Resources

3MBS has a wealth of knowledge and information about Classical Music and we'd like to share it with you!

We have a selection of biographies of composers of significance written by 3MBS volunteers, information about significant Australian composers, our Music Teachers Directory and more to come.

Great Composers | Australian Composers | Music Teachers Directory

Great Composers

Listed below are links to information about some of the great composers we play on 3MBS.

You can read biographies of the following composers written by a 3MBS presenter.

Bartok | Bloch | Copland | Delius | Elgar | Fauré | Gluck
Kodály | Korngold | Mendelssohn | Nielsen | Prokofiev
Rachmaninov | Respighi | Rossini
Shostakovich | Sibelius | Smetana | Suk
Tippett | Vaughan Williams

At the right of each composer’s name are external links to websites containing further information about that composer. Please note that 3MBS gives no endorsement of the accuracy of the information contained in these websites.

This page will be updated periodically so check back soon for information on your favourite composers.

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Béla Bartók

Bartók was born on 25th March, 1881 in an area which, following the terms of the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, is now in Romania. His father, the director of a school of agriculture, was a keen and gifted amateur pianist, cellist and composer. He died when Béla was seven; as a result, the chief intellectual and musical influence on the boy came from his mother, who, after her husband’s death, taught piano. Béla suffered many bouts of ill-health in his childhood and adolescence; at one time it was feared that he would not live.

Bartók was a professional musicologist as well as an eminent composer and virtuoso pianist. He and Kodály (born 1882) became intensely interested in the rhythms and scales of the peasant music of Hungary and surrounding countries. As they moved from village to village, using wax cylinders, they recorded, then analyzed and classified, thousands of songs and dances, which they found to be essentially different from the folk music of Western Europe.   Many were later published, together with rhythmic, scalar and harmonic analysis. As a result, much of Bartók’s music is based on the elements of the indigenous music of the region.

Bartók was never wealthy; at times, particularly in his later years, the future for him and his family was uncertain. As a result, much of his output was dependent on commissions. He wrote concertos for piano as well as violin, but no symphonies. His six string quartets are considered by some to be a logical sequel to Beethoven’s late quartets. His music is intense and concentrated; padding of any kind is absent. His works create an impression of uncompromising integrity and sincerity, which seem to reflect the man himself. This impression is reinforced by anecdotes and extracts from his letters as well as by personal photographs displayed in various biographies. He detested the Nazi-oriented government, which had allied Hungary to Hitler’s Germany. In disgust, he left Hungary for America in 1940, expecting to return in more liberal times. An extract from his will, quoted by Halsey Stevens in The Life and Music of Béla Bartók (1938), reveals much about his character and attitudes: “My burial is to be the simplest possible. If after my death they want to name a street after me, or to erect a memorial tablet to me in a public place, then my desire is this: as long as what were formerly Octogon-tér and Körönd in Budapest are named after those men for whom they are at present named (i.e., Hitler and Mussolini), and further, as long as there is in Hungary any square or street, or is to be, named for these two men, then neither square nor street nor public building in Hungary is to be named for me, and no memorial tablet is to be erected in a public place”.

In New York, apart from some sections of the music community, he was almost unknown and unrecognized. In addition, he fell ill with cancer. He was materially but discreetly helped by commissions from Koussevitzky and Yehudi Menuhin.

As a way of coming to terms with the complex and often challenging music of Bartók it may be useful to examine characteristics of three of his best-known works; the first in some detail, the other two much more briefly.

Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, from 1936, was commissioned by Paul Sacher for the Basle Chamber Orchestra. The placing of the players is important. For the creation of the required stereophonic effect, there are two self-complete string ensembles, separated by two diverse groups of percussion players, consisting of timpani, tambourine, pianoforte, bass drum, cymbals and xylophone. These latter produce a startlingly diverse range of tone-colours, some mysterious and some sheerly magical.

Rhythm and meter are of great interest. The function of bar lines is to indicate phrasing, rather than rigorous metrical division. Time signatures change constantly; they include five, seven and ten quavers per bar, as well as eight, nine and twelve. The result is a pattern of phrasing which, in its freedom and flexibility, is closer to Gregorian chant and Medieval and Renaissance compositions than to the standard repertoire from Bach to Shostakovich and beyond. The work displays supreme balance and poise in a context of extraordinary ingenuity.

There are four highly individualistic movements. The first is an elaborated fugue. The subject is a semi-chromatic theme in four sub-phrases. It has an organic wholeness, rising to and retreating from a point of climax. Each entry of the total subject has a logical pitch relationship with its predecessor. At the same time, each of the sub-phrases has its own climactic point, approached and followed by ascending and descending passages. The whole subject reveals symmetry within a larger symmetry. The apogee of the movement occurs about three fifths of the way through the whole movement, at a point which defines the ideal proportions of the Classical Golden Section. Here, Bartók inverts the subject of the fugue, creating a mirror image, such that melodic intervals which were rising now fall by the same degree. Thus, symmetry within symmetry is reinforced. Near the movement’s end, parts of the original fugue subject are played directly against their inversion. In the final three bars the theme’s last sub-phrase, pitted against its inversion, resolves on the pitch with which the movement began.

The second movement is notable for its vigour and brilliantly inventive orchestral effects. It begins with plucked glissando, followed by rushing antiphonal unison passages for the string ensembles. Fragments of theme tossed between string sections, combined with sharply etched syncopation and chromatic runs, create an electric and exhilarating sound. After a frenetic climax, harp, piano and other percussion assume a virtuosic role. The writing for timpani is particularly interesting, in that glissando passages are called for, requiring the on-going use of the tuning pedal. The latter part of the movement reveals a seemingly inexhaustible range of devices, including powerful syncopation, frequent changes of time-signature and pizzicato passages in contrary motion. A fugue-like passage leads to a great climax and the beginning of a triumphant final section. Near the end, a moment of serenity precedes a coda of astounding power, brilliance and complexity.

The third movement is even more remarkable. A repeated high note for solo xylophone, glissandi passages for timpani and sequential string entries comprise a mysterious introduction. Five segments follow; the third, powerful and intense, is the keystone of this arch structure. Each is preceded by a short phrase from the fugue theme of the first movement, such that by the fifth segment, the whole theme has been heard. The content of each segment displays an astonishing range of instrumental combinations and techniques. These include rapid glissandi for timpani and violins, very high passages for two solo violins, virtuoso writing for celesta, harp and piano and stopped and natural harmonics for strings. The movement ends quietly and mysteriously, with subdued phrases for strings, glissando trills for timpani, and a recall of the repeated high note from the beginning of the movement, for solo xylophone.

The last movement opens dramatically with two timpani strokes. These are followed by a syncopated Bulgarian melody, accompanied by a restless, thrusting rhythm, interspersed with forceful timpani notes and rapid interaction between the string sections. A spirit of great excitement is created. The piano becomes increasingly prominent; the sense of urgency intensifies. A wildly accelerating honky-tonk passage for piano and xylophone (semitones struck together in sequence) evolves into a noble, singing melody for lower strings, with piano descant, gradually taken up canonically by the higher strings, rising and falling like the waves of the ocean. This is, in fact, an opened-out version of the fugue theme of the first movement, closer to a major rather than minor mode; it emerges as a powerful unifying element and a triumphant summing up of the whole work. The coda begins with a mysterious solo for cello, followed by a sudden rush of strings, a calm passage for celesta and harp and a sudden, dramatic accelerando with an audacious tongue-in-cheek jazzy passage. The conclusion is triumphant and exhilarating.

The Concerto for Orchestra comes from Bartók’s last years. There are five movements. The Introduction opens mysteriously, then evolves into a dazzlingly original and inventive display of the many facets of the orchestral families. The second movement, in ternary form, juxtaposes pairs of solo instruments. A hymn-like theme, presented by horns, with side-drum accompaniment, constitutes one of many memorable passages. The third movement, an example of the composer’s “Night Music”, commences mysteriously with muted strings and solo woodwind instruments, but becomes intensely dramatic. The delicately coloured opening of the fourth movement, Intermezzo Interrotta, evolves abruptly into a satirical, strident burlesque, then just as unexpectedly returns to the serene spirit of the opening. The whole work culminates in an extraordinarily brilliant, energetic and complex Finale, which reaches remarkable heights of emotional intensity. The middle part of the movement is distinguished by a complex and brilliantly orchestrated fugue. The Coda which follows is of overwhelming orchestral colour and force. Composed when the cancer afflicting the composer was in remission, the piece speaks eloquently of Bartók’s courage, determination and integrity of purpose.

Bartók’s last string quartet, the Sixth, comes from 1939. Much of its musical language is rooted in Magyar rhythms and scales; consequently, the work, like many others of his compositions is essentially different from most Western European music. It is both passionate and rhapsodic. Its scale patterns are often closer to medieval ecclesiastical modes than to the familiar major and minor scales of more recent eras. Each of the four movements is introduced by an evolving version of a strangely haunting theme marked Mesto (“sad” or “mournful”).

In the first movement, brief and greatly contrasting melodic and rhythmic figures merge one into another, resulting in a sense of seamless continuity. After a richly elaborated statement of the introductory theme, the second movement, Marcia, displays powerful dotted rhythms, succeeded by a wildly rhapsodic episode, evocative of the spirit of Gypsy music. The jagged rhythms return. Much of the third movement, marked Burletta (a “jest” or “farce”) is derived from a bear dance. It has broken rhythms of greatly varying speeds and much pizzicato. A brief, lyrical middle part is succeeded by a modified return of the broken rhythms and a suggestion of the Mesto motif. The fourth movement is marked, simply, Mesto. It is dark, subdued, and deeply moving; it is imbued with the spirit of the Mesto motif. Despite the mood of desolation at the end of the movement there is, nevertheless, a sense of resolution and restrained hope.

It is hoped that these notes, concerning three of Bartók’s voluminous and multi-faceted output, will provide some insight into the compositional techniques and inward characteristics of this eminent Hungarian composer, who lived through one of the most turbulent periods in the history of modern Europe.

Peter Larsen

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Ernest Bloch

Swiss-born Ernest Bloch was a Jewish composer.

That statement may not seem particularly remarkable. Western music has been enriched by many fine Jewish composers. But Bloch is different. Many of his finest compositions are very specifically “Jewish” in character, seeking to express the very soul of the Jewish people and their priceless heritage through music influenced by oriental traditions.

The son of a dealer in clocks, he was born in Geneva in 1880, and although there was no hereditary musical skill on either side of the family, he was given the opportunity to learn the violin. He resolved early in life to become a composer; it is said that, at the age of eleven, he wrote out a vow to devote himself to composition and burnt it solemnly on a pyre of stones!

When he left school at the age of fourteen, it was expected that he would follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead, he wrote an Oriental Symphony, with the titles “Prayer”, “Desert Caravan”, “Oasis” and “Funeral Rite” and based on Jewish themes that he learnt from the singing of his father. A sign of things to come.

By the age of seventeen he was in Brussels, studying the violin with the great Ysaÿe. Then it was on to Frankfurt and the noted Russian-born teacher of composition, Ivan Knorr. (Percy Grainger, incidentally, had also been a pupil of Knorr but they had a falling out and the headstrong young Australian sought tuition elsewhere.) It was Knorr who had the greatest influence on Bloch’s musical personality, though his compositions at this time were inevitably derivative- symphonic poems obviously influenced by Richard Strauss and an opera Macbeth, said to be a mixture of Debussy and Mussorgsky -  a curious amalgam which you are unlikely to encounter these days on stage, although the work was produced at the Paris Opera in 1911 and revived in 1939. A complete recording exists on the Capriccio label.

Meanwhile the young man had realized that it was not possible to live by composition alone and had returned to the family business. While travelling as a commercial agent and acting as a salesman, he still managed to find time to compose, developing an intense interest in the ancient Biblical Hebrew spirit. In his own words, “the freshness and naivety of the patriarchs; the violence of the prophetic Books; the Jew’s savage love of justice; the despair of Ecclesiastes; the sorrow and immensity of Job; the sensuality of the Song of Songs. It is this that I endeavour to hear in myself, and transcribe into music: the sacred emotion of the race that slumbers far down in our soul”.

These first Hebrew works include the Israel Symphony, Three Jewish Poems for tenor and orchestra (in memory of his father), Baal Shem for violin and piano and the work by which he is best known, Schelomo (Solomon), a rhapsody for cello and orchestra.

Bloch visited America for the first time in 1916 where he conducted concerts of his own works which were sufficiently successful for him to receive an invitation to be the first Director of the new Cleveland Institute of Music. He took up the position in 1920 and in 1924 became an American citizen. Five years (1925-30) followed as Director of the San Francisco Conservatory. Though he spent much of the 1930s in Switzerland, he returned finally to America in 1941 where his last academic posting was Professor of Music at the University of California. He died in 1959.

Throughout his academic career, Bloch continued to compose, except during World War II when he suffered from severe depression.

In the mid-1920s he had begun to re-study counterpoint and Palestrina and Bach became important new influences. His “neo-classical” works include two concerti grossi (No.1 is especially appealing) and the Piano Quintet No.1 which, nevertheless, includes passages in quarter tones. His splendid Avodah Hakodesh (Sacred Service) could be said to contain both Jewish and neo-classical elements. A Voice in the Wilderness for cello and orchestra, another Hebrew-inspired work, dates from about the same time.

Among other works worth investigating are the Violin Concerto (1938), which makes use of an American Indian motto, and a considerable body of chamber music, including five string quartets.

Though he experimented with serialism in his later years, melody remained of prime importance to Bloch, so his music poses no difficulties for the adventurous listener. To quote “Grove” in conclusion: “For Bloch music was a spiritual experience. …. His firm beliefs in his own work and his faith in the spirituality of mankind make him a singular figure in 20th century music”.

Hector Walker

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Aaron Copland

If we wished to nominate music which is quintessentially American, surely the three great ballet scores Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942) and Appalachian Spring (1943-4), would spring readily to mind. Remarkably, the three works all stemmed from the same pen, one belonging to Aaron Copland. Yet the composer of such colourful, popular pieces could also produce music of astringent, rigorous formality.

Aaron Copland, born in Brooklyn, New York, on 14 November 1900, was the son of a Jewish immigrant whose original surname Kaplan was misspelt by an official when on a ship en route from his native Russia to America, and a Russian-Jewish mother whose parents had originally settled in the Wild West. From an early age Aaron was fascinated by music, having to be physically removed from the family piano. When, in his early teens, he heard Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Symphony Orchestra and saw Isadora Duncan perform her miraculous dancing with Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company, he decided that composition was to be his life's work. After studying piano, Copland took lessons in harmony, counterpoint and sonata form with Rubin Goldmark, under whose tutelage he wrote his first (unpublished) compositions. Like so many other American musicians (and, indeed, those of other origins), his three years in Paris from 1921 studying with the legendary Nadia Boulanger, together with the influence of Prokofiev, Roussel, the group of French composers known as Les Six and especially Stravinsky, instilled in him the discipline necessary to make best use of his creative talents. It was during his Parisian sojourn that Copland wrote his first successful piece, a Debussyian Scherzo humoristique, The Cat and the Mouse.

Having returned to the United States, Copland was fortunate in attracting the attention of the great conductor Serge Koussevitzky, during whose 25 year reign with the Boston Symphony Orchestra many American composers' works were premiered. Copland achieved success with his boisterous Music for the Theatre (1925) and the jazz-influenced Piano Concerto (1926). But soon the mercurial composer was immersed in other disciplines, spending time as a concert pianist, lecturing and writing articles and books, three of which, What to Listen for in Music, Our New Music and Music and Imagination, have been read widely. After Koussevitzky founded his immensely popular Tanglewood Summer School in 1940, he persuaded Copland to join the staff as a teacher (he later became chairman of the faculty). Later again, Copland embarked on the conducting career which led to him being on the podium of many orchestras throughout the world, including the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in 1978.

During the early 1930s many of Copland's compositions were austere, almost astringent and yet, although they attracted less than enthusiastic audience response, some commentators believe that works like the Piano Variations (1930), the Stravinskyian Short Symphony (1933) and Statements (1935) are among his most notable creations. This lack of audience appreciation inspired Copland to change his thinking for, as he put it, "During these years I began to feel an increasing dissatisfaction with the relations of the music-loving public and the living composer…..It seemed to me that composers were in danger of living in a vacuum….I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I could say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms". When the infectiously tuneful El salón México was premiered in 1937 it was so warmly received that the composer felt that his reformation was eminently justified.

What are the hallmarks of Copland's creative style? Perceptive fellow composer Virgil Thomson described Copland's music as "plain, clear-colored (sic!), deeply imaginative, theatrically functional …. it has style". Copland himself once remarked that, in writing for the orchestra, it was important to ensure that "the instruments are kept out of each others' way". His melodies are characterized by wide intervals, sometimes up to a tenth. One writer suggests that Copland "could sort potentially the grossest dissonance into a balanced sonority, or transform the humblest C major triad into something radiant and new". In his frequent use of folk music, Copland usually modified the melodies by syncopation or used them as the basis of his own more complex melodies (the well-known "Simple Gifts" from Appalachian Springs was a rare instance of a tune being used "straight"). In his earlier music the rhythmic material tends to be more complex than in his later works (perhaps, having turned to conducting, he liked his barlines to be evenly spaced, making rehearsals a tad easier to manage!); yet his rhythms were always fascinatingly vivacious. He was such a vivid orchestrator that it's been suggested that the spacious, colourful music gracing many American films can be attributed to some of Copland's more flamboyant scores (although one wit suggested that its genesis can be traced back to Alexander Borodin's 1880 piece In the Steppes of Central Asia!). Copland himself wrote many successful film scores, including for Of Mice and Men, Our Town, The Red Pony and The Heiress (which won an Academy Award in 1948 for the best film score).

As mentioned at the beginning of this essay, Copland was a composer of extraordinary contrasts. Music which was easy to assimilate and which are among the most popular works penned by an American composer include the three great ballets already referred to, Billy the Kid, Rodeo and Appalachian Spring (from each of which concert suites were made), the orchestral works Music for the Theatre, El salón México, Quiet City (the latter later arranged for a chamber ensemble), Lincoln Portrait (scored for speaker and orchestra), Fanfare for the Common Man (for brass and percussion), Three Latin American Sketches, the Symphony No.3 (an epic work marrying Copland's "folksy" and more austere styles) and the Clarinet Concerto written for Benny Goodman. Apart from his orchestral output, Copland composed in virtually every form of classical music, including the lyrical opera The Tender Land (a pity about the inane libretto!) and the delightful vocal work, Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier and despite his determination to write in a relatively simple, easy-to-understand style, Copland continued to produce scores which were never destined to appeal to the general public; music like the ebullient Piano Sonata (1941) and two atonal works, the Piano Quartet of 1950 and, his last major orchestral piece, Inscape (1967).

Copland's compositional activities diminished significantly from the late 1950s, probably due to his insatiable desire to wield the baton and to indulge his penchant for the recording studio. Aaron Copland died in Tarrytown, New York, on 2 December 1990.

John Barns

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Frederick Delius

Most of us think of Frederick Delius as he appears in the famous Ken Russell film, Song of Summer; a syphilitic wreck of a man, blind and paralyzed, insufferably egotistical and sarcastically cruel even to those on whom he depended; but he had been an energetic and virile young man who had grown oranges in Florida, lived a promiscuous Bohemian life in Paris and spent his summers mountain-climbing in Norway.

He was born in Bradford in 1862 to German parents who had become naturalized British citizens and was baptized “Fritz”.  His father had made his fortune in the wool industry and music-making in the home was a part of family life.  However, for the promising young boy to make a career in music was quite another matter.  Members of the upper class did not do such things!  So, when he was old enough, Fritz joined the family business as a traveller and quickly showed that he had neither the will nor the aptitude for the job.  However, it did take him to Norway, a country that always remained dear to him. He was packed off to Florida to manage an orange grove and, hopefully, get music out of his system.

It gave Delius the freedom he wanted.  From his house in Solarno Grove, not far from Jacksonville, he heard the unaccompanied singing of the former slaves drifting across the river at dusk.  It was an experience that haunted him for the rest of his life and it’s recalled often in his music, no more so than in the two wordless a capella choruses, To be sung of a summer night on the water.

He met a New York organist, Thomas Ward, who was in Florida for his health.  A piano was quickly acquired.  Ward moved to Solarno Grove and conducted lessons in counterpoint and fugue.  Oranges were forgotten and the fortuitous arrival of his brother enabled him to move to Danville, Virginia, where he set up as a music teacher and organist.  Father, meanwhile, had relented sufficiently to permit eighteen months of study at the Leipzig Conservatorium.  There Delius met Grieg, who became an encouraging friend and eventually persuaded father Delius to allow his wayward son to pursue a full-time musical career.

We find him next in Paris, enjoying the delights of the city and its women, and moving in artistic circles with other young men who were to become famous in their later years.  He numbered Gauguin, Munch and Strindberg among his friends.  He was now composing busily and his works at this time included two operas Irmelin and The Magic Fountain and many songs.  In 1896 he met Jelka Rosen, a young German painter whom he married and together they set up house in the little village of Grez-sur-Loing, not far from Versailles.  It remained their home until both died in 1934 and the peaceful surroundings enabled them both to develop their creative talents. Delius finest works were composed at Grez.

Delius rejected the formal training that he had in Leipzig and his music owes little to classical form and its development of thematic material.  For many this a stumbling block in understanding and enjoying it.  Scraps of melody seem to drift aimlessly without ever coalescing and there are no clear signposts to mark the music’s progress; or so the composer’s detractors would have us believe.  Listen, then, to the glorious, passionate melody which marks the climax of The Walk to the Paradise Garden from the “lyric drama” A Village Romeo and Juliet- (incidentally, in terms of pure sound, is this not some of the loveliest music ever written?)  Or turn to Sea Drift, the setting of Walt Whitman which is possibly Delius’ masterpiece.  The lament of a sea bird for his lost mate becomes a symbol of all human loss and the melodic ebb and flow of the music seems as timeless as the sea itself.

Delius had no interest in the English folk-song movement which influenced so many composers in the early 20th century; but he was sufficiently attracted by Brigg Fair, a Lincolnshire folk-song collected by his friend Percy Grainger, that he used it a the basis for an orchestral “rhapsody”.  His Florida experience is recollected in Appalachia: Variations on an Old Slave Song and here again are the haunting unaccompanied voices.  Then there are the short tone-poems, said to be inspired by his beautiful riverside garden at Grez: On hearing the first cuckoo in Spring, In a Summer Garden, and so on.

The Delius story is never complete without an account of the last years.  In 1928, when the composer was so physically incapacitated that writing music was no longer possible, he received an offer from a young Yorkshireman, Eric Fenby, to help in setting down on paper the music that still ran through his mind.  The extraordinary tale of this unlikely partnership- the old man a militant atheist, Fenby a devout Catholic- can be read in Fenby’s ”Delius as I knew him” and is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand Delius and his music.  Note by note, Delius communicated to Fenby a string of new works, some of them based on old material.  The climax of their time together was Songs of Farewell, a truly major work for double chorus and orchestra.  Listen, and wonder at the resilience of the human spirit.

It was in Germany that the music of Delius was first heard and acclaimed.  It was rarely played in England until (Sir) Thomas Beecham discovered it in 1907 and became its champion. For the rest of his life (he died in 1961) Beecham continued to play and record all the major works.  The climax of all this was a Delius Festival in 1929, the composer making the journey to England and, wheelchair-bound and unseeing, hearing at last the acclaim of his countrymen.

Rejecting all forms of religion, Delius was inspired by the philosophical writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, whose words he set in A Mass of Life.  His own creed, as distilled by Fenby, was “The love of women, courage to live fearlessly and die fearlessly though death be total extinction- this is the crown of life.  Man is a mystery; Nature alone is eternally renewing”.  All of this can be found in his music.

A Melbourne connection: One of the Deliuses’ prize possessions was a Gauguin painting, Nevermore.  After the First World War, financial difficulties obliged them to sell it.  Jelka, however, painted a copy which continued to hang on the wall at Grez.  It is now in the Grainger Museum in Melbourne.

Hector Walker

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Edward Elgar

Sir Edward Elgar is credited with being the first great English composer since Henry Purcell, and as one of the last great Romantic composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  His compositions are highly creative and technically brilliant, and draw upon the life experiences and feelings of a complex personality.  In his popular music, such as his Pomp and Circumstance March No 1, Elgar is considered to be the last great composer to reach the hearts of the people.  Like the greatest of the Romantic composers, Elgar conveys in his major works an understanding of human experience that can be universally grasped and understood.

Elgar is one of the most well-documented and analysed composers in history.  He lived in Victorian and Edwardian England where letter writing and diary keeping were prolific occupations - and he wrote expressively to those around him.  His letters often included his most personal thoughts and feelings, but Elgar also loved “japes” or jokes, and his letters were full of japes and humourous sketches.  His letters have provided rich material for Elgar’s biographers and many have ventured various theories as templates over his life.

From the outset, the odds were against Elgar becoming a great composer.  His family circumstances were lower middle class; he had no formal academic training in composition; and he grew up a Catholic in Anglican Britain.  These factors led to feelings throughout his life that he was an outsider who would never receive deserved recognition.  This attitude pervaded despite him receiving far more recognition in his lifetime than almost any other composer, and numerous honours from Royalty and the musical and social establishments in Britain and beyond.

Edward Elgar was born on 2 June 1857 in Worcester, England, the fourth of seven children born to William and Ann Elgar.  William was a Roman Catholic, appointed as organist at St George’s Roman Catholic Church in Worcester.  Ann was the daughter of a Hereford farm labourer.  She converted to Catholicism and was thought to be attracted to its intellectual and literary aspects.  She was an avid reader and conveyed to her son her love for literature and stories of chivalry.

Ann had yearned for a country life, and in 1856 William and Ann rented a tiny cottage in the village of Broadheath, five kilometres from Worcester.  However, they moved back to Worcester in 1859 for business reasons, and in 1860 took over a music shop in High Street.  Although Elgar only lived at Broadheath for a short period of his infancy, he idealized it throughout his life.  The cottage at Broadheath was opened as a permanent Elgar Birthplace Museum in 1938.

Elgar’s musical talent was noticed in the Elgar shop and piano lessons were arranged.  In 1867 when he was twelve years old, Elgar taught himself the violin, read books on harmony and orchestration and studied the scores of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven from his father’s music shop.

As a young man, Elgar’s musical experience was confined to leading small orchestras and giving violin lessons.  He became music director at the nearby Powick Lunatic Asylum in 1879, for which he wrote a number of early compositions, and where he gained an understanding of a variety of instruments.  He became organist at St George’s Roman Catholic Church in 1885.  The young Elgar’s musical world expanded as he took every opportunity to participate in or attend concerts in Worcester and beyond.  He played at the London premiere of Verdi’s Requiem in 1886, and in the same year went to the British premiere of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony under Hans Richter.

Elgar became engaged to one of his piano pupils, Alice Roberts, in 1887.  She was the daughter of a Major General, was nine years older than Elgar, and her family strongly disapproved of the engagement on the grounds of Elgar’s unlikely prospects.  Elgar wrote Salut d’amour, Op 12, as an engagement present for Alice, and they were married in 1889, when they moved to London to further his standing as a composer.  Their only child, a daughter, Carice, was born in 1890.  Through Alice’s funds, they were able to attend operas and concerts in London.  This time was formative for Elgar, who soaked up the musical influences of Wagner, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Schumann and Massenet.  In the 1890s Wagner was the most potent influence on Elgar.  He and Alice went to the Bayreuth Festival in 1892, where they heard Parsifal twice, Tristan und Isolde, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.

However, the musical recognition Elgar craved in London did not come, and they moved back to his beloved west country, to Malvern, in 1891.  Here his creativity found expression, with the overture Froissart, Op 19, his technically accomplished Serenade, Op20, and then a number of early cantatas (The Black Knight, Op 25, The Light of Life (Lux Christi), Op 29, and King Olaf, Op 30) that showed evidence of much of the musical promise that was to follow.  The cantata Caractacus, Op 35, followed in 1898, his most accomplished and masterful work to date.  Of the Woodland Interlude in that work, Elgar characteristically wrote:  “The trees are singing my music, or have I sung theirs?”  Elgar seemed to recognize his own unique quality developing in the compositions of this period.  In a letter to his publisher and friend, August Jaeger in 1897, he wrote: “My music, such as it is, is alive.  … I always say to my wife (over any piece or passage that pleases me) ‘If you cut that, it would bleed!’”.

1899 saw the composition of the first of Elgar’s great orchestral works: Variations on an Original Theme (‘Enigma’), Op 36.  While Elgar was extemporising at the piano, Alice commented on a “tune” he was playing.  He then proceeded to play it in the manner of various friends.  The work developed into a serious composition, which Elgar’s biographer, Michael Kennedy, called “the greatest orchestral work yet written by an Englishman”.  Elgar would not explain the “enigma” of the title, and there has been much conjecture about it during Elgar’s lifetime and since.

Following this success, Elgar was offered a commission for the 1900 Birmingham Music Festival, to compose a work on Cardinal Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius, telling of an old man’s death and passing to the next world.  Despite a poor first performance in Birmingham, The Dream of Gerontius, Op 38, became recognized (initially in Germany) as one of the greatest sacred music dramas.  Elgar knew its worth, and quoted lines by Ruskin on the score:  “This is the best of me; for the rest I ate, drank, and slept, loved and hated, like another;  my life was as the vapour, and is not; but this I saw and knew; this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory”.

Further commissions for Birmingham Music Festivals followed, and Elgar planned the Apostles trilogy, to tell the story of the calling of the Apostles (The Apostles, Op49, 1903), the foundation of the Church (The Kingdom, Op 51, 1906), and the Last Judgment (not completed).  General opinion is that the works overall failed to inspire Elgar as The Dream of Gerontius had done.  However, they have had strong advocates, and contain some of Elgar’s most brilliant and moving musical settings.

Elgar had long held the view that the highest form of musical expression was “absolute music” as expressed through the symphony.  By the age of 50, however, he had used texts (or, in the case of the Enigma Variations, vignettes of friends) to provide structure and continuity to his works.  It was not until 1908, when he was aged 51, that he felt he had the technical capacity to compose an abstract symphony.  Elgar’s Symphony No 1 in A Flat, Op 55, was hugely successful from the outset, receiving many performances in the UK and abroad.  Elgar said of the work: “There is no programme beyond a wide experience of human life with a great charity (love) and a massive hope for the future”.  Elgar dedicated the symphony to “Hans Richter, Mus. Doc, True Artist and True Friend”.

In this Symphony, and his other mature works, Elgar demonstrated his complete understanding of the orchestra.  He understood orchestral players and their instruments, and ensured that every player was stretched to capacity and had music offering challenge and reward.  He was supremely confident in his work, having many of his compositions engraved before their first performance, and rarely making changes subsequently.

Elgar’s Violin Concerto in B Minor, Op 61 was composed in 1910 at the request of the virtuoso violinist Fritz Kreisler.  The concerto is Elgar’s most personal work, enshrining an unidentified “soul” now thought to be that of his lost love from an early broken engagement.  Elgar’s biographer, Michael Kennedy, wrote of the work and its final movement cadenza that: “All Elgar’s love and understanding of his favourite instrument is in this concerto and especially in this cadenza which is the most poetic cadenza in the world, for it not only displays the instrument’s technical range but enables it to show its unrivalled capacity for emotional expression”.

The Symphony No 2 in E Flat, Op 63, was inspired by visits to Venice and Tintagel, and was composed and scored within a brief two months in 1911.  Elgar quoted from Shelley on the score: “Rarely, rarely comest thou, Spirit of delight”, and wrote that “the spirit of the whole work is intended to be high and pure joy:  there are retrospective passages of sadness but the whole of the sorrow is smoothed out and enobled in the last movement, which ends in a calm and I hope & intend, elevated mood”.  However, many have noted the deeply emotional aspects of the Symphony, of which Elgar’s biographer, Diana McVeagh, wrote: “His turmoils, his extremes of elation and morbid despair, are at its heart, transfigured so that his private memories become universal”.

As an established and highly successful composer, Elgar and Alice moved to Hampstead, London, in late 1911, when he became conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.  The Music Makers, Op 69, followed in 1912, followed by his symphonic study, Falstaff, Op 68, sometimes regarded as one of his greatest works, but generally less easily understood or appreciated than his other great works.

With the outbreak of war in 1914 Elgar only produced occasional patriotic pieces and works for the stage.  His Edwardian world was rapidly changing and he grew to feel an outsider, with no interest in developments in modern music.

In 1918 Elgar and Alice rented a summer cottage in Sussex as a respite from London.  Here he once again addressed himself to serious abstract composition, producing his three chamber works (Violin Sonata in E Minor, op 82, String Quartet in E Minor, Op 83, and Piano Quintet in A Minor, Op 84) and the Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op 85.  The works are personal and autumnal in mood, again expressing “a man’s attitude to life”.  The Cello Concerto was premiered on 27 October 1919, with Felix Salmond as soloist, and the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Elgar.

Alice became gravely ill and died of cancer in April 1920, and this proved to be the final blow to Elgar’s creativity.  He sensed that his music had become unfashionable and belonged to a previous age, so he withdrew from serious composition.

Elgar moved back to his beloved Worcestershire in 1923, and continued to compose occasional smaller works.  In his last years, he befriended the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who suggested that Elgar ask the BBC to commission a new symphony.  This suggestion was taken up by others and the BBC commissioned the work in 1932.  The work was not completed by Elgar, but over 60 years later his sketches were drawn together by English composer Anthony Payne, incorporating Elgar’s sketches unchanged and writing new material, using signposts from Elgar’s compositional style.  The work was first performed in 1998 to considerable public acclaim.

In the years prior to his death Elgar recorded all his major works for the HMV Company, and was the first great composer to use the gramophone recording process to preserve his interpretations of his music.   He had, in fact, made discs over a twenty year period from 1914 until his death.  In 1931 he recorded the Violin Concerto with the 16 year old Yehudi Menuhin, and later that year he opened the new HMV Abbey Road Studios.  His complete electrical recordings have been made available on CD.

Elgar’s health failed in 1933 and inoperable cancer was diagnosed.  He died in Worcester on 23 February 1934.  In his last weeks, he took comfort from recordings of his chamber works, especially the slow movement of the piano quintet.

Further information about the life and music of Edward Elgar can be found on the website of the Elgar Society, UK, at:  www.elgar.org

Doug Beecroft

References:
Moore, J.N.. Elgar and His Publishers, Letters of a Creative Life, Vol.1,Clarendon Press, London,
 1987
Young, P., Letters to Nimrod from Edward Elgar,Dobson, London, 1965
Kennedy, M., Portrait of Elgar, OUP, 1968
McVeagh, D., Elgar The Music Maker, Boydell, 2007

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Gabriel Fauré

Fauré, the most beguiling of French composers, was born in Pamiers on 12 May 1845, the youngest of his parents' six children and the only one to pursue a musical career. Realizing that his son was a gifted pianist, arrangements were made for young Gabriel to enrol at the École Niedermeyer in Paris when he was nine. The institution was designed to train church organists and choirmasters and improve the standard of French church music; curiously, though, a number of the École's graduates also excelled in writing operetta, among them Messager, Audran and Vausseur. Life there was singularly tough; the pupils began work immediately after they arose at 5.30 am. Their only time off during the week was on Thursday afternoons, when they were allowed to undertake chaperoned walks beyond the school's walls, a strict regimen observed until Camille Saint-Saëns, not much older than the pupils, arrived as a teacher and introduced a little more latitude into their lives. Saint-Saëns even indoctrinated the youngsters into the heady and "subversive" romanticism of Liszt and Wagner.

Saint-Saëns quickly realized that Fauré had exceptional gifts as a keyboard player and composer and it was under his tutelage that his young protégé wrote his captivating Chants sans paroles (Songs without words) in 1863 and, two years later, the engaging short choral piece Cantique de Jean Racine. Apart from recognizing Fauré's musical attributes, Saint-Saëns was impressed by his charming personality. The two became lifelong friends, even though Fauré was palpably heterosexual, the older man in all probability certainly not.

Unlike the materially successful Saint-Saëns, Fauré struggled financially for the first fifty years of his life, until the philanthropic Winnaretta, Princesse de Polignac, née Singer, daughter of the founder of the famous sewing machine company, assisted him financially. Fauré's first appointment, at a meagre salary, being as organist at the Church of Saint Sauveur in Brittany. He remained there for four years until 1870, when he returned to Paris and served in the light infantry during the Franco-Prussian War. Shortly afterwards, he joined César Franck, Emmanuel Chabrier, Edouard Lalo, Henri Duparc and Vincent d'Indy in establishing the Société Nationale de Musique to foster "new" French music. After a number of other brief church appointments, Saint-Saëns helped Fauré obtain the post of choirmaster at the Madeleine Church in Paris in 1877. Even though there was some prestige associated with the position, the salary was again so meagre that Fauré was forced to bolster his income by giving private piano lessons, a task he disliked for, together with his church duties, it restricted his opportunities to compose to the summer holidays. It is reported that, even though Fauré enjoyed his church activities, his addiction to nicotine motivated him to slip out for a quick gasp or two during tedious sermons, a practice frowned upon by the clerical authorities. He also became music critic for Le Figaro, another task which he found unpalatable, for his good nature disinclined him to be critical of other people's music.

Fauré was an excellent teacher who, in 1896, succeeded Massenet as professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire, an illustrious institution of which he became director nine years later. Among Fauré's pupils were the composers Maurice Ravel, George Enescu and (his favourite) Jean Roger-Ducasse and the pianist Alfred Cortot. Fauré was also prominent in the development of French music founding, in collaboration with fellow composers César Franck, Emmanuel Chabrier, Edouard Lalo, Henri Duparc and Vincent d'Indy, the Société Nationale de Musique.

Although Fauré was not motivated to adopt the serial techniques of the likes of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, it may surprise us in the 21st. century to realize that he was regarded as quite forward-thinking in his compositional approach, using 7th. and 9th. chords, the chromatic scale and church modes not infrequently. Renowned for the poignancy and restrained refinement so typical of French music, among Fauré's finest creations are the orchestral Pavane, Op.50 (with chorus ad lib) and Masques et bergamasques (Op.112)), his enduring setting of the Requiem Mass (Op.48), two Violin Sonatas (Opp.13 & 108), the String Quartet (Op.121), the Piano Trio (Op.120), two Piano Quartets (Opp.15 & 45), two Piano Quintets (Opp.89 & 115) and the delightful Dolly Suite for piano duet (Op.56). There are also many fine piano pieces and songs, including the song-cycle La bonne chanson (Op.61), the "modernism" and harmony of which shocked Saint-Saëns.

Fauré's dark, sunken eyes, raven-coloured hair (which later became a distinguished grey), soft and tuneful speaking voice and laid-back manner appealed to all with whom he came into contact, especially women, and it is thought that he may well have indulged in a number of discreet romantic liaisons. His friendship with the famous contralto Pauline Viardot led to him becoming acquainted with such artistic luminaries as Gustave Flaubert, Ivan Turgenev and George Sand. Fauré fell deeply in love with Viardot's daughter Marianne and her subsequent rejection of him distressed him for a considerable time. However, in 1883 he married Marie Fremiet, the cynical and withdrawn daughter of the sculptor Emmanuel Fremiet, a union which yielded two sons. Although the relationship was cordial, Fauré's sensuous nature led him into a number of discreet affairs, the most notable with Emma Bardac, who later became Claude Debussy's second wife, and Marguerite Hasselmans.

Honours came relatively late in life for Fauré. He was elected to the Académie des Beaux Arts in 1909, a year later was made a Commander of the Légion d'honneur and in 1920 was awarded the Grand Croix. Perhaps the most tragic aspects of Fauré's life were the deafness and hallucinatory tendencies which began in the early 1900s and which led to his resignation from the Conservatoire. These infirmities regrettably increased until his death on 4 November 1924. Nevertheless, his reputation is firmly established as one of France's most illustrious sons; indeed, had he written nothing other than the much-loved and often played Requiem and the Pavane, his fame would be secure. Also, in the opinion of many shrewd judges, Gabriel Fauré is his country's pre-eminent chamber music composer. Perhaps composer Arthur Honegger should have the last word: "I know of no other music that is more purely and uniquely music except, perhaps, that of Mozart or Schubert".

John Barns

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Christoph Willibald Gluck

One of the most important and innovative composers in the early years of opera was Christoph Willibald Gluck, born on 2 July 1714 in the Bavarian town of Erasbach, to a father who hailed from a long line of foresters and a mother of whom almost nothing is known. Although information about Christoph’s early life is scanty, we do know that his father expected and encouraged him to participate in the family’s employment tradition. The young fellow, however, having succumbed to the lure of music, had other ideas and was later to write that “….inflamed with a passion for this art, I soon made astounding progress and was able to play several instruments. My whole being became obsessed with music and I left behind all thoughts of a forester’s life”.

Having gained proficieny as a violinist, cellist, harpsichordist and organist, Gluck left home, apparently to escape his father’s wrath, and earned sufficient money to sustain himself as he headed for Vienna by playing in village churches on Sundays and Holy Days and teaching. Before reaching  Vienna, however, he is reputed to have settled briefly in Prague, where he studied logic and mathematics at university, but whether he actually qualified for a degree remains unclear. Around this time (i.e. in the early 1730s) the young man and his father became reconciled, Gluck père no doubt realizing that a forester’s work was inconsistent with his son’s precocious musical talents.

It is thought that Gluck reached Vienna in 1736 but plans to settle there were soon abandoned as the opportunity arose to become a member of the wealthy nobleman Antonio Prince Melzi’s orchestra in Milan, a position which led to his enchantment with the world of opera. Although it is possible that at this time he took a few composition lessons from Giovanni Battista Sammartini (the evidence supporting this suggestion is meagre indeed), Gluck was basically self-taught. We do know that his first opera, Artaserse, was premiered successfully on 26 December 1741 and that within a period of just over three years no fewer than eight operas were written by him and performed in various Italian cities.

Further travels ensued, first to London, where La caduta de’ giganti and Artamene were performed in 1746, although to no great acclaim. It was also in this city in the same year that six of his short but charming eight trio sonatas for two violins and basso continuo were published. Gluck met the great Georg Frideric Handel during his London sojourn and, although the latter was not impressed by Gluck’s knowledge of counterpoint, they became sufficiently friendly to put on a concert together. One aspect of Gluck’s  musical expertise which captivated his audiences was his playing of glasses filled with varying amounts of water, struck with sticks to produce seductively sensuous sounds.

After spending time in Dresden, where his next opera Le nozze d’Ercole e d’Ebe was produced, in 1748 Gluck arrived in Vienna to fulfil a commission to compose an opera, to a text by the Italian writer and poet Metastasio, in celebration of the birthday of the Empress Maria Theresia and the re-opening of the Burgtheater. La semiramide riconosciuta was a great success, following which the itinerant Gluck was soon on the road again, joining Pietro Mingotti’s travelling opera company in Hamburg for a journey to Copenhagen, where La contesa de’ numi was premiered in 1749. Gluck’s period in the Danish capital marked a significant turning-point in his career; it was there that he met the retired court Kapellmeister Johann Scheibe. The latter believed that the overture or prelude to an opera should be linked to the ensuing action and that arias (and even recitatives) should ignite the passions rather than merely being a vehicle for florid demonstrations of singers’ vocal prowess; ideals which supported the thoughts then germinating in Gluck’s mind.

Returning to Vienna, in September 1750 Gluck married Maria Anna Bergin, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. The money brought by the dowry enabled Gluck and his wife to live in financial security and her family’s friendship with members of the Imperial Court was instrumental in gaining for Gluck the influential support of the nobility, including the patronage of Emperor Francis I, who was enraptured by the opera Le cinesi. Gluck’s subsequent appointment as Kapellmeister of the orchestra of Prince Joseph Friedrich Wilhelm of Saxe-Hildburghausen is also attributable to this influence. This position lasted until 1761, when the privations occasioned by the Seven Years War forced the disbandment of the orchestra.

During those eleven years another phase in Gluck’s development occurred with the introduction into Viennese life of a French drama company. The repertoire comprised drama, ballet and opéra comique. Suspecting that not all things Gallic would appeal to suspicious Viennese taste, Gluck was commissined to arrange much of the music in a style familiar to local audiences. Gradually he began to replace overtures and arias in the operas with his own music and eventually to try his hand at composing completely new opéras comiques, the first of which was La fausse esclave (1758). Three of Gluck’s most brilliant works, the ballet-pantomime Don Juan, the opera Orfeo ed Euridice (which contains the famous aria Che farò senza Euridice) and the ballet Iphigénie, date from this period. During the next few years Gluck divided his time between Vienna, where his opera Paride ed Elena was enthusiastically received in 1780, and Italy.

Gluck was not alone in a desire to demonstrate his creative talents in Paris, one of the most musically important cities during the 18th century. His plans to visit the French capital in 1763 were thwarted by the fire which destroyed the Paris Opéra. However, ten years later he was able to fulfil his desire, scoring a triumph with the staging of his opera Iphigénie en Aulide in the presence of the Dauphin and his wife. Further success was achieved with the French version of Orfeo (under the title Orphée et Euridice). During later visits to Paris the premiere of Gluck’s latest opera, Armide, provoked a massive controversy between his followers and those who supported the Neapolitan composer Niccolò Piccinni, whose music was more light-hearted than Gluck’s more substantial, more dramatically powerful scores. Interestingly, after the premiere of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride in 1779 an opera by Piccinni on the same subject and with the same name appeared two years later. Whereas Gluck’s work was rapturously received, the reception given to the Italian composer’s was extremely tepid.

During this Parisian sojourn Gluck suffered a minor stroke and, following his return to Vienna, his health gradually deteriorated until his death on 15 November 1787. Antonio Salieri conducted a performance of Gluck’s De profundis at the funeral service, before the great composer’s remains were buried in the Matzleinsdorf cemetery, later being re-interred in the Vienna Zentralfriedhof. The gravestone bears the following inscription: “Here rests an upright German man, a devout Christian, a faithful husband, Christoph Ritter von Gluck, great master of the noble art of music”. The appellation “Ritter von Gluck” was attributable to his appointment by Pope Benedict XIV as a Knight of the Golden Spur (an honour later conferred on Wolfgang Mozart).

As has been foreshadowed, Gluck’s importance in the development of opera cannot be overlooked. Apart from a number of short sacred and secular vocal works, eighteen symphonies and the trio sonatas mentioned earlier, his forty-four operas introduced a quality into the art form which emphasized the dramatic elements of the story, enshrining it in music of beauty, power and majesty. He also had the ability, along with Handel and Mozart, to portray poignancy and solemnity in melodies and harmonies of great simplicity. Mozart (whose Idomeneo hints at the older composer’s influence), Weber, Berlioz and Wagner were ardent admirers of Gluck, Berlioz being particularly perceptive to the grandeur and ethereal quality of his predecessor’s music and whose epic Les Troyens epitomizes and indeed fulfils Gluck’s idealistic concepts.

John Barns

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Zoltán Kodály

Zoltán Kodály was born in the rich agricultural town of Kecskemét, in a region familiar to connoisseurs of apricot brandy, on 16 December (also Beethoven’s birthday) 1882, one year after his nationalist “twin”, Béla Bartók. His father’s occupation as a station master meant that young Zoltan’s early years were itinerant; indeed, he spent the first eighteen years of his existence in various parts of the Hungarian countryside, an experience which partly explains his subsequent interest in and dedication to the codification and promulgation of his country’s folk songs and dances.

“The shaping of my life”, Kodály wrote in 1950, “was as natural as breathing itself. I sang before I could speak and I sang more than I spoke. I made my first instrument myself. I was hardly four years old when I took my mother’s draining-ladle, threaded strings into its holes and fastened them to the end of the ladle. On these strings I played the guitar and sang improvised songs to this accompaniment”.

Kodály was exposed to classical music from an early age- his father played the violin and his mother was a singer and pianist and during his school years his musical interests were stimulated further. He joined in singing folksongs with his elementary school choir in Galánta; and, although with little formal musical education, he reached sufficient proficiency as a pianist, violinist, violist and cellist that he was able to participate in chamber music at home and in the orchestra at the Archiepiscopal Grammar School in Nagyszombat. Whilst at the latter school he began to compose, his Overture in D minor for orchestra and Trio in E flat for two violins and viola being performed during this time. He also sang in a cathedral choir. Apart from music, young Zoltán showed a prolific flair for literature and languages, passing all examinations with distinction.

In 1900 Kodály read Hungarian and German at Budapest University, simultaneously studying composition with Hans Koessler at the Academy of Music. In 1906 his thesis Strophic Construction in Hungarian Folksong gained him a PhD. Much of the material for this enterprise was gathered by Kodály during his collecting tours, during which he met Bartók, a meeting which was to have a profound effect on the future of Hungarian music.

The two young men established a friendship which lasted until Bartók’s death in 1945. Over a period of some twenty years the two scholars travelled throughout Hungary and neighbouring lands and wrote down or recorded between 3000 and 4000 folk melodies and dances. Later, Bartók wrote an important book on Hungarian folk music, Kodály producing several treatises on the same subject. The former, in his autobiography, said of Kodály that “by his clear insight and sound critical sense he has been able to give, in every department of music, both invaluable advice and helpful warnings”.

Apart from meeting Bartók and being appointed a professor, lecturing on the theory of music at the Academy of Music, 1906 was also the year when Kodály’s first really significant composition, Summer Evening, was written. His visits to Paris and Berlin during that and the following year were the genesis of his continuing admiration for the music of Debussy, some of whose works he heard in concert.

Kodály accepted the responsibility for the first-year composition class from Koessler in 1908 and, two years later, the first public performance of his music occurred. A concert with pianist Béla Bartók and the Waldbauer-Kerpely Quartet included the String Quartet, Op.2, Zongoramuzsika (Nine