Priaulx Rainier was born on 3 February 1903 at Howick, Natal, South Africa, of English-Huguenot parents. Her early childhood was spent in a remote part of the country near Zulu land, where the liquid language and music of the indigenous people, the sounds of wild animals and the calls of the birds were to prove a lasting influence.
As a violin student, at the age of ten, she entered the South African College of Music and, under the stimulating influence of the Principal, W. H. Bell, played a great deal of chamber music. In 1920 the University of South Africa Overseas Scholarship brought her to the Royal Academy of Music where she studied violin. Subsequently she settled permanently in London.
Priaulx studied briefly with Nadia Boulanger in Paris followed, before the outbreak of theWar.
She also met Michael Tippett at Morley College which thereby became a centre of considerable activity. Here Priaulx became acquainted with Tippett himself, as well as with the conductor Walter Goehr; the critic and administrator William Glock, the composer and teacher Matyas Seiber; the concert promoter Gerald Cooper; the singer Peter Pears, and many others. She was especially at home in the company of writers (David Gascoyne, Arthur Waley), artists (Lucian Freud, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson), and dancers (Pola Nirenska).
Among her many friends Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson occupied a special category. Their ideas about space-construction and geometric forms of abstract art found a receptive listener in Priaulx as she herself forged her own style; moreover Hepworth's belief in the reality of the world of ideas, and of the new vistas opened up by abstract scientific thought, struck forcibly home with the composer; who went so far as to buy a studio in St Ives, where Hepworth and Nicholson lived. There was, however, a primitivism at the heart of Rainier's music which called for particularly personal expression, and which was at variance with the tradition of Western classical music. As long as she used notes of determinate pitch it was necessary for her to come to terms with tonality; for pitched notes imply tonality if not necessarily a key The risk she ran was that her use of chromaticism might become uncontrolled, chaotic.
In June 1982 the University of Cape Town honoured her with a Doctorate in Music (Honoris Causa).
Priaulx Rainier died in France on 10 October 1986.
The Oboe Quartet Quanta was written for Janet Craxton and her London Oboe Quartet (as were most oboe quartets by British composers at this time), and commissioned by William Glock - by this time the Head of Music at the BBC. He initiated a series of "Invitation Concerts" specifically for the introduction of new compositions, and Rainier was asked to contribute one. It so happened that this invitation came at a particularly radical moment of her career so the resulting work, Quanta, proved to be a key work.
The title derives from the Quantum Theory in physics, whereby energy exists in space, independent of matter. Rainier's idea was that energy particles which gradually congregate together; only to burst out again violently can be given musical expression. Clusters of sound can be built up, later broken into fragments. Played continuously, the work falls into two sections; the first quick, energetic, the second gentle.
The tonality which is secondary, is static, broadly centred round D/D flat, and the repetitive figurations are typical of many other composers at this time. This was the period when the tide of serialism was at its flood in Europe and America, and it could hardly be expected that Rainier should remain impervious to such a universal trend. She makes much use of dissonant intervals, such as the minor ninth, minor second, major seventh, augmented second. The music is non-directional, inspire of the melodic continuity of phrase. Tonality that is static can have no direction; Rainier relies instead on the sharply characterised nature of each tone-cluster; as it exploits dissonance to a greater or lesser degree, depending on the speed of its assembly and dissolution, and its remoteness or closeness to the base-note D/D flat, The music is tonally abstract in that it avoids all suggestion of conventional progression. It is not serial.
There is an exploratory, experimental aspect to Quanta. That is its essence. The sound-source of the ideas is different from the traditional or African sources that Rainier had previously used. The treatment of them is also different.
Biography: Come and Listen to the Stars: P.R.: A Pictorial Biography (Penzance, 1988)
[The recordings we are posting are obviously from an LP released in the early 1970s, and not from the CD issued briefly in the 1990s, which contained different performances.]
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Priaulx Rainier, Cello Concerto - Part 1 of 2by lendallpitts699 views
Very Nebulous.
ludwigvan17 11 months ago
What a wonderful and underrated composer! She is certainly ready for a re-evaluation of her work. I am presenting a concert of her solo vocal music in April. I would love to find a copy of her biography. I didn't even know it existed. Any suggestions?
SingDude 2 years ago