Walter Leigh - the Eric Ravilious of Music?

A few days ago I went to Dulwich to see the Eric Ravilious exhibition (which ends on August 31st) and was both delighted and appalled to see that it was packed with vistors. I partly blame James Russell, the exhibition's curator, for tirelessly promoting Ravilious's work and producing some gorgeous hardback books, but the other culprit must surely be the internet.

Part of the appeal of Ravilious is, I think, the fact that he celebrates England in a manner that is free of bombast or sentimentality, finding beauty in the mundane and commonplace. It is an art that can only have been created by the generation who came of age after the First World War.

As many will know, Ravilious's life came to a premature end in 1942, when a plane he was travelling in as a war artist went missing off the coast of Iceland, on September 2nd.

Less well known is a death that took place ten weeks earlier, when a young composer called Walter Leigh was killed in action at Tobruk.

Born in Wimbledon, exactly two years to the day after Ravilious, on June 22nd, Walter Leigh grew up in a middle class family and began having music tuition at the age of eight. His early years are something of a mystery, but thanks to this website, we know that when he was at Cambridge, Leigh decided to switch from studying English to Music.

After Cambridge, Leigh travelled to Berlin and, like several of his contemporaries, studied with the German composer Hindemith. It was there that Leigh began to develop a style that mirrors Eric Ravilious in its clarity and restraint, eschewing melodrama in favour of a gentle, understated melancholy.

Here is Walter Leigh's greatest work, the exquisite Concertino for Harpsichord and Strings:



If you can't face hearing more than a couple of minutes, skip to 3:23 and try the sublime middle movement. Listening to this work is always a bittersweet experience, as I can't help wondering what Leigh would have gone on to write if he'd survived the War.

Another gorgeous piece that I find quietly heart-rending is the first movement of Leigh's 'Music for Strings':



But like Ravilious, Walter Leigh wasn't precious about his art and would happily write in a more populist style if the commission called for it.


Walter Leigh died at the age of 37. Unlike Eric Ravilious, he didn't leave a huge body of work behind and a projected symphony never progressed beyond the stage of rough sketches. But the chamber, piano and orchestral works that exist show a composer of exceptional gifts who, had he lived, would have become a major figure in British musical life.

Light and Shade

During the last few days, our oven has exploded, the fridge has broken and my car's dashboard keeps flashing an orange light, warning of imminent doom. It feels as if we're in a Stephen King movie. As far as I know, there are no Native American burial grounds under our house, but we're near the site of the Battle of Lewes, so perhaps some tormented medieval souls are making their presence felt.

This morning I took the car to be serviced and walked home, cutting through some of the many twittens that are tucked away behind the main roads. Because it was so early, the sun was still low and I was struck by the contrast between the intense, golden light of the castle walls and the gloomy, muted colours of the narrow twittens.


I don't normally walk around thinking about light and shade, but last night I went to a fascinating talk about Eric Ravilious, given by author (and blogger) James Russell. Organised by the wonderful Much Ado Books, it was so successful that the venue had to be to changed to a larger place.

I'd say that there were at least 150 people at the talk - a number that any bookseller would be very happy with. Even the largest city centre stores struggle to achieve figures like that, so it's remarkable that an independent bookshop in a small Sussex village attracted such a good turnout.

It's a great tribute to both the growing popularity of Eric Ravilious and the marketing skills of Much Ado Books and James Russell.

I seemed to be the only person there under 50. I'm not quite sure why, although I know how difficult it is to do anything in the evening if you're in the tunnel of parenthood. Perhaps Banksy would have drawn a different crowd.

As for the talk itself, I think it would have been interesting even if I'd never heard of Eric Ravilious, thanks to James Russell's passion about his subject. Using a series of slides, he showed the contrast between Ravilious's paintings and the actual scenes. To a layman like me, it was a revelation.

For example, here is a lithograph that Ravilious made of Newhaven Harbour:

And here is the actual scene, which I've pinched from James Russell's blog:


I had no idea that Ravilous had excercised his artistic licence so liberally, compressing distances and altering the perspective to suit his purposes. That is one of the things that makes him a great artist, along with his ability to capture the spiritual quality of a place:

For example, compare this watercolour by Ravilious of the South Downs in winter:

With this traditional downland scene by a contemporary artist:


Perhaps my favourite Ravilious painting is 'Dangerous Work at Low Tide', which comes from the final years of his life when he was an official war artist. I bought a 420mm x 594mm print from the Ministry of Defence for the ridiculously cheap price of £18.

If this takes your fancy, you can buy it here.

Even if you only have a very casual interest in the art of the interwar years, I'd strongly recommend getting along to one of James Russell's talks. Recent venues have included London, Oxford and Bristol, so it's worth checking his blog to see where he's off to next.

Finally, a quick plug for Much Ado Books. The owners - Kate Olsen and Nash Robbins - ran a successful bookshop in Marblehead, Massachusetts for over 20 years before moving to Alfriston in Sussex. When 'Much Ado' first opened, I confidently predicted that they'd close within two years because Alfriston was too small to sustain a bookshop.

Instead, they went on to win the Independent Bookseller of the Year award and now have a thriving business which is an object lesson in how to run a bookshop in the age of Amazon and ebooks. It just shows how much I know.

In hindsight, they followed one of the golden rules of bookselling: open a shop where there are lots of posh people. Alfriston may be small, but it has a wonderful catchment area full of literary types who think that buying books at discounted prices from Amazon is insufferably vulgar. The owners have successfully exploited the area's Bloomsbury connection and both the stock and presentation are pitch perfect. It's hard to believe that they're relative newcomers to Sussex.

On April 22nd they're holding a book swap, hosted by Scott 'Me and My Big Mouth' Pack and Robert Husdon. The idea is that you bring a book that you love along and swap it for one you haven't read.

Frankly, if I love a book, I'm buggered if I'm going to let anyone else have it. I don't even lend books, so I'm not sure whether I'll go or not. Perhaps I could bring a book I'm not that keen on and pretend to like it, but I suppose that really isn't entering into the spirit of the occasion.

On the subject of books, I almost forgot to mention why James Russell was holding an event with Much Ado Books. He's written some books - beautiful, lavishly-illustrated hardbacks - that focus on different aspects of Ravilious's art. Here's one I bought earlier:

I wouldn't be tactless enough to include an Amazon link, but they are available from all good booksellers and, no doubt, some bad ones too.