London, Morley College and Leighton House: Mátyás Seiber celebrations

With Tippett and Rawsthorne centenaries this year, Mátyás Seiber's (1905–60) might have been overlooked, but Morley College, prompted by the composer's daughter Julia, made sure it was not with a well-devised festival comprising four concerts, two lectures (by Michael Graubart and Hugh Wood – both names familiar to Tempo readers, and the latter currently especially featured) and an exhibition. Seiber was one of a number of continental arrivals, the others including Gerhard and Reizenstein, who remained here to our considerable benefit, in Seiber's case becoming a much sought-after teacher of composition. Morley was a fitting focus for the celebrations, having welcomed him onto the staff in 1942 after more august, and blinkered, institutions had shown no interest. The subtitle of the festival – ‘From blue notes to twelve notes’ – neatly encapsulated his wide ambit. As Robert Hanson pointed out in his notes, ‘his refusal to accept the mutual exclusiveness of different types of musical study and practice, first shown publicly in his jazz course at Frankfurt, came to typify the man’. This is in direct line with the Morley philosophy since the days of Dr Hanson's reforming predecessor Gustav Holst, who is reported in the College's magazine of December 1917 to have insisted that the terms ‘classical’ and ‘popular’ were misleading: there was only ‘good’ and ‘bad’ music. (The danger now, as Wood pertinently observed, is that students reluctant to accept the authority of the teacher prefer to think their own opinions equally valid. Seiber would have had no truck with such self-deception. Ruthlessly honest yet tactful in discussing a student's work, he adopted the Socratic approach by indicating a passage and asking ‘why did you do that?’ After listening patiently to the reply, he would quietly explain the fault and request a revision for the next lesson.) Sadly, older pupils like Fricker, Milner and Banks are not around to discuss how he would see an extended piece through to completion. But more recent ones were present at the festival, including Graubart and Anthony Gilbert (also featured in Tempo recently), who can corroborate Wood's testimony to Seiber's belief that composition should be taught as a discipline grounded in tradition and the classics, backed up by thorough analysis and imitation of Bach inventions and Haydn minuets.