The quiet Englishman

The composer Lennox Berkeley remains something of an enigma. On the eve of a concert to mark the centenary of his birth, Bayan Northcott reflects on his life and work

In the ominous autumn of 1939, as Britain awaited an invasion, a rising young composer called Lennox Berkeley sat down to write a lighthearted entertainment for strings – a gesture, it might seem, of culpable escapism or singular sangfroid. The Serenade for String Orchestra, Op 12, only begins lightheartedly, however: with a delectably crisp little neo-classical Vivace that is over in a couple of minutes and not a note too many. The next two movements are more ambiguous in feeling: a darkly unfolding Andantino melody, and a faintly phantasmagoric scherzo that emerges from and retreats into the shadows. And the concluding Lento with its almost searing climax seems to heave with regret before fading in recollection of the work's opening gaiety – imbuing what set out as a sequence genre pieces not only with an unexpected weight of feeling, but a haunting sense of the time in which it was written.

Was the 36-year-old composer consciously attempting, in his modest way, to reaffirm civilized values in the encroaching gloom? And was he aware that this neatly crafted score of a mere 14 minutes would come to stand, in many ways, as his defining statement? Possibly, for the Serenade was to remain Berkeley's favourite of his own works. But it is hard to know for sure. Not that he lacked for public profile: after three wartime years as a concert planner at the BBC, he taught two generations of composers at the Royal Academy, including Nicholas Maw, Richard Rodney Bennett and John Tavener, later serving as president of the Performing Right Society and of the Cheltenham Festival. Eventually he was to receive not only the royal accolade, but a Papal Knighthood of St Gregory for his work for the Church.

Meanwhile, he was to fulfil a stream of commissions, including a grand opera, Nelson, for Covent Garden in 1954, and to emerge as a competent conductor for a series of recordings of his output. Yet he issued no artistic manifestos and was apt in interview to deny being inspired by extra musical ideas, visual or verbal stimuli or anything much beyond the notes themselves. His few published writings are mainly programme notes or tributes to composers he liked such as Chopin or Ravel, and one may search what biographical material there is without finding a clue as to his political beliefs. Compared with most of his contemporaries, there remains something reticent and elusive about the personality and work of Lennox Berkeley.

It might be tempting to ascribe part of that reticence to his well-heeled English background, for he was born near Oxford on 12 May 1903 into an ancient aristocratic line to a music-loving ex-naval officer father who, but for disinheritance, would have been an earl, and attended the same public school that subsequently took in WH Auden and Benjamin Britten. Yet much of his childhood was spent with his mother's family in France. It was only after reading French at Oxford that he chanced to show his compositional efforts to Ravel, who directed him to five years study in Paris with Nadia Boulanger – during which he also converted to Catholicism and forged a lifelong friendship with Francis Poulenc.

Back in England in 1935 as a late developer at last finding his voice, Berkeley must have been startled to encounter in Britten a composer 10 years younger who already seemed able to do with ease all he had struggled for. Their friendship also had its personal complexities: "He is an awful dear," confided Britten to his diary of an early working holiday together, "In spite of his avowed sexual weakness for young men of my age and form – he is considerate and open, and we have come to an agreement on that subject." Yet when Berkeley unexpectedly married at 43, Britten was happy to stand godfather to his eldest son, the composer, broadcaster and festival director Michael Berkeley.

It was Britten, too, who spotted one of the most distinctive traits of Berkeley's early music: "To its advantage, it is under Stravinsky's influence, but the harmony is extremely personal."And a delight in gently astringent dissonances and unexpected harmonic side-slips was to persist. Another trait already evident in his Five Short Pieces for piano, Op 4 (1936) was Berkeley's ability to take a brief melodic-harmonic idea or twist of figuration and extract a complete closed form. But, as he recognized, such skills were likely to prove less helpful in the elaboration of more tonally wide-ranging and developmental large-scale structures.

From the mid-1950s, he attempted to modernise his harmonic practice, even flirting with 12-tonery in his one movement Third Symphony, Op 74 (1969). At best, as in the opening of the fine Sinfonia Concertante for oboe and orchestra, Op 84 (1973), he achieved a genuine enlargement of his range. But much of the later music seems to hover in limbo, neither genuinely atonal nor in any particular key. Nor could his resort to longer lines and more contrapuntal textures always prevent a falling back on the old neo-classical habit of four bars of this, four bars of that.

Ultimately, it could be argued that the vivacious materials and succinct developments of Divertimento for small orchestra, Op 18 (1943) catch more of a symphonic impulse than any of the four numbered symphonies. But then, in larger structures, Berkeley generally seemed happier with the connecting line of a solo instrument and, like Britten, in variation rather than sonata forms. His eclectic, unjustly neglected Concerto for two pianos and orchestra, Op 30 (1948) and the Violin Concerto, Op 59 (1961) he composed for Yehudi Menuhin, both include extended variation movements – as does the inventive Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano, Op 44 (1954) the most attractive of his extended chamber works.

Of the four operas, it was the luminous pastoral of Ruth, Op 50 (1956) that came closest to realizing his special qualities in the theatre, though his most inspired vocal writing remains Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila for contralto and strings, Op 27 (1947). Yet to catch Berkeley at his most nearly confessional, one has to turn to his more intimate instrumental pieces – for instance Theme and Variations for guitar, Op 77 (1970) written for Julian Bream.

Despite his slow start and the memory loss that clouded the last years before his death in 1989, Berkeley achieved a surprisingly large output. None the less much of what he had to say can be extracted from the dozen or so best of his works, and most of those that have particularly beguiled me have been mentioned here. If there have to be categories, he remains a relatively minor composer – but one who encapsulates specific qualities of invention and sensibility that are to be heard nowhere else.

The Nash Ensemble gives its Lennox Berkeley 100th Anniversary Concert at the Wigmore Hall, London W1 (020-7935 2141) on 14 May at 7.30pm; Michael Berkeley gives a pre-concert talk at 6.15pm