Elizabeth Poston Centenary, 2005: Contributed Articles and Personal Letters

In the early years of the twentieth century, three Eliz/sabeths were born in England within 21 months of each other. These three would become three of Britain’s most illustrious composers. They share an uncompromising conception of the value of music and a complete immersion in the life it demands, but cover an enormously diverse range of musical language and aesthetic. 

Elizabeth Poston is the oldest of the three, born in October 1905. Next was Elisabeth Lutyens in July 1906, followed by Elizabeth Maconchy, born March 1907. 

These composers could not be more different; and in their differences, they highlight just how extraordinary the talent of women composers was even then, at a time that is now ignored, or worse, seen as overstated. How many people know that one of the most famous carols for which King’s College Choir Cambridge is known is by a woman?

The woman in question, Elizabeth Poston, is the subject of this month’s book, a collection of conference papers centred around the enigmatic composer and her environment. It was not a music conference, but one organised by The Friends of Forster Country, founded to preserve both natural and cultural heritage of the land of which Poston’s life was a fundamental part. Many of the papers are light touch, reminiscences rather than in-depth scholarship. One author is frank about the amount that must be conjectured about the immensely private Poston, especially around her wartime work for the BBC. Nevertheless, the touching warmth throughout, both in the way that the writers speak of Poston personally, and in the way they use language, conjures a vibrant image of both composer and milieu. Because Poston lived in E.M. Forster’s old house, their two stories are inextricably entwined. This is not to say  that Forster acted as a requisite male lens for Poston, though at times the narrative being offered around Poston does veer dangerously close to being overshadowed by the more famous figure. What it does, however, is underline an aesthetic, the way in which the bygone era of Forster’s novels found a lingering tendril in Poston and her output. An extract from the offering of the German au-pair who lived with Poston and her mother for a year in the early 1960s vividly sums up much about Poston’s musical past and present. Ruth Brunner writes:

“Miss Poston was working really hard to get a living out of her work. Looking back, I realise that she must have been working on several songbooks at different stages. I often woke up late at night hearing her play the piano, trying out different harmonies. She was then working on The Penguin Book of Christmas Carols, first published in 1965 and also I believe on Baby’s Song Book […]. On the inside of the cover of [Baby’s Song Book] are sketches of two pairs of hands on a piano keyboard, one a grown up’s and the other a child’s laid on top. Mrs Poston told me that that was the way her daughter, at a very early age, wanted to play the piano.”

The papers are lifted verbatim from the conference, without adjusting then for a written medium; the book is a patchwork quilt rather than a narrative. The first half are the papers, the second, writings from Poston’s own pen. Poston was not only a composer but also a writer by profession, and her way with words is wonderfully descriptive as well as often scalpel-sharp. She has a skill for confronting what she sees as prejudice and/or reactionism quietly but with precision. Her letter to Diana Sparkes on 5 April 1967 is a case in point:

“I have been bombarded with requests to write a work for girls which would give them the same chances and enlarge the repertory in the same direction as the Britten Ceremony of Carols does for boys – i.e. to get right away from the conventional clichés meted out to girls, with a subject that clicks and an old/new outlook.
[…]
NOW, here’s an idea. I am looking around for a companion piece, i.e. a text on which to write one. Why not POTS AND PANS? in itself a splendid title and an ideal subject for females!”

Poston is rather ignored in the literature on English music, her considerable influence often being condensed into two or three sentences, at best. Perhaps this is a result of her adherence to a musical aesthetic that matched the gentility of the immediate world she inhabited, quite different from the language of Maconchy and Lutyens; perhaps it was also because of her withdrawal from more (physically) public musical spheres. Yet she remained active in radio and television, as well as acting as president of the Women’s Society of Musicians from 1955-1961. Her output encompasses around 300 works, from the violin sonata and solo songs from her time at the Royal Academy of Music in the 1920s, to the choral works and arrangements of the 1980s (John Alabaster’s biographical catalogue is a sterling piece of work). This small volume opens a window onto an enigmatic figure who deserves more, not least for an underlying philosophy that feels like a shaft of light in the turmoil of today’s world:

“As we […] look at life from within or without, as we struggle on with the immense complexities of its problems, it still behoves us to go back to the beginning – stop talking, and simply stand still and love a sound or a sight or a thought, a bird maybe, or a daisy or a dandelion in green grass.”