Richard Rodney Bennett

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, CBE (born March 29, 1936 in Broadstairs, Kent) is an English composer renowned for his film scores and his jazz performance as much as for his challenging concert works. He has lived in New York City since 1979.

Biography

Richard Rodney Bennett was a pupil at Leighton Park School, the Quaker school in Reading, studied at the Royal Academy of Music with Howard Ferguson and Lennox Berkeley. During this time, he attended some of the Darmstadt summer courses, where he was exposed to serialism. He later spent two years in Paris as a student of the arch-serialist Pierre Boulez.

Bennett taught at the Royal Academy of Music between 1963 and 1965, and the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, United States from 1970 to 1971, and was later International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music between 1994 and the year 2000. He received a CBE in 1977, and was knighted in 1998. [ [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/for_christmas/_new_year/new_year_honours/43509.stm BBC News | NEW YEAR HONOURS | Life Peers to Order of the Companion of Honour ] ]

He was the tutor of the celebrated composer Grayston Ives.

As one of Britain’s most respected and versatile musicians, Bennett has produced over two hundred works for the concert hall, and fifty scores for film and television, as well as having been a writer and performer of jazz songs for fifty years. Studies with Boulez in the 1950s immersed him in the techniques of the European avant-garde, though he subsequently developed his own distinctive dramato-abstract style. In recent years, he has adopted an increasingly tonal idiom.

In 1995, to celebrate its 200th issue, Gay Times magazine published list of people regarded as important to the British lesbian and gay community. Bennett was named as one of the key musical figures on the list. [ [http://www.knittingcircle.org.uk/gaytimeslist1995.html Knitting Circle Gay Times List 1995 ] ]

Music

Despite his early studies in modernist techniques, Bennett's tastes are catholic, and he has written in a wide range of styles, being particularly fond of jazz. Early on, he found success by writing music for feature films, although he considered this to be subordinate to his concert music. Nevertheless, he has continued to write music for films and television; among his scores are the "Doctor Who" story "The Aztecs" (1964), "Far from the Madding Crowd" (1967), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, "Nicholas and Alexandra" (1971), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award, "Murder on the Orient Express" (1974), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award and won a BAFTA, "Enchanted April" (1992), "Four Weddings and a Funeral" (1994), and "The Tale of Sweeney Todd" (1998). He is also a prolific composer of orchestral works, piano solos, choral works and operas. Despite this eclecticism, Bennett's music rarely involves crossover of styles.

elected works

Instrumental works

*"Concerto for alto saxophone"
*"Concerto for Stan Getz (ten sax & piano)"
*"Elegy for Davis"
*"A Little Suite", based on selections from his song cycles "The Insect World" and "The Aviary".
*"Farnham Festival Overture" (1964) for orchestra
*"Morning Music" for wind band
*"Reflections on a Sixteenth Century Tune" for string orchestra or double wind quintet (1999)
*"Sonata" for solo guitar (1983)
*"Sonatina" for solo clarinet
*"Summer Music" for flute and piano
*"Trumpet Concerto" for trumpet and wind orchestra

Operas

*"The Ledge" - 1961
*"The Midnight Thief" (with libretto by Ian Serraillier) - 1964
*"The Mines of Sulphur" - 1965
*"A Penny for a Song" - 1967
*"Victory" - 1970

Choral works

*"Missa Brevis" - 1990
*"Sea Change" - 1983
*"Spells", written for soprano Jane Manning
*"Out of Your Sleep"
*"On Christmas Day to My Heart", written in 1998 for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King's College Chapel, Cambridge in 1999.
*"The Garden - A Serenade to Glimmerglass", commissioned by Nicholas Russell for Glimmerglass Opera in honour of Stewart Robertson for its Young American Artists Program - 2006

Portrait bust of Richard Rodney Bennett

Richard Rodney Bennett sat for sculptor Alan Thornhill for a portrait [ [http://alanthornhill.co.uk/sm_007.htm portrait head of Richard Rodney Bennett] image of sculpture] in clay. The correspondence file relating to the Bennett portrait bust is held as part of the Thornhill Papers (2006:56) in the archive [http://www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk/matrix_engine/content.php?page_id=584 HMI Archive] of the Henry Moore Foundation's Henry Moore Institute in Leeds and the terracotta remains in the collection of the artist.

References

*Timothy Reynish, "British Wind Music", paper presented to the 2005 CBDNA National Conference

External links

* [http://www.chesternovello.com/Default.aspx?TabId=2431&State_2905=2&composerId_2905=100 Biography and list of works]
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