Kenwood House
HG Wells vision was uncannily accurate
Arthur Bliss remembers a huge production
 Raymond Massey explains the new world order to Ralph Richardson and Margaretta Scott in Things to Come
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HAMSTEAD AND HIGHGATE FESTIVAL 2006
HG Wells's music of things to come
Gerald Isaaman reveals how HG Wells challenged convention when he brought in composer Arthur Bliss to work
on his futuristic film
The letter came out of the blue, a surprise for the handsome composer Arthur Bliss at East Heath Lodge, his home for a decade from 1929, overlooking Hampstead Heath. So too was the request it made – and the name of its sender.
The celebrated HG Wells wanted Bliss, one of whose recent lectures he had heard at the Royal Institution, to write the music for a film version of The Shape Of Things To Come, the now iconic film scripted by Wells himself and produced by Alexander Korda.
The date on the letter, October 16, 1934, from Wells’s then home in Clarence Gate, on the edge of Regent’s Park, was the start of a new adventure for them both, Wells wanting to shake the world with his prediction of World War II, when strategic mass bombing would wipe out Everytown and people would suffer from wandering sickness.
But Wells, as might be expected from such a radical thinker whose ideas excited so much attention, wanted something totally different and new for the first epic sci-fi film, in which Raymond Massey starred alongside Ralph Richardson, Cedric Hardwicke, Margaretta Scott and Ann Todd.
“I am at issue with Korda and one or two others of the group on the question of where you come in,” wrote Wells. “They say – it is the Hollywood tradition – ‘We make the film right up to the cutting, then, when we have cut, the musician comes in and puts in his music.’
“I say Balls! I say ‘A film is composition and the musical composer is an integral part of the design. I want Bliss to be in touch throughout.’
“I don’t think Korda has much of an ear, but I want the audience at the end not to sever what it sees from what it hears. I want to end on a complete sensuous and emotional synthesis… So far from regarding the music as trimming to be put in afterwards, I am eager to get any suggestions I can from you as to the main design.”
It was an historic moment in film-making, the first time music was to be composed and performed prior to a movie production instead of being slotted in at the end as an afterthought.
And it undoubtedly helped to make Bliss famous, his name forever associated with the classic Things To Come, first seen in 1936.
This month’s Hampstead and Highgate Festival pays homage to Bliss as a local composer with five of his significant works being performed, including Music For Strings, probably one of his finest and most complex scores, composed in Hampstead, up to the Birthday Songs For A Royal Child, written for Prince Andrew, in 1959, when Bliss was living in St John’s Wood.
It is a shame, however the works do not include the stirring strains of Things To Come. And neither is the film being shown again at the Everyman.
“One of the main reasons for featuring Bliss this year was that he was appointed Master of the Queen’s Musick in 1953, the year of the Queen’s coronation, and as we are in her 80th year now, I thought this was a particularly fitting moment,” says George Vass, the festival’s artistic director.
“Bliss was one of the few composers to take his royal post seriously. He wrote a great deal of ceremonial music, including fanfares, anthems and a royal march. I am sorry that we have missed out on Things To Come.
“But that will form part of a special film segment planned for another festival year, which will feature films with scores written by Hampstead and Highgate composers. And there’s literally hundreds to chose from.”
As for Things To Come, Bliss conjures up the scene well enough himself in his memoirs, As I Remember. “Those were the days of size in film production, huge sets, huge orchestras – the bigger the ensemble, the more important the film,” he writes.
“At Denham whole towns sprang up, to be battered down by bombs and guns, and then rebuilt in a different setting. One section of the film was actually shot to my musical score: there was no dialogue in it; the sequence dealt exclusively with the machines of the future.
“The scene showed the earth being mined, roads made, houses erected, apparently without the aid of manual labour. This was one of the parts of the film in which Wells took particular interest, watching the ‘rushes’ as they were shown, and caustically commenting.”
And Bliss adds: “Wells had expressed a wish to hear my music before the ‘shooting’, so I invited him to come to my house in Hampstead, and there played the music through to him as best I could on the piano.
“I think at the end his comment was, without doubt, the strangest I have ever heard from any critical listener. ‘Bliss,’ he said, ‘I am sure that all that is very fine music, but I’m afraid you have missed the whole point. You see the machines of the future will be noiseless!’
“Assuring him that I would try to write music that expressed inaudibility, I went my own way, and luckily Wells forgot his objections.”
Alas, Wells became disillusioned with the film, despite its world-wide success, because he believed the cinema was an educative force. His film would warn of the horror and uselessness of war, which would lead inevitably to the destruction of civilised life, the world ruled by gangster dictatorship and oppression.
“He knew that that the mass medium of the film was the most powerful means of conveying his message,” Bliss points out. “But it did not quite turn out like that. In spite of imaginative direction, fine acting, and an expert staff of technicians, the financial necessity of having to appeal to a vast audience mean a concession here, and a concession there, a watering down in one place, a deletion in another.
“So that, instead of having the impact of a vital parable, it became just an exciting entertainment. Everything Wells prophesied back in 1935 came to pass, even the dream of shooting young volunteers into outer space moonwards, but though the film has gone round the world, it has not influenced world events, as Wells so sincerely hoped.” Yet Bliss himself became a major influence before his death in 1975, aged 83, and he is equally remembered, during his years at the BBC, for launching the popular radio programme, Composer Of The Week.
And if you are wandering down East Heath Road, you will discover that there is now an English Heritage blue plaque to him at East Heath Lodge, later owned by Esther Rantzen.
It kind of adds an encouraging beat to your silent step.
FRIDAY MAY 12
CONTEMPORARY Consort performs Beethoven, Bartok, Ades, Schumann and others. Christ Church, Hampstead Square, Christchurch Hill, NW3, 0870 033 2733. £6. 7.45pm.
SATURDAY MAY 13
MOZART’S Birthday Party by Chalemie. An event ideal for ages 3 to 8. Lauderdale House, Highgate Hill, Waterlow Park, N6. 0870 033 2733. £4.50, concs £3. 10am and 11.30am.
SUNDAY MAY 14
PIANIST Tessa Uys performs Scarlatti, Haydn and Schubert. Highgate School, North Road, N6, 0870 033 2733. £12, concs £5. 3pm.
FAMILY Friendly Concert with Prema Kesselman on flute and Panayotis Archontides on piano, performing works by Franz Xavier Mozart and others. Lauderdale House, Highgate Hill, Waterlow Park, N6. 020 8348 8716. £7, concs £5. 11.30am.
MONDAY MAY 15
Melvyn Bragg interviewed by Piers Plowright, Highgate Literary and Scientific Institution, South Grove, Highgate, N6. 0870 033 2733. £6. 1pm.
CHILDREN’S Concert with the Christ Church Hampstead School Choir, the Hampstead Parochial Church of England Primary School Choir, New End School Choir, South Hampstead Junior Chamber Choir and the University College School Junior Branch Choir. St John-at-Hampstead, Church Row, NW3, 0870 033 2733. £9, £6 and £3 students. 6pm.
WEDNESDAY MAY 17
ALLEGRI String Quartet performs Schubert, Webern, Shostakovich and Beethoven. St John-at-Hampstead, Church Row, NW3, 0870 033 2733. £13-£10, students £5. 7.45pm.
THURSDAY MAY 18
THE Music Collection, with violinist Simon Standage, cellist Jennifer Ward Clarke, with pianist Susan Alecander-Max, performing Mozart, Haydn and Mendelssohn. Rosslyn Hill Chapel, Rosslyn Hill, NW3, 0870 033 2733. £13, students £5. 7.45pm.
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