Speranza
Composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett dies aged 76
Versatile musician
was equally at home writing jazz and film scores as music for the concert
hall
Richard Rodney Bennett was part of a golden generation of
British composers.
Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, one
of Britain's most versatile and talented composers and performers, has died
peacefully on Christmas Eve in his adopted home city of New York, aged
76.
Over the course of a distinguished career he has been equally at home
writing music for the concert hall and performing cabaret at the Algonquin
Hotel.
As enthusiastic about Cole Porter as Pierre Boulez.
His publisher, Gill
Graham of the Music Sales Group, said:
"He was, I think, the last of his kind."
"He wrote 32-bar jazz standards, the most complex serial music, and everything in
between."
To a broad audience he is perhaps best known as a prolific writer
of scores for film and television, including for Sidney Lumet's Murder on the
Orient Express and Four Weddings and a Funeral.
His film work earned him two
Oscar nominations.
To his friends he will be remembered as a witty and generous
host, a fiendish player of Scrabble and an enthusiastic creator of delicious
Christmas feasts.
Graham described him as "determined, hilarious and a great
influence".
Bennett was born in 1936 and raised in Budleigh Salterton, Devon.
His mother had studied composition with Gustav Holst.
His father was a writer of
children's books.
In 1953 he turned down a place at Oxford to study at the Royal
Academy of Music in London, part of a golden generation of British composers
including Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Thea Musgrave, Cornelius Cardew and Sir
Harrison Birtwistle.
He told the Guardian last year:
"In fact for me the academy
was a disaster."
"I learned much more in the Westminster music library in
Buckingham Palace Road, which was an absolute treasure house of 20th-century
music."
"But London was very exciting."
"It was cheap and we could live our own
lives and be slightly raffish without exactly being bohemian."
Bennett was
one of only very few composers to study personally with Boulez, in Paris from
1957-8.
He also visited the Darmstadt summer school.
These were the twin
citadels of 12-tone serial composition, and the rigorous attitude among many of
the "serious" composers of the time was to discount music written outside its
strictures.
All along, though, Bennett was writing music for the screen in
popular idioms "to earn money to subsidise my other work."
"But I liked writing
music that would be played next week by brilliant musicians."
It was the best
training there was," he said.
As a student he also supported himself as a jazz
musician and later began to perform regularly with Cleo Laine.
He is regarded as
having been one of the most accomplished jazz pianists of his
generation.
Major works include three symphonies and AN OPERA, The Mines of
Sulphur.
There were concertos for various instruments and concertante pieces
including his Actaeon for orchestra and solo horn, and his Sonnets to Orpheus
for orchestra and solo cello.
Finally, all these disparate parts of his
musical life were reconciled, aided by a move to New York in 1979.
A more
relaxed style emerged, with music for the concert hall inflected with flavours
of the jazz and film music that he loved.
A 1990 concerto for saxophone fused
jazz harmonies and serial technique; recent works have included Reflections on a
Scottish Folk Song for cello and string orchestra commissioned by Prince Charles
to honour the memory of the Queen Mother.
The critic Tom Service wrote
earlier this year:
"In his reflection of so many of the streams, trends and
styles of postwar music, and in the unmistakable, personal voice he has found
across all of the genres in which he has worked, composed and performed, Bennett
is one of the most significant compositional voices we have."
Although the
sheer variety of his output means that he has, perhaps, been undervalued, his
delight in so many genres and styles has, arguably, prefigured the eclectic
musical approach of a younger generation of composers such as Mark-Anthony
Turnage and Thomas Adès.
Chris Butler, head of publishing for the Music Sales
Group, which owns Chester and Novello, said:
"Richard was the most complete
musician of his generation – lavishly gifted as a composer, performer and
entertainer in a multiplicity of styles and genres.
He was a loyal friend to
music, musicians and music publishing and we will remember him with great
respect and affection."
Friday, December 28, 2012
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment