Charles-Valentin Alkan
Encyclopedia
Charles-Valentin Alkan (30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French
composer
and one of the greatest virtuoso
pianist
s of his day. His attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six, earning many awards, and as an adult became a famous virtuoso and teacher. Although early in his life he was socially active and good friends with prominent musicians and artists including Eugène Delacroix
, Franz Liszt
and Frédéric Chopin
, he gradually withdrew from the concert platform after 1848, and he lived a reclusive life in Paris until his death.
Alkan was born Charles-Valentin Morhange on 30 November 1813 at rue des Blancs-Manteaux in Paris
to Alkan Morhange (1780–1855) and Julie Morhange née
Abraham. He was the second of six children, one elder sister and four younger brothers, and his father supported the family as the proprietor of a private music school in Le Marais
, the Jewish quarter of Paris. At an early age, he and his siblings adopted their father's first name as their last (and were known by this during their studies at the Paris Conservatoire and subsequent careers). His brother Napoléon became professor of solfège
at the Conservatoire, his brother Maxim had a career writing light music for Parisan theatres, and his sister Céleste was also a pianist.
Charles-Valentin Alkan spent his life in and around Paris. His only known excursions were a concert tour in England in 1833-1834, and a brief visit to Metz
on family matters in the 1840s.
Alkan was a child prodigy. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six, where he studied both piano and organ. He was a favorite of his teacher, Joseph Zimmermann
, who also taught Georges Bizet
, César Franck
, Charles Gounod
, and Ambroise Thomas
. At the age of seven, he won a first prize for solfège
and prizes in piano, harmony
, and organ
, and Luigi Cherubini
, director of the Conservatoire, described his technique and ability as extraordinary. At the age of seven-and-a-half he gave his first public performance, appearing as a violinist; his first public performance as a pianist took place at the age of twelve when he performed several of his own compositions in a concert in a private home. His opus
1 dates from 1828, when he was 14 years old.
In his twenties, he taught and played concerts in elegant social circles, and was a friend of Franz Liszt
, George Sand
, Victor Hugo
and, later, Anton Rubinstein
. By 1838, at just 25 years old, Alkan had reached the peak of his career. He often performed with Chopin, and was famed as a virtuoso rivaling Liszt, Sigismond Thalberg
, and Friedrich Kalkbrenner
. Liszt once stated that Alkan had the finest piano technique of anyone he knew. At this time, (which coincides with the birth and childhood of his presumed son, Élie-Miriam Delaborde
), he withdrew into private study and composition for six years, returning to the concert platform in 1844. In the 1840s, he lived next to Frédéric Chopin
, and after Chopin died in 1849, many of his students transferred to Alkan.
In 1848 he faced a major disappointment when he was passed over for the position of head of the piano department in the Conservatoire upon Zimmermann's retirement; Alkan expected, and lobbied strongly for, the appointment, but Daniel Auber
, the head of the Conservatoire, replaced Zimmermann with Antoine Marmontel
, a former pupil of Alkan. Deep disappointment arising from this incident may account for his reluctance to perform in public thereafter. He was appointed organist at the Paris Temple
in 1851, but resigned the post almost immediately, and apart from two concerts given in 1853, he withdrew, in spite of his early fame and technical accomplishment, into virtual seclusion for some twenty-five years.
In a letter to Ferdinand Hiller
in 1861, Alkan wrote:
Despite this, Alkan had a circle of friends and continued to compose and publish. The German-Scottish musical academic Frederick Niecks
, several days after being sternly denied access by Alkan's concierge, found Alkan at Erard's. Niecks describes the meeting, saying, "the reception of me was not merely polite but most friendly." He also continued his correspondence with Hiller and with the Spanish pianist and composer Santiago Masarnau
whom he had befriended in Paris and to whom he had dedicated his opus 16 'Trois études de bravoure'.
Jack Gibbons
writes of Alkan's personality:
In his last decade Alkan emerged to give a series of 'Petits Concerts' at the Érard
piano showrooms, which featured music not only by himself but of his favourite composers from Bach
onwards. He was occasionally assisted in these concerts by his siblings. Those attending included Vincent d'Indy
.
There are periods of Alkan's life about which little is known, other than that he was immersed in the study of the Bible
and the Talmud
. It appears from his correspondence with Ferdinand Hiller
that Alkan completed a full translation into French of both the Old Testament
and the New Testament
, from their original languages. This has been completely lost, as have many of Alkan's compositions. Amongst the missing works are some string sextet
s and a full-scale orchestral symphony
, which was described in an article in 1846 by Léon Kreutzer, to whom Alkan had shown the score.
(1839–1913) is generally believed to have been Alkan's son. Some have sought significance in the fact that Delaborde was the maiden name of the mother of Alkan's friend (and sometime lover of Frédéric Chopin
) George Sand
. Delaborde was taught by Alkan in his youth and performed and edited many of Alkan's works. Like his father, he was a notable pédalier
player. After Georges Bizet
's death, his widow Geneviève (daughter of the composer Fromental Halévy
) had an alliance with Delaborde; indeed there exists the application for registration of a marriage between them, which was never carried out. Interestingly Delaborde, who was a passionate athlete, may have been indirectly responsible for Bizet's death, which followed a swimming competition between the two, as a result of which Bizet caught a chill. Delaborde married late in life, and is not known to have had any children.
Alkan died in Paris on 29 March 1888, at the age of 74. For many years it was believed that his death was caused by a bookcase falling on him in his home, brought down as he reached for a volume of the Talmud
from a high shelf. This apocryphal tale, which may have been circulated by Delaborde, is argued against by Hugh Macdonald, who reports the discovery of a contemporary letter by his concièrge explaining that Alkan had been found prostrate in his kitchen, under a porte-parapluie (a heavy coat/umbrella rack), after his concièrge heard him moaning. He had possibly fainted, bringing it down on himself while grabbing out for support. He was reportedly carried to his bedroom and died later that evening. The story of the bookcase may have its roots in a legend told of the Rabbi
Aryeh Leib ben Asher
, known as 'Shaagat Aryeh', rabbi of Metz
, the town from which Alkan's family originated.
Alkan was buried on 1 April (Easter Sunday
) in the Jewish section of Montmartre Cemetery
, Paris, not far from the tomb of his contemporary Fromental Halévy
.
A myth also circulates about an alleged obituary of Alkan, cited as fact in Ronald Smith
's biography of the composer and since widely quoted, credited to the magazine 'Le Ménéstrel', beginning with the words "Alkan is dead. He had to die in order to prove his existence." No such obituary appeared in 'Le Ménéstrel' and none has been located to date in any other contemporary journal.
Alkan's sister Céleste is also buried in his tomb at Montmartre.
However, this technique was not at the expense of musicality. This is exemplified by his more sensitive pieces, (e.g. his Op. 22 Nocturne in B and several of his Esquisses
). The composer Vincent d'Indy
, recalling Alkan at his mid-sixties with "skinny, hooked fingers" in an empty room with an Erard pedalier playing Bach, said:
Alkan later played Beethoven's Op. 110 sonata
, of which d'Indy said:
Another account of his playing, this one by a pupil of Liszt and Alkan towards the end of his life, recalls how Alkan's performance retained "an extraordinarily youthful quality despite his appearance, which was frail and older than his years."
(a piano with a pedal board), of which he was a noted exponent. Some of his music requires a dazzling virtuosity, calling for extreme velocity, enormous leaps at speed, long stretches of fast repeated notes, and the maintenance of widely-spaced contrapuntal
lines. Such examples of his music have been reviewed as "ferociously" and even "impossibly" difficult. The pianist Marc-André Hamelin
has said:
Alkan's notable compositions include the Grande sonate Les quatre âges
(Op. 33), depicting the Four Ages of Man, and the two sets of etude
s in all the major and minor keys (Op. 35 and 39, respectively). The opus 39 collection contains the Symphony for Solo Piano (numbers four, five, six and seven), and the Concerto for Solo Piano
(numbers eight, nine and ten). The Concerto takes nearly an hour to play. Number twelve of Op. 39 is a set of variations Le festin d'Ésope ("Aesop
's Feast").
Amongst a variety of other works, Alkan also composed programmatic pieces, such as Le chemin de fer
("The Railroad", Op. 27) which may be the earliest composition giving a musical picture of a steam train.
Alkan's chamber music compositions include a violin sonata, a cello sonata, and a piano trio. One of his most bizarre pieces is the Marcia funebre, sulla morte d'un Pappagallo ("Funeral march
on the death of a parrot
", 1859), for three oboe
s, bassoon
and voices.
Musically, many of his ideas were unconventional, even innovative. Some of his multi-movement compositions show "progressive tonality" which would have been familiar to the later Danish
composer, Carl Nielsen
(for example, Alkan's sonata Les quatre âges begins in D major and ends in G-sharp minor). He was rigorous in avoiding enharmonic
spelling, occasionally modulating to keys containing double-sharps or double-flats, so pianists are occasionally required to come to terms with distant keys such as E major and the occasional triple-sharp.
was Alkan's pupil at the Conservatoire is mistaken, as Fanelli came to the Conservatoire in 1876, long after Alkan had left it. However, Alkan had important admirers, including Franz Liszt
, Ferruccio Busoni
, Anton Rubinstein
, Egon Petri
and Kaikhosru Sorabji
. Liszt said that Alkan had the finest piano technique of anyone he knew. Rubinstein dedicated his fifth piano concerto to him. When in Paris, both Liszt and Rubinstein made a point of visiting Alkan. Busoni ranked Alkan with Liszt and Chopin as a master of the pianoforte étude in his preface to the first volume of the collected edition of Liszt's pianoforte works
. In the first half of the twentieth century, when Alkan's name was still obscure, Busoni, Petri and Frieda Kindler included his works in their performances. Sorabji published an article on Alkan in his book Around Music.
Debussy and Ravel both studied Alkan's music under teachers who knew Alkan personally and noted their debt to his examples. Alkan's organ compositions were known to César Franck
, Camille Saint-Saëns
and others and their influence can be traced in the French organ school up to the present day. They have only recently been recorded, however; the English organist Kevin Bowyer
is committing all of them to disc for the British label Toccata Classics. The composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji
promoted Alkan's music in his reviews and criticism, and his sixth and final symphony for piano solo, completed in 1976, includes a movement entitled Quasi Alkan.
For much of the 20th century, Alkan's work seemed forgotten, but was steadily revived. English pianist Ronald Smith
in particular championed his music through performances, recordings, a biography and the Alkan Society of which he was president for many years. Works by Alkan have also been recorded by John Ogdon
, Raymond Lewenthal
, Jack Gibbons
, Egon Petri
, Mark Latimer
, Stephanie McCallum
, Alan Weiss, Steven Osborne
and Marc-André Hamelin
, amongst others. Ronald Stevenson
has composed a piano piece Le festin d'Alkan (referring to Alkan's Op. 39 No. 12) and the composer Michael Finnissy
has also written piano pieces referring to Alkan, e.g. Alkan-Paganini, no.5 of The History of Photography in Sound. Marc-André Hamelin's Étude no. IV is a moto perpetuo
study combining themes from Alkan's Symphony Op. 39 No. 7 and Alkan's own perpetual motion etude Op. 76 No. 3. It is dedicated to Averil Kovacs and François Luguenot, respectively activists in the English and French Alkan Societies. As Hamelin writes in his preface to this étude, the idea to combine these came from the composer Alistair Hinton, the finale of whose Piano Sonata No. 5 (1994–95) includes a substantial section entitled "Alkanique".
On 25 April 2009, BBC Radio 3 dedicated a 45 minute program to Alkan, presented by Piers Lane
and with contributions by John White
and David Conway.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
and one of the greatest virtuoso
Virtuoso
A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability in the fine arts, at singing or playing a musical instrument. The plural form is either virtuosi or the Anglicisation, virtuosos, and the feminine form sometimes used is virtuosa...
pianist
Pianist
A pianist is a musician who plays the piano. A professional pianist can perform solo pieces, play with an ensemble or orchestra, or accompany one or more singers, solo instrumentalists, or other performers.-Choice of genres:...
s of his day. His attachment to his Jewish origins is displayed both in his life and his work. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six, earning many awards, and as an adult became a famous virtuoso and teacher. Although early in his life he was socially active and good friends with prominent musicians and artists including Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
, Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
and Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
, he gradually withdrew from the concert platform after 1848, and he lived a reclusive life in Paris until his death.
Life and career
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to Alkan Morhange (1780–1855) and Julie Morhange née
NEE
NEE is a political protest group whose goal was to provide an alternative for voters who are unhappy with all political parties at hand in Belgium, where voting is compulsory.The NEE party was founded in 2005 in Antwerp...
Abraham. He was the second of six children, one elder sister and four younger brothers, and his father supported the family as the proprietor of a private music school in Le Marais
Le Marais
Le Marais is a historic district in Paris, France. Long the aristocratic district of Paris, it hosts many outstanding buildings of historic and architectural importance...
, the Jewish quarter of Paris. At an early age, he and his siblings adopted their father's first name as their last (and were known by this during their studies at the Paris Conservatoire and subsequent careers). His brother Napoléon became professor of solfège
Solfege
In music, solfège is a pedagogical solmization technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfège syllable...
at the Conservatoire, his brother Maxim had a career writing light music for Parisan theatres, and his sister Céleste was also a pianist.
Charles-Valentin Alkan spent his life in and around Paris. His only known excursions were a concert tour in England in 1833-1834, and a brief visit to Metz
Metz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...
on family matters in the 1840s.
Alkan was a child prodigy. He entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of six, where he studied both piano and organ. He was a favorite of his teacher, Joseph Zimmermann
Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann
Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmermann, , known as Pierre Zimmerman and Joseph Zimmermann, was a French pianist, composer, and music teacher.Zimmermann was born in Paris, the son of a piano maker...
, who also taught Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
, César Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
, Charles Gounod
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod was a French composer, known for his Ave Maria as well as his operas Faust and Roméo et Juliette.-Biography:...
, and Ambroise Thomas
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas was a French composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet and as Director of the Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.-Biography:"There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."- Emmanuel Chabrier-Early life...
. At the age of seven, he won a first prize for solfège
Solfege
In music, solfège is a pedagogical solmization technique for the teaching of sight-singing in which each note of the score is sung to a special syllable, called a solfège syllable...
and prizes in piano, harmony
Harmony
In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...
, and organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, and Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....
, director of the Conservatoire, described his technique and ability as extraordinary. At the age of seven-and-a-half he gave his first public performance, appearing as a violinist; his first public performance as a pianist took place at the age of twelve when he performed several of his own compositions in a concert in a private home. His opus
Opus number
An Opus number , pl. opera and opuses, abbreviated, sing. Op. and pl. Opp. refers to a number generally assigned by composers to an individual composition or set of compositions on publication, to help identify their works...
1 dates from 1828, when he was 14 years old.
In his twenties, he taught and played concerts in elegant social circles, and was a friend of Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...
, Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
and, later, Anton Rubinstein
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...
. By 1838, at just 25 years old, Alkan had reached the peak of his career. He often performed with Chopin, and was famed as a virtuoso rivaling Liszt, Sigismond Thalberg
Sigismond Thalberg
Sigismond Thalberg was a composer and one of the most distinguished virtuoso pianists of the 19th century.- Descent and family background :...
, and Friedrich Kalkbrenner
Friedrich Kalkbrenner
Friedrich Wilhelm Michael Kalkbrenner was a German pianist, composer, piano teacher and piano manufacturer who spent most of his life in England and France. Before the advent of Frédéric Chopin, Sigismond Thalberg and Franz Liszt, Kalkbrenner was by many considered to be the foremost pianist in...
. Liszt once stated that Alkan had the finest piano technique of anyone he knew. At this time, (which coincides with the birth and childhood of his presumed son, Élie-Miriam Delaborde
Élie-Miriam Delaborde
Eraïm-Miriam Delaborde, generally known as Élie-Miriam Delaborde was a French pianist and composer. He was also renowned as a player of the pedal piano....
), he withdrew into private study and composition for six years, returning to the concert platform in 1844. In the 1840s, he lived next to Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
, and after Chopin died in 1849, many of his students transferred to Alkan.
In 1848 he faced a major disappointment when he was passed over for the position of head of the piano department in the Conservatoire upon Zimmermann's retirement; Alkan expected, and lobbied strongly for, the appointment, but Daniel Auber
Daniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber was a French composer.-Biography:The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he also allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments...
, the head of the Conservatoire, replaced Zimmermann with Antoine Marmontel
Antoine François Marmontel
Antoine François Marmontel was a French pianist, teacher and musicographer.Marmontel entered the Paris Conservatory in 1827. His teachers were Pierre Zimmerman in pianoforte, Victor Dourlen in harmony, Jacques Fromental Halévy in fugue and Jean-François Le Sueur in composition...
, a former pupil of Alkan. Deep disappointment arising from this incident may account for his reluctance to perform in public thereafter. He was appointed organist at the Paris Temple
Synagogue
A synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
in 1851, but resigned the post almost immediately, and apart from two concerts given in 1853, he withdrew, in spite of his early fame and technical accomplishment, into virtual seclusion for some twenty-five years.
In a letter to Ferdinand Hiller
Ferdinand Hiller
Ferdinand Hiller was a German composer, conductor, writer and music-director.-Biography:Ferdinand Hiller was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, where his father Justus was a merchant in English textiles – a business eventually continued by Ferdinand’s brother Joseph...
in 1861, Alkan wrote:
“I’m becoming daily more and more misanthropic and misogynous…nothing worthwhile, good or useful to do… no one to devote myself to. My situation makes me horridly sad and wretched. Even musical production has lost its attraction for me for I can’t see the point or goal”.
Despite this, Alkan had a circle of friends and continued to compose and publish. The German-Scottish musical academic Frederick Niecks
Frederick Niecks
Frederick Niecks was a German musical scholar and author, who was resident in Scotland for the bulk of his life. He is best remembered now for his biographies of Frédéric Chopin and Robert Schumann.-Biography:...
, several days after being sternly denied access by Alkan's concierge, found Alkan at Erard's. Niecks describes the meeting, saying, "the reception of me was not merely polite but most friendly." He also continued his correspondence with Hiller and with the Spanish pianist and composer Santiago Masarnau
Santiago Masarnau Fernández
Santiago Masarnau Fernández, , ,was a Spanish pianist, composer and religious activist.-Early life:...
whom he had befriended in Paris and to whom he had dedicated his opus 16 'Trois études de bravoure'.
Jack Gibbons
Jack Gibbons
Jack Gibbons is an English classical pianist and composer.-Biography:Gibbons was born in England. His father is a scientist and his mother a visual artist. He began his piano studies in Stockton-on-Tees, later continuing in Oxford. He began performing in public at the age of 10...
writes of Alkan's personality:
Alkan was an intelligent, lively, humorous and warm person (all characteristics which feature strongly in his music) whose only crime seems to have been having a vivid imagination, and whose occasional eccentricities (mild when compared with the behaviour of other 'highly-strung' artistes!) stemmed mainly from his hypersensitive nature.
In his last decade Alkan emerged to give a series of 'Petits Concerts' at the Érard
Sébastien Érard
Sébastien Érard , born Sébastien Erhard, was a French instrument maker of German origin who specialised in the production of pianos and harps, developing the capacities of both instruments and pioneering the modern piano....
piano showrooms, which featured music not only by himself but of his favourite composers from Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
onwards. He was occasionally assisted in these concerts by his siblings. Those attending included Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...
.
There are periods of Alkan's life about which little is known, other than that he was immersed in the study of the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and the Talmud
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
. It appears from his correspondence with Ferdinand Hiller
Ferdinand Hiller
Ferdinand Hiller was a German composer, conductor, writer and music-director.-Biography:Ferdinand Hiller was born to a wealthy Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main, where his father Justus was a merchant in English textiles – a business eventually continued by Ferdinand’s brother Joseph...
that Alkan completed a full translation into French of both the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
and the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
, from their original languages. This has been completely lost, as have many of Alkan's compositions. Amongst the missing works are some string sextet
Sextet
A sextet is a formation containing exactly six members. It is commonly associated with vocal or musical instrument groups, but can be applied to any situation where six similar or related objects are considered a single unit....
s and a full-scale orchestral symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
, which was described in an article in 1846 by Léon Kreutzer, to whom Alkan had shown the score.
Delaborde
Alkan did not marry, but the pianist Élie-Miriam DelabordeÉlie-Miriam Delaborde
Eraïm-Miriam Delaborde, generally known as Élie-Miriam Delaborde was a French pianist and composer. He was also renowned as a player of the pedal piano....
(1839–1913) is generally believed to have been Alkan's son. Some have sought significance in the fact that Delaborde was the maiden name of the mother of Alkan's friend (and sometime lover of Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric Chopin
Frédéric François Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist. He is considered one of the great masters of Romantic music and has been called "the poet of the piano"....
) George Sand
George Sand
Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, later Baroness Dudevant , best known by her pseudonym George Sand , was a French novelist and memoirist.-Life:...
. Delaborde was taught by Alkan in his youth and performed and edited many of Alkan's works. Like his father, he was a notable pédalier
Pedal piano
The pedal piano is a kind of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ....
player. After Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet formally Alexandre César Léopold Bizet, was a French composer, mainly of operas. In a career cut short by his early death, he achieved few successes before his final work, Carmen, became one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertory.During a...
's death, his widow Geneviève (daughter of the composer Fromental Halévy
Fromental Halévy
Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...
) had an alliance with Delaborde; indeed there exists the application for registration of a marriage between them, which was never carried out. Interestingly Delaborde, who was a passionate athlete, may have been indirectly responsible for Bizet's death, which followed a swimming competition between the two, as a result of which Bizet caught a chill. Delaborde married late in life, and is not known to have had any children.
Death
Talmud
The Talmud is a central text of mainstream Judaism. It takes the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history....
from a high shelf. This apocryphal tale, which may have been circulated by Delaborde, is argued against by Hugh Macdonald, who reports the discovery of a contemporary letter by his concièrge explaining that Alkan had been found prostrate in his kitchen, under a porte-parapluie (a heavy coat/umbrella rack), after his concièrge heard him moaning. He had possibly fainted, bringing it down on himself while grabbing out for support. He was reportedly carried to his bedroom and died later that evening. The story of the bookcase may have its roots in a legend told of the Rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
Aryeh Leib ben Asher
Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gunzberg
Aryeh Leib ben Asher Gunzberg , also known as the Shaagas Aryeh , was an Ashkenazi rabbi and author....
, known as 'Shaagat Aryeh', rabbi of Metz
Metz
Metz is a city in the northeast of France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers.Metz is the capital of the Lorraine region and prefecture of the Moselle department. Located near the tripoint along the junction of France, Germany, and Luxembourg, Metz forms a central place...
, the town from which Alkan's family originated.
Alkan was buried on 1 April (Easter Sunday
Easter
Easter is the central feast in the Christian liturgical year. According to the Canonical gospels, Jesus rose from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. His resurrection is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday...
) in the Jewish section of Montmartre Cemetery
Montmartre Cemetery
Montmartre Cemetery is a cemetery in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, France.-History:Cemeteries had been banned from Paris since the shutting down of the Cimetière des Innocents in 1786, as they presented health hazards...
, Paris, not far from the tomb of his contemporary Fromental Halévy
Fromental Halévy
Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...
.
A myth also circulates about an alleged obituary of Alkan, cited as fact in Ronald Smith
Ronald Smith
Ronald Sam Smith was an English classical pianist, composer and teacher, born in London. He entered the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 16 with the Sir Michael Costa Scholarship for composition...
's biography of the composer and since widely quoted, credited to the magazine 'Le Ménéstrel', beginning with the words "Alkan is dead. He had to die in order to prove his existence." No such obituary appeared in 'Le Ménéstrel' and none has been located to date in any other contemporary journal.
Alkan's sister Céleste is also buried in his tomb at Montmartre.
Technique
Alkan's remarkable technique is evidenced by the technical and physical demands of his compositions.However, this technique was not at the expense of musicality. This is exemplified by his more sensitive pieces, (e.g. his Op. 22 Nocturne in B and several of his Esquisses
Esquisses (Alkan)
The Esquisses , Op. 63 is a set of 49 short piano pieces written by French composer Charles-Valentin Alkan and published in 1861. The Esquisses is divided into four books, each book running through all the major and minor keys once. The set ends with an unnumbered Laus Deo in C major.Unlike many...
). The composer Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy
Vincent d'Indy was a French composer and teacher.-Life:Paul Marie Théodore Vincent d'Indy was born in Paris into an aristocratic family of royalist and Catholic persuasion. He had piano lessons from an early age from his paternal grandmother, who passed him on to Antoine François Marmontel and...
, recalling Alkan at his mid-sixties with "skinny, hooked fingers" in an empty room with an Erard pedalier playing Bach, said:
"I listened, rooted to the spot by the expressive, crystal clear playing."
Alkan later played Beethoven's Op. 110 sonata
Piano Sonata No. 31 (Beethoven)
The Piano Sonata No. 31 in A flat major, Op. 110, by Ludwig van Beethoven was composed in 1821. It is the central piano sonata in the group of three opp. 109–111 which he wrote between 1820 and 1822, and the thirty-first of his published piano sonatas....
, of which d'Indy said:
"What happened to the great Beethovenian poem—above all, the Arioso and the Fugue, where the melody, penetrating the mystery of Death itself, climbs up to a blaze of light—I couldn't begin to describe. [The performance] affected me with enthusiasm such as I have never experienced since. This was not Liszt—less perfect technically—but it had greater intimacy and was more humanly moving..."
Another account of his playing, this one by a pupil of Liszt and Alkan towards the end of his life, recalls how Alkan's performance retained "an extraordinarily youthful quality despite his appearance, which was frail and older than his years."
Music
Like Chopin, Alkan wrote almost exclusively for the keyboard, although in Alkan's case this included the organ and the pédalierPedal piano
The pedal piano is a kind of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ....
(a piano with a pedal board), of which he was a noted exponent. Some of his music requires a dazzling virtuosity, calling for extreme velocity, enormous leaps at speed, long stretches of fast repeated notes, and the maintenance of widely-spaced contrapuntal
Counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more voices that are independent in contour and rhythm and are harmonically interdependent . It has been most commonly identified in classical music, developing strongly during the Renaissance and in much of the common practice period,...
lines. Such examples of his music have been reviewed as "ferociously" and even "impossibly" difficult. The pianist Marc-André Hamelin
Marc-André Hamelin
Marc-André Hamelin, OC, CQ, is a French Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer.Born in Montreal, Quebec, Marc-André Hamelin began his piano studies at the age of five. His father, a pharmacist by trade who was also a pianist, introduced him to the works of Alkan, Godowsky, and Sorabji when he was...
has said:
"The aspect of Alkan that is most apparent when people who don't know him listen to him for the first time is that his music is difficult to play... But in a way, I wish that it did not take a formidable technique ... the great musical worth of Alkan's music makes it worthwhile to master those difficulties."
Alkan's notable compositions include the Grande sonate Les quatre âges
Grande sonate 'Les quatre âges'
Grande sonate: 'Les quatre âges is a four movement sonata for piano by Charles-Valentin Alkan. The sonata's title refers to the subtitles given to each movement, portraying a man at the ages of 20, 30, 40, and 50...
(Op. 33), depicting the Four Ages of Man, and the two sets of etude
Étude
An étude , is an instrumental musical composition, most commonly of considerable difficulty, usually designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular technical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano...
s in all the major and minor keys (Op. 35 and 39, respectively). The opus 39 collection contains the Symphony for Solo Piano (numbers four, five, six and seven), and the Concerto for Solo Piano
Concerto for solo piano (Alkan)
Concerto for solo piano is a 3-movement solo piano piece written by Charles-Valentin Alkan. The pieces are part of a 12 piece cycle entitled Douze études dans tous les tons mineurs , published in 1857...
(numbers eight, nine and ten). The Concerto takes nearly an hour to play. Number twelve of Op. 39 is a set of variations Le festin d'Ésope ("Aesop
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
's Feast").
Le chemin de fer
Le chemin de fer , Op. 27, is a programmatic étude for piano composed by Charles-Valentin Alkan in 1844,, frequently cited as the first musical representation of a railway...
("The Railroad", Op. 27) which may be the earliest composition giving a musical picture of a steam train.
Alkan's chamber music compositions include a violin sonata, a cello sonata, and a piano trio. One of his most bizarre pieces is the Marcia funebre, sulla morte d'un Pappagallo ("Funeral march
Funeral march
A funeral march is a march, usually in a minor key, in a slow "simple duple" metre, imitating the solemn pace of a funeral procession. Some such marches are often considered appropriate for use during funerals and other sombre occasions, the most well-known being that of Chopin...
on the death of a parrot
Parrot
Parrots, also known as psittacines , are birds of the roughly 372 species in 86 genera that make up the order Psittaciformes, found in most tropical and subtropical regions. The order is subdivided into three families: the Psittacidae , the Cacatuidae and the Strigopidae...
", 1859), for three oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
s, bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
and voices.
Musically, many of his ideas were unconventional, even innovative. Some of his multi-movement compositions show "progressive tonality" which would have been familiar to the later Danish
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...
composer, Carl Nielsen
Carl Nielsen
Carl August Nielsen , , widely recognised as Denmark's greatest composer, was also a conductor and a violinist. Brought up by poor but musically talented parents on the island of Funen, he demonstrated his musical abilities at an early age...
(for example, Alkan's sonata Les quatre âges begins in D major and ends in G-sharp minor). He was rigorous in avoiding enharmonic
Enharmonic
In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note , interval , or key signature which is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature, but "spelled", or named, differently...
spelling, occasionally modulating to keys containing double-sharps or double-flats, so pianists are occasionally required to come to terms with distant keys such as E major and the occasional triple-sharp.
Influence
Alkan seems to have had few followers. The claim that Ernest FanelliErnest Fanelli
Ernest Fanelli was a French composer of Italian descent who is best known for sparking a controversy about the origins of Impressionist music when his composition Tableaux Symphoniques was first performed in 1912...
was Alkan's pupil at the Conservatoire is mistaken, as Fanelli came to the Conservatoire in 1876, long after Alkan had left it. However, Alkan had important admirers, including Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt ; ), was a 19th-century Hungarian composer, pianist, conductor, and teacher.Liszt became renowned in Europe during the nineteenth century for his virtuosic skill as a pianist. He was said by his contemporaries to have been the most technically advanced pianist of his age...
, Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni
Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...
, Anton Rubinstein
Anton Rubinstein
Anton Grigorevich Rubinstein was a Russian-Jewish pianist, composer and conductor. As a pianist he was regarded as a rival of Franz Liszt, and he ranks amongst the great keyboard virtuosos...
, Egon Petri
Egon Petri
Egon Petri was a classical pianist.-Biography:Petri's family was Dutch and he was born a Dutch citizen, but he was born in Hanover in Germany and was brought up in Dresden. His father was a professional violinist who taught his son that instrument. Petri played in the Dresden Court Orchestra and...
and Kaikhosru Sorabji
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was an English composer, music critic, pianist, and writer.-Biography:...
. Liszt said that Alkan had the finest piano technique of anyone he knew. Rubinstein dedicated his fifth piano concerto to him. When in Paris, both Liszt and Rubinstein made a point of visiting Alkan. Busoni ranked Alkan with Liszt and Chopin as a master of the pianoforte étude in his preface to the first volume of the collected edition of Liszt's pianoforte works
Catalog of adaptations by Ferruccio Busoni
The composer Ferruccio Busoni produced a large number of adaptations, transcriptions, and editions of works by other composers. He also wrote a number of cadenzas for compositions by other composers. This article presents a complete catalog of these works....
. In the first half of the twentieth century, when Alkan's name was still obscure, Busoni, Petri and Frieda Kindler included his works in their performances. Sorabji published an article on Alkan in his book Around Music.
Debussy and Ravel both studied Alkan's music under teachers who knew Alkan personally and noted their debt to his examples. Alkan's organ compositions were known to César Franck
César Franck
César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck was a composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher who worked in Paris during his adult life....
, Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
and others and their influence can be traced in the French organ school up to the present day. They have only recently been recorded, however; the English organist Kevin Bowyer
Kevin Bowyer
Kevin John Bowyer is an English organist, known for his prolific recording and recital career and his interest in playing unusual, modern and extremely difficult compositions.-Biography:...
is committing all of them to disc for the British label Toccata Classics. The composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was an English composer, music critic, pianist, and writer.-Biography:...
promoted Alkan's music in his reviews and criticism, and his sixth and final symphony for piano solo, completed in 1976, includes a movement entitled Quasi Alkan.
For much of the 20th century, Alkan's work seemed forgotten, but was steadily revived. English pianist Ronald Smith
Ronald Smith
Ronald Sam Smith was an English classical pianist, composer and teacher, born in London. He entered the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 16 with the Sir Michael Costa Scholarship for composition...
in particular championed his music through performances, recordings, a biography and the Alkan Society of which he was president for many years. Works by Alkan have also been recorded by John Ogdon
John Ogdon
John Andrew Howard Ogdon was an English pianist and composer.-Biography:Ogdon was born in Mansfield Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire, and attended Manchester Grammar School, before studying at the Royal Northern College of Music between 1953 and 1957, where his fellow students under Richard Hall...
, Raymond Lewenthal
Raymond Lewenthal
Raymond Lewenthal was an American pianist.-Biography:Lewenthal was born in San Antonio, Texas to Russian-French parents. His birth date is often given as 1926, but he was actually born three years earlier in 1923...
, Jack Gibbons
Jack Gibbons
Jack Gibbons is an English classical pianist and composer.-Biography:Gibbons was born in England. His father is a scientist and his mother a visual artist. He began his piano studies in Stockton-on-Tees, later continuing in Oxford. He began performing in public at the age of 10...
, Egon Petri
Egon Petri
Egon Petri was a classical pianist.-Biography:Petri's family was Dutch and he was born a Dutch citizen, but he was born in Hanover in Germany and was brought up in Dresden. His father was a professional violinist who taught his son that instrument. Petri played in the Dresden Court Orchestra and...
, Mark Latimer
Mark Latimer
Mark Latimer is an English pianist.His repertoire consists of over 75 performed piano concertos, including the mammoth Concerto for Piano and Chorus by Busoni and the Alkan Concerto for solo piano, of which he made the first live recording...
, Stephanie McCallum
Stephanie McCallum
Stephanie McCallum is a classical pianist. She has recorded works of Erik Satie, Ludwig van Beethoven, Charles-Valentin Alkan, Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann, Carl Maria von Weber, Albéric Magnard, Pierre Boulez, and Iannis Xenakis among others.-Life:Stephanie McCallum studied with Alexander...
, Alan Weiss, Steven Osborne
Steven Osborne (pianist)
Steven Osborne is a Scottish pianist who has performed concertos and solo recitals worldwide.He was taught by Richard Beauchamp at St Mary's Music School in Edinburgh before going to the Royal Northern College of Music/Manchester University in Manchester to study under Renna Kellaway...
and Marc-André Hamelin
Marc-André Hamelin
Marc-André Hamelin, OC, CQ, is a French Canadian virtuoso pianist and composer.Born in Montreal, Quebec, Marc-André Hamelin began his piano studies at the age of five. His father, a pharmacist by trade who was also a pianist, introduced him to the works of Alkan, Godowsky, and Sorabji when he was...
, amongst others. Ronald Stevenson
Ronald Stevenson
Ronald Stevenson is a British composer, pianist, and writer about music.-Biography:The son of a Scottish father and English mother, Stevenson studied at the Royal Manchester College of Music , studying composition with Richard Hall and piano with Iso Elinson, graduating with distinction...
has composed a piano piece Le festin d'Alkan (referring to Alkan's Op. 39 No. 12) and the composer Michael Finnissy
Michael Finnissy
Michael Finnissy is an English composer and pianist. His music is characterised by the range of extremes often found in his work; opposing binary structures are found commonly, often seen as juxtaposing textures, register and tempi...
has also written piano pieces referring to Alkan, e.g. Alkan-Paganini, no.5 of The History of Photography in Sound. Marc-André Hamelin's Étude no. IV is a moto perpetuo
Perpetual motion
Perpetual motion describes hypothetical machines that operate or produce useful work indefinitely and, more generally, hypothetical machines that produce more work or energy than they consume, whether they might operate indefinitely or not....
study combining themes from Alkan's Symphony Op. 39 No. 7 and Alkan's own perpetual motion etude Op. 76 No. 3. It is dedicated to Averil Kovacs and François Luguenot, respectively activists in the English and French Alkan Societies. As Hamelin writes in his preface to this étude, the idea to combine these came from the composer Alistair Hinton, the finale of whose Piano Sonata No. 5 (1994–95) includes a substantial section entitled "Alkanique".
On 25 April 2009, BBC Radio 3 dedicated a 45 minute program to Alkan, presented by Piers Lane
Piers Lane
Piers Lane is an Australian classical pianist. His performance career has taken him to more than 40 countries. His concerto repertoire exceeds 75 works.- Early life :...
and with contributions by John White
John White (composer)
John White is an English composer and musical performer.-Life:White trained and taught at the London Royal College of Music...
and David Conway.
Selected recordings
This list comprises a selection of some significant premiere and other recordings by musicians who have become closely associated with Alkan's works. A comprehensive discography is available at the Alkan Society website.- Études dans tous les tons mineurs op. 39 - played by Ronald Smith (piano). Recorded 1977. EMI, SLS 5100 [3 LPs] (1978), partly reissued EMI Gemini, 585 4842 (2003)
- Études dans tous les tons mineurs op. 39 and other works - played by Jack Gibbons (piano). Recorded 1995. ASV, CD DCS 227 [2 CDs] (1995)
- Concerto op. 39, nos.8-10 - played by John Ogdon (piano). Recorded 1969. RCA, LSC-3192 [LP] (1972). Great British Pianists, 4569132 (1999)
- Le festin d'Esope (op. 39 no. 12) and other works - played by Raymond Lewenthal. Recorded 1966. RCA LM 2815 [LP mono], LSC-2815 [LP stereo]; BMG High Performance Series 633310 (1999)
- Grande sonate op. 33 - played by Marc-André Hamelin (piano). Recorded 1994. Hyperion, CDA669764 (1995).
- 11 Pièces dans le style religieux, et un transcription du Messie de Hændel op. 72 - played by Kevin Bowyer (organ). Recorded 2005. Toccata TOCC 0031 (2007)
- Sonate de concert op. 47 for cello and piano - played by Steven Osborne (piano) and Alban Gebhart (cello). Recorded 2008. Hyperion CDA67624 (2008).
- Piano Trio op.30 - played by Trio Alkan. Recorded 1992. Naxos, 8555352 (2001)
Media
Sources
- The Concise Edition of Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 8th ed. Revised by Nicolas SlonimskyNicolas SlonimskyNicolas Slonimsky was a Russian born American composer, conductor, musician, music critic, lexicographer and author. He described himself as a "diaskeuast" ; "a reviser or interpolator."- Life :...
. New York, Schirmer Books, 1993. ISBN 0-02-872416-X
About Alkan
- Alkan Society website, including complete and regularly updated discography
- Alkan-Zimmerman International Music Association
- "The Myths of Alkan" by Jack Gibbons
- Unriddling Alkan
- Bibliography, Discography, Sheet music and MIDI
- Pictures of Alkan.
Scores and sheet-music
- Free Alkan scores and manuscripts - site of Sylvain Chosson
- Kunst der Fuge website: many of the piano works in MIDI files
- Alkan Piano Trio-Discussion of work and soundbites
- www.kreusch-sheet-music.net - Free Scores by Alkan
Performances on the Web
- Alkan's Allegro Barbaro (Etudes dans les tons majeurs, Op. 35. No. 5), played by Jack GibbonsJack GibbonsJack Gibbons is an English classical pianist and composer.-Biography:Gibbons was born in England. His father is a scientist and his mother a visual artist. He began his piano studies in Stockton-on-Tees, later continuing in Oxford. He began performing in public at the age of 10...
- Menuet from Alkan's Symphonie op. 39 no. 6, played by Jonathan PowellJonathan Powell (musician)Jonathan Powell is a British pianist and composer. He was a student of Denis Matthews and Sulamita Aronovsky. He made his performing debut at the age of 20 in the Purcell Room in London....
. - Last movement of Alkan's Symphonie (op. 39 no. 7), played by Jonathan Powell
- First movement of Alkan's Concerto (op. 39 no. 8), played by Jack GibbonsJack GibbonsJack Gibbons is an English classical pianist and composer.-Biography:Gibbons was born in England. His father is a scientist and his mother a visual artist. He began his piano studies in Stockton-on-Tees, later continuing in Oxford. He began performing in public at the age of 10...