Richard Rodney Bennett

An amazingly prolific composer and versatile pianist, Richard Rodney Bennett divided his attention among three primary music passions: film music within an frequently Romantic design, concert music owing very much to serialism, and jazz and cabaret music. Bennett started following many of these strategies with the 1950s, but he hardly ever allowed the pathways to intersect. Each quest maintained its integrity and by no means could he certainly be a crossover musician. He was composing music even while he was understanding how to read, and created three string quartets by enough time he was 18. Bennett signed up for the Royal Academy of Music in 1953, learning structure with Howard Ferguson and Lennox Berkeley. He graduated in 1956, after that spent 1957 – 1959 being a scholarship or grant pupil in Paris with Pierre Boulez. Right here, Bennett was completely indoctrinated in Boulez’s technique of total serialism as well as the German avant-garde, but his just surviving work out of this period is normally Routine II for Paul Jacobs. Bennett nearly immediately took an extremely personal method of serialism, concentrating on the melodic likelihood of a build row and easily discovering its harmonic potential. A turning stage emerged in 1981 along with his ballet Noctuary, which fused the tonality from the Scott Joplin piece which it was structured with Bennett’s normal atonal serialism. Following this, Bennett’s methods became very much freer; while still atonal, his extremely expressive music shook from the strictest handles of serialism and frequently indulged in quotation of previously composers. Bennett’s catalog contains four string quartets, three symphonies, concertos for nearly all the primary equipment (including harpsichord), and significant amounts of chamber music. He often composed for woodwinds throughout his profession, but begun to concentrate more intently with them in the past due ’80s upon befriending many blowing wind players in his capability being a piano accompanist. Since 1956, Bennett acquired also been composing film ratings in a more conventional design. He became a preferred author of Joseph Losey, among various other directors, and among his some 50 cinematic initiatives are ratings for such well-known movies as Definately not the Madding Group, Nicholas and Alexandra, Murder for the Orient Express, and Four Wedding ceremonies and a Funeral. It had been also in the 1950s that Bennett became thinking about jazz, particularly being a pianist. He held this fascination generally to himself before 1990s, when he started touring the globe with a single cabaret act, performing and playing jazz parts and torch tracks.