Welcome back to another deep dive. Today we're
settling in to talk about a figure who, well,
who quite honestly feels like a bit of a secret
giant, specifically in the world of British music.
We are going to be looking at the life and really
the immense work of Frances Johnruth. It's a
pleasure to be here. And Secret Giant is actually
a really apt way to put it. You think so? Oh,
absolutely. Because when you just look at the
surface, you see a composer. Right. But when
you start digging into the sources, and we do
have a really great stack of material to go through
today, you realize he was just so much more than
that. Exactly. I mean, usually when we do these
dives, we're looking at someone who did one thing
really, really well. The specialist. Right. the
specialist, the guy who's been 40 years perfecting
the violin sonata, or the woman who only wrote
about, say, medieval chant. But Ruth feels like
he's a triple threat. In the theatrical sense.
Well, no, not singing and dancing. But in the
context of classical music history, he wasn't
just sitting in a room somewhere, writing notes
on a page, waiting for the muse to strike. No,
not at all. He was a prolific composer, yes.
Yeah. But he was also a dedicated author. and
a historian, documenting the music of his time.
And perhaps, surprisingly to me, he was a tireless
organizer. Yes. He actually built platforms for
other people. And that is the key right there,
that third pillar. The organizer. The organizer,
exactly. That's what makes him such a fascinating
case study for us. He wasn't just creating art.
He was creating the ecosystem for art to exist.
And we're talking about a massive span of time
here. Oh, the dates alone are staggering. Yeah.
Born in 1927 and he died in 2021. Which is...
years. Right. It's a life that effectively spans
the entire modern era of British classical music.
Truly. I mean, he saw the post -war reconstruction,
the avant -garde explosion of the 60s. The shift
into the digital age. All the way to the 21st
century. He was there for the invention of talking
pictures and he was there for the rise of digital
streaming. And that's really our mission for
this deep dive, isn't it? To use Francis Ruth
as a lens. We want to see how his career serves
as a microcosm for all that history. But we also
want to get to the heart of the man himself.
Right. And specifically the legacy he left behind.
Because for all the work he published, and there
is a lot of it, which we'll get into, there's
this really haunting detail at the very end of
his life that I know we're going to get to. Yes.
A final symphony that, as of right now, has never
been heard. That really stuck with me too, the
idea of a silent symphony. It's almost cinematic.
It is. But before we get to the end, we have
to start the beginning. We do. So let's unpack
the foundations of Francis Ruth. Let's do it.
We're starting in Kitterminster, England, January
5th, 1927. A pre -depression, pre -war world.
Yeah, a completely different England than the
one you or I know today. Very different. And
he goes through the traditional education route
initially. The sources mention Malvern College,
Harrow School. These are, you know, highly prestigious
institutions. You really get the sense of a classic
English upbringing. You do. But then history
intervenes. The source notes that he served in
the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve from 1945 to
1948. Which is a crucial detail. Just think about
those dates for a second. Yeah. 1945. The war
is ending. The war is ending, but the world is
in absolute turmoil. And he's 18 years old. It's
hard to imagine, isn't it? I mean, today, you
look at an 18 -year -old aspiring musician, they're
probably worrying about conservatory audition.
Or building up their social media following.
Right. But Ruth is joining the Navy. Precisely.
He spends three years in the service before he
really begins his artistic life in earnest. And
I think that context is so important for you
to keep in mind as we discuss his later work.
How so? Well, we often forget that this generation
of artists, the post -war generation, they brought
a level of maturity and perhaps a very specific
kind of discipline to their work because they'd
seen service. It's not just about discipline
in the sense of like waking up early to practice
scales, is it? No, no. It's about understanding
hierarchy and function. On a naval ship, everything
has a place. Right. Every single action has a
consequence. You exist in a very rigid, high
-stakes structure. They had existed in that environment
before they ever set foot in a composition seminar.
Which certainly sets the stage for a disciplined
mind. Absolutely. And speaking of a disciplined
mind, after the Navy, he doesn't just go to music
school immediately. He goes to King's College,
Cambridge. But here's the curveball. He didn't
just study music there. He read classics. This
is one of those details that just explains so
much about his later work. It really jumped out
at me. Because reading classics at Cambridge
isn't just about learning Latin and Greek vocabulary.
It's about understanding structure, rhetoric,
balance, and form. It's heavy stuff. It is the
study of the architecture of thought, essentially.
So you think that directly influenced his music?
Without a doubt. If you spend your university
years analyzing, say, the meter of an epic poem
or the logical arguments of ancient philosophers,
you're wiring your brain to appreciate form and
development. You're learning how to construct
a narrative arc that holds together. Exactly.
When he eventually sits down to write a symphony
or a concerto, that classical architecture is
going to be in his DNA. It suggests he wasn't
interested in chaos. He was interested in coherent
expression. It's like he was learning the engineering
of art before he actually learned the specific
bricks of music. That's a great way to put it.
And we should note, he was learning the organ
at Cambridge, too. Yes, he picked up the organ
there. And the organ is, in many ways, the most
architectural of all instruments. Right, because
of its sheer size. Size, yes, but also mechanics.
It's literally a machine, a massive structure.
It relies on wind pressure, mechanical linkages,
levers, stops. It's not just a piece of wood
with strings on it. No, it's not like a flute
where it's just your breath and a simple tube.
You are operating a complex engine. So you have
this convergence of the naval discipline, the
classics curriculum, and the structural complexity
of the organ. That's the foundation. That is
a rock solid bedrock. So after Cambridge, he
finally pivots to pure music training. He heads
to the Royal Academy of Music in 1951. Where
he studies with some real heavy hitters, William
Alwyn for piano. Allwin is a big name. Huge.
Allwin was a master melodist, famous for his
film scores as much as his symphonies. He really
knew how to communicate with an audience. And
then Ruth studied organ with Wesley Roberts.
Right. But what fascinates me here is what happened
after the Academy. The private lessons. Yes.
The source mentions he took private composition
lessons with Macias Cyber. Which, why is that
significant? I mean, he already went to the Royal
Academy, he's got the pedigree. Why go get a
private tutor after you've already graduated
from a top -tier institution? It shows a very
specific kind of hunger. The Academy gives you
the broad strokes, right? The credential, the
network. But seeking out Cyber, who was a Hungarian
composer living in England, that tells us something
else entirely. What does it tell us? Well, cyber
was known for being quite rigorous and very knowledgeable
about modern techniques, specifically the European
modernist traditions that might not have been
the main focus at the Royal Academy at that specific
time. So the Academy was perhaps a bit more...
I don't know, tradition. A bit more English establishment,
perhaps? Whereas cyber represented the wider,
more experimental world. Ruth going to him shows
that he wasn't satisfied with just being good
enough for the English scene. He wanted to push
himself. He wanted to refine his specific voice.
He wanted to understand the absolute nuts and
bolts of composition on a much deeper level.
It's like getting your degree, but then going
out and hiring a master craftsman to teach you
the actual secrets of the trade. Exactly. It
implies that he took the craft of composition
incredibly seriously. He wasn't just, you know,
waiting for inspiration to strike from the heavens.
He was actively honing his tools. So let's talk
about those tools. Yeah. Let's talk about his
voice. He spends the 50s training, organizing,
getting ready. And by the early 1960s, he really
starts to get noticed. Yes. The source describes
his style in a very specific way. It calls it
chromatic. but still tonal. Now that is a phrase
we need to unpack because it appears a lot in
descriptions of his work and if you aren't a
music theorist it can be a bit confusing. Please
do unpack it because to a lay person that might
sound like a complete contradiction. It does
doesn't it? Think of tonal music as having a
home base. Okay. When you're listening to a piece
of music and you can just sort of feel where
it's going to resolve, you feel the key of the
song. It's like gravity. Like when a pop song
ends on that final satisfying chord. Exactly.
No matter how high the melody jumps, you know
where the ground is. That's tonality. OK, got
it. It's grounded. Right. Now, chromatic refers
to using all the notes in between the standard
scale steps. The black keys on the piano essentially
slipping in and out. It adds color, tension,
ambiguity. So it makes it less straightforward.
Yes. If a simple tonal song is a primary color
painting, just red -yellow -blue chromaticism
is adding thousands of shades of shadow and neon
in sharp contrast. I like that analogy. So when
Ruth is described as chromatic but still tonal,
it means he's pushing the boundaries. He's wandering
far away from home using complex, colorful, modern
harmonies that might sound dissonant or edgy.
But he never completely burns the house down.
Exactly. He never abandons that sense of a tonal
center entirely. So it's modern, but not alienating.
That is a really great way to put it. He's not
writing purely a tonal noise where there is zero
gravity and you just float in space without a
compass. He is writing music that communicates,
that has a logic you can follow. It's just dressed
in a very sophisticated mid -century harmonic
language. Let's look at some of the works that
actually established this voice. We mentioned
his background in classics earlier, and that
seems to pop up immediately in his vocal works.
It definitely does. In 1962, he writes a song
cycle called A Woman young and old, which is
based on Yeats. And then in 1963, four Shakespeare
songs. Both heavy literary hitters. Yeah, he's
not messing around. He isn't setting simple nursery
rhymes, that's for sure. And then later, in 1972,
he writes The Death of Iphigenia. Which is a
direct callback to his classics degree. The text
is by Aeschylus from the Oristea. It is. And
The Death of Iphigenia is a heavy, tragic subject.
It's about as heavy as it gets in literature.
sacrifice, betrayal, the whims of the gods. For
a composer to tackle Greek tragedy, they need
a real sense of grandeur and dramatic pacing.
It's not light listening. No. And this confirms
that Ruth wasn't just writing pretty little tunes
to be played in the background. He was engaging
with serious weighty literature. He treated the
music as an extension of that literary tradition.
He was probably analyzing the text just like
he did back at Cambridge. Oh, surely. He was
likely analyzing the rhythm of the text just
as closely as he analyzed the notes themselves.
Now, we can't talk about Ruth without talking
about the organ. No, we cannot. You mentioned
it was his instrument at Cambridge and at the
Academy. The list of his organ works and our
sources is, well, it's extensive. It's central
to his entire output. The organ was his laboratory
and there's one massive project that really stands
out in the source material, the sacred tetralogy.
The name alone sounds imposing. The Sacred Tetralogy.
It sounds like a high fantasy novel series. It
really does, but it's actually a set of four
major organ works composed between 1959 and 1974.
Wait, 1959 and 1974? That's a 15 -year span?
15 years to complete one cycle that shows incredible
persistence. Just think about how much the world
changed between 1959 and 1974. Everything changed.
Culture, politics, music. Everything. Yet he's
stuck with this singular project. The works are
The Manger Throne from 1960, Lumen Christi from
1968, Aeternar Rex Celticia from 1970, and Gloria
Tibi Trinitas from 1974. Lumen Christi, Light
of Christ, Gloria Tibi Kitty, Trinitas' Glory
to the Trinity. These are deeply religious titles.
They are. And they suggest that for Ruth, The
organ wasn't just a concert instrument. It was
a vessel for spiritual expression. And calling
it a tetralogy implies a unified artistic statement.
He is building a cathedral out of sound. And
when you consider his style, that chromatic tonal
language we just talked about, these pieces likely
have an immense power to them. Because the organ
can handle that kind of density. Exactly. The
organ can sustain these long, complex chords
that shift and evolve slowly over time. It is
the perfect medium for his harmonic language
because the organ literally breathes. It has
infinite sustain. As long as the blower's running,
the sound doesn't stop. Precisely. But he didn't
start there with the organ, though. There's an
English organ book from 1972 and four Marian
antiphons from 1989. Which tells us he was contributing
to the everyday repertoire. He wasn't just playing
for himself. He was giving other organists new
material to play. Practical material? Yes. An
English organ book sounds like something specifically
designed to be used to be part of the canon of
English church and recital music. He was trying
to ensure that the English organ tradition had
new vibrant music to keep it alive. But he wasn't
stuck in the organ loft. We had to look at his
orchestral output. I was honestly surprised by
how many concertos he wrote. It's a very healthy
list. Yeah, let's look at it. Violin concerto
in 65, double concerto in 70. cello concerto
in 73, piano concerto in 76, and an oboe concerto
in 84. That covers almost every major solo instrument
family. It does. And writing a concerto is a
very specific challenge, isn't it? Oh, it's incredibly
difficult. You have to balance a solo ego, a
single melodic line against a massive orchestra.
Right. Ensuring the soloist isn't drowned out,
but the orchestra isn't bored. Exactly. You have
to understand the specific mechanics of the violin,
the cello, the oboe. It shows he was a highly
practical musician who understood how instruments
actually worked in the real world. He likely
knew the soloists he was writing for, understanding
their individual strengths and weaknesses. And
then there are the symphonies. The big ones.
The heavyweights. Symphony No. 1 in 1973. And
then a pause? A huge pause. Symphony No. 2 doesn't
appear until 2003. That is a 30 -year gap between
his first and second symphony. 30 years. What
do we make of that? Why wait 30 years to write
your second symphony? It is really fascinating
to speculate on that. This source doesn't explicitly
tell us why, but look at what else he was doing
during that time, which we'll get to in a moment.
He was busy. Very busy. He was organizing concerts,
editing magazines, teaching. Life happens. But
also, the symphony is a daunting form. It is
the novel of the music world. It's a major statement.
Right. Maybe he felt he had said what he needed
to say in 1973, and it simply took three decades
of living, of changes in the musical landscape,
before he felt he had something new to say in
that specific form. It speaks to that longevity
we mentioned at the start. He didn't burn out.
He kept going. He didn't just retire in the 90s
and stop writing. And he kept evolving. We have
to mention the chamber music, too. The dance
suite for string quartet, mosaics for two violins,
and his late piano work, The Well -Tempered Pianist
from 2009. Another title that feels like a massive
nod to history. Bach wrote The Well -Tempered
Clavier. Exactly. Ruth rates 24 Preludes. That
is a direct conversation with Bach and with Chopin.
and with Shostakovich, who also wrote sets of
24 preludes and fugues. He's placing himself
in that direct lineage. He is, and the source
notes, it was actually performed and recorded
by Charles Matthews. So even in 2009, when Ruth
is in his 80s, he is creating substantial, ambitious
cycles of music that are being brought to life.
Which brings us to the unheard finale we teased
earlier, Symphony in 03. Written between 2010
and 2012. So he's in his mid -80s while writing
this. Yes. And the source gives us a really poignant
detail about this piece. It incorporates and
develops material from some of his previous compositions.
So it's a retrospective. It is a musical memoir.
He is looking back at his entire life's work,
taking themes or ideas from earlier pieces, maybe
things he wrote in the 50s or the 70s, and weaving
them into a final symphonic statement. It's a
summation of his artistic identity. Yes. And
yet, the source says, it remains unperformed.
That is the real tragedy here. A lifetime of
experience synthesized into a final symphony
and it's just sitting in a drawer or an archive
somewhere. It really makes you wonder what we
are missing. It's like finding the final unpublished
manuscript of a great novelist. It does. But
Ruth's legacy isn't just about the notes he wrote.
It is about the notes he helped other people
get heard. We really need to shift gears and
talk about the organizer. The organizer. This
is part three of our dive. And honestly, this
might be where he had the most tangible everyday
impact on the life of British music. I agree
completely. It starts in the 1950s. The source
says he began organizing informal performances
in St. Luke's Church, Red Cliff Square. Just
a local church. This is real grassroots stuff.
He's with colleagues from the Royal Academy,
probably drinking tea and complaining that nobody's
playing their music. And they just say, well,
we need a place to play new music. Let's do it
ourselves. And from those informal church gigs,
things snowball. It evolves into the Redcliffe
Festival, which ran between 1957 and 1961. Right.
And then the big one, the Redcliffe Concerts
of British Music, founded in 1963. The Red Cliff
Concerts became a legitimate brand. They moved
from the church to the Arts Council at St. James's
Square. And then in 1967, they hit the Major
League. The Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell
Room on the South Bank. For listeners who don't
know the geography of London, that is the center
of cultural life. It is the absolute heart. It
is the equivalent of moving from a garage band
to playing Carnegie Hall. It is a massive step
up in prestige and visibility. And this series
ran for 22 years until 1989. That is an incredible
run for a concert series focused exclusively
on British music. And the British music part
is key. The source says the mission was promoting
British music. He wasn't just putting on Beethoven
and Mozart to sell easy tickets. No, and he wasn't
just promoting himself either, which I think
is the mark of a true statesman of the arts.
He championed the Tippett generation. The Source
mentions a 21st anniversary series in autumn
1985 that surveyed composers like Constant Lambert,
Alan Ross Dorn, and Michael Tippett. These are
major figures. They are, but Ruth was ensuring
they were contextualized and celebrated as a
movement. He was building a narrative of British
music history. He was saying to the public, look
at what we have achieved in this country. He
also looked backward too. The Source mentions
he revised and edited the works of Samuel Wesley.
Samuel Wesley is an interesting figure, a 19th
century composer who is often overshadowed. Ruth,
taking the time to edit his works for modern
performance shows, he saw the Red Cliff concerts
as a way to connect the deep past to the present.
He's saying here is where we came from and here's
where we are. Exactly. And doing all this with
the backing of the Greater London Council, which
gave it real institutional weight. But here is
where it gets really interesting to me. We talked
about his background classics, the organ, the
Navy. Chromatic, but tonal. You picture a fairly
traditional academic guy. Right. A very establishment
figure. Maybe wearing a tweed jacket with elbow
patches. Definitely. But then, look at what happened
on January 15, 1968, at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
This is the aha moment of his organizing career.
This is the plot twist. The source identifies
it as one of the earliest concerts of electronic
music by British composers held in Britain. In
1968, think about that. It's so early for that.
Electronic music was still in its absolute infancy.
We aren't talking about sleek synthesizers or
laptops as we know them today. We are talking
about the wild avant -garde. And the lineup is
legendary. Tristram Carey, Delia Derbyshire,
George Newsome, Daphne Oram, Peters and Avif.
Delia Derbyshire and Daphne Oram are icons now.
They are the pioneers of the BBC radiophonic
workshop. They are the people who literally made
the sounds of the future. The Doctor Who theme,
right? Exactly. But in 1968, putting this on
in a concert hall was weird stuff. It involved
tape loops, raw oscillators, physically cutting
magnetic tape with razor blades and sticking
it back together. It was probably seen as just
noise by the classical elite. Oh, absolutely.
It was highly controversial. And here is Frances
Ruth, the organist, the classic scholar, giving
them a platform at the Queen Elizabeth Hall.
It reveals an incredible open mindedness. You
might expect someone with his strict classical
background to turn up his nose at beeps and boops.
Right. But he didn't. He recognized that this
was a vital growing part of the British musical
landscape. He saw the value in it. It shows he
wasn't a gatekeeper trying to keep things traditional.
He was opening the gates for true innovation.
That contrast is just wild to me. The man writing
the sacred tetralogy for organ is the exact same
man booking a gig for Delia Dobercher. It proves
that for Ruth, British music was a very big tent.
It included everything. And, you know, perhaps
there is a connection. We talked about the organ
being a machine. Early electronic music was also
intensely mechanical. It was about directly manipulating
sound waves and voltage. Maybe his analytical
mind saw the connection between the windpipes
of an organ and the electronic oscillators of
a synthesizer. That is a fascinating thought,
the mechanics of sound. Yes. And he didn't just
stop at concerts, he got into the business side
too. In 1989, he formed Red Cliff Records and
Red Cliff Publishing. Which is the logical next
step, because concerts are ephemeral. Right,
you play it once and it's gone. Once they are
done, they are done. The applause fades. But
recordings and printed scores last forever. By
starting a label in a publishing house, he was
ensuring that the music is owned, but also works
by people like Priya Rangne and Graham Weddam
had a permanent home. He was securing the legacy.
He was taking the means of production into his
own hands, which is incredibly forward thinking
for a classical composer of his era. So we have
a composer and we have the organizer. But there
was one more hat he wore, the scholar. Because
apparently writing symphonies and running a 22
-year concert series just wasn't enough work
for one man. I know, right? When did this guy
sleep? The source tells us he taught music at
Morley College starting in 1971. Morley College
has a great tradition of adult education and
music, so he's out there passing on the knowledge
directly to students. But he's also writing.
He was the editor of Composer Magazine from 1980
to 1987. Being an editor is a really powerful
position. You shape the conversation. You decide
what gets discussed. Composer Magazine was a
crucial forum for the profession. It forced him
to be in touch with the issues facing composers
in the 80s. Funding, aesthetics, technology.
He had his finger constantly on the pulse. And
he wrote books. Actual physical books. Several
of them. Playing the organ in 1958. Which was
a practical instruction manual. Contemporary
music. an introduction in 1968, an educational
text probably helping everyday people understand
the weird new sounds of the 60s we were just
talking about, and contemporary British music,
1945, 1970, published in 1972. Now, that one
is deeply significant. He is writing the history
of his own era while he is living it. That's
tough to do objectively. It takes a lot of confidence
and a very analytical mind. He is documenting
the first 25 years of post -war British music.
He is trying to make sense of the chaos of the
present. He's saying to his readers, This is
what happened, and this is why it matters. And
finally, a book on Stravinsky in 1975. Which
brings us back full circle to that chromatic
but tonal idea. Oh, right. Stravinsky is the
ultimate model for that fiercely modernist but
deeply rooted in structure and tradition. It
makes perfect sense Ruth would write about him.
Stravinsky was the giant of the century, and
Ruth clearly saw him as kindred spirit in terms
of valuing structure and clarity over pure emotion.
So how does this writing side compliment the
composer's side. I mean, why do both? It forces
you to articulate why music matters. When you
compose, you are working mostly with intuition
and raw sound. When you write about music, you
have to use logic and language. You have to explain
yourself. Exactly. Ruth was doing both. The scholar
informed the composer and the organizer gave
the composer a platform. It is a complete self
-sustaining ecosystem of a career. It really
is. It's incredibly impressive. So we reach the
end of the timeline. Francis Ruth died on November
27, 2021. At the age of 94. The source notes
the funeral was at St. Peter's Church, Hammersmith,
followed by a committal at Mortlake Crematorium.
A quiet end to a very loud, very full life. When
we sum it up, the numbers are just impressive.
85 published works spanning 60 years. And remember,
that's just the composition stats. That doesn't
count the hundreds of concerts he organized,
the students he taught at Morley, the articles
he edited, or the books he wrote. It's a legacy
that touches literally every part of the musical
world. Performance, creation, education, promotion.
He was a true custodian of British music. He
took care of it. He nurtured it. He made sure
it had a place to live. But I can't help but
go back to that one loose end. The Symphony No.
3. Yeah. It's the final provocative thought I
want to leave you, our listeners, with today.
Here is a man who spent his entire life ensuring
other people's music was heard. He organized
the concerts. He published the scores. He fought
for the underdog in 1968. He did the work. He
did. And yet, his own final statement, his musical
memoir, the culmination of 94 years of life and
art remains unperformed. It is a profound irony.
It is. And it makes me think about the medium.
You know, if he had just recorded a digital file
and put it on a blog, anyone could hear it. But
because it's a symphony, because it requires
an orchestra, a hall, a budget, a physical gathering,
it sits in silence. The physical medium is the
barrier. Exactly. It raises a challenge for us
and for you listening. We live in a world that
is completely obsessed with the new. We want
the latest release, the newest young star, the
next big premiere. Always looking forward. But
what else is hidden in the archives because of
that obsession? Does the drive for new premieres
actually kill the revival of late -in -life masterpieces?
Here is a treasure, a symphony no. 3 by a master
craftsman just sitting in a drawer. What is the
true value of a musician? Is it the fame they
have while they're alive? Or is it what they
leave behind for us to find later? If the physical
score is there waiting to be digitized or performed,
maybe the story isn't over. I think Frances Ruth
would say the value is in the work itself. He
did the work. He wrote the notes. He respected
the structure. Now, it is up to us, the next
generation of organizers, conductors, and musicians,
to open that drawer, take out the score, and
bring it to life. Maybe one of you listening
right now is the person to do it. That's all
for this deep dive into the life of Frances Ruth,
a fascinating journey through a century of British
music. Thanks for listening. Thank you. Keep
listening and keep digging.