Roberto Gerhard
Encyclopedia
Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder (ruˈβɛrd ʒəˈɾart) (25 September 1896 – 5 January 1970) was a Catalan
Spanish composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia
as Robert Gerhard.
, near Tarragona
, Spain, the son of a German-Swiss father and an Alsatian
mother. He was predisposed to an international, multilingual outlook, but by birth and culture he was a Catalan. He studied piano with Granados and composition with the great scholar-composer Felipe Pedrell
, teacher of Albéniz
, Granados and Falla
. When Pedrell died in 1922, Gerhard tried unsuccessfully to become a pupil of Falla and considered studying with Charles Koechlin
in Paris but then approached Arnold Schoenberg
, who on the strength of a few early compositions accepted him as his only Spanish pupil. Gerhard spent several years with Schoenberg in Vienna
and Berlin. Returning to Barcelona in 1928, he devoted his energies to new music through concerts and journalism, in conjunction with the flourishing literary and artistic avant-garde of Catalonia. He befriended Joan Miró
and Pablo Casals
, brought Schoenberg and Webern
to Barcelona, and was the principal organizer of the 1936 ISCM Festival
there. He also collected, edited and performed folksongs and old Spanish music from the Renaissance
to the eighteenth century.
Identified with the Republican cause throughout the Spanish Civil War
(as musical adviser to the Minister of Fine Arts in the Catalan Government and a member of the Republican Government's Social Music Council), Gerhard was forced to flee to France in 1939 and later that year settled in Cambridge
, England. Until the death of Francisco Franco
, who made it his business to extirpate Catalan national aspirations, his music was virtually proscribed in Spain, to which he never returned except for holidays. Apart from copious work for the BBC
and in the theatre, Gerhard's compositions of the 1940s were explicitly related to aspects of Spanish and Catalan culture, beginning in 1940 with a Symphony in memory of Pedrell and the first version of the ballet Don Quixote. They culminated in a masterpiece as The Duenna (a Spanish opera on an English play, by Sheridan
, which is set in Spain). The Covent Garden
production of Don Quixote and the BBC
broadcasts of The Duenna popularized Gerhard's reputation in the UK though not in Spain. During the 1950s, the legacy of Schoenbergian serialism
, a background presence in these overtly national works, engendered an increasingly radical approach to composition which, by the 1960s, placed Gerhard firmly in the ranks of the avant-garde. From the early 1950s Gerhard suffered from a heart condition which eventually ended his life. He died in Cambridge in 1970 and is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground
in Cambridge. His archive is kept at Cambridge University Library
.
), the ballets Pandora and Soirées de Barcelone and pieces for a wide variety of chamber ensembles, including Sardana
s for the indigenous Catalan street band, the cobla
. He was perhaps the first important composer of electronic music
in Britain; his incidental music for the 1955 Stratford-on-Avon King Lear – one of many such commissions for the Royal Shakespeare Company
- was the first electronic score for the British stage.
and Stravinsky
. This was the idiom whose major achievements included the ‘Ballet Catalan’ Soirées de Barcelone, the ballet Don Quixote, the Violin Concerto and the opera The Duenna.
In the complex formation of Gerhard's personal language the influence of his last and greatest master, Schoenberg, had seemed to remain subordinate, almost suppressed. Yet Schoenbergian precepts had always been observed in his profound level of craftsmanship; and certain highly chromatic, quasi-serial passages, emerging as it were surreptitiously in these and other works, confirmed the enduring background presence of Gerhard's studies in Vienna and Berlin. In fact, Gerhard never ceased to venerate Schoenberg and remained in cordial contact with most of the leading figures of the Second Viennese School
. He continued to study and meditate upon the implications of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique
. After The Duenna he turned to it more decisively, as if he had finally absorbed it and made it his own. In a notable series of works, such as the First Symphony and First String Quartet, which began to win him real international recognition for the first time, it became his principal mode of discourse. And simultaneously he developed it in new and personal directions, combining pitch-series with duration-series and a boldly exploratory attitude to sound and texture.
In one sense, this was a move towards greater abstraction
. Yet the ‘Spanish’, folkloric elements were not necessarily rejected. Rather they reappear in new perspectives, more symbolic, less anecdotal in effect—just as, in painting, they recur as motifs in the work of Gerhard's compatriots Picasso and Miro. This transitional period eventually gave birth to the strikingly original music of Gerhard's final decade, where serialism itself dissolves into a freely-associating continuum of colour and rhythm, and the Spanish turns of phrase may still surprise us with sudden nostalgia or dreamlike fantasy.
Gerhard often said that he stood by the sound of his music: 'in music the sense is in the sound'. Yet dazzling as their scoring is, his last works are in no sense a mere succession of sonic events. Their forms are meticulously organized and several make use of his special development of serialism where a twelve-tone pitch series, governing intervallic relations, interacts with a twelvefold time series governing the music's duration and proportions. Whereas in the Third and Fourth Symphonies, for instance, these techniques result in music of majesty and high drama, in the Concerto for Orchestra the element of play, of inordinate instrumental virtuosity enjoyed for its own sake, is paramount.
Catalan people
The Catalans or Catalonians are the people from, or with origins in, Catalonia that form a historical nationality in Spain. The inhabitants of the adjacent portion of southern France are sometimes included in this definition...
Spanish composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia
Catalonia
Catalonia is an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, with the official status of a "nationality" of Spain. Catalonia comprises four provinces: Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona. Its capital and largest city is Barcelona. Catalonia covers an area of 32,114 km² and has an...
as Robert Gerhard.
Life
Robert Gerhard (who only consistently adopted the form ‘Roberto’ after he was exiled from Spain) was born in VallsValls
Valls is the capital of the comarca of Alt Camp, in Catalonia, Spain. The typical food is calçots and also typical are the human towers called castells...
, near Tarragona
Tarragona
Tarragona is a city located in the south of Catalonia on the north-east of Spain, by the Mediterranean. It is the capital of the Spanish province of the same name and the capital of the Catalan comarca Tarragonès. In the medieval and modern times it was the capital of the Vegueria of Tarragona...
, Spain, the son of a German-Swiss father and an Alsatian
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
mother. He was predisposed to an international, multilingual outlook, but by birth and culture he was a Catalan. He studied piano with Granados and composition with the great scholar-composer Felipe Pedrell
Felipe Pedrell
Felip Pedrell , was a Spanish Catalan composer. He worked as a musicologist and early music specialist and edited Victoria’s opera omnia and the requiem of Joan Brudieu. This and other of his writings fostered a keen interest in the early music of Spain...
, teacher of Albéniz
Isaac Albéniz
Isaac Manuel Francisco Albéniz y Pascual was a Spanish Catalan pianist and composer best known for his piano works based on folk music idioms .-Life:Born in Camprodon, province of Girona, to Ángel Albéniz and his wife Dolors Pascual, Albéniz...
, Granados and Falla
Manuel de Falla
Manuel de Falla y Matheu was a Spanish Andalusian composer of classical music. With Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados and Joaquín Turina he is one of Spain's most important musicians of the first half of the 20th century....
. When Pedrell died in 1922, Gerhard tried unsuccessfully to become a pupil of Falla and considered studying with Charles Koechlin
Charles Koechlin
Charles Louis Eugène Koechlin was a French composer, teacher and writer on music. He was a political radical all his life and a passionate enthusiast for such diverse things as medieval music, The Jungle Book of Rudyard Kipling, Johann Sebastian Bach, film stars , travelling, stereoscopic...
in Paris but then approached Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
, who on the strength of a few early compositions accepted him as his only Spanish pupil. Gerhard spent several years with Schoenberg in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
and Berlin. Returning to Barcelona in 1928, he devoted his energies to new music through concerts and journalism, in conjunction with the flourishing literary and artistic avant-garde of Catalonia. He befriended Joan Miró
Joan Miró
Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...
and Pablo Casals
Pablo Casals
Pau Casals i Defilló , known during his professional career as Pablo Casals, was a Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor. He is generally regarded as the pre-eminent cellist of the first half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest cellists of all time...
, brought Schoenberg and Webern
Anton Webern
Anton Webern was an Austrian composer and conductor. He was a member of the Second Viennese School. As a student and significant follower of Arnold Schoenberg, he became one of the best-known exponents of the twelve-tone technique; in addition, his innovations regarding schematic organization of...
to Barcelona, and was the principal organizer of the 1936 ISCM Festival
XIV International Society for Contemporary Music Festival
The XIV International Society for Contemporary Music Festival took place in Barcelona in April 1936, just three months before the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The 1936 festival is best remembered for the posthumous world premiere of Alban Berg's Violin Concerto on its inaugural...
there. He also collected, edited and performed folksongs and old Spanish music from the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
to the eighteenth century.
Identified with the Republican cause throughout the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
(as musical adviser to the Minister of Fine Arts in the Catalan Government and a member of the Republican Government's Social Music Council), Gerhard was forced to flee to France in 1939 and later that year settled in Cambridge
Cambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
, England. Until the death of Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was a Spanish general, dictator and head of state of Spain from October 1936 , and de facto regent of the nominally restored Kingdom of Spain from 1947 until his death in November, 1975...
, who made it his business to extirpate Catalan national aspirations, his music was virtually proscribed in Spain, to which he never returned except for holidays. Apart from copious work for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and in the theatre, Gerhard's compositions of the 1940s were explicitly related to aspects of Spanish and Catalan culture, beginning in 1940 with a Symphony in memory of Pedrell and the first version of the ballet Don Quixote. They culminated in a masterpiece as The Duenna (a Spanish opera on an English play, by Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
, which is set in Spain). The Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
production of Don Quixote and the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
broadcasts of The Duenna popularized Gerhard's reputation in the UK though not in Spain. During the 1950s, the legacy of Schoenbergian serialism
Serialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
, a background presence in these overtly national works, engendered an increasingly radical approach to composition which, by the 1960s, placed Gerhard firmly in the ranks of the avant-garde. From the early 1950s Gerhard suffered from a heart condition which eventually ended his life. He died in Cambridge in 1970 and is buried at the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground
Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge
The Ascension Parish Burial Ground, formerly St Giles and St Peter's Parish, is a cemetery just off Huntingdon Road near the junction with Storey's Way in the northwest of Cambridge, England. It includes the graves of many Cambridge academics and non-conformists of the 19th and early 20th century...
in Cambridge. His archive is kept at Cambridge University Library
Cambridge University Library
The Cambridge University Library is the centrally-administered library of Cambridge University in England. It comprises five separate libraries:* the University Library main building * the Medical Library...
.
Works
Gerhard's most significant works, apart from those already mentioned, include four symphonies (the Third, Collages, for orchestra and tape), the Concerto for Orchestra, concertos for violin, piano and harpsichord, the cantata The Plague (after Albert CamusAlbert Camus
Albert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
), the ballets Pandora and Soirées de Barcelone and pieces for a wide variety of chamber ensembles, including Sardana
Sardana
The sardana is a type of circle dance typical of Catalonia, Spain. The dance was originally from the Empordà region, but started gaining popularity throughout Catalonia during the 20th century....
s for the indigenous Catalan street band, the cobla
Cobla
The cobla is a traditional music ensemble of Catalonia, Spain and in Northern Catalonia in France. It is generally used to accompany the Sardana, a traditional Catalan folk dance, danced in a circle.-Structure:...
. He was perhaps the first important composer of electronic music
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...
in Britain; his incidental music for the 1955 Stratford-on-Avon King Lear – one of many such commissions for the Royal Shakespeare Company
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
- was the first electronic score for the British stage.
Stylistic Evolution
For twenty years – first in Barcelona and then in exile in England – Gerhard cultivated, and enormously enriched, a modern tonal idiom with a pronounced Spanish-folkloric orientation that descended on the one hand from Pedrell and Falla, and on the other from such contemporary masters as BartókBéla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
and Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
. This was the idiom whose major achievements included the ‘Ballet Catalan’ Soirées de Barcelone, the ballet Don Quixote, the Violin Concerto and the opera The Duenna.
In the complex formation of Gerhard's personal language the influence of his last and greatest master, Schoenberg, had seemed to remain subordinate, almost suppressed. Yet Schoenbergian precepts had always been observed in his profound level of craftsmanship; and certain highly chromatic, quasi-serial passages, emerging as it were surreptitiously in these and other works, confirmed the enduring background presence of Gerhard's studies in Vienna and Berlin. In fact, Gerhard never ceased to venerate Schoenberg and remained in cordial contact with most of the leading figures of the Second Viennese School
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
. He continued to study and meditate upon the implications of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique
Twelve-tone technique is a method of musical composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg...
. After The Duenna he turned to it more decisively, as if he had finally absorbed it and made it his own. In a notable series of works, such as the First Symphony and First String Quartet, which began to win him real international recognition for the first time, it became his principal mode of discourse. And simultaneously he developed it in new and personal directions, combining pitch-series with duration-series and a boldly exploratory attitude to sound and texture.
In one sense, this was a move towards greater abstraction
Abstraction
Abstraction is a process by which higher concepts are derived from the usage and classification of literal concepts, first principles, or other methods....
. Yet the ‘Spanish’, folkloric elements were not necessarily rejected. Rather they reappear in new perspectives, more symbolic, less anecdotal in effect—just as, in painting, they recur as motifs in the work of Gerhard's compatriots Picasso and Miro. This transitional period eventually gave birth to the strikingly original music of Gerhard's final decade, where serialism itself dissolves into a freely-associating continuum of colour and rhythm, and the Spanish turns of phrase may still surprise us with sudden nostalgia or dreamlike fantasy.
Gerhard often said that he stood by the sound of his music: 'in music the sense is in the sound'. Yet dazzling as their scoring is, his last works are in no sense a mere succession of sonic events. Their forms are meticulously organized and several make use of his special development of serialism where a twelve-tone pitch series, governing intervallic relations, interacts with a twelvefold time series governing the music's duration and proportions. Whereas in the Third and Fourth Symphonies, for instance, these techniques result in music of majesty and high drama, in the Concerto for Orchestra the element of play, of inordinate instrumental virtuosity enjoyed for its own sake, is paramount.
Symphonies
- Symphony ‘Homenatge a Pedrell’ (1941)
- Symphony No.1 (1952–53)
- Symphony No.2 (1957–59); recomposition as Metamorphosis, unfinished (1967–68)
- Symphony No.3 Collages (for orchestra and tape) (1960)
- Symphony No.4 ‘New York’ (1967)
- Symphony No.5 (fragment only) (1969)
- (for Chamber Symphony ‘Leo’ see Chamber Music)
Stage Works
- Ariel, Ballet (1934)
- Soirées de Barcelone, ballet in three tableaux (1937–39; edited and orchestration completed by Malcolm MacDonald, 1996)
- Don Quixote (original version 1940-41, rev. 1947-49)
- Alegrias, Divertissement flamenco (1942)
- Pandora (1943–44, orch. 1944-45)
- The Duenna, opera after Sheridan (1947–49). The Bielefeld OperaBielefeld OperaThe Bielefeld Opera is the venue of Städtische Bühnen Bielefeld in Bielefeld, Germany. It is a Dreisparten Haus , offering plays, music , and ballet...
and conductor Geoffrey MoullGeoffrey MoullGeoffrey Moull is a professional conductor and pianist.- Education :Geoffrey Moull was born in London, Ontario, Canada and studied conducting with Kirill Kondrashin, Sergiu Celibidache and Martin Stephani...
performed La Duenna in a new production in 1994. The Wiener Zeitung at the time remarked that the work is "a rediscoverd stroke of genius". - El barberillo de Lavapies, arrangement and orchestration of the zarzuela (1874) by Francisco Barbieri (1954)
- Lamparilla, German-language Singspiel loosely based on El barberillo de Lavapies with additional music and original overture by Gerhard (1955–56)
Concertos
- Concertino for string orchestra (1929)
- Violin Concerto (1942–43)
- Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1951)
- Concerto for Harpsichord, String Orchestra and Percussion (1955–56)
- Concerto for Orchestra (1965)
Orchestral Works
- Albada, Interludi i Dansa (1936)
- Epithalamium (1966)
- Various suites from Soirées de Barcelone, Don Quixote, Alegrias, Pandora
Chamber and Instrumental Music
- Sonatine a Carlos, piano (1914)
- Trio in B major for violin, cello and piano (1918)
- Trio (‘no.2’) for violin, cello and piano (1918)
- Dos Apunts, piano (1921–22)
- 3 string quartets composed up to 1928 (all lost; 'No.3' (1928) was reworked as the Concertino for strings)
- Sonata, clarinet and piano (1928; also version for bass clarinet and piano)
- Wind Quintet (1928)
- Andantino, clarinet, violin and piano (period 1928-9)
- String Quartet No.1 (1950–55)
- Sonata, viola and piano (1948; recomposed 1956 as sonata for cello and piano)
- Capriccio, solo flute (1949)
- 3 Impromptus, piano (1950)
- Secret People (study for the film score) for clarinet, violin and piano (1951–52)
- Nonet (1956–57)
- Fantasia, guitar (1957)
- String Quartet No.2 (1961–62)
- Concert for 8 (1962)
- Chaconne, violin solo (1959)
- Hymnody for large wind ensemble, two pianos and percussion (1963)
- Gemini, Duo for violin and piano (1966)
- Libra, sextet (1968)
- Leo, Chamber Symphony (1969)
Vocal Works
- L’infantament meravellós de Shahrazada Song-cycle for voice and piano, op.1 (1916–18)
- Verger de les galanies for voice and piano (1917–18)
- 7 Haiku for voice and ensemble (1922 rev. 1958)
- 14 Cançons populars catalanes for voice and piano (1928–29; six numbers orchestrated 1931 as 6 Cançons Populars Catalanes)
- L’alta naixenca del Rei en Jaume, cantata for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra (1932)
- Cancionero de Pedrell for voice and piano or chamber orchestra (1941)
- 3 Canciones Toreras for voice and orchestra (c.1943) [composed under pseudonym ‘Juan Serralonga’]
- 6 Chansons populaires françaises for voice and piano (1944)
- The Akond of Swat for voice and percussion (1954)
- Cantares for voice and guitar (1962; incorporates Fantasia for guitar)
- The Plague, cantata for narrator, chorus and orchestra, after Camus (1963–64)
Electronic Music
- Audiomobiles I-IV (1958–59)
- Lament for the death of Bullfighter for speaker and tape (1959)
- 10 Pieces for tape (c.1961)
- Sculptures I-V (1963)
- DNA in Reflection (1963)
- Anger of Achilles (1964) with Delia DerbyshireDelia DerbyshireDelia Ann Derbyshire was an English musician and composer of electronic music and musique concrète. She is best known for her electronic realisation of Ron Grainer's theme music to the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and for her work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.-Early...
http://delia-derbyshire.dyndns.org/#AngerOfAchilles - also tape component in Symphony No.3 and in many film, radio and theatre scores
Fantasias on themes from Zarzuelas
(for light orchestra; composed c.1943 under the pseudonym ‘Juan Serralonga’)- Cadiz, after Chuca & Valverde (1943)
- Gigantes y Cabezudos, after Caballero (c.1943)
- La Viejecita, after Caballero (c.1943)
Sources
- Gerhard, Roberto, and Meirion Bowen. 2000. Gerhard on Music: Selected Writings, edited by Meirion Bowen. Aldershot [Hants, UK] and Burlington [Vermont]: Ashgate. ISBN 0754600092
- Homs, Joaquim. 1991. Robert Gerhard i la seva obra. Barcelona: Biblioteca de Catalunya. ISBN 8478451099
- London Sinfonietta. 1974. Programme book for The complete Instrumental and Chamber Music of Arnold Schoenberg and Roberto Gerhard. London: London Sinfonietta.