Christian Victor-Hely-Hutchinson, Musical Genius
A Carol Symphony, His Best Known Composition
Jan 5, 2009
Victor Hely-Hutchinson was definitely a child prodigy in music...he showed evidence of having perfect pitch at the age of two and at three was playing piano solos. He was given a first-class musical education and was composing from the time he was a young boy. The son of the last Governor of Cape Colony, South Africa, his family was able to afford the best teachers of the time.
Nonsense Songs
After completing his very brilliant preliminary music studies Victor was awarded the Nettleship Scholarship at Balliol College in 1919. However, after two years he was offered a position at a Cape Town College teaching music. He decided to accept and during his time there he performed The Owl and The Pussy Cat (a nonsense song), Ruthless Rhymes and Three Fugal Fancies.
Marriage
Victor met and married Marjorie Hugo, a talented artist and violinist and they began married life in Hampstead where their two sons, Christopher and John were born.
The house was alive with music and Victor was continually composing and arranging. During the first years of his marriage he often played in public, composed, arranged, wrote copious program notes and made himself generally useful when there was anything musical to do.
A Carol Symphony
In 1927 Victor composed the Variations, Intermezzo, Scherzo and Finale which brought him the Carnegie Prize. A Carol Symphony came at the same time. The symphony is a work that begins with a rollicking fragment which is heard throughout and catches the ear immediately.
He is ingenious in his interspersing of the well-known Christmas carols, beginning with O Come, All Ye Faithful, which receives a sparkling handling at the hand of a master. The next carol is God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, set in a delightful harmonic background, and just as one believes that he can do nothing more with the melody he finds yet another way to skirt around the theme with swirling strings and flutes.
The third carol is the more serious minor key Coventry Carol introduced with ingenious harmony and a soaring violin obbligato above. After some exploration of this theme the work blends into The First Noel. Next comes O Little Town of Bethlehem with a strange and haunting harmonic treatment that leaves the listener in another world, only to be brought back with the reintroduction of The First Noel.
Then the rollicking tune from the first carol comes back in an almost fugal-type episode. Here We Come A Wassailing is the last carol investigated and the symphony ends with a sweeping and uplifting full orchestral setting of O Come All Ye Faithful, neatly tying all loose ends together
Victor Hely-Hutchinson was the founder of the BBC Midland Orchestra and in 1934 he was made Chair of Music at Birmingham University, succeeding Sir Granville Bantock. 1940 found him in the role of Music Director of the BBC, following such celebrated musicians as Sir Adrian Boult and Sir Arthut Bliss.
Last Days
A selfless and considerate person, Victor died at the young age of forty-three after refusing to use fuel during the time it was in such short supply following WW2 and insisting on working in cold rooms. His wife Marjorie remained true to his memory, his music and the man himself and died forty-one years later, never having remarried.
Source
Personal Correspondence with John Hely-Hutchinson, Victor's son, 2009
For further reading about composers see Ruth Crawford Seeger
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