WILFRED HEATON (1918-2000) is a revered yet enigmatic composer, much of whose music for brass band composed in his teens and early twenties has achieved ‘classic’ status. Paul Hindmarsh’s much-anticipated biography uncovers a private but complex man behind the music, in particular what led him in his mid-30s to call time on his ambition of full-time composition, only to comment in right at the end of his life, “I suppose the creative impulse never leaves you.”

The dilemma Heaton faced proved intractable. Much of the music from his productive twenties was considered too “advanced” for The Salvation Army, of which he was a dedicated member. However, in the mid-1950s he discovered that the orchestral and chamber music he was writing for what he termed “the wider worlds” was too conservative in the face of the “atonalists’ confederation.” He found a refuge in the spiritual philosophies and disciplines of Rudolf Steiner, which in turn precipitated his withdrawal for 10 years from membership of The Salvation Army.

     The Salvation Army and the brass band community didn’t catch up with Heaton until the 1980s. He was composing very little by then, but following the premiere of his best known work Contest Music in 1982, requests for new work poured in. Most were politely rebuffed unless he was able to repurpose or revive something composed, as he said, by an “alter-ego” left behind in the 1940s – music that had either been rejected by The Salvation Army or that languished at home in what he called his “un-regarded corner”. In this final decade Heaton began to compose again, but, like Elgar in his seventies, progress was slow and faltering. He did not live to complete any of these late works. That task was undertaken, at the invitation of the Heaton family, by Howard Snell and by the author, who says, “It has been one of the most extended but rewarding aspects of my musical career to have been given the opportunity to edit, research and write about the music and the life of one my childhood heroes.”

     Wilfred Heaton: His Life – His Music has been extensively researched from the recollections of family, friends and colleagues and from surviving correspondence and archive documents. The musical commentary relies on the author’s in-depth knowledge of Heaton’s music, having edited The Wilfred Heaton Edition.  Composer Edward Gregson writes: “A book such as this, on one of the most important composers in the 20^th century to have written for brass bands, is long overdue. Paul Hindmarsh does not pull his punches in his microscopic assessment of his subject; but in the end what shines through is the author’s real affection for Heaton, as well as an immense respect for his music – something many of us share.”

Andrew Plant writes in a British Music Society review: “Hindmarsh, already an established scholar of Frank Bridge, as well as through his long-standing work as a producer of brass band music for Radio 3 and elsewhere, has…achieved similar exemplary success with this handsome hardback, whose standards are on a par with Boydell & Brewer at half the price.” 

Published by PHM Publishing
464 pages, hardback, £30.00

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