Early years and
Stravinsky (top);
Vaughan Williams (lower left) and
Ravel Bliss was born in
Barnes, a London suburb now, but then in Surrey, the eldest of three sons of Francis Edward Bliss (1847–1930), a businessman from
Massachusetts, and his second wife, Agnes Kennard
née Davis (1858–1895). Agnes Bliss died in 1895, and the boys were brought up by their father, who instilled in them a love for the arts. Bliss graduated in classics and music in 1913 and then studied at the
Royal College of Music in London for a year. In his brief time at the college, he got to know the music of the
Second Viennese School and the repertory of
Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes, with music by
modern composers such as
Debussy,
Ravel and
Stravinsky. When the First World War broke out, Bliss joined the army, and fought in France as an officer in the
Royal Fusiliers until 1917 and then in the
Grenadier Guards for the rest of the war. His bravery earned him a
mention in despatches, and he was twice wounded and once gassed. In 1918, Bliss converted to
Roman Catholicism.
The Times wrote that "Bliss was acquiring a reputation as a tearaway" by the time he was commissioned, through Elgar's influence, to write a large-scale symphonic work (
A Colour Symphony) for the
Three Choirs Festival of 1922.
The Times praised it highly (though doubting whether much was gained by the designation of the four movements as purple, red, blue and green) and commented that the symphony confirmed Bliss's transition from youthful experimenter to serious composer. After the third performance of the work, at the
Queen's Hall under
Sir Henry Wood,
The Times wrote, "Continually changing patterns scintillate … till one is hypnotised by the ingenuity of the thing." Elgar, who attended the first performance, complained that the work was "disconcertingly modern." In 1923 Bliss's father, who had remarried, decided to retire in the US. He and his wife settled in
California. Bliss went with them and remained there for two years, working as a conductor, lecturer, pianist and occasional critic. He wrote two major works with American orchestras in mind, the
Introduction and Allegro (1926), dedicated to the
Philadelphia Orchestra and
Leopold Stokowski, and
Hymn to Apollo (1926) for the
Boston Symphony and
Pierre Monteux. During the decade Bliss wrote chamber works for leading soloists including a Clarinet Quintet for
Frederick Thurston (1932) and a Viola Sonata for
Lionel Tertis (1933). In 1935, in the words of the
Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "he firmly established his position as Elgar's natural successor with the Romantic, expansive and richly scored Music for Strings." By the late 1930s, Bliss was no longer viewed as a modernist; the works of his juniors
William Walton and the youthful
Benjamin Britten were increasingly prominent, and Bliss's music began to seem old-fashioned. His last large-scale work of the 1930s was his
Piano Concerto, composed for the pianist
Solomon, who gave the world premiere at the
World's Fair in New York in June 1939. Bliss and his family attended the performance and then stayed on in the US for a holiday. While they were there, the Second World War broke out. Bliss initially stayed in America, teaching at the
University of California, Berkeley. He felt impelled to return to England to do what he could for the war effort, and in 1941, leaving his wife and children in California, he made the hazardous Atlantic crossing. but was plainly under-employed. He suggested to
Sir Adrian Boult, who was at that time both the chief conductor of the
BBC Symphony Orchestra and the BBC's director of music, that Boult should step down in his favour from the latter post. Bliss wrote to his wife: "I want more power as I have a lot to give which my comparatively minor post does not allow me to use fully." Boult agreed to the proposal, which freed him to concentrate on conducting. In 1944, when Bliss's family returned from the US, he resigned from the BBC and returned to composing, having written nothing since his String Quartet in 1941. He composed more film music, and two ballets,
Miracle in the Gorbals (1944), and
Adam Zero (1946). In 1948, Bliss turned his attention to opera, with
The Olympians. He and the novelist and playwright
J. B. Priestley had been friends for many years, and they agreed to collaborate on an opera, despite their lack of any operatic experience. Priestley's libretto was based on a legend that "the pagan deities, robbed of their divinity, became a troupe of itinerant players, wandering down the centuries". The opera portrays the confusion that results when the actors unexpectedly find themselves restored to deity. The opera opened the 1949–50
Covent Garden season. It was directed by
Peter Brook, with choreography by
Frederick Ashton. The doyen of English music critics,
Ernest Newman, praised it highly: "here is a composer with real talent for opera ... in Mr. Priestley he has been fortunate enough to find an English
Boito", but generally it received a polite rather than a rapturous reception. After the Covent Garden run of ten performances, the company presented the work in
Manchester, but did not revive it in subsequent years; it received a concert performance and broadcast in 1972.
Later years In 1950, Bliss was
knighted. In
The Times, Howes commented, "The duties of a Master of the Queen's Music are what he chooses to make of them, but they include the composition of ceremonial and occasional music". Howes commended Bliss's
Processional for the 1953 coronation, and
A Song of Welcome, Bliss's first official ''pièce d'occasion''. Bliss returned to Moscow in 1958, as a member of the jury of the
International Tchaikovsky Competition, with fellow jurors including
Emil Gilels and
Sviatoslav Richter. for which Bliss composed
The Beatitudes In addition to his official functions, Bliss continued to compose steadily throughout the 1950s. His works from that decade include his Second String Quartet (1950); a scena,
The Enchantress (1951), for the
contralto Kathleen Ferrier; a Piano Sonata (1952); and a Violin Concerto (1955), for Campoli. The orchestral
Meditations on a Theme by John Blow (1955) was a particularly deep-felt work, and Bliss regarded it highly among his output. though some critics thought Bliss's music competent but unremarkable. In 1961, Bliss and Hassall collaborated on a
cantata,
The Beatitudes, commissioned for the opening of the new
Coventry Cathedral. Reviews were friendly, but the work has rarely been performed since, and has been eclipsed by another choral work written for Coventry at the same time,
Britten's
War Requiem. Bliss followed this with two further large-scale choral works,
Mary of Magdala (1962) and
The Golden Cantata (1963). In 1969 he publicly censured the BBC for its plan to cut its classical music budget and disband several of its orchestras. He was delegated by his colleagues Walton, Britten,
Peter Maxwell Davies and
Richard Rodney Bennett to make a strong protest to
William Glock, the BBC's controller of music. Bliss continued to compose into his eighth and ninth decades, in which his works included the Cello Concerto (1970) for
Mstislav Rostropovich, the
Metamorphic Variations for orchestra (1972), Bliss died at his London home in 1975 at the age of 83. ==Music==