Berkeley, Sir Lennox (Randall Francis) (B Boars Hill, Oxford, 12 May 1903; D London, 26 Dec 1989)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Berkeley, Sir Lennox (Randall Francis) (b Boars Hill, Oxford, 12 May 1903; d London, 26 Dec 1989). English composer. From the same generation as Walton and Tippett, he has little connection with national traditions represented by them or by Elgar and Vaughan Williams earlier. This is partly because of his French ancestry and temperament which made him closer to Fauré, and to Ravel and Poulenc who were both personal friends. Berkeley admired Mozart above all, then Chopin, Ravel and the neo-classical Stravinsky. His own idiom is built from an overt melodic expression, usually rooted in tonality and allied to a fastidious command of harmony and orchestral texture. Religious subjects in particular invariably gave rise to vocal music of unusual spiritual intensity, a mood also reflected in his instrumental slow movements. 1. Life. 2. Works. WORKS WRITINGS BIBLIOGRAPHY PETER DICKINSON (text, bibliography), JOAN REDDING (work-list) Berkeley, Sir Lennox 1. Life. Berkeley was born into an aristocratic family. His grandfather was George Lennox Rawdon, Seventh Earl of Berkeley and Viscount Dursley, who married Cecile, daughter of Edward Drummond, Comte de Melfort, a family of French and Scottish origin. The composer’s father, Captain Hastings George FitzHardinge Berkeley, was the eldest son, but, born before his parents were able to marry, he was legally unable to inherit the title and estates to which Lennox, as his only son, would have succeeded. Berkeley’s childhood was spent in or near Oxford and was affected by listening to his father’s collection of piano rolls; visits to the family of his mother, Aline Carla Harris, who lived in France where her father was British consul at Nice; a godmother who had studied singing in Paris at the turn of the century; and an aunt who was a salon composer. He attended the Dragon School, Oxford; Gresham’s School, Holt, where he was followed by W.H. Auden and Britten; and St. George’s School, Harpenden, where one of his first compositions was performed. Berkeley went to Merton College, Oxford, where he read French, Old French and Philology, and took the BA in 1926. Then, on the suggestion of Ravel to whom he showed some of his scores, he studied with Boulanger in Paris, where he was based until 1932. In many ways Berkeley was the quintessential Boulanger pupil, responsive to her passion for music and her rigorous demands in strict counterpoint; with her he effectively undertook his professional training; in this context, too, in 1928, he became a Roman Catholic, which profoundly affected both his life and work. After the prolonged influence of Boulanger the next landmark was not until Berkeley’s meeting with Britten at the ISCM Festival in Barcelona in 1936. They immediately collaborated on the orchestral suite, Mont Juic, and became close friends as well as colleagues. Even though Berkeley was ten years older the two composers found they had much in common and they influenced each other. Berkely was the first to set the poems of his Oxford contemporary, W.H. Auden (early songs now lost). Britten admired Berkeley's 1930s music and later conducted the Stabat Mater, which was dedicated to him; Berkeley eagerly awaited each of Britten's new works. During World War II Berkeley worked at the BBC in London as an orchestral programme builder and it was there that he met Elizabeth Freda Bernstein, whom he married in 1946; their happy domestic life proved an ideal background for his creative work. From 1946 to 1968 Berkeley was professor of composition at the RAM, where he exercised an influence on later generations which was no less significant for being unobtrusive. His later pupils included Bedford, Bennett, Mathias, Maw and Tavener: they have all paid tribute to his sensitive guidance and personal generosity. Berkeley’s honours have included the CBE (1957), the Cobbett Medal (1962), the Ordre National du Mérit Culturel de Monaco (1967), the Papal Knighthood of St Gregory (1973) and a knighthood (1974). Many universities and other organizations have granted him honorary status too, among which doctor of Oxford University (1970), fellow of Merton College (1974), fellow of the RNCM (1975), professor of Keele University (1976–9), member of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters (1980), Member of the GSMD (1980), Member of the Académie Royale, Belgium (1983) and doctor of City University (1984). From 1975 to 1983 he was President of Honour of the PRS and from 1977 to 1983 he was president of the Cheltenham Festival. Berkeley, Sir Lennox 2. Works. Berkeley lacked confidence in most of his early works written while he was studying with Boulanger and many of them disappeared, some to be rediscovered later. His first published composition, however, had been written at Oxford, a polished song with piano in G major, D’un vanneur de blé aux vents. Soon after he reached Paris his style changed: Tombeaux – five songs to poems by Jean Cocteau – for example, draws on bitonality of the kind then fashionable amongst the composers of Les Six. Berkeley had opportunities for performances of works on a larger scale too with his orchestral Suite given its première in Paris as early as 1928 and at the Proms in London the following year. He came into greater prominence with the oratorio Jonah, when it was broadcast by the BBC in 1936 and given at the Leeds Festival a year later, conducted by Berkeley himself. However, despite Britten’s admiration for the work it received a mixed response, and Berkeley withdrew it (it was revived in London in 1990). The score is permeated with Stravinskian neo-classicism – in some ways it seems to anticipate The Rake’s Progress – and its construction in separate numbers derives from the Bach passions and cantatas. Berkeley’s first unqualified success was a work for string orchestra, the Serenade op.12, which has become a mainstay of the British repertory alongside Britten’s Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge, which was written just before it, and Tippett’s Concerto for Double String Orchestra which came just after. Its four movements are in contrasted styles, though not as diverse as the Britten. The opening Vivace is an exhilarating moto perpetuo recalling the rhythmic energy of Bach’s ‘Brandenburg’ Concertos; the following Andantino is a melancholy serenade with pizzicato strings suggesting guitars; the third movement is a kind of scherzo where, as often in Berkeley, the material is continuously developed rather than merely repeated; the final Lento strikes the most personal note. Berkeley began the Serenade at Snape in Suffolk, where he shared the Old Mill with Britten. By the time he was writing the last movement the war had started and the colleague whom he idolized had gone to the USA with Pears, circumstances which appear to be reflected in the music. In 1940 Berkeley completed his First Symphony op.16, a spacious four-movement work lasting half an hour; but perhaps more characteristic is the Divertimento in B op.18, for small orchestra, commissioned by the BBC and one of several works the composer dedicated to Boulanger. The layout of the Divertimento avoids the formalities of symphonic design. It opens with a Prelude in extremely compressed sonata form and follows it with a Nocturne, a beautiful piece of lyrical pacing, leading to the emotional climax of the whole work. The Scherzo is of larger proportions than either of the two outside movements, while the vivacious Finale is a cross between Haydn and Poulenc in Berkeley’s own manner. By the 1940s he had achieved real maturity. In particular, the Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila op.27, for contralto and string orchestra, first sung by Kathleen Ferrier, create in their religious intensity a strong impression; while the Stabat mater op.28, written for Britten’s English Opera Group, is, if rarely heard, a work of comparable distinction. Of the many piano works from all periods the extended Sonata op.20 is a true landmark; outstanding too are the Six Preludes op.23, a kind of Mikrokosmos of Berkeley’s compositional technique. The Concerto in B for piano and orchestra op.29 is one of his most successful works written in a particularly felicitous form. The thematic layout of the first movement has a Mozartian elegance, while the second subject shows a blues influence which can be traced back to 1920s Paris, and which surfaces frequently in his melodic writing. The second movement, an Andante, is again typical in its introspective tranquillity and objective passion. The Finale combines the dry humour of Prokofiev with the high spirits of Les Six but given Berkeley’s inimitable stamp. In the 1950s he followed Britten’s lead into the theatre with three operas: the grand opera Nelson op.41, a one-act comedy, A Dinner Engagement op.45 and a biblical tableau, Ruth op.50. Nelson was well received at Sadlers Wells in 1954 but not revived until a concert performance in London in 1988. By contrast, the sophisticated, witty A Dinner Engagement is regularly staged. Ruth is an expansion of the serious language of the Four Poems of St Teresa into a touching sacred drama, and, as with A Dinner Engagement, it showed Berkeley to be more at home with something less ambitious than grand opera, something more in keeping with his personal reserve. The later Castaway op.68 is a one-act treatment of the story of Odysseus and Nausicaa, while at the end of his life illness prevented the completion of the first act of another grand opera, Faldon Park. In the early 1960s Berkeley began to show a remarkable ability to extend his musical language, and like other Boulanger pupils such as Copland and Carter he moved away from neo-classicism.