1 Jimmy Biggs

Early in September 1930 a young English organist strode down the gangplank of an ocean liner and onto the streets of depression-wracked New York. He had no job or, apparently, any real prospect of one, but he had come to stay. For the next few weeks he pounded pavements and knocked on doors, eating at the Automat—where a sandwich or a piece of pie could be had for a nickel—and staying at the YMCA for 75 cents a night.

The previous year he had made a chaotic and financially unrewarding tour of the United States, consisting largely of one-night stands in small towns, followed by a single New York recital; nonetheless he was almost completely unknown in a country where audiences equated organ concerts with the flamboyant orchestral transcriptions of his charismatic countryman Edwin H. Lemare or the melodious platitudes of the “millionaires’ organist,” Archer Gibson. This young musician’s style—personal as well as musical—was conservative. His assets were a solid conservatory training under some outstanding teachers, considerable raw talent and capacity for work, self-confidence of a quite realistic sort, and a seemingly unshatterable optimism.

Edward George Power Biggs was born on March 29, 1906, in the sign of Aries, to Alice Maud Tredgett and Clarence Power Biggs of Westcliff-on-Sea, a small town east of London. His father was an auctioneer, his mother the daughter of a farmer. As far as can be determined, the family was not a particularly musical one.

In 1907 the Biggses moved to Ventnor on the Isle of Wight, partly in an attempt to restore Clarence Biggs’s health, which had been undermined by tuberculosis. There they took in paying guests in a rambling Victorian house named Highport Towers, which was well supplied with smooth banisters, hidden cupboards, and other diversions for an imaginative (and perhaps sometimes lonely) child. The sea breezes and Alice Biggs’s Christian Science convictions notwithstanding, Clarence Biggs died only two years after the move, leaving his widow to cope with both the boardinghouse and an active three-year-old son.

At the age of seven, Jimmy Biggs (his unwieldy full name temporarily bypassed) entered Hurstpierpoint College, a “public” (i.e., private) school in Sussex, where, among other extracurricular activities, he played soccer and began taking piano lessons. During his summers at Ventnor he had ample opportunity to observe the many boats that passed the Isle of Wight on their way from Southampton to France. His interest in them led to the compilation of a notebook titled, in a youthful but firm hand, “Notes on Model Boats.” In it are a number of clippings and photographs of ocean-going vessels, the latter possibly taken by young Biggs himself, plus businesslike comments on the various classes of boats.

The end result of this rather mature (for an eleven-year-old) piece of research was a 31-inch model of a liner, which he admitted was “not very easy to build except in large sizes as it is impossible to put in much detail.” In determining the size of his model, however, some compromise must have been necessary: “A 4 ft. model liner is about the best size as it is possible to put in a good bit of detail yet the boat is not too big & heavy to carry to the water.” Nonetheless, “great attention should be given to the deck fittings.” Electricity is recommended over steam for motive power, and “speed should not be aimed for.” The resulting model, powered by a tiny electric motor, and now in the possession of Peggy Biggs, is a very creditable piece of youthful craftsmanship. The deck fittings are all there in some detail, and it is indeed “not too big & heavy to carry to the water.”

Young Jimmy Biggs probably spent a good deal of his spare time tinkering with things. In his teens, he often spent summers at Wiggie, a farm owned by family friends. One of his duties there was feeding the chickens, but at some point a conflict arose between the timing of this chore and his newfound love of tennis. He cannily resolved the problem by inventing an automatic chicken feeder. The chicken feed was placed in a pan atop the device, which was turned by a spring activated by an old alarm clock. All Jimmy had to do was to load the pan and set the alarm clock, and he could be off playing tennis for the rest of the afternoon, knowing that the feed would be scattered to the biddies at the appointed time.

Jimmy Biggs’s stay at Hurstpierpoint encompassed the years of World War I. During that time he took his music lessons, participated in sports and school plays, studied hard (excelling in mathematics and science), and, toward the end of his school days, joined the Officers Training Corps, or Cadets, where he did well in miniature range musketry. He was rated by Captain Pocock as “a keen cadet who left before developing into a leader.” When he graduated from Hurstpierpoint at the age of sixteen he had earned a good recommendation from headmaster A. H. Coombes with regard to his behavior and scholarship.

Biggs may have already given up his piano lessons, and certainly he gave no indication of seeking a musical career at the time of his graduation. Instead, he headed directly toward the kind of work a boy who liked tinkering and who excelled in mathematics and science might be expected to pursue. Shortly after leaving Hurstpierpoint, Jimmy Biggs entered into an apprenticeship with an electrical engineering firm in London.

The active musical life of London must have exercised a powerful stimulus on the young man from Sussex, for at the age of eighteen Biggs began studying music again. This time it was not piano, but organ. His teacher was J. Stuart Archer, who was organist of a large Christian Science Church in London (which Biggs may have attended) and was also well known as a recitalist. Archer saw sufficient promise in the apprentice engineer to recommend that he audition for a scholarship at the Royal Academy of Music. This Biggs did in the spring of 1926, shortly after his twentieth birthday. He was awarded the Thomas Threlfall organ scholarship, but he agonized all summer as to whether it was really to be his, since he felt that he had played the audition piece (the slow movement from Rheinberger’s Sonata No. 7) “not particularly well.”

Entering the Academy in the fall, Biggs studied organ, at Archer’s recommendation, with George Dorrington Cunningham, then at the height of his career as a concert organist. He also studied piano with Claude Pollard and Welton Hickin, and harmony with J. A. Sowerbutts, but it was Cunningham—who, in the words of Reginald Whitworth, was beloved “not only for his supremely fine playing but also for his delightful and unassuming personality”—to whom Biggs turned as a role model and who appears to have been a powerful determinant in his choice of a career.

In a memoir written near the end of his life and published posthumously in Music, Biggs recalled his influential teacher, who was, “first of all, and by the style of his playing, a concert organist.” Cunningham was himself an Academy graduate who had achieved early fame through his weekly recitals on the famed Willis organ in London’s Alexandra Palace, where he played regularly until the organ was silenced by World War I. In 1925, when Biggs began studying with him, Cunningham had just been appointed municipal organist to the City of Birmingham, a position he held in addition to that of organist to the University of Birmingham, and was only teaching one day a week at the Academy. In his article, Biggs comments on the backbreaking schedule this necessitated for Cunningham:

At the crack of dawn every Thursday, he would take the two-hour train trip from Birmingham to London (let’s hope the dining car coffee was hot!), arriving early, and would teach right through the day. Quite often he would then give a London recital in the evening, returning late that night to Birmingham.

I was always conscious of the considerable privilege of being one of his pupils. But it was only later, when I, too, came to give lessons, that I realized what devotion and sacrifice of his own work such days must have cost him. Only later does one realize how precious and irreplaceable is the element of time.

Archer’s recommendation of young Biggs to Cunningham was fortuitous in every way, for the two had much in common, and Biggs found in his teacher a man with whom he could identify, both musically and intellectually. Reginald Whitworth, writing in The Organ for July 1933, makes some observations about Cunningham that could well have applied to Biggs himself later on in his career:

Mr. Cunningham is not a believer in organ transcriptions, except as relief items used in order to obtain variety. He plays many of his programmes from memory, and has frequently played various organ concertos under our distinguished conductors. As many of his recitals are broadcast, his influence upon organ playing is incalculable. He is continually receiving letters of thanks and appreciation from listeners both at home and abroad. This work must of necessity possess a high educational value. Unspoiled by success, Mr. Cunningham has preserved a delightful modesty, which, with his other great gifts, has won for him many friends and admirers.

And, according to Biggs, “Cunningham was not only a great player, he was also a great teacher.” To the end of his life, in both his teaching and his personal practice habits, Biggs adhered to the basics laid down by Cunningham; not dogmatically, for that was not his nature, but rather because these techniques worked and produced a desired result. These concepts are important to the understanding of Biggs’s own thought and practice, and the following is his own summary of them:

His [Cunningham’s] own playing projected a wonderful sense of accent, a splendid ongoing rhythm. This rhythm was by no means metronomic; it was plastic and flexible. The secret (though “the secret” is no secret at all) was his sensitivity to note duration and his finger control of the organ key, disciplined by his piano technique.

He had the gift to teach this to his pupils. He gave his students a method of work—a key—but of course one had to open the door oneself. He insisted on much piano practice. It was in any case obligatory to study the piano with one of the piano professors, as a “major” equal to the organ.

Cunningham practiced what he preached with regard to the piano, as is evident in an incident related by Biggs. When the organ in Birmingham City Hall failed just before one of his scheduled organ recitals, Cunningham coolly switched to the piano, giving from memory an impromptu program that included music by Brahms and Beethoven and was favorably received by the critics.

For the learning of most compositions Cunningham recommended a “divide and conquer” process. For finger sprightliness, one practiced the manual parts first on the piano. On the organ, one started with the pedal part alone. Naturally, in the process all fingerings and footings were to be puzzled out and pencilled in.

Having attained fluency at pretty nearly the right tempo in each of the three parts, one started to put them together—perhaps even in the three easy stages of pedal and left hand, pedal and right hand, and then all three.

Cunningham wished his pupils to avoid becoming mired in slow “organy-like” practice—trying to swallow the animal whole, so to speak. He wanted an ongoing rhythm right away, along with the notes, and though the above three-part breakdown seems a long way around the bush, one actually learned a piece very quickly that way.

A fault had to be worked out until it could be played correctly at least three times consecutively. It was a good idea, Cunningham thought, sometimes to begin one’s practice period with the last section, and work section by section to the beginning of a piece. Then one’s right-through performance seemed to take on a certain freshness. (This incidentally is a useful idea to try with one’s choir.) If to this practice approach one added contrapuntal, harmonic and form analysis, the music seemed to become almost automatically set in the fingers and memory.

Cunningham recommended that certain pieces should be worked on and worked on until thoroughly memorized for the formation of concert programs. Other compositions—“Sunday music” if you like—could be thoroughly studied but left to play from music. Playing from memory does not by itself assure a fine performance, although certainly it can add flare and excitement.

A very succinct summary of some of these precepts is found in a notebook entitled “Organ Notes,” dating from the time Biggs began his studies under Cunningham. On the very first page, under the heading “Organ Technique,” he wrote, “Always practice pieces in ‘ultimate units,’ & gradually build up phrases, & then sentences & so on. Then you don’t get fed up & wonder why on earth you can’t do the thing properly.” A page later he noted that “The feel of the time or pulse is more important than anything else. . . .” Further on, one finds additional proof of the importance Biggs (and his teacher) placed on rhythmic flow: “If registration cannot be changed without breaking the rhythm, then don’t change it.”

In the spring of 1929 Cunningham made his only concert tour of the United States and Canada, winning high critical praise in New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Biggs recalled that Cunningham found “the Americans wonderful, the country magnificent, and many of the organs terrible.” The positive parts of this observation doubtless outweighed the negative in Biggs’s mind, and it may well be that it was this that first stirred his interest in pursuing a career outside his homeland.

At the end of Biggs’s first year at the Royal Academy, Cunningham rated his punctuality and industry as “excellent,” commenting that Biggs had “made a capital start.” Welton Hickin, his first piano teacher, found him “an intelligent student and thoughtful.” Despite this obvious devotion to his studies, Jimmy Biggs led a social life like that of most other college and conservatory students. He lived at 84 Warwick Gardens, Kensington, near the Academy, Royal Albert Hall, and the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was an avid attendant at concerts of all kinds—symphonic, choral, operatic, student recitals, and “school shows.” He was still an enthusiastic tennis player, and he attended all the R. A. M. dances. That he did not lack for company at these functions is obvious from the list of young ladies (with phone numbers) kept at the back of his date books. But his winning of the Hubert Kiver Organ Prize in 1927 shows that his social life did not interfere unduly with his practicing.

It was not long after receiving this honor that Biggs, though still a student, began to be involved in professional musical activities. His first public performances had been in student concerts, but the pieces he played show that he had already attained an impressive level of proficiency. In a student concert given in February 1928 at Duke’s Hall, he played Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G minor, and at a similar concert given on May 31, he performed the Allegro Vivace from Widor’s Symphony No. 5. His skill on the piano matched his achievements on the organ, for barely a week later, on April 5, he took part in a joint “Pianoforte and Song” recital in Leighton House, where his piano solos included Schubert’s Fantasy in C Major (“The Wanderer”), De Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance, and Liszt’s Rhapsody No. 6.

In the fall of 1928 Biggs was appointed a “sub-professor” at the Academy and was chosen to play two concertos for organ and orchestra under Sir Henry Wood. He also did some broadcasts for the BBC and a recital in Queen’s Hall, the latter apparently on fairly short notice, but reviewed in The Referee for November 25 as “a remarkably brilliant performance.” In 1929, in student concerts at Duke’s Hall, he performed the Finale from Vierne’s Symphony No. 1 in January and two movements from Reubke’s Sonata in C minor in June. In July he again played the Widor Allegro Vivace at the Academy’s prize distribution ceremony in Queen’s Hall. He also began playing full recitals in London churches in this year; and programs survive from concerts given in the churches of St. Paul, St. Mary-le-Bow, and St. Dunstan-in-the-East. From these we find that, in addition to the virtuoso pieces already mentioned, Biggo had also mastered the rest of Widor’s Symphony No. 5, Bach’s Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, and Liszt’s monumental Fantasia and Fugue on “Ad nos, ad salutarem undam.” In between these big works he sandwiched smaller pieces by Wesley, Bach, and Vaughan Williams; transcriptions from Schubert and Haydn symphonies; and transcriptions of piano works such as MacDowell’s A. D. 1620.

Biggs also held a few church positions. One was at the Third Christian Science Church on Curzon Street, where he auditioned in January 1928—and from which he was fired. Another may have been St. Columba’s Church of Scotland on Pont Street in Belgravia, for he is thought to have made his first gramophone recording there (possibly for H. M. V.)—of the Scottish church service. A recital program of February 3, 1929 identifies him as organist of Chiswick Parish Church. In 1929 and 1930 Biggs also served as the piano accompanist of the London Select Choir, which participated in a Delius Festival under Sir Thomas Beecham in the summer of 1930.

During Biggs’s conservatory years his name appears in a variety of forms. On some notebooks dating from his first year at the Academy, he wrote it “E. G. Biggs,” and in the 1927 Prize List the Threlfall scholar is “Edward G. P. Biggs.” On various concert and recital programs it is variously “E. G. Power-Biggs,” “Edward Power Biggs,” and “Power Biggs”—almost as though he were trying out different styles. But by 1929 his name appeared consistently as “E. Power Biggs,” and so it remained for the rest of his life.

The year 1929 began in a flurry of activity as Jimmy Biggs approached the end of his student days. It also saw the beginning of a brief but ardent romance between him and Joan Boulter, an attractive vocal student at the Academy. For the rest of the term she was his regular companion at boat races, R. A. M. dances, operas at the Old Vic, plays at the Embassy Theatre, and “talkies.” Occasionally Biggs let his romantic ebullience spill over onto the pages of his date books, as on May 23, when he scrawled “A gorgeous day of brilliant sunshine—Joan darling!” It takes very little imagination to conjure up a picture of two high-spirited young music students strolling hand in hand in the warm spring sunshine of Kensington Gardens, Regents Park, or some similar idyllic spot.

However, in that final term of Biggs’s studies at the Royal Academy of Music there were also serious matters concerning the future to be settled. Biggs approached Sir John McEwan, the principal of the school, about the possibility of staying on as a teacher. McEwan had probably heard similar requests before. His reply was both fatherly and sensible: “We hate to lose any of you, but you must go out in the world, go anywhere. Of course, come back later if you like.”

But there were other options to be pursued. On January 21 a notation in Biggs’s date book reads, “Meet Davies at 1:45 at Finsbury Pk. St.” The individual Biggs met at the Finsbury Park tube station was Rhys Davies, a Welsh baritone associated with a small touring group known as the Cambrian Concert Company. Its other members were Jeannette Christine, soprano, and David Owen Jones, “Business and Field Manager,” but it lacked a keyboard player. Biggs was probably aware that the group was a second-rate affair that played largely to small-town audiences wherever Jones could scare up a one-night stand. But more important to him was the fact that the group had scheduled a six-month tour of the United States in the fall of 1929, and he signed on as a kind of utility man—organist, pianist, and accompanist.

For the rest of the term Biggs was occupied in studying for his final examinations, but he also found time to play some recitals, carefully hoarding the reviews for future use. He took the examinations in June—in organ, piano, harmony, ear training and accompaniment—earning good marks on all of them. July was spent with his mother at Wiggie, and no doubt Biggs found a bit of time for playing tennis.

In August he was back in London, accompanying the Select Choir, playing more recitals, collecting addresses of American organists, checking out boat fares, equipping himself with a new wardrobe, and, of course, practicing. He also prudently had a publicity flyer printed up, replete with endorsements from G. D. Cunningham and Sir Henry Wood, favorable excerpts from reviews, and a photo of a coolly confident young musician in his best double-breasted suit. Biggs had accepted what was probably the most intriguing of the seemingly limited options open to him. Two months after his graduation from the Academy he made ready to embark on his first transatlantic concert tour.