Like his Friend Don Banks, Keith Humble was a tireless fighter for Australian music and Australian composers, not to mention performing standards within the Australian context.
Humble is an seminal figure in terms of this book because he continued, throughout his life, to write for the piano and moreover was, all his days, an exponent on the instrument, performing his own and other composers' music. I can only describe Keith's style at the piano as "white": that is, a way of playing that was no nonsense, no histrionics, no excess movement, little pedal, dynamics always reigned in, a sense of delicacy and elegance ever present, understated with that curious detachment that is quite often 'the composer at the keyboard', as though what meant most to the creator at the time of creation was now viewed with some critical detachment.
Keith Humble was also significant because as an educator he, for a time, exerted an ideology and idealism that was important for Australian music. He was there because he believed in what he was doing, not because he had an eye out for the main chance. It was this idealism that led to the formation of the Australian Contemporary Music Ensemble and which was the daddy of much subsequent performance of new music in this country. But that is a story that needs to be told elsewhere. Within the activities of ACME, Keith Humble also acted as conductor and one of the artistic directors.
Throughout his life, Humble followed, to a stricter or looser extent, the aesthetics of the Second Viennese School; but the lean sound of Schoenberg's and Webern's piano music is ever present in the Humble scores, right from the very early Three Little Pieces through to the late Bagatelles.
Having said that, I need to qualify it by pointing out that there are some early Humble pieces which do establish a beginning in tonality. From 1947, a set of three pieces called Childhood Tunes: 1. Teddy Bear; 2. The Wind; and 3. A Dream – Bewilderment. The last is somewhat less tonal than its predecessors, playing on the tritonal pull between B and F. The last two pieces are somewhat reworked and combined into a Prelude also dated 1947. Two Preludes (F Minor and F# Major) were written in 1948. The harmony is well-defined not only by the key signature but also by the strong writing, although the second prelude is shifting towards some added notes in the chords; this prelude features alternate hand chords for most of its texture. An Essay for the Piano was composed in 1949 and explores chords in piled-up fifths, although still within well-marked tonal boundaries of Bb minor-major. An Etude from 1952 owes something to the first Debussy Etude with a similar humorous reference to the elementary
five-finger pattern on white notes superimposed with black notes foreign to the implied harmony. The manuscript now names Paris instead of Melbourne as a location. From the same place come the Three Album Leaves (1954). The tonal centres are now weaker and the writing closer to Humble's later aphoristic style.
In a similar vein is The First Day of Spring (dated somewhat prematurely 23/2/54; perhaps an early onset that year?); this charming miniature is dedicated To Jill, presumably the same Jill that was to be his wife of many years. All of this early music is unpublished, like so much of Humble and has become available only very recently with the establishment of the Humble archive at the National Libary of Australia. To complete this list from earlier years, I should add the Three Statements for Piano (Overture, Improvisation and Finale) from 1967, the whole only taking up two pages of manuscript and now in a confirmed and confident Second Viennese School approach. Finally, two incomplete works: Loose Leaves (date difficult to decipher, but could be 1989), of which only the first is complete, and the second breaks off. Similarly, Miniatures (1994) with one completed piece followed by a detailed scheme of pitch rotation. The single first pieces of Loose Leaves and Miniatures could conceivably be published together.
There are four sonatas and in a way they characterize all of Humble's music for the piano. Keith was a composer who found his personal language very early and never deviated from it, at least not to any significant extent, and he was content to stay within this framework. He used the twelve-tone system in his own way, subdividing the row in various ways – not always in equal subdivisions – and treating the material at times as a main cell and a subsidiary cell of notes. But the resultant textures and expressive devices rarely shifted from a world defined earlier by Webern and Schoenberg.
Sonata I (1953) already has within it the characteristics of later Humble:
Ex 11:2 K. Humble. Sonata I. opening.
Both movements are in this telegraphic style, and it is not until the coda that some hint of a warmer world manifests itself with some tremolo pedals.
Sonata II (1977) is a fiercer, more aggressive work; in it Humble works his raw material in a more chordal and polyphonically denser fashion than in Sonata I
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and so forces the performer to extend the dynamic range due to close proximity of changes and moods and the need to delineate them, often harshly.
Ex 12:2 K. Humble. Sonata II. Bars 17-20.
Nevertheless, there still is room for gentler moments in the coda near the end, as before in Sonata I, where a Schoenbergian mood and texture momentarily holds sway:
Ex 13:2 K. Humble. Sonata II. Bars 67-69
The sonatas are all short. For example Sonata III (1985), in Keith 's sprawling calligraphy, still only runs to ten manuscript pages. Whatever one feels about the music and its unvarying style, Keith had the courage to stick to his guns and an even greater courage, not possessed by many composers to put a full-stop when he had said what he wanted to say. The works have no excess fat on them, no room for trimming – it is all spare and essential. A volume gathering all the sonatas together should be a publishing priority.
Sonata III, like its predecessor, is a continuous work, but the composer does divide it into smaller sections; an Epilogue of a more extended and gentler nature sums up the qualities of the Sonata:
Ex 14:2 K. Humble. Sonata III. opening of Epilogue.
Sonata IV (1990) is Humble’s last major work for piano – it is eight pages of manuscript and although no new expressive ground is covered here, what is evident is a higher level of control over the technique and a refined language.
Once again, the composer ends the Sonata with a gentle coda. Here is how Sonata IV opens, a composite world of what was experienced in the first and second sonatas:
Ex 15:2 K. Humble. Sonata IV. opening.
The set of Bagatelles (1992), eight in all, is Humble's last work for piano. I had the privilege of hearing Keith perform these short pieces and to my ears they are a beautiful summation of his musical journey, with gentle reference to some of the major influences on his style and piano playing.
In 1969 he wrote this note in connection with his piano piece Arcade II:
The sound material of Arcade II is derived from a recent computer research programme which was conducted at the University of Melbourne. It appears from the results of this programme that there are but four 12-tone rows (out of a possibility of millions of combinations) in which all of the 12 distinct trichords appear. Consequently, I have used each of these rows as a basis for each section of Arcade.
Humble's restless and probing curiosity, his pianism, his love/hate relationship with Australia, his refusal to concern himself with current fashions - all produced music of high integrity and value. His uncompromising honesty is all too often missing from our compositional scene.
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