Cyril Meir Scott

Scott, Cyril Meir (1879–1970), composer and writer on the occult, was born on 27 September 1879 in Oxton, Cheshire, the youngest of the three children of Henry Scott (1843–1918), businessman and amateur Greek scholar, and his Welsh wife, Mary Griffiths. Not a strong child, Scott was taught by a series of private tutors; his obvious musical talent led to his enrolment in 1891 at the Hoch Conservatorium, Frankfurt am Main, to learn the piano with Lazarro Uzielli and theory with Engelbert Humperdinck. In 1893 he came back to England, but he later returned to Frankfurt as a composition student of Iwan Knorr (1853–1916), remaining until 1898. The hopes of English music rested briefly in the ‘Frankfurt group’ of Scott and his fellow students Balfour Gardiner, Percy Grainger (a close friend), Roger Quilter, and Norman O'Neill.

In Germany, Scott became a friend of the poet Stefan George. His visual sensibilities were awakened by a friend of George, the stained-glass artist Melchior Lechter, who inspired both Scott's lifelong preference for a Gothic style of domestic surroundings and his youthfully picturesque appearance of ‘overlong hair and curious ties’ (Scott, Bone of Contention, 75). His other interests were equally unconventional. Though brought up as a low-church Anglican, he embraced the yoga teachings of the Swami Vivekananda in 1902 and the tenets of theosophy from 1907. He lived the rest of his personal and professional life according to his esoteric beliefs, and the guidance (via various mediums) of his ‘master’, Koot Hoomi. Thus in 1921 he was directed to work through karma from a relationship in a previous existence, by marrying Rose Laure Allatini (the novelist Eunice Buckley) (1890–1980), with whom he had a daughter, Vivien, and a son, Desmond. After an amicable separation from Rose in 1939, Scott settled in Sussex in 1943 with a companion, Marjorie Hartston (d. 1997), who acted as his medium; he lived in Sussex for the rest of his life.

Among Scott's considerable literary works were many poems, translations of Baudelaire and Stefan George, writings on natural remedies including some with such disconcerting titles as Crude Black Molasses: Nature's Wonder Food (1947), and two discursive but entertaining autobiographies, My Years of Indiscretion (1924) and Bone of Contention (1969). His most substantial writing is to be found in books on esoteric matters such as the trilogy The Initiate (3 vols., 1920–32), which remained popular long after his death, and Music: its Secret Influence throughout the Ages (1933); in the latter he describes the occult power of music in shaping the destiny of mankind.

Scott's compositions achieved early success, and were championed by Hans Richter, who conducted the Heroic Suite in 1900. Several Promenade Concert performances followed, including those of his first symphony (in 1903), the overture to Princess Maleine (in 1907), and Two Poems for Orchestra (in 1913), and Fritz Kreisler was impressed enough by the piano quartet to lead its first performance in 1901.

Scott was also a professional pianist. His idiomatic piano compositions range from the rhythmically complex cyclic-form piano sonata no. 1 (1909) to suites: his ‘occult’ suite Egypt (1913) was dedicated to ‘my friend Mrs Marie Russak, that enlightened Seer, who brought back for me the memory of my past Egyptian lives’. He also wrote numerous small piano pieces, such as the popular ‘Water Wagtail’ and ‘Lotusland’. Robert Elkin became Scott's enthusiastic publisher and promoter and pressured him into production of further charming and facile miniatures and songs, which were enthusiastically performed by musical amateurs both in Britain and abroad.

Unfortunately, the English musical establishment after 1918 was marching to the tune of English folk-song and the Tudor music revival, and Scott's cosmopolitan and occult interests were out of step. The disparaging music criticism of the mid-1930s, coupled with the BBC music department's dismissive attitude towards Scott's more serious compositions, illustrates the depths into which his once-proud reputation as a major English composer had disappeared by that time.

Yet Scott's music has undoubted strengths. Percy Grainger admired the ‘magical power of Cyril's chord-skill’ (Armstrong, 18), and claimed an influence on Scott's ground-breaking experimentation with irregular rhythms, which were inspired by the ‘incessant flux’ (Scott, ‘Fragments of a lecture’, 183) of universal natural forces. His orchestration is subtle, as in the brass-less piano concerto no. 1 (1915) and the Gallic sound-world of his Aubade (1911). Although he was dubbed ‘the English Debussy’ (Scott, Bone of Contention, 124), this was a similarity that was firmly denied by both him and the French composer. Nevertheless, French harmonic and textural influence is very clear in the piano quintet (1904–5), which in 1925 was belatedly awarded the Carnegie Trust prize, while the opening of the Idyll (1923) for voice and flute closely resembles that of Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune (1892–4).

As Scott became increasingly immersed in the esoteric, so his musical style changed. Early works were characterized by both impact and drive, as was his opera The Alchemist (1917), successfully produced in Essen in 1928 (but not without the aid of occult intervention from Master Koot Hoomi, who was persuaded during a rehearsal dispute to ‘come in one of his subtle bodies and diffuse peace’ (Scott, Bone of Contention, 188). Later works, such as Summerland (Devachan) (1935) and The Hymn of Unity (1947), were pervaded by an atmosphere of hypnotic calm, achieved through Scott's use of ostinati, pedal notes, and harmonic stasis, a style which may have evolved from his interest in meditation, breathing, and yoga techniques. Ironically, his oriental interests were condemned as spurious in 1932 by the writer and composer K. S. Sorabji, who described Scott's music as an ‘astonishing production ... which underneath its trumpery finery of ninths, elevenths, added sixths, joss sticks, papier-Asie Orientalism and pinchbeck Brummagem-Benares nick-nackery, oozes with glutinous commonplace’ (Sorabji, 63).

Scott was unfairly considered a poseur rather than a composer, probably because of his occult beliefs, his flamboyant appearance, and his refusal to conform to current musical fashion. Yet his rueful analysis of his musical role seems accurate and honest:

I had some forty years ago helped to extricate British music from the academic rut in which it had got fixed, and having performed that office, it might well be that that was all I was destined to do along musical lines in this particular incarnation! (Scott, Bone of Contention, 218)

Scott died at his home, Santosa, 53 Pashley Road, Eastbourne, on 31 December 1970; his ashes were interred at St Nicholas's Church, Pevensey, Sussex.

Diana Swann