaps dreams of better days.
Hands Across the Centuries was published in the last year of Parry’s life and dedicated to another of the women who gave him Platonic solace for the bleakness of his marriage. Emily Daymond (1866-1949) had become a student at the Royal College of Music upon its opening in 1883. Parry was among her teachers. She adulated him and much later offered him her services as amanuensis and general assistant. From around 1914 she was virtually part of the Parry household, to the extreme displeasure of Maude. It has not been suggested that their relationship actually impinged upon Maude’s marital rights, but her extra-musical activities involved extensive bicycle rides with Parry. In the last of these she forced the pace, unwittingly provoking her idol’s final illness. After his death, she ordered and catalogued his work, as well as arranging for the publication of several works, such as the well-known English Suite for strings, that had not yet found their final form.
Ostensibly, Hands Across the Centuries is a romantic revisitation of old baroque forms, yet it seems to go beyond this to express the composer’s unease and emotional isolation. Intentionally or not, the music evokes seas and weathers experienced on Parry’s beloved yacht “The Wanderer”. Majestic breakers in the Prelude, roiling storms in the Passionate Allemande, lapping wavelets in the Wistful Courante, rolling at anchor in the Sarabande and the outer sections of the Minuet (the central part of which expresses something very mysterious and threatening), back into the maelstrom for the Whirling Jig. Only the charming Gavotte and Musette seem to be exactly what they say they are. Those who find this interpretation too fanciful will agree, I hope, that this is a powerful, affecting and sometimes disturbing late work.
Christopher Howell © 2025