Obituary, Anthony Payne (1936-2021)

The British composer Anthony Payne, best known for his ‘elaboration’ of the sketches for Elgar’s Symphony No. 3, has died aged 84.

Born in London in 1936, Payne was educated at Dulwich College and Durham University, and spent his early career as a musicologist, critic and university lecturer; his first major composition, The Phoenix Mass, was premiered by the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble and the BBC Singers in 1969. Three years earlier he had married the soprano and contemporary music champion Jane Manning, with whom he founded the pioneering instrumental ensemble Jane’s Minstrels in 1988; his compositions for Manning included The World’s Winter, The Stones & Lonely Places Sing, Evening Land, and Adlestrop (a fiftieth birthday gift, setting text by Edward Thomas).

Payne’s interest in Elgar’s sketches for his Symphony No. 3 began in the early 1970s, around the time that a planned performance of Roger Fiske’s completion of the score (conducted by Sir Adrian Boult) was shelved due to reservations on the part of former BBC Head of Music Maurice Johnstone (Elgar had asked his friend William Henry Reed not to ‘let anyone tinker’ with the unfinished score, and Johnstone was keen to respect the composer’s wishes). Payne described his private work on the sketches over the next two decades as ‘an intermittent hobby’, but the project took on new momentum in 1993 when he was approached by the BBC to prepare a working version of the score for a workshop; the performance was vetoed by the Elgar family, but two years later they had a change of heart and commissioned Payne to produce an authorised completion of the work.

Payne’s ‘elaboration’ (as it was officially described) received its first performance from the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Andrew Davis at the Royal Festival Hall in May 1998, several months after the world premiere recording was made by the same artists on NMC; the recording was praised in Gramophone for Payne’s ‘stunningly idiomatic orchestration’ and his ‘intriguing, ingenious’ approach to completing the Finale, which Payne had described as his ‘last and greatest obstacle’ due to the sparse nature of the original sketches. The work was subsequently recorded by Sir Colin Davis, Paul Daniel, Tadaaki Otaka and Richard Hickox, and has been widely performed internationally.

Payne also realised sketches for Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No. 6, and orchestrated works by Delius, Bruckner, Finzi and Warlock. His original compositions include the BBC Proms commissions The Spirit's Harvest (1985), Time's Arrow (1990), Visions and Journeys (2002), and Of Land, Sea and Sky (2016), the latter written to mark his eightieth birthday and described by The Guardian as ‘a beautifully crafted and paced “symphony of illusions” ’.

In addition to his compositional career, Payne was also a widely respected writer and broadcaster on music, contributing regularly to several UK broadsheets and magazines and publishing books on Elgar, Schoenberg and Bridge. He held visiting professorships in California and New South Wales, and was awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of Durham, Kingston and Birmingham; other honours included the Elgar Society Medal in 2011, and Fellowship of the Royal College of Music.

Payne died on 30th April, just a month after the death of his wife Jane.

Anthony Payne - a selected discography