Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Music Examples
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- I Introduction
- II Some Autobiography
- III An American Apprenticeship
- IV Writings About Music
- V Literary Connections
- VI Peter Dickinson on his own Music
- VII Interviews and a Memoir
- VIII Travels
- Appendix 1 Peter Dickinson: Chronological List of Works
- Appendix 2 Peter and Meriel Dickinson: Discography
- Index
5 - Meeting Philip Larkin
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 June 2021
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Music Examples
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- I Introduction
- II Some Autobiography
- III An American Apprenticeship
- IV Writings About Music
- V Literary Connections
- VI Peter Dickinson on his own Music
- VII Interviews and a Memoir
- VIII Travels
- Appendix 1 Peter Dickinson: Chronological List of Works
- Appendix 2 Peter and Meriel Dickinson: Discography
- Index
Summary
The substance of this account was delivered as a lecture to the Philip Larkin Society at the University of Hull on 26 September 2003 and then at Senate House, University of London, on 25 November 2003, presented by the Institute for English Studies and as part of the music programme of the Institute for United States Studies. A version was printed in The London Magazine, August/September 2004, 29–39, reprinted here by permission, and another in About Larkin 19 (Spring 2005), 4–9.
In the Soviet Union in 1948 the Central Committee issued drastic ideological prescriptions about the way in which composers should in future write their music. Public figures such as Prokofiev and Shostakovich were publicly humiliated. My contact with Philip Larkin eventually gave rise to my musical composition called Larkin's Jazz, but the way in which I tried to respect his own considerable trepidation about having his poetry set to music meant that I was working within constraints. These were not a matter of life or death, as in the Soviet Union; they were probably beneficial; and as they developed they throw light on the attitudes of both Larkin and his old friend Kingsley Amis.
Perhaps I should say – to set the record straight – that it was I who first used the title Larkin's Jazz for two programmes about Larkin’s taste in jazz which I devised and presented for BBC Radio 3 in 1988. More recently the supplementary collection of Larkin's jazz writings first published in 1999 has been given the title of Larkin's Jazz in the paperback reprint.
My musical tribute was called Larkin's Jazz following my song cycle Stevie's Tunes, which was based on melodies indicated or implied by some of Stevie Smith's poems. Larkin's Jazz was commissioned by Keele University and first performed there on 5 February 1990 with Henry Herford, in the joint role of speaker and singer, John Harle on the soprano saxophone with the Nash Ensemble conducted by Lionel Friend.
In 1989 when I reviewed a group of Larkin publications, including the reissues of two of his recordings on cassette, I recalled my own introduction to his work when I was living in New York thirty years earlier:
I first came across Philip Larkin's name when I subscribed to Listen, the review of poetry and criticism edited by George Hartley from Hull …
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- Information
- Peter Dickinson: Words and Music , pp. 213 - 226Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2016