Wilfred Brown. Photo: Courtesy of Stephen Johnston.
Wilfred Brown
Stephen Johnston writes about the life of the tenor and broadcaster Wilfred Brown
The tenor Wilfred Brown (1921-1971) will doubtless be known to all lovers of Gerald Finzi’s vocal music for his 1963 recording of Dies Natalis. The inspiration of the moment captured in the singing and orchestral playing, allied to Wilfred Brown’s insights into the visionary world of Thomas Traherne, produced a luminous reading of the composer’s intentions that has easily survived the test of time. Indeed, some say that this recording is unlikely to be bettered. Yet the radiance of Wilfred’s interpretation of the piece sprang from many influences.
Famed throughout his career for the clarity of his diction and command of nuance, not least in the recitatives of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passions, he became a master of the declamation of text. There were other significant influences still that enabled a close affinity with the visionary landscape of Thomas Traherne’s texts.
Early years
Although his parents had not been birthright Quakers, the family became attenders at Horsham Meeting (in West Sussex) when Wilfred was a young boy. Reflection upon and insight into the world of the Spirit, the Divine and Creation from then onwards became an essential part of his and his family’s weekly round, first in Horsham and afterwards in Petersfield Meeting.
Before later taking up a scholarship to Cambridge in 1939 he wrote, in reply to a circular from the university concerning national service, to explain that as he had become a member of the Religious Society of Friends, having ‘attained the years of discretion, I should find myself compelled to refuse to serve with the armed forces or take up any national service which released another to take up arms’.
A countryman at heart, Wilfred’s attentiveness to the rhythms of the natural world, gained from cycling prodigious distances around Horsham, encouraged observations of such detail that the Natural History Society at Christ’s Hospital School, to which he had won a scholarship, published a comprehensive booklet of local ornithological observations, based almost in its entirety on Wilfred’s notes. His experiences waiting on the natural work mirrored his waiting upon the Spirit at Meeting for Worship. Both were profound influences.
Wilfred’s understanding of the power of poetry and literature came to distinguish him as a singer of texts, a love of which was deepened by his reading of German and French literature at Cambridge. In part, his command of declamation was achieved by the fact that he was an experienced and talented linguist, possessing as native an accent in spoken German as many had heard.
He would later write that encountering the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, and especially the extraordinary concept of transformation expressed in one particular poem on Apollo, was of the greatest significance and would later help imbue his interpretation of the moment of creation, that transformation delineated in Gerald Finzi’s setting of Thomas Traherne’s words in the cantata Dies Natalis, with spell-binding nuances and insights.
Wartime service
Called up in 1941, Wilfred’s conscientious objection to bearing arms was immediately proved, his Quaker convictions having been established before he became a teenager, according to a letter from his father to his school. He left Cambridge and moved to London to work as an itinerant upholsterer and repairer with the Friends Relief Service (FRS). This was followed by post-war reconstruction work with the FRS in France and Germany, where he was much influenced by Corder Catchpool’s witness.
Returning to Cambridge in 1947, he performed regularly with musicians such as David Willcocks and John Stevens, before graduating, marrying Mollie Perris, and launching himself into a career as a teacher of Modern Languages at University College School, London and subsequently at Bedales School in Petersfield.
Singing part-time as much as possible while teaching full-time, Wilfred finally decided to take the plunge into professional singing in 1951 (akin to ‘stepping into the abyss’, as he would call it).
Professional singing
A remarkably high proportion of Wilfred’s professional engagements would be return visits to societies, music clubs and festivals. Further work as a member of the Deller Consort during one of its golden periods, together with regular solo performances for the BBC across a wide range of repertoire, led to Wilfred Brown rapidly establishing himself as a key mover in the regeneration of English vocal music in the 1950s and 1960s.
Wilfred would go on to cement a position as a leading recitalist with the guitarist John Williams. These recitals became great favourites in music clubs across the land during the 1950s and 1960s, which he would regularly conclude with unaccompanied folk songs and ballads, including some he had penned himself (though he often mischievously omitted to say so) on the bizarre, surreal or farcical contemporary events to be found in tiny paragraphs tucked away in newspapers.
Broadcaster and teacher
It is not just for the luminosity of his sadly few recordings that Wilfred Brown deserves to be remembered, but for the elegance, wit and depth of his writing, evident in many programmes for the Religious Broadcasting Department of the BBC, contact with which had emerged through influential friends first met in the Fire Watchers’ Choir. This ensemble had been established at the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields during the quieter nights of the London Blitz.
Long before the date of the Dies Natalis recording of 1963, he had been engaged to write and present what would turn out to be hundreds of radio broadcasts, primarily for the BBC World Service. His scripts were hugely appreciated by listeners.
The contents of these short, five- or ten-minute programmes, such as Five to Ten, The Way to Heaven’s Door, or The Silver Lining, were based on the insights flowing from disciplined religious reflection in Quaker Meeting and close observation of the (natural) world, all expressed concisely in stylish, elegant English. Weekly series such as Touched by Beauty or reflections on Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ were laced with insight and perception, all gained from a perspective which he once described as: ‘Standing in all weathers at the crossroads of human experience.’
Wilfred Brown would become a singer much loved and respected by his younger colleagues, such as (dame) Janet Baker, and by his students. One of Wilfred’s gifts was to be able to spot potential, not least in those he taught at the Royal College of Music and at King’s College Cambridge, where he gave lessons during the last few years of his life after he had been diagnosed with terminal illness.
The legacy
Power of declamation founded upon insight, nuance and clarity of diction, had come to exemplify Wilfred’s singing from the very start of his career. Yet, so individual was his perception of the world, so trenchant were his views and so profound his reflections on life, that it can be argued that he was at least as fine and influential a writer as he was a singer.
Indeed, Wilfred Brown’s writing continues to find resonance beyond the realm of Quaker thought or BBC religious programmes, as his writing is currently to be found used for the further formation of priests within one diocese of the Church of England.
Wilfred Brown died at the age of forty-nine in 1971.
Wilfred Brown: At the crossroads of human experience by Stephen Duncan Johnston is published by EM publishing at £30. ISBN: 9780957294226.
