A Clockwork Composer?
Exploring the musical life of Anthony Burgess.
Anthony Burgess is the subject of a new 45-minute BBC radio documentary, featuring rare material from the sound archives, and with contributions from the Burgess Foundation, the musicologist Christine Lee Gengaro, and the concert pianist Stéphane Ginsburgh (listen via the link below).
Burgess’s life as a composer began long before his first novel, Time for a Tiger, appeared in 1956. He claimed to have completed his first symphony in 1935, the year in which he turned eighteen, although the manuscript, if it ever existed, was subsequently lost.
During his Army career (1940-46), Burgess worked as a pianist and arranger for a concert party in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and he continued to write music when he was posted to Gibraltar as an instructor with the Royal Army Educational Corps in 1943.
The earliest of his compositions to have survived is the Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, written shortly after the end of the Second World War in August 1945. This piece is referred to in his later novel A Vision of Battlements, which is set in Gibraltar during the Second World War. The main character, Richard Ennis, a reluctant soldier and thwarted composer, closely resembles Burgess himself.
Among his more than 250 compositions, Burgess was proudest of the Symphony in C, first performed in Iowa City in 1975. An extract from this important piece can be heard in the BBC radio documentary. The final movement of the symphony, sung by a tenor and baritone, takes its text from the song of the owl and the cuckoo in Shakespeare’s play Love’s Labour’s Lost. Burgess described the opening movement as ‘variations on a theme by William Shakespeare.’
One of the highlights of the BBC programme is a contribution from Christine Lee Gengaro, Professor of Music at City College, Los Angeles, and editor of the Irwell Edition of This Man and Music, Burgess’s musical autobiography. Gengaro explains that music was a serious and lifelong preoccupation for Burgess, although she disputes his claim to have taught himself the piano after receiving a single lesson from his father, who had played piano in music halls and silent cinemas.
Stéphane Ginsgurgh, who has recorded Burgess’s 24 Preludes and Fugues, guides listeners though this complex suite of piano pieces, pointing out deliberate echoes from other works, such as The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky. Ginsburgh, who has also recorded the complete piano sonatas of Prokofiev, speaks about his excitement when he found out about the existence of Burgess’s preludes and fugues, written in all the major and minor keys. He talks us through a variety of Burgess’s pieces at the piano, and illustrates why Burgess’s music ‘doesn’t sound like it was written by an amateur composer.’
The Afterwords programme was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 23 March 2025, and is now available to stream via BBC Sounds (see the link below). It was produced by Alan Hall and Pheobe McIndoe for Falling Tree Productions. This is the first full-length radio documentary about Burgess since Paul Morley’s programme for Archive on Four in 2012 (see link below).
The revival of interest in Burgess’s music has been accompanied by a wider international reassessment of his life and work. A new television documentary about Burgess and A Clockwork Orange was broadcast by Arte in French, German and Spanish in 2023, and another film is currently being prepared by a Swiss-Italian TV production company.
In recent years the Foundation has supported the first commercial recordings of Burgess’s music, which have been made available on CD and as downloads and via music streaming services. These include The Piano Music of Anthony Burgess (Prima Facie, 2015), Orchestral Music including the ballet suite, Mr W.S. (Naxos, 2016), 24 Preludes and Fugues: The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard (Naxos Grand Piano, 2018) and the Complete Guitar Quartets, performed by the Méla Quartet (Naxos, 2023).
Plans are well advanced for a new recording of piano pieces by Burgess, which have recently been discovered in the archive. These ‘lost’ pieces, including a substantial Suite for Four Hands, have been recorded by the pianist Richard Casey for release later in 2025.
No doubt Burgess himself would have been pleased by the recent refocussing of interest in his musical life. He often said, perhaps only half-jokingly, that he wanted to be remembered as a composer who also wrote novels, rather than the other way around. In the final months of his life, when he knew that time was running out, he returned to writing music for piano and wind instruments, in the hope of leaving a legacy for his son, who was also a musician.
Find out more
Afterwords: Anthony Burgess is on the BBC website (also available on the BBC Sounds app).
Paul Morley’s Archive on Four programme is available via the BBC (also available on the BBC Sounds app).
Naxos has a page devoted to their Burgess recordings.
It's wonderful that Burgess's music continues to receive growing attention. In addition to the Naxos recordings mentioned in the article was the earlier recording of the guitar quartets with the Aighetta Quartet, which I believe was a commercial recording (and the first of his music?). That recording, and those works, remain my favorites of the few I've had a chance to hear.
"...when he knew time was running out," —so terribly sad. One wonders what he thought about his Villiger Export and Café Crème cigars then? For his sake I hope he, like Hitchens, regarded them as the necessary fuel which had allowed him to lead a full life.
Another end of life matter intrigues me: he became friendly with Robertson Davies at the end of his life. Davies was a Canadian author (little known outside Canada but well worth exploring) who had achieved a similar Grand Old Man status. I wonder if any correspondence between them survives?