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 Piano Pieces), Op.3, and the Sonata for Cello and Piano, Op.4. In the same year the composer married the pianist, composer and poet Emma Sándor.

One of Kodály’s finest compositions, the Sonata for Solo Cello, Op.8, was completed in 1915. An extraordinarily powerful tour de force, it has been compared with J.S. Bach’s Cello Suites in its profound intensity and awesome technical demands. With epic counterpoint and sudden rhythmic contrasts, it conjures up the sounds of a whole gypsy orchestra, including drones, shepherd pipes, zithers and cimbalons.

In 1919 a Communist revolution resulted in 133 days of the Hungarian Republic of Councils. The Academy of Music was elevated to university status, with composer Ernö Dohnányi as director as Kodály his deputy. A savage counter-revolution resulted in the latter’s dismissal and two years passed before he obtained another teaching position. Apart from this humiliation, Kodály’s growing international reputation had suffered by the restrictions on musical performance during World War I. However, the composer’s fortunes improved markedly when, in 1921, Universal Edition began publishing his scores and with the enthusiastic reception following the premiere of Psalmus Hungaricus, written to celebrate the 50th. anniversary of the amalgamation of Pest, Buda and Obuda into the city of Budapest. This large-scale oratorio, scored for tenor, chorus and orchestra, is a setting of Psalm 55 and was written in less than two months.

Kodály’s popularity received another fillip with the success of his opera Háry János (1926) and of the six-movement suite derived from it. The latter, indisputably the composer’s most engaging and popular work, quickly found its way into the repertoire of such influential conductors as Toscanini, Mengelberg, Ansermet and Furtwängler.

Despite Kodály’s new-found fame, he was undeterred in his dedication to teaching, paying particular attention to the musical education of young children and adolescents. He campaigned, ultimately successfully, for the inclusion of music as an integral part of the school curriculum, especially after 1945 when financial assistance was made available for this purpose. He lectured widely, developed singing and reading exercises and wrote choruses in an endeavour to rekindle the flame of the Hungarian choral tradition. In addition to these pursuits, he continued to compose for the theatre and concert hall.

Zoltán Kodály died on 6 March 1967. Institutes to promulgate his ideals have been established in various cities, among them Sydney. An International Kodály Society was founded in Budapest in 1975. Perhaps the final word about this charming and modest musician should come from his friend Bartók, who wrote in 1921: “Kodály is one of the most outstanding composers of our day, characterized in the main by rich melodic invention, a perfect sense of form ……… It is possible that it is closer to certain traditions (than mine); it is also possible that it expresses calm meditation rather than unbridled orgies. But it is precisely this essential difference, reaching expression in his music as a completely new and original way of thinking, that makes his message so valuable”.

John Barns

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold

Those who remember the films Captain Blood, Anthony Adverse, The Sea Hawk, King’s Row, Elizabeth and Essex, Deception and The Constant Nymph may not be aware that they share something in common.

The musical scores for these films, so rich in colour and depth, all stemmed from the fertile pen of one person: Erich Wolfgang Korngold. He and his contemporaries Franz Waxman, Bernard Herrmann and Miklós Rózsa were pioneers in creating fresh, vibrant music which played an increasingly important role in the fabric of a film. Michael Stewart, in an excellent article, “Between Two Worlds”, in the April 1993 edition of “Gramophone” magazine, wrote that Korngold “always composed spontaneously with the running film- and his natural sense of dramatic pace and use of identifying Leitmotivs for characters brought a dimension to film that had not previously been explored to its full potential”.

For many years Korngold’s success in the film studio obscured the high quality of the other important facet of his musical creativity- his more abstract, more rigidly constructed music for the stage and concert hall. Korngold was a most consummate composer who demonstrated an extraordinary talent from a very early age, a distinction he had in common with another, earlier musician who also had “Wolfgang” in his name. Indeed, few composers have been able to write such beautifully crafted, powerful music before reaching their teenage years as did Korngold.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born on 29 May 1897 in Brünn (now Brno), Moravia, but when he was two years old, moved with his parents to Vienna where his father, Dr. Julius Korngold, a lawyer by training, assisted and eventually succeeded Eduard Hanslick as chief music critic of Vienna’s Neue Freie Presse. The perennially turbulent relationship between the domineering father and precocious son was similar to that which existed between Leopold and Wolfgang Mozart. Examples of Julius’ attitude to Erich are his refusal to allow the young man to meet Alban Berg, whose principles of atonality in music were anathema to Korngold père and his attempt to prevent his son’s marriage to the actress and singer Luzi von Sonnenthal (a union, incidentally, which proved enduringly successful).

When he was nine, young Erich composed a cantata, Gold, which paved the way for him to study at the Vienna Conservatory with Robert Fuchs. Gustav Mahler, when he heard Gold, declared Korngold “a genius” and arranged for him to receive further education from the distinguished composer and teacher Alexander von Zemlinsky. Under the latter’s tutelage Korngold produced three scores remarkable for their emotional maturity and sure craftsmanship: The D minor Piano Sonata, the ballet-pantomime Der Schneemann (The Snowman), which Zemlinsky orchestrated, and the Piano Trio of 1909, the first work to be allotted an opus number. Of the three, the Sonata is arguably the least “Korngoldian” but, as composer and musicologist Michael Stewart says, “its post-Straussian language, romantic gesture and tragic mood are nevertheless a truly astonishing product from an 11-year-old boy”.

Der Schneemann abounds with melodic and harmonic sophistication and in it may be discerned the beginnings of the lush chromatic harmonies, astute characterisation, dramatic flair and rich melodic vein which were to become synonymous with Korngold’s music.

These works, together with the second Piano Sonata (Op.2) and the set of Märchenbilder (Fairytale Pictures), Op.3, effectively put the young teenager in the august company of Franz Schreker, Zemlinsky, Max von Schillings and Hans Pfitzner as leaders of the emerging late-Romantic Viennese school.

Korngold achieved further success with his first two works for symphony orchestra, the Schauspiel-Ouverture, Op.4, and the Sinfonietta, Op.5, a miraculous work by a 15-year-old which caused Richard Strauss to exclaim: “Such mastery fills me with awe and fear”. To quote Michael Stewart again: “The diminutive title Sinfonietta certainly belies its epic grandeur and proportion, for here in all but name is a fully-fledged four-movement symphony of some forty-five minutes in duration; only its abundant playfulness and a joie de vivre place it in the “sinfonietta” category …….”.

When we realize how lyrical are these orchestral pieces, it’s not surprising that Korngold was attracted to opera, his first venture in the medium being the one-act opera buffa Der Ring des Polykrates. However, his operatic masterpiece is undoubtedly Die tote Stadt, completed in 1920 and thought to be influenced by the composer’s experiences in the Austrian Army during World War I. It was only in 1975, incidentally, that the true identity of the librettist (one Paul Schott) was discovered: Korngold père et fils! Korngold was also a fine writer of songs, among which the song-cycle Abschiedslieder (Songs of Farewell), Op.14, is an outstanding example.

More fine music was created by Korngold, including three string quartets, before he was enticed to America in 1934 by and in the company of the stage director Max Reinhardt. Korngold’s subsequent phenomenal success as a film score composer meant that he had little time for the writing of more serious music, a fact which accounted for his diminishing reputation in that field, despite the success of the lyrical Violin Concerto of 1945, to which the virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifetz was so devoted. In 1947 Korngold effectively retired from motion pictures and tried to resurrect his more esoteric career. He returned to Vienna in 1949 but met only with disinterest or downright malicious criticism. So it was back to America again, where he composed his last four works, culminating in the towering Symphony in F sharp, Op.40, a work in turn ferocious, solemnly tranquil and tragic.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold died in Hollywood at the age of 60 on 29 November 1957. In a monograph of the composer, Brendan G. Carroll recounts that “the Vienna Opera House flew the black flag of mourning at half-mast”. On being told of this, Korngold’s widow Luzi stared blankly into space for a few moments and then murmured, “It’s a little late”.

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Felix Mendelssohn (-Bartholdy)

Few composers have made such a remarkable impact on the musical world as did the adolescent Mendelssohn. Only composers like Mozart, Arriaga and Korngold wrote with equal competence at such a young age and it may be argued that, of them, Mendelssohn was the most precocious.

Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg on 3 February 1809 into a wealthy banking family which, having settled in Germany’s artistic capital, Berlin, played host to many of the intellectual giants of the day, including Hegel and Goethe, so it is hardly surprising that young Felix was surrounded by intellectual stimulation almost from day one. This exposure may help account for his proficiency not only as a musician but also as a writer (often illustrating his letters with his own cartoons), poet, watercolourist, linguist and a more than competent debater on philosophical subjects (his paternal grandfather was Moses Mendelssohn, the renowned philosopher of the Enlightenment). Apart from these intellectual pursuits, Mendelssohn was a fine athlete, excelling particularly at swimming.

After receiving his early piano tuition from his mother, Mendelssohn became a pupil of Ludwig Berger (piano), Carl Hennig (violin) and Carl Zelter (theory and composition). Later he received lessons from the virtuoso pianist/composer Ignaz Moscheles who proclaimed that Mendelssohn was so advanced that there was little he could teach him. The two became firm friends. A more than accomplished violinist, pianist and organist, Mendelssohn’s technical and interpretative abilities were recognized early. When Beethoven, for example, heard the 12 year-old play he wrote in his notebook that the youngster “promises much”. By then Mendelssohn had already completed four operas, seven of his twelve string symphonies and a wealth of chamber and piano music. During his adolescent years he produced a series of masterpieces, of which the marvellously crafted Piano Quartet in C minor, Op.1, the superb Octet in E flat, Op.20 (1825) and the mercurial overture to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op.21 (1826), with its gossamer sheen on the shimmering strings, are outstanding examples. Mendelssohn’s ability to capture the spirit and nature of Shakespeare’s great play is indicative of his profound understanding, even at the tender age of fifteen, of the illustrious poet and dramatist’s works.

Despite the fact that Mendelssohn was born in the emerging years of Romanticism, his music was firmly rooted in the Classical era, an example of which is the Mozartean Violin Concerto in D minor (1822). His early influences appear to be Bach (fugal writing), Handel (harmony), Mozart (instrumental texture and dramatic impetus) and Beethoven (instrumental and orchestral technique). However, Romanticism gradually began to permeate his compositions, mainly as a result of his extensive travels and contact with great artists and thinkers of the time. Visits to Scotland inspired The Hebrides Overture and the Scottish Symphony (No.3) and to Italy, the Italian Symphony (No.4). Mendelssohn was especially popular in England, making in all ten visits, and winning the esteem of Queen Victoria, to whom the Scottish Symphony was dedicated, and her consort Prince Albert.

In 1832 Mendelssohn applied unsuccessfully for the position of director of Berlin’s Singakademie but in the following year he became music director at Dusseldorf, where he introduced many Handelian oratorios. Two years later he accepted the position of Chief Conductor of the august Gewandhaus Orchestra of Leipzig where, to great public acclaim, he resurrected forgotten masterpieces like Johann Sebastian Bach’s monumental St. Matthew Passion which, inexplicably, had not been performed for nearly a century, and premiered Franz Schubert’s Great C major Symphony, more than decade after the composer’s death and the score of which Robert Schumann “discovered” in the home of Schubert’s brother Ferdinand. He also introduced audiences to such “modern” composers as his concertmaster Ferdinand David, Niels Gade, Ferdinand Hiller and especially Schumann, and founded and directed the Leipzig Conservatory, where he was joined on the teaching staff by Moscheles.

In addition to the monunental works written during his adeolescent years, Mendelssohn created enduring masterpieces in the incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Op.61 (with its famous Wedding March), the Violin Concerto in E minor, Op.64, the three String Quartets, Op.44, the String Quintets, Opp.18 and 87, the Cello Sonata in D, Op.58, the Fantasia in F sharp minor, Op.28, and the Variations sÈrieuses in D minor, Op.54, (both for solo piano) and the oratorios Elijah and St. Paul.

Mendelssohn was inordinately devoted to his family, especially to his wife CÈcile Jeanrenaud, whom he married in 1837 and with whom he had five children, and to his older sister Fanny, who was also an accomplished pianist and composer. He was so devastated by her death at the age of 41 in 1847 that it may have exacerbated his own health problems. His last great work, the String Quartet in F minor, Op.80, was written as a “Requiem for Fanny”. After suffering a slight stroke at the end of October 1847 his health deteriorated rapidly and he died at 9.24 pm on 4 November. Among the pallbearers at his funeral service at Leipzig’s Lutheran Paulinerkirche were Schumann, Ferdinand David, Gade and Moscheles. Mendelssohn’s family had converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1816 (adding “Bartholdy” to the surname); hence the service in a Christian church. A distressed Queen Victoria was among the many people who mourned the composer’s death, calling him “the greatest musical genius since Mozart and the most amiable man”.

John Barns

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Carl August Nielsen

"When one reflects on the great artists of the past, one seems to be conscious of two main types: one, grave and gloomy, his brows contracted and hands clenched, strides heavily and determinedly forward. The other comes swinging along with light springy steps, free and easy with a friendly smile, as if walking in the sun." The observer, Denmark's greatest and most complete composer Carl Nielsen, belonged to the latter category.

The island of Funen was known to its inhabitants as 'the garden of Denmark'. Hans Christian Andersen was born there in 1805. A house painter there, Niels Jorgensen, was also in demand as a fiddler at local weddings and other festive occasions. He also played cornet in a local band. It was said that he had the best sense of rhythm in the whole of Funen. After he returned from conscripted service in the Danish-Prussian War, Jorgensen's wife, formerly housemaid, Maren Kirsten, gave birth to Carl, the seventh of their twelve children on 9 June 1865. Alberik Magnard the French composer was born on the same day. Niels' son Carl became Carl Nielsen.

Tiny Carl was playing in a wood stack with a brother when he discovered that the tones produced by striking pieces of wood varied according to their mass and length. He then amused his family and neighbours by hammering little tunes there. Later, when he was six years old he suffered from measles. His mother sang to him, and removed a three-quarter sized violin hanging on the wall. She encouraged him to find the notes of her songs on the violin.

The rural family lived in comparative poverty but the neighbours were kindly. Little Carl was sometimes offered pocket money for herding geese on the neighbour's estate during school holidays. On other occasions he cleaned and shaped bricks with his brothers at the adjacent factory, where he was appalled by an employee's cruelty to a horse. During warm summer days he enjoyed exploring the island and lying in the long grass while observing dragonflies and other insects. He learnt to play brass instruments and the piano. Niels disapproved of Carl's first composition, a Polka, because its numerous syncopations made it unsuitable for dancing. Occasionally he was invited to join his father's band where an ageing blind clarinettist was much later a source of inspiration for his cantata, Springtime in Funen.

Carl did not last long as a grocer's assistant. After completing a rudimentary education, the little fourteen year-old boy left home to join the 16th Battalion at Odense to fill a vacancy as a bugler. His protective mother advised him to avoid a much older notorious bandsman there, Jens Soby. However, the same bandsman protected Carl from bullies and their bad language. After a promotion Carl was able to afford private accommodation and to purchase an old piano. He met an elderly gentleman he knew as Outzen, a tavern basement pianist who was down on his luck. Outzen introduced Carl to the keyboard music of J S Bach and Mozart, who was to become Carl's favourite composer.

In 1881 the sixteen year-old Carl had violin lessons with Carl Larson, Director of the Odense Music Society. Encouraged by Soby and Larson, he composed music for brass instruments and a string quartet, etc. He became bored with his limited military career path. His rudimentary education was no barrier to his growing interest in fine literature. Outzen introduced him to Olfert Jespersen, well known in Copenhagen as a bandleader and composer of light music. Well-to-do musical friends of Jespersen banded together and organised an introduction to the Copenhagen Conservatoire headed by the composer Niels Gade, a protégé of Mendelssohn from Leipzig. Against Carl's father's wishes he was discharged from his regiment, but his mother was more encouraging. When he was awarded a scholarship there his idyllic rural childhood had come to an end, recorded in his excellent autobiography, My Childhood. However Copenhagen's musical narrowness oppressed him. He skipped classes and valued only one of his teachers there, Orla Rosenhoff, who remained a lifelong friend.

His first publicly performed string quartet composition happened at the Tivoli Gardens in 1887, to be quickly followed there by his Little Suite for Strings, which Gade said was "too muddled" but Wilhelm Hansen published the latter in 1889. Nielsen's fertile career as a songwriter almost exclusively to Danish texts began during this time. In 1890-91 he travelled to Germany, France and Italy. At a Scandinavian Society function in Paris he was introduced to a Danish sculptor, Anne Marie Brodersen, who had already attended the premiere of his Little Suite for Strings. Their marriage in 1891 produced two daughters and a son. Anne Marie refused Carl's wish to adopt an older illegitimate son. From 1889 to 1905 Nielsen was employed as a second violinist with the Danish Court Orchestra. In 1894 it performed his Brahmsian Symphony No. 1 which began in one key and ended in another. The conductor called him from his violin desk to bow to the audience including the Danish Royal Family. The reticent Nielsen resented his failure to obtain a promotion in the orchestra.

Nielsen's Symphony No. 2 (1902) was inspired by a chance viewing in a pub of a painting, The Four Temperaments, which amused him. Correspondingly each of the four movements of the Symphony primarily characterized a particular temperament, choleric, followed by phlegmatic, melancholic, then sanguine. As well as creating piano solos and chamber music, Nielsen's attention turned to opera at the turn of the century. The first, Saul and David (1901), based on an Old Testament story in the First Book of Samuel, was inspired by the difficult relationship between the jealous old King Samuel and the more gifted young shepherd David, who slew the giant Philistine Goliath. In contrast, the sparkling Masquarade (1906) is a comic opera involving mistaken identity, unfaithfulness and forgiveness. It is regarded as Denmark's national opera. Nielsen also wrote a considerable amount of stage music. One of the most extended and exotic is Aladdin (1918), including the remarkable A beautiful square in Isfahan, where four instrumental groups play simultaneously but independently.

In 1908 Nielsen succeeded Johan Svendsen as a Kapellmeister at the Royal Theatre but he resigned in 1914 owing to friction with the management. That year, with encouragement from his colleague Thomas Laub, he wrote fifty hymn tunes to fulfil a need and improve the quality of communal and church singing. In 1915 he joined the governing body of the Copenhagen Conservatory where he taught theory and composition for several years. His five year marriage crisis from this time resulted in more periods away, particularly in Gothenburg where Wilhelm Stenhammar often invited him to conduct the orchestra. His association with the Copenhagen Conservatory culminated in his appointment as a director during the year of this death, 1931.

Nielsen's Symphony No. 3, "Espansiva" (1910), one of his most popular, is high spirited and rhythmically exhilarating. The slow movement includes a pair of wordless singers. It was quickly followed by his spacious Violin Concerto composed at Troldhaugen in Edvard Grieg's composing hut at the invitation of Grieg's widow.

There is an increasing level of conflict in his last three symphonies. Symphony No. 4, "Inextinguishable", has a subliminal programme, evoking the re-emergence of life on earth after a catastrophe. Towards the end there is an improvised battle between two timpanists. Once again there is a prominent role for timpani in the intense and dramatic Symphony No.5 (1915), a wartime work. Deryck Cooke, the musician who completed Mahler's Symphony No. 10, regarded Nielsen's Symphony No. 5 as the greatest symphony of the twentieth century. Long after Nielsen's death Symphony No. 5 was performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1951 and gave his international reputation an enormous boost. His Symphony No. 6, "Semplice" (1925), is anything but, despite his original intention. It is his most personal, difficult, modern and controversial symphony, including its sardonic humour and ending with a rude noise from the brass. The British composer Robert Simpson was originally sceptical of it but gradually became its great champion. Nielsen wrote two more concertos, the Flute Concerto (1926) with its ripe sense of fun and poetic insight into the human character, and the tense and modern sounding Clarinet Concerto (1928). Three motets (1929) were inspired by Renaissance masters, as was his final major work, Commotio (1931), for organ. He was particularly proud of it.

This article would be incomplete without further mention of his chamber music and cantatas. His early String Quintet, two Violin Sonatas, four String Quartets and music for solo violin provide evidence of his profound understanding of stringed instruments. They have been overshadowed by his Wind Quintet (1922), written to exploit the very differing personalities of the five musicians to whom it was dedicated. It is one of the finest since Mozart's wind quintets. Without lapsing into sentimentality, his cantatas are amongst his most lovable and human works. Adopting the remote language of Latin, Hymnus Amorus (1896) explores aspects of love from infancy to old age. In 1921 Nielsen was so idolised after conducting it in Helsinki he felt at that moment he could "have healed the sick". Springtime in Funen (1921) is an eloquent tribute to the Danish Island of his birth and its community.

For several years Nielsen suffered from angina. During a revival of Aladdin he climbed a ladder on the stage to release a snared rope, but the strain was too much for his weak heart and he died within days on 3 October 1931. Later his widow carved his image in stone with a marble bust for the Gothenburg Concert Hall and a monument as The Herd Boy playing the flute at his birthplace. To the patrons of the world's concert halls Carl Nielsen is regarded as one of the greatest symphonists of the twentieth century. To the general public in Denmark he is revered as a composer of many popular songs and hymn tunes. He published a down to earth collection of essays entitled Living Music. In it he compared music with the human condition: "I am everywhere and nowhere; I skim the wave and tops of forests; I sit in the throat of the savage and the foot of the Negro, and sleep in the stone and the sounding metal. None can grasp me, all can apprehend me; I live tenfold more intensely than any living thing, and die a thousandfold deeper. I love the vast surface of silence; and it is my chief delight to break it. I know no sorrow or joy, no pleasure or pain; but I can rejoice, weep, laugh, and lament all at once and everlastingly."

Geoff Hayes

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Sergei Prokofiev

It may seem surprising that an idealist like Prokofiev would have spent his happiest compositional years during the most tyrannical years of Russia's Stalinist regime. However, when we realize that Prokofiv was never entirely happy during the seventeen years of his self-imposed exile, understanding dawns.

Sergei Seregeievich Prokofiev was born in the Ukranian city of Sontsovka on 23 April 1891 into a prosperous middle-class family. It was recognized early in life that he possessed uncommonly high musical ability (and also, incidentally, prodigious prowess at chess, a game to which he became passionately attached). His pianistic talent soon led to him becoming a performer of virtuoso ability Creatively, he wrote his first pieces for his chosen instrument at the age of five (Indian Galop, March in C and Waltz in C) and his first opera, The Giant, when he was nine. Two years later saw him attending advanced musical studies with Reinhold Glière and, at the age of thirteen, entering the St. Petersburg Conservatory, where his teachers included Liadov (harmony) and Rimsky-Korsakov (orchestration). Despite his natural ability, Prokofiev's independence of mind (one writer described him as "a spoiled brat") made him a less than ideal pupil; indeed, he soon gained the reputation of being very much an enfant terrible, an appellation which suited his rebellious temperament. It appears that the unsettled political situation in Russia and the highly conservative atmosphere prevalent at the Conservatory had such a stultifying effect on the precocious young man that he sought his inspiration from the likes of Sergei Rachmaninov (a composer whose music is now regarded as almost conservative in the extreme!) and, especially, Alexander Scriabin. The latter's incisively cutting rhythms and bold harmonies fascinated Prokofiev, although he soon tired of the music's mystical qualities.

After graduating from the Conservatory's composition course in 1909 (with less than impressive marks!), Prokofiev began advanced piano studies with Anna Esipova but again proved to be a difficult pupil. It is to Esipova's credit that she perservered with her student, adding to Prokofiev's natural technical brilliance a sense of lyricism and beautiful tone quality. She even managed to convince the young man of the wonders of Mozart and Schubert, two composers whose music he had previously disdained! Prokofiev also studied conducting with Nikolai Tcherepnin, an undertaking which proved a blessing as Tcherepnin, like his pupil, was something of a "modernist", fascinated by the ordchestral sounds being developed by the likes of Debussy, Richard Strauss and, of course, Scriabin.

The death of Prokofiev's father in 1910 wrought great upheaval in the family's fortunes. His mother was forced to sell the rural estate and move to St. Petersburg, where she supported her son as best she could, so that instead of having no financial worries, young Sergei suddenly had to make his own way in the world. Fortunately soon many of his compositions were received enthusiastically, bringing solace to his financial affairs After graduation and a visit to London in 1914 Prokofiev returned to the St. Petersburg (now known as Petrograd) Conservatory to study organ.

Among other works composed by Prokofiev during these early years were the first two piano concertos (the furore generated by the frenetic First's premiere was mild compared with the reaction to the Second, which occasioned the audience to leave "frozen with fright, hair standing on end", according to a contemporary critic), the Scythian Suite, the ballet Chout, the ever-popular Symphony No.1 in D (intended as a tribute to Joseph Haydn, justifying Prokofiev's own description of the music as his "Classical" Symphony) and the opera The Gambler, based on Dostoyevsky's macabre tale and which, in its original form, was the composer's most powerful and savage score.

With the onset of the Revolution and the increasingly volatile situation in Europe, Prokofiev left Russia for the United State of America in 1918. Although feted as a celebrity, he found it difficult to settle into an environment he regarded as hostile to "new" sounds; consequently, he composed little, although his very fine Third Piano Concerto and his operas The Love for Three Oranges and The Fiery Angel were completed during this four-year period. He departed for Europe in 1922 and settled in Paris, although his frequent visits to Mother Russia so increased his yearning for his native country that it precipitated his permanent return in 1936. The European years were singularly unproductive from a creative point of view, a factor which is understandable when we read that he once remarked that "foreign air does not inspire me; because I'm Russian I'm the least suited of men to live in exile. Here I risk dying of academicism". However, this period did yield the witty film score Lieutenant Kije, the suite from which has proved immensely popular, and the ballet Romeo and Juliet.

Prokofiev's expectation that Russian artists would be allowed virtually unfettered freedom, especially after the Second World War, was certainly not fulfilled. Under the sadistically dictatorial Stalin composers like the politically astute Shostakovich and the politically naïve Prokofiev suffered from a constant barrage of official criticism for creating music deemed reactionary and bourgeois or overtly or covertly critical of the regime. In 1948, during the most trenchant period of criticism, Prokofiev was informed that his estranged Spanish-born wife Lina, from whom he was estranged but remained on friendly terms, had been arrested, possibly as an attempt to persude him to conform to the government's stringent musical dictates. She was only released from captivity in 1956, three years after her husband's death.

Despite the difficulties of life in Russia, Prokofiev produced some of his finest scores after his permanent return. His delightful work for children, Peter and the Wolf, the opera War and Peace, the ballets Cinderella and The Tale of the Stone Flower, the film scores Alexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible, the massive Cantata for the Twentieth Anniversary of the October Revolution and the powerful Fifth Symphony all stem from these years. Prokofiev's cause was also advanced by great Russian instrumentalists like the pianists Sviatoslav Richter and Emil Gilels, the violinist David Oistrakh and the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.

We find in Prokofiev's music a traditional harmonic language and an adherence to tonality, despite the occasional use of dissonance, probably meant to amuse or shock the listener. There is an abundance of appealing melody, often unmistakably Russian in timbre and feeling, and much sardonic wit. His orchestration is colourful, often exotic, his chamber music and songs generally lyrical, but in much of the solo piano music a more aggressive, percussive element prevails. Yet melody, of a late-Romantic bent, also abounds in the piano writing; indeed, Prokofiev's Visions fugitives could be regarded as the 20th. century equivalent of Schumann's Fantasiestücke. Perhaps the French composer Poulenc had Prokofiev's extension of the colour and sound possibilities of the piano in mind when he labelled him the "Russian Liszt". The prolific Prokofiev produced 7 symphonies, 6 piano concertos (the 6th. for two pianos), two violin concertos, a a symphony-concerto for cello and orchestra, sonatas for flute, violin (3, one of them for two violins) and cello, and two string quartets. He wrote delightfully for children creating, apart from Peter and the Wolf, the piano works Music for Children and three sets of Pieces from Cinderella.

Prokofiev died in Moscow on 5 March 1953, the same day as the dreaded Stalin.

John Barns

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Sergei Rachmaninov

Those so presumptuous as to make confident predictions must be prepared to eat the proverbial humble pie if and when their prognostications prove manifestly wrong. Take, for instance, the author of the article on Sergei Vassilievich Rachmaninov in the 1954 edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. His claim was that “the enormous popular success some few of Rachmaninov’s works had in his lifetime is not likely to last”, a slur robustly rejected by the renowned music critic of the New York Times Harold C. Schonberg who, in his book Lives of the Great Composers, declared that the assertion was “one of the most outrageously snobbish and even stupid statements ever to be found in a work that is supposed to be an objective reference”. Of course, the Grove writer was not the only person to have commented cynically on the Russian master’s music. Fellow composer César Cui described the Symphony No.1 as “a programme symphony on the Seven Plagues of Egypt” (this from a composer whose music is seldom played these days!) and another acerbiccritic referred to the Piano Concerto No.3 as “a cosy piece of schlock”. However, not only has the Russian composer’s music proved enduring; despite its polarization of audiences, some of whom find its emotional impact rather excessive, much of it is among the most frequently played and appreciated music of the last hundred years and its popularity shows no sign of diminution.

Apart from being a composer of rare distinction, Rachmaninov was one of the greatest pianists the world has seen and heard, although he always regarded his creative talents as more important than his prodigious technical ability, the latter no doubt partly attributable to the fact that his large hands and long fingers could encompass an interval of a thirteenth on the keyboard. It is fortunate that we are able to listen to and admire Rachmaninov’s pianistic and interpretive prowess through the recordings he made, mainly for the Victor Company albeit, of course, in what is certainly not state-of-the-art sound.

After Sergei was born on 1 April 1873, in his early years Rachmaninov’s father’s financial profligacy caused the family to move a number of times in order to attempt to escape from the demands of predatory creditors. First they moved to St. Petersburg, where Sergei continued the piano studies he had begun under his mother’s tuition; then to Moscow, where the youngster enrolled at the Conservatory, from which he graduated as a pianist in 1891 and as a composer one year later. One of his piano teachers at Moscow was his cousin Alexander Soloti, who had studied with Franz Liszt. It is probable that at least some of the famous Lisztian technical wizardry had been imparted to the young Russian. Rachmaninov studied harmony with Anton Arensky and counterpoint with Sergei Taneyev. Despite Rachmaninov’s subsequent success as a pianist and composer, in his early years of education he was not considered to be a particularly satisfactory or competent student; indeed, he failed all subjects in 1885! Some commentators say that his mother’s increased domestic burdens and financial worries (she and her husband were now separated) meant that she was unable to supervise her son’s homework adequately; more cynical observers claim that Sergei’s laziness and preference for ice skating over music lessons and practice was the cause of him incurring the wrath of his teachers. It was only when he became a resident in the home of the disciplinarian Nikolai Zverev that young Sergei mended his irresponsible ways and became a successful student and eager participant in his host’s Sunday soirees involving some of the most notable musicians of the day, among them Arensky, Taneyev, Anton Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky.

When Rachaninov’s services as a pianist were in such high demand, his concerts in many cities throughout Europe and America and the practice involved in their preparation made setting aside time for composition difficult to achieve. It is interesting that he wrote 39 works bearing opus numbers between 1892 and 1917, when living in Russia but, with increasingly frequent concert engagements, only another six until his death 26 years later. Despite his success and fame, Rachmaninov was in many ways a very private person who valued solitude highly. He delighted in time spent at Ivanoka, a remote estate some 500 kms. from Moscow. However, with the outbreak of the Revolution in 1917, he and his wife and two daughters were forced to leave Russia, abandoning virtually all their money and other property. Later, as a consequence of being a joint signatory to a letter published in the New York Times deploring Soviet policies and practices, his music was banned in his native country for some years. After spending time in Sweden, then Denmark, the family finally settled in the United States of America, albeit with extended periods in Europe where, in Paris in 1924 he established TAIR, a publishing firm named after his daughters Tatiana and Irina. His motivation was to provide financial support for Irina, whose young husband had died tragically after just one year of marriage. Later, in 1931, Rachmaninov and other Russian exiles founded a music school, which was named after him. During the 1930s, again seeking a tranquil atmosphere in which to compose, he built the Villa Senar, near Lake Lucerne in Switzerland. The celebrated Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini for piano and orchestra dates from this period.

Rachmaninov’s compositions are renowned for their wealth of late-Romantic melodic material, radiant harmonies, powerful emotional structure, often bathed in an aura of nostalgia and tinged with that rich vein of melancholy so distinctive of Russian music generally, but also attributable to the increasing homesickness from which he suffered in the realization that he would never again return to his beloved native country. Among the greatest and most enduring of his compositions are his early opera Aleko, four piano concerti (of which the third is rated as one of the most difficult of the genre to play), the Paganini Rhapsody, three symphonies (the second is a perennial crowd-pleaser), two great a cappella works (the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom and the All-Night Vigil, often called Rahmaninov’s Vespers), The Bells, a work for choir and orchestra based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe, the orchestral pieces The Rock, The Isle of the Dead and the Symphonic Dances, the Cello Sonata and, for solo piano, the Twenty-four Preludes, two sets of Etudes-tableaux and Variations on a Theme of Corelli. There are also some fine songs.

Rachmaninov died on 28 March 1943 in Beverly Hills, California.

John Barns

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Ottorino Respighi

The success of Italian composition of the 19th. and early part of the 20th. centuries is based substantially on opera. However, although he wrote two reasonably successful operas early in his career and turned to the genre again late in life, the basis of Ottorino Respighi’s fame rests elsewhere.

Rather patronizingly described by musicologist Adolfo Salazar as “a facile, agreeable composer whose characteristics are within the reach of sensibilities which still respond to the commonplaces of the romanza and the aria”, Respighi was born in Bologna on 9 July 1879. After studying at the Liceo Musicale in his native city, where his teachers included the successful composer Giuseppe Martucci, Respighi visited Russia twice between 1900 and 1903 as a violist at the Imperial Opera and while there took lessons in composition and orchestration from Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

In addition to establishing himself as an excellent string player and pianist in the first decade of the 20th. century, Respighi developed a growing interest in earlier music, particularly that of neglected Italian composers. This fascination remained with him throughout his life, so that we can hear echoes of old melodies in many of his scores. Gregorian chant motifs also permeate a number of his works, especially the late ones.

The cosmopolitan richness of Berlin’s cultural environment made a profound influence on Respighi when he visited there in 1902, although the lectures he attended by teacher and composer Max Bruch did not. It seems that he found Rimsky-Korsakov’s exotic concepts of melody and orchestration much more suited to his romantic temperament than Bruch’s Teutonic correctness.

The acclaimed premieres of Respighi’s Piano Concerto in A minor (1902), the Suite in G minor for organ and strings (1905) and the successful presentation of his first two operas, Re Enzo (1905) and Semirama (1910), led to his appointment as a teacher of composition at the Liceo Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he became director in 1923. He resigned three years later to concentrate on composition, although he continued to teach and perform publicly, both as a conductor and piano accompanist to his wife, the mezzo-soprano Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo, whom he had married in 1919. Respighi died on 18 April 1936, his wife outliving him by some sixty years, dying one week before her 102nd. birthday in 1996!

Despite the enthusiastic reception of the two operas referred to, it is Respighi’s orchestral music upon which his reputation is based. Probably he was not the most important Italian composer of his generation from an esoteric or intellectual viewpoint but palpably the most popular, his cause being championed by such conducting luminaries as Arturo Toscanini, Fritz Reiner and Charles Münch.

Respighi’s colourful and evocative tone poems, including those portraying various aspects of Rome, the Eternal City, firmly established his popularity and, indeed, continue to please audiences. Fountains of Rome (1916) was the first, followed by Pines of Rome (1924), Church Windows (1925), the Botticelli Triptych (1927) and Roman Festivals and Brazilian Impressions (1928). Adolfo Salazar suggests that these works contain “pages of uneven merit among which are agreeable landscapes saturated with bucolic poetry and expressed with a palette of delicate tints”. The three suites of Ancient Airs and Dances (composed between 1917 and 1932), based on Renaissance lute pieces, the ballet La boutique fantasque (1919) and the suite The Birds (1927), the former based on music by Rossini and the latter on old Italian and French melodies, also retain their popularity.

Among Respighi’s larger-scale scores are La bella dormente nel bosco, the Sleeping Beauty story which appeared as an opera in 1916 but was later arranged as a marionette play and in a child mime version,the ballet Belkis, Queen of Sheba (1931), the admittedly verbose Sinfonia drammatica (1914), two works for violin and orchestra- the Concerto gregoriano (1921), inspired by two Gregorian chants and described by the eminent musicologist Sir Donald Tovey as “a subtle and intimate work”, and the Poema autunnale (1925)- the Concerto in Mixolydian Mode for piano and orchestra (1925) and the Concerto a cinque for oboe, trumpet, violin, double bass, piano and strings (1933). In the realm of chamber music, Respighi impresses by his Violin Sonata in B minor (1917) and his scoring of archaic melodies in “modern” guise in the Quartetto dorico (1924).

Not surprisingly, in view of his nationality, Respighi wrote beautifully for the human voice. Apart from his operas, he produced many songs and larger scale vocal compositions, including three settings of Italian translations of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley, the early Aretusa (1910), La sensitiva (1914), both scored for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, and Il Tramonto (1914), for voice and strings. Also noteworthy are the charming little Stornellatrice (1906) and what John Waterhouse in an edition of “Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians” described as “the radiantly charming Lauda per la Natività del Signore (1930) for vocal trio, chorus and small instrumental group.

It has been remarked that the sentimentality and colourful nature of the tone poems have engendered a negative attitude to Respighi’s more abstract works. Like many other composers of conservative disposition, his music was virtually neglected during the years when the emphasis was on serial and electronic creations. Now that tonality is again in vogue, a rekindling of interest in the Italian composer has led to a welcome reappraisal of his output and enabled listeners to appreciate that his serious writing, though uneven in quality, transcends the occasional banality of his overtly picturesque scores.

John Waterhouse wrote that Respighi, “though a man of considerable culture, remained at heart very simple, even childish … the best aspects of his work tend to be ‘sensory’ in character. … And when deeper emotions break through, they often recall the fresh, radiant emotions of a child”. He also suggests that we should not “ignore the series of large and unexpectedly sober abstract works” of the last years of Respighi’s life.

Those who listen to a representative sample of Ottorino Respighi’s works may ultimately concur with Adolfo Salazar’s description of the music as “agreeable” (and perhaps more than that!) but demur from the “facile”.

John Barns

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Gioachino Rossini

Like Christoph Willibald Gluck in an earlier age, Gioachino Antonio Rossini was responsible for a subtle, albeit radical approach to the creation of opera.

Born in the Adriatic town of Pesaro on 29 February 1792, Rossini’s father Giuseppe was a sufficiently competent horn player to gain a teaching role at Bologna’s Accademia Filarmonica. When Gioachino was seven, his father’s support of the republican cause led to his brief imprisonment, a calamity which forced his wife Anna to seek employment as an operatic soprano in a number of Italian cities. We suspect that her young son often accompanied her on these travels which, together with his appearance on stage as a boy soprano and other singing engagements, may have laid the foundation for his love of opera.

Gioachino showed such precocious musical talent (including the composition of a short opera buffo when he was ten) that he was admitted to the Bologna Academia at the age of fourteen. Despite his undoubted instrumental and creative abilities, his reluctance to apply himself diligently to the study of counterpoint showed an indolence which was to lead to the erroneous opinion (still voiced in this day and age) that the long hiatus in his compositional activities later in life were a continuation of this propensity; Rossini himself said that his teacher Stanislao Mattei regarded him as “the dishonour of his school”. Nevertheless, he undertook as many engagements as he could obtain as a keyboard player in local theatres. As a student he increased his already substantial knowledge of Haydn and Mozart, whose music he was later to acknowledge as “the admiration of my youth, the desperation of my mature years and the consolation of my old age”. It was during these years that he composed the still popular six Sonate a quattro and a number of scores to sacred texts.

1807 was a turning-point in the career of the young musician for he heard two singers who represented differing musical approaches. The castrato Giovanni Battista Vellutti was a product of the “old” school”, from a period when it was considered inappropriate for women to appear on stage; the Spanish soprano Isabella Colbran, whom he later married, belonged to a new era in which composers delighted in the opportunity of writing for the more robust female voices compared with the more ethereal purity of tone of the castrati. Rossini responded to a commission from the tenor Domenico Mombelli to set to music a libretto which became the young Italian’s first opera, Demetrio e Polibio. However, by the time it was premiered three or four years later (1812), Rossini had had another four operas produced, the first of which, the comic opera La cambiale di matrimonio, was greeted enthusiastically and established the young composer as force to be reckoned with.

Five more comic operas appeared between 1810 and 1813, culminating in the brilliant Il Signor Bruschino, arguably the most satirically penetrating single-act opera before Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Just prior to that production in Milan in 1813 Rossini’s first two-act opera, La pietra del paragone, was so successful that it was staged no fewer than 53 times during its first season! He was now regarded as such an indispensably important part of his country’s cultural life that he was exempted from conscripted military service and made a maestro di cartello.

During the early part of the 19th. century Europe’s richest opera house was not Milan’s La Scala but the Neapolitan Teatro San Carlo and Rossini’s career took a giant step forward when he received a contract to work there. It was to prove an arduous undertaking, for he was not only expected to supply the illustrious company with a constant stream of new operas, but also to act as artistic and musical administrator of other composers’ material in addition to his own. Yet the opportunity to work with many of the pre-eminent singers of the day (including Isabella Colbran, who was now stationed in Naples) saw Rossini’s compositional activity rise to even greater heights, for he was now able to write much more serious material than had been required in the past. The first of these operas was Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra. While the Teatro was being rebuilt after being destroyed by fire, Rossini’s other operas were performed in other theatres in Naples and other Italian cities.

Beginning with Tancredi and L‘Italiana in Algeri in 1813, and continuing with such enormous later successes as Il barbieri di Siviglia (originally called Almaviva, ossia L’inutile precauzione to distinguish it from Giovanni Paisiello’s opera of the same now-popular title, although it’s more commonly referred to as The Barber of Seville), La Cenerentola and Semiramide, Rossini’s name had come to be recognized throughout Europe, so that visits to Vienna in 1822 and London the following year led to attempts for him to settle in either of those cities. However, cosmopolitan Paris lured those of artistic temperament and ability and Rossini was no exception, especially as the French capital housed the well-funded and well-administered Théâtre-Italien. During his visits he not only captivated Parisian opera-goers with Il viaggio a Reims, Le Comte Ory and Giullaume Tell but encouraged and helped other composers like Meyerbeer, Donizetti and Bellini.

In 1829, after Rossini had returned to Bologna for a visit, he was advised that the French government had fallen, that Charles X had fled, that his contract with the Opéra and the life pension granted to him were revoked. Following lengthy litigation Rossini regained his pension but failing health made him so disinclined to indulge in the substantial mental and intellectual challenges demanded in writing operas that he went into retirement. After spending some time in Florence Rossini and his "new" wife, the singer Olympe Pélissier (Isabella Colbran had died in 1845), settled in France again in 1855. His health having improved and his famous wit restored Rossini, whose pen had remained still for many years, again turned to composition, albeit not to opera. Instead, he produced eleven volumes of delectable vocal, piano and other instrumental ensemble morsels under the title Péchés de vieillesse ("Sins of old age") and wrote the superbly constructed Petite messe solennelle (which he described as "the last mortal sin of my old age"). Gioachino Rossini became mortally ill in 1868, dying on 13 November. His will included provision for the establishment of a conservatory in the town of his birth, Pesaro.

Rossini’s name in the development of opera cannot be overlooked. From the Neapolitan years onwards Rossini wrote operas presenting a continuity of structural development, compared with those of many of his predecessors in which the story was of secondary importance and which were vehicles for singers to embellish the vocal line so prodigiously that the original melody became almost unrecognizable He also used the chorus as an important participant in the narrative rather than allotting it the passive role of earlier times. Not only was he a master of the overture, replete with scintillating crescendi, the writer of scintillating arias, ensembles and choruses with melodies which "sit" so perfectly on the voice, but he gave to posterity what is possibly the greatest comic opera of all, The Barber of Seville. It was Rossini who, with his vividly sketched characters, established the basis for the outpouring of the powerful Romantic operatic dramas penned later by the likes of Verdi and Puccini.

John Barns

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Dmitry Shostakovich

Apart from the originality and scale of his musical output, what probably fascinates us most about Dmitry Dmitriyevich Shostakovich is that his compositions are inseparable from the time and country in which he lived.

Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg in 1906, and as he died in 1975 his life covered most of that period of Russia’s history known as the Soviet era, with all the constraints on artistic freedom that era entailed. From all accounts Shostakovich was privately a dissident and showed tremendous courage in maintaining his artistic integrity, in spite of the universal climate of fear generated by the Soviet regime.

After studying with his mother, a professional pianist, Shostakovich entered the Petrograd Conservatory in 1919. While a student he worked as a piano accompanist for silent films, and throughout his life he composed for the cinema to earn some extra money and keep himself out of trouble (in total scoring the music for over 30 films). His graduation piece in 1925 was his Symphony No.1, which brought international acclaim.

After graduation, he initially embarked on the careers of concert pianist and composer and won an "Honourable Mention" at the 1927 Warsaw International Piano Competition. After the competition Shostakovich met Bruno Walter, who was so impressed by the composer's First Symphony that he conducted the Berlin premiere later that year. Thereafter Shostakovich concentrated primarily on composition.

In the same year he wrote his Second Symphony (subtitled “To October”) and also began his satirical opera The Nose, based on the story by Gogol.

Also in 1927 Shostakovich began a long friendship with Ivan Sollertinsky, which continued until the latter's death in 1944. Sollertinsky introduced Shostakovich to the music of Gustav Mahler, which had a strong influence on his music from the Fourth Symphony onwards.

In 1932 Shostakovich married Nina Varzar. Initial difficulties led to divorce proceedings in 1935, but the couple soon reunited.

Widely recognized as the major achievement of this period was his second opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, first performed in 1934. Lady Macbeth was received enthusiastically. However, in 1936, as a result of a series of attacks on Shostakovich in Pravda, in particular an article entitled “Chaos Instead of Music” instigated by Stalin and condemning Lady Macbeth as formalist, commissions disappeared. The Fourth Symphony entered rehearsals, but the negative criticisms made performance impossible. It was not performed until 1961.

1936 also marked the beginning of the Great Terror (instigated by Stalin), in which many of the composer's friends and relatives were imprisoned or killed. A great consolation in this period was the birth of his daughter Galina in 1936; his son Maxim was born two years later.

Shostakovich then began a new symphony, No.5, which was much more conventional and is still one of his most popular works. In 1937 this was received favourably by the authorities and the public. As a result he devoted himself to symphonies, concertos, quartets and songs (as well as some cantatas during the war years).

Of the next four symphonies, No.7 is perhaps the most famous: it was begun in besieged Leningrad and at the time was thought to portray the advance of the German army. It was adopted as a symbol of resistance both in the USSR and in the West but many now believe it reflects on the rise of Stalinism. Oleg Caetani, Chief Conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, considers the Seventh one of Shostakovich’s two or three greatest works, the central work of his life. The other symphonies appear to show more clearly the contrast between official optimism and private doubt, expressed with typical Shostakovichian irony.

The Eighth Symphony of 1943 is perhaps the blackest and most violent of his works, resulting in it being banned until 1960. The Ninth Symphony of 1945, in contrast, is typically ironic, and failed to satisfy the triumphant mood of the time. Shostakovich continued to compose chamber music, notably his Second Piano Trio (Op. 67), dedicated to the memory of Sollertinsky. The finale, a Jewish dance, is said to be his response to reports of conditions in the German concentration camps, which were being liberated at the time the work was composed. Shostakovich had a close affinity with Jewish music and said that it is “almost always laughter through tears”.

In 1948 Shostakovich was condemned again, and for five years he wrote little besides patriotic and private works (quartets, the 24 Preludes and Fugues, the Violin Concerto No. 1 and the song cycle From Jewish Folk Poetry).

In 1953, following Stalin's death, Shostakovich returned to the symphonic form with his Tenth Symphony, another popular work. The following year his wife Nina Varzar died. He married his second wife, Margarita Kainova, in 1956; but their differences resulted in divorce three years later.

Of the following symphonies Nos. 11 (“The Year 1905”) and 12 (“The Year 1917”) are both programmatic works on crucial years in revolutionary history and No.13 (“Babiy Yar”) was the most critical of public policy. Symphony No.14 is a song cycle based on a number of poems concerning the theme of death, and in contrast No.15 is more melodic and contains quotations from Rossini and Wagner.

Some of his most sublime music was composed in the last years of his life – the last three string quartets and the Viola Sonata which was completed a month before his death on 9th August 1975. He was survived by his third wife Irina (they had married in 1962), his daughter Galina and his son Maxim, a pianist and conductor and the dedicatee and first performer of some of his father's works.

Bill Mack

References:
Fay, Laurel (2001). “Dmitri Shostakovich”, Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Macmillan Publishers.
MacDonald, Ian (1990). “The New Shostakovich”. Northeastern University Press.
Shostakovich, Dmitry; Volkov, Solomon (2000). “Testimony” 7th Edition, Proscenium (publisher)
Wilson, Elizabeth (1994). “Shostakovich: A Life Remembered”. Princeton University Press.
Figes, Orlando (2002): “Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia”. Penguin Books.

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Jean Sibelius

For fifty years after the birth of Jean Sibelius at Hämeenlinna on 8 December 1865 he remained a Russian subject. This son of a military doctor and parson's daughter was christened Johan Christian Julius. Before the second son, Christian, was born, Dr Sibelius contracted typhus from his patients and died bankrupt. The pregnant Maria and her little Linda and Johan were evicted from their rented home and obliged to move in with Maria's mother. Maria was somewhat aloof and unable to lavish the affection which her little son craved. Fortunately the children were well blessed with their extended family. Young Sibelius found the visiting cards left by his late uncle Johan Sibelius, a sea captain, who had adopted the French version of his name on them. Later using them himself, the name Jean Sibelius stuck.

The composer's first music lessons were at the keyboard with an aunt. His Swedish speaking family enrolled the ten year old Sibelius at the first Finnish language school in Finland. His Uncle Pehr Sibelius bought him a violin and from the age of fourteen Jean's ambition was to become a violin virtuoso. He began composing instrumental music and studied a book on composition by Adolf Marx. In 1886 he enrolled to study law, but soon transferred to the Helsinki Music Institute where he attended composition classes with Martin Wegelius. He became a member of the Institute's orchestra and string quartet, but sometimes went missing when suffering from stage fright. His friends there included the Italian pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni, the pianist and author Adolf Paul, and the musician Armas Järnefelt, who introduced Sibelius to his artistically gifted family. Sibelius fell in love with Järnefelt's sister, Aino.

After graduating in 1889 with his String Quartet in A minor, Sibelius was awarded a scholarship to study composition with Albert Becker in Berlin. He drifted into a bohemian lifestyle in taverns there with Paul and other Scandinavian students. He transferred to Vienna the following year where the more liberal tutorials with Karl Goldmark and Robert Fuchs were more congenial. In the hope of earning some income, he failed an audition with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra due to stage fright. He was stimulated there by exposure to great music and orchestras. He began reading Finland's epic folk poetry collection, the Kalevala, and wrote the first sketches of his breakthrough composition, Kullervo, based on an unsuccessful mythological hero from the Kalevala. He returned to Finland in 1891 and worked as a violin teacher at the Music Institute until he was awarded a modest pension in 1897. This was a period in Finland's history when the newly appointed autocratic Russian governor imposed severe restrictions on its citizens. It caused great protests and heightened the national fervour which was reflected in the music commissions for Sibelius.

His Mahlerian length choral symphony, Kullervo, was the vehicle for his conducting debut in 1892. It was a sensational success with the Finnish public and clinched his marriage to Aino. However, his self criticism manifested itself for the first of many times by withdrawing Kullervo after four performances. Before the turn of the century several orchestral successes followed. The first was an independent tone poem, En Saga. The Karelia Suite was a selection from music for a patriotic fund raising gala concert in 1893. Finlandia was the product of a similar event in 1899. The Lemminkäinen Suite was a purely orchestral sequel to Kullervo. King Christian II was incidental music for a play by Paul. Composed immediately before Finlandia, Symphony No. 1 is his most percussive, Slavic and traditional symphony.

International fame grew when the founder of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Robert Kajanus, conducted Finlandia and Symphony No. 1 at the World Trade Fair in Paris in 1900. In 1901 Henry Wood conducted King Christian II at a Prom Concert in London. Sibelius himself conducted En Saga and two of the Lemminkäinen Legends in Berlin to great critical acclaim in 1902. During this period Sibelius dedicated many songs to soprano Ida Ekman. More often than not, he used Swedish verses by J L Runeberg, a poet also admired by Brahms. A loyal patron and mentor, Axel Carpelan, persuaded Sibelius to benefit from an extended sojourn in Italy where he sketched his popular Symphony No.2. The recent death of his third daughter Kirsti, and the life-threatening illness of his second daughter Ruth brought on a nervous breakdown, causing him to flee to Rome to recover his composure. It was there that he had "a wonderful idea for a violin concerto". Back in Finland the premiere of his epic Symphony No.2 was an even greater triumph than Kullervo.

Unfortunately, bad habits returned and Aino appointed Kajanus to drag him home from the Kämp Hotel to work on his Violin Concerto. So Aino's family persuaded Sibelius to purchase a beautiful forest plot at Järvenpää, near Lake Tuusula, forty kilometres away from Helsinki's taverns. A beautiful log cabin was built, large enough for his wife, five daughters and two loyal domestic servants. Aino designed many of the features, including the sauna. The house was named Ainola in her honour. The premiere of the Violin Concerto was beyond the powers of the perspiring soloist, so Sibelius withdrew it and tightened it up for its reappearance in Berlin under Richard Strauss.

A play by a brother-in-law required incidental music from Sibelius which resulted in the seductive Valse triste. He sold the manuscript for a modest fee and in no time the publisher earned a fortune from it. Several more theatre commissions followed over the next twenty years with music for Pelléas et Mélisande, Belshazzar's Feast, Swanwhite, The Lizard, Language of the Birds, Scaramouche, Everyman and, greatest of all, Shakespeare's The Tempest. The quality of these scores matched the best in their field. For much of the time the peace of Ainola worked its magic. Pohjola's Daughter, loosely based on an episode in the Kalevala, is one of his most brilliant, compact, and colourful scores. According to Robert Layton it surpasses any tone poem by Richard Strauss.

There is no prototype Sibelius symphony. With Symphony No. 3 he produced a truly classical symphony several years ahead of Prokofiev's pastiche Classical Symphony and Stravinsky's neoclassical period. It was in Helsinki during this time in 1907 that he disagreed with Mahler concerning the character of the symphony. Sibelius recalled saying that he "admired its severity of style and the profound logic which created an inner connection between all the motifs." He dedicated the Symphony to the English composer Sir Granville Bantock, who had invited him to conduct it in London.

While performing the Symphony in St Petersburg and London, Sibelius was distressed by a tumour in his throat. He went to Berlin and had it surgically removed. He feared for his life and abstained from alcohol and cigars for eight years. Aino said that those were the most contented years of their marriage. Major works became more introverted. For one more time Sibelius returned to the string quartet medium with his heartfelt Voces intimae. More tone poems followed, namely Nightride and Sunrise, then the meditative The Bard, with its prominent role for harp, and Luonnotar, a tone poem for soprano and orchestra which evoked the power of nature and the pain of childbirth. Symphony No.4, with its two slow movements and prominent cello solo, is a bleak and courageous work reminiscent of chamber music, so sparing is its use of the orchestra. It is seldom performed, but connoisseurs regard it as one of the greatest of symphonies.

An invitation to conduct a new work in the USA lifted Sibelius' spirits. There he premiered his sonorous and ethereal tone poem The Oceanides to great acclaim. Before his ship landed him home war had broken out and he was cut off from his German royalties, leaving him in a desperate financial situation. No sooner had he received a Steinway piano for his fiftieth birthday than credit agents threatened to confiscate it. Once again Carpelan organised a reprieve for him. Numerous short piano and violin pieces were composed for the domestic market and to alleviate his financial crisis.

His Symphony No. 5 suffered from two public birth pangs. The chaos caused by the Russian Revolution gave Finland a window of opportunity to unilaterally declare its political Independence on 6 December 1917. Meanwhile communist sympathisers in Finland provoked a short but brutal civil war. Sibelius fled from Ainola and hid in Helsinki's Lapinlahti Psychiatric Hospital for three months where his ailing brother, Professor Christian Sibelius, was its superintendent. One of three patriotic cantatas from this period was written in the peaceful environment of the hospital. After normality was restored, the terminally ill Carpelan encouraged Sibelius to complete the third and definitive version of Symphony No. 5. So in 1919 Sibelius set to work feverishly to complete this triumphal work with its glorious "swan theme" finale. The grieving composer asked himself, "For whom shall I compose now?"

The death of Christian in 1922 caused a creative paralysis in Sibelius when he suspended progress on his Symphony No. 6 for several weeks. The Swedish composer and conductor Wilhelm Stenhammar invited him to premiere it in Gothenburg. This, his most refined and tranquil symphony was surely an antidote to personal grief and the social disruption and horror of the recent past. In the auditorium Aino noticed that her nervous husband had imbibed in too much alcohol before he wielded the baton and she subsequently refused to attend any future concert when he was to conduct. The usually savage critic was not concerned by the composer's condition and wrote a glowing review of the Symphony. For the sake of his marriage, Sibelius decided it would soon be time to give up conducting.

Less than a year later Sibelius premiered his stern but majestic single movement Symphony No. 7 in Stockholm. As promised, Aino was absent. Sibelius' final orchestral works were conducted by others, so he lost the opportunity to make last minute changes in rehearsal. He was not present for the premiere of The Tempest in Copenhagen. His final tone poem, Tapiola, evoking the magic and terrors of the forest was premiered by Walter Damrosh with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. For several years he worked at least on an eighth symphony before burning many manuscripts in 1945. He completed his Masonic Music in 1948. His wife explained that his creativity dried up because of "rigorous self-criticism."

On his ninetieth birthday he received twelve hundred telegrams, and gifts from Churchill, Eisenhower, Marion Anderson, Toscanini and many others. On 20 September 1957 when Sir Malcolm Sargent was conducting the Symphony No. 5 in Helsinki, Sibelius died at home suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in his ninety-second year, in the company of his five daughters. In 1969 after her ninety-seventh birthday Aino died and was buried in her garden beside him.

In view of his high regard according to the 3MBS survey, it is surprising how seldom some of his masterpieces, such as Symphony No. 3 or Voces intima are performed in Melbourne. In 2006 The Oceanides and Luonnotar are still waiting for their Melbourne premieres.

Geoff Hayes

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Bedrich Smetana

Despite the fame of the great Antonín Dvorák, the role of father of Czech music really belongs to Bedrich Smetana, who was born on 2 March 1824, in Litomysl, in a region of Bohemia which was under Austrian rule throughout Smetana's life.

Smetana's first musical training was given by his German-speaking father, a master brewer and amateur violinist. So proficient was the child that he was playing the violin in a string quartet by the age of five, before making his début as a pianist a year later. However, Smetana senior was adamant that music should not dominate his son's development, insisting that he should have a general academic eduction. This was carried out in German at the Premonstratensian Gymnasium in Plzen; indeed, Smetana was well into his adult life before being able to speak and read and write in Czech and, even then, his ability to pen letters in that language was mediocre.

Having completed his schooling, Smetana took lessons in harmony, counterpoint and composition from the renowned teacher Josef Proksch. He then found employment as a piano teacher in Prague, later being appointed to a similar position with Count Leopold Thun's family. Smetana's ambition to sustain a career as a concert pianist was unsuccessful, so he founded a music school in Prague which, although not a particularly lucrative venture, enabled him to find sufficient financial security to marry Katerina Kolárová, whom he had met in Plzen.

The political unrest enveloping the continent of Europe during the mid-1800s, the Smetanas' constant financial struggles, together with the tragic loss of three of their four daughters between 1854 and 1856, persuaded Smetana to accept a piano teacher position in the more stable environment of Sweden's Göteberg (now Gothenburg). Apart from his teaching responsibilities, Smetana's talents as a concert pianist at last gained recognition and he also turned his hand successfully to conducting. He was soon able to open his own music school, its renown soon becoming such that it was forced to turn away students clamouring for admission. It was during this period that Smetana composed his first symphonic poems, a musical form in which he was to excel. Unfortunately, his wife's health deteriorated so markedly that they decided to return to Bohemia but, alas, Katerina died of tuberculosis before the journey could be completed. They had been married for ten years, a period during which they tragically lost three of their four daughters in infancy.

Returning to Göteborg, Smetana married again and, two years later, he and Bettina Ferdinanová decided to resume life in Prague, especially as he resolved to play an active role in the resurrection of Czech culture following Austria's defeat at the hands of Napoleon. At first disappointment again greeted Smetana but circumstances changed for the better after the enthusiastic reception of his first opera The Brandenburgers in Bohemia in 1866. But it was his enduringly successful second opera, The Bartered Bride, with its multiplicity of folk elements and vivacious rhythmic material, which was to be a veritable watershed in the Smetanas' financial affairs. Having been appointed Principal Conductor of the Provisional Theatre, Smetana significantly increased the opera's repertory, including his own Dalibor and The Two Widows.

It was during this time that Smetana composed his most famous work, the marvellous and spectacular orchestral cycle of six symphonic poems which comprise Má Vlast (My Country), including the frequently-played Vlatava (Moldau), a portrayal of the river on which Prague lies, and the delightful "From Bohemian Fields and Groves".

From 1874 Smetana's health grew increasingly worse, the high-pitched noises in his ears which led to deafness and made sleep virtually impossible eventually bringing about such a rapidly declining mental stability that he spent his last years in a mental asylum in Prague, dying on 14 May 1884. In the second of his two string quartets, subtitled From my Life, Smetana turned so autobiographical that the last movement even includes a passage suggesting the screeching which so marred his hearing.

The constant flow of melody, the harmonic richness and colourful orchestration of Smetana's music ensure his fame as one of the greatest of Czech composers and the forerunner of Dvorák, Suk, Janácek and Martinu. Apart from the works already mentioned, other music by Smetana well worth hearing are the operas Libuse (which the composer described as "my most perfect work in the field of higher drama"), The Kiss and The Secret, the orchestral scores Richard III, Wallenstein's Camp, Hakon Jarl and Prague Carnival, the chamber music pieces String Quartet No.1 and Piano Trio in G minor. For the piano Smetana wrote prodigiously, the Bagatelles et impromptus, Czech Dances and Six morceaux caractéristiques, as well as the numerous polkas (the native Czech dance), being especially rewarding.

Those who appreciate and admire the music of the likes of Berlioz and Liszt (with whom the young Smetana became friendly after hearing one of the great pianist's recitals and whose advice later inspired Smetana to compose the symphonic poems) should find Bedrich Smetana's music much to their liking. It is fitting to recall how Liszt once described Smetana: "Here is a composer with genuine Czech heart, an artist by the grace of God".

John Barns

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Josef Suk

Josef Suk, born in 1874, was the third son of a village schoolmaster in Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic.) By the time he was eight he was already showing a talent for music and his understanding father agreed that he should be trained as a musician. Such tuition as was locally available included playing the organ in the village church. His legs were too short to reach the pedals and his father constructed a second pedal board to solve the problem.

At the age of 11, he left home and entered the Prague Conservatoire where his teachers included the cellist Hanus Wihan, for whom Dvorák had composed his concerto. He graduated to Dvorák’s masterclass in composition a step which was to change his life when he became  a suitor for the hand of his master’s daughter Ottilie. Dvorák opposed the match because he did not want Ottilie to marry a musician. Furthermore, Suk proved himself to be singularly inept at the business of train-spotting, a hobby which Dvorák embraced passionately, and he made extravagant use of manuscript paper by writing large notes! However, true love triumphed in the end, and Suk expressed his happiness in radiant music which celebrated the joy of young love and the bliss of a happy marriage. This included his Serenade for Strings and incidental music to two plays by Julius Zeyer, Radúz a Mahulena (which became the Fairy Tale Suite) and Under the Apple Tree.
 

It was not to last. The unexpected death of Dvorák in 1904, followed not long after by that of Ottilie, who suffered from a heart condition, was a shock from which he recovered only slowly. In the remaining twenty-nine years of his life he composed only ten works and the music itself became darker and more profound as he reflected on nature, love, life and death. This is especially evident in his great Asrael Symphony, and the long tone poems Ripening, A Summer Tale and Epilogue.

Asrael (the Angel of Death) is widely acclaimed these days as one of the greatest of late romantic symphonies, but is hardly comfortable listening, expressing as it does Suk’s grief at losing the two people who meant most to him. So it’s not often heard in the concert hall outside the composer’s homeland. Fortunately there are some fine recordings.

This darker feeling can be heard, too, in his Second String Quartet, in one movement, which covers a wide range of feelings, but finds calm and contentment at the end. Suk was a fine violinist, for many years second violin in the legendary Bohemian String Quartet, so it’s hardly surprising to find the instrument featuring prominently in his own works. A set of Four Pieces for Violin and Piano was made famous many years ago by the French violinist Ginette Neveu. It’s rather neglected these days, though Suk’s grandson (also Josef Suk) has recorded it.

At the time of the First World War, the Czechs, as part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, could see the possibility of independence following the end of hostilities. Suk's own nationalistic feeling manifested itself in the Meditation on the Czech Chorale "St.Wenceslas". He wrote it for string quartet, and later rescored it for string orchestra. Two other short works were later added to form a kind of orchestral triptych, but they lack the profound feeling of the Meditation.

If Suk recalled his personal tragedy in his later years, then he did so mainly through his piano music. There are two collections of short pieces, About Mother, composed for his son in 1907, and Things lived and dreamed. "The best of these pieces are miniatures only in clock-time", says one writer.

His personal life was uneventful and devoid of the picturesque anecdotes in which biographers delight. Music was his life and all who knew him praised his generosity and lack of any conceit or affection. He never sought positions of influence but had accepted the appointment as Professor of Composition at the Prague Conservatoire just three years before his sudden death in 1935. His last, and some believe most important composition was Epilogue for soloists, choir and orchestra, completed in 1932 and dedicated to Jan Masaryk, President of Czechoslovakia. Perhaps he was fortunate not to live through Masaryk’s tragic death and the turmoil of the succeeding years.

One last quote from a Czech writer about this endearing composer: "In life's grim struggle, he fought his way through to an outlook and attitude towards life, from the most intimate personal confessions to a sublime conception embracing all humanity." And we, as music-lovers, are enriched through his music.

Hector Walker

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Sir Michael Tippett

When Michael Tippett died in 1998 at the age of 93, he had become something of a legend as the last of the composers who had brought about a remarkable renaissance of English music in the 20th century. He had been knighted in 1966, became a Companion of Honour in 1979, and was chosen by the Queen to receive the Order of Merit (the highest British honour) in 1983 - quite a remarkable achievement for a man who, in the 1930s, was rather frowned upon, both as a homosexual and a pacifist who had served a short prison sentence for his beliefs. One might have termed him "the grand old man of English music", but he was rarely grand, preferring to dress in colourful, informal clothes and sneakers, rather than formal suits. He remained outside the Establishment to the very end, and was a trenchant critic of Thatcherism.

Born in London in 1905, he received his early education from his mother, a forthright lady actively involved with the suffragette movement. He did not attend a school until he was 13. During all these years he received no musical education, and not until his schooling was completed did he express his intention of becoming a composer. So his parents agreed that he should enrol at the Royal College of Music in London, where he began his studies in 1923. There he remained for five years, before becoming a part-time schoolteacher in order to earn some money and allow him some free time to compose.

In the 1930s Tippett became involved with Morley College, a south London institution formed to provide activities for the unemployed. He became its Director during the war years and, apart from his time in prison, remained there until 1951, by which time it was an important centre of musical activities.

Meanwhile, he had begun to make his mark as a composer. His first major work, a string quartet, was published in 1938. It was followed by the Concerto for Double String Orchestra, a work in the great tradition of English string writing, though its rhythmic complexity was to become a feature of Tippett's later music.

The oratorio, A Child of Our Time, was composed in the early years of the war. It had its origins in tragic events in 1938. A German diplomat in Paris was assassinated by a young Polish Jew, in despair over events in his homeland. The outcome was not only the death of the young man but a cruel and ruthless Nazi pogrom unleashed in revenge for the killing. Tippett took as his model the Bach Passions, but wrote his own text and used negro spirituals instead of German chorales to reflect on the drama. It is a dark work, but at the end the tenor sings

I would know my shadow and my light
So shall I at last be whole

This was the composer's fundamental conviction: that wisdom comes from the knowledge of one's own good and evil natures, and inner harmony from their reconciliation. It led him to an exploration of Jungian philosophy, reflected in his operas, for which he wrote his own librettos. Tippett's first opera, The Midsummer Marriage, occupied him for six years and when it was first staged in 1955 at Covent Garden it baffled many of the critics. While they sensed the quality of the luxuriant music, the composer's own mystifying and over-complex libretto was largely incomprehensible.

The works which followed over the next five years inhabited the same sound-world as The Midsummer Marriage, but in his next opera, King Priam, there was a radical shift to an abrasive musical idiom, with the orchestra used in blocks of sound, and declamatory rather than lyrical vocal lines. Apart from a few "occasional" works, this was to be Tippett's style for the remainder of his long life.

He travelled widely, visiting Australia for the first time in 1978 for the Adelaide Festival. That memorable occasion saw the first (and only) Australian production of The Midsummer Marriage, and the composer himself conducted his recently-completed Fourth Symphony. He returned in 1984, this time to Melbourne where he introduced an evening devoted to his piano sonatas, played by Paul Crossley. A Tippett archive was established at the University of Melbourne and it remains a stimulus to scholarly research on the composer's life and work.

He was back in Australia yet again in 1990 (at the age of 85!) and later in the same year visited Senegal, which was to inspire his last work, The Rose Lake, first heard in 1995. He described it as "A Song without Words for orchestra" It was failing sight rather any mental decline which led to Tippett's decision to cease composing.

The degree of dissonance in Tippett's music written after the mid-1950s makes it "difficult" for the average listener; but his earlier works - especially the Concerto for Double String Orchestra, the Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli and the chamber music- are well worth exploring. The "Ritual Dances" from The Midsummer Marriage are a good introduction to the opera.

Hector Walker

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Ralph Vaughan Williams     

Great composers, it is commonly supposed, have revealed their talent at an early age. Ralph Vaughan Williams was an exception. An elderly aunt on his mother's side of the family described him as "that foolish young man... who would go on working at music when he was so hopelessly bad at it." Indeed, although he attended the Royal College of Music in London and received all the right training, he was almost forty before he produced the first of the major works which were to establish him as a leading figure in English music.

He was born  on 12 October 1872 in the little Gloucestershire village of Down Ampney. His father was the vicar of St Peter's Church, and his mother was related to both the Darwin and Wedgwood families.  Many churchgoers who know and love the Vaughan Williams hymn-tune Down Ampney are unaware of the origin of the name. His time there was brief. His father died tragically young when Ralph was only three, and his mother returned to her parents' home at Leith Hill, Hampshire, with her three children.

He attended Charterhouse, which he disliked intensely and, as soon as he could, entered the RCM. That was in 1890, and his musical education continued for the rest of the decade and included three years at Trinity College, Cambridge, and a period of study with Max Bruch in Berlin. He had made no mark as a composer, although he was invited to contribute articles on "Fugue" and "Conducting" for the 1903 edition of Grove's Dictionary. In that same year, he began to collect folk-songs, an experience which was to have an indelible influence on his own music, as would Tudor church music, which he discovered at about the same time.

The decision to study with Ravel in 1908 - to acquire "a little French polish"- seems to have been a turning point. He was required to work at orchestrating piano works by Russian composers and learned a new, lighter, more colourful kind of instrumentation which he put to good use in a string quartet and the song-cycle On Wenlock Edge. Then, at the Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester in 1910, he conducted a new work which was to bring wide recognition - the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.  The organist Herbert Brewer described it as "a queer, mad work by an odd fellow from Chelsea", but budding composers Herbert Howells and Ivor Gurney walked the streets all night talking about it. They were both aware that something of real importance had happened in English music. And they were right. The Fantasia remains one of Vaughan William's greatest and most characteristic works. 

Within a few weeks, A Sea Symphony had been launched at the Leeds Festival, demonstrating the composer's mastery of large-scale choral and orchestral forces, even if it was not as original as the Fantasia. "Big stuff - with some impertinences," remarked his former teacher Parry. The critic Cecil Gray was more expansive: "He flounders about in the sea of his ideas like a vast and ungainly porpoise, with great puffing and blowing; yet, in the end, after tremendous efforts and almost heroic tenacity, there emerges ... a real and lovable personality, unassuming. modest and almost apologetic."

It may have been a late start, but Vaughan Williams had another forty-eight years left to him and ample time to confirm those first impressions. He has suffered because too many music-lovers believe mistakenly that the range of his music is limited - rewrites of the Fantasia, or in the subdued pastoral mood of The Lark Ascending which he composed in 1914. One has only to listen to Satan's jagged music in Job (1930) or the Fourth Symphony (1935) to hear just how wrong such judgements are.

Then there is the sensual, almost erotic Flos Campi (1926), based on verses from the Biblical Song of Songs; or the settings of earthy poems by John Skelton in Five Tudor Portraits (1936). "Disgusting!" announced the elderly Countess of Albermarle at the first performance, and she marched out of the hall. "A pity she didn't read the lines I didn't set", was the composer's response.

It seemed that the older Vaughan Williams grew, the more adventurous his music became. At the age of 68, he wrote his first film score and continued to work enthusiastically in this medium until his death. From the music for Scott of the Antarctic he fashioned his Sinfonia antartica (1953). He wrote a short work for harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler, and a tuba concerto. In his Ninth (and last) Symphony, written in the year of his death, he employed a quartet of saxophones and a flugelhorn.

Though not a conventionally religious man - he described himself as "a cheerful agnostic" - he composed a great deal of deeply-felt church music. After a lifetime of listening to his music, I have come to believe that he was a visionary, one of those rare human beings (William Blake was another) who are able to see profound spiritual truths without the conventional trappings of religion. Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress was a life-long love. A setting of an episode from the book, The Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains (1922) became finally part of his opera The Pilgrim's Progress (1951) which was, in many ways, the climax to his life's work. It proved to be his last music for the stage, though right up to the day he died he was working on a new opera based on the old ballad of Thomas the Rhymer.

Cecil Gray had certainly summed up Vaughan Williams back in 1910 - "..a lovable personality... unassuming, modest...". He never lost the common touch, nor his understanding of the need of ordinary folk like you and me to make music. Through nearly  fifty years as conductor of the annual Leith Hill Festival, and through countless works written for amateur performers, he put his ideas into practice.

Hector Walker

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Australian Composers

Listed below are links to biographical information about significant Australian composers.

Where there is an official website for a composer, that link is given.  In other cases, the link is made to the website of the Australian Music Centre which is a useful resource for finding information about many more Australian composers.

3MBS can give no endorsement of the accuracy of the information contained in external websites.

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

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Music Teachers' Directory

This service connects qualified local teachers and accompanists with the 3MBS musical community.

If you contact any of these teachers, please tell them you found their details at the 3MBS Music Teachers' Directory.

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Join the 3MBS Music Teachers' Directory

This service connects qualified local teachers and accompanists with the 3MBS musical community.

The 3MBS Music Teachers' Directory has the advantage of promoting itself on-air, directly communicating with music-lovers and musicians, as well as to the parents and grandparents of tomorrow's musicians.

An annual fee of $70 covers your inclusion on both the Phone Referral Service and the 3MBS Music Teachers’ Web Directory - 3MBS does not charge separate fees for each type of listing.  Potential students can either visit the 3MBS website, and then contact you by phone or email to discuss lessons or they can phone the station and we will refer them on. Your details will be added to the Phone Referral Service Listing and the 3MBS Music Teachers’ Web Directory once payment has been received.  There are no further fees to pay for students obtained through the 3MBS Music Teacher’s Directory.

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