Richard Rodney Bennett

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Sir Richard Rodney Bennett CBE (born March 29, 1936 in Broadstairs , Kent , † December 24, 2012 in New York City ) was a British pianist and composer .

Live and act

Bennett came from a musical family. His mother was a musician and studied with Gustav Holst . In 1953 he received a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music in London and began to compose. Inspired by Elisabeth Lutyens , he began to be interested in new music . From 1955 to 1958 he stayed frequently in Darmstadt and worked there with avant-garde musicians. It was at this time that the cooperation with Pierre Boulez began in Paris . Together with the pianist Susan Bradshaw , he worked on a translation of the theoretical writings of Pierre Boulez into English and formed a piano duo with her for several years.

In 1958 he wrote the music for Stanley Donen's film Indiscreet . In the 1960s he composed great operas : The Mines of Sulfur and Victory . The Mines of Sulfur was performed again in November 2005 in New York with great success. His frequently performed children's opera All the King's Men is also very popular in the Anglo-Saxon region .

In addition, Bennett composed music for a number of other genres in the 1960s and 1970s: works for choir and orchestra, choral works a cappella as well as orchestral and solo pieces for an enormous range of the most varied of individual instruments. These include the symphonic poem Aubade and the opera A Penny for a Song (Napoleon is coming), which had its German premiere in 1968 in Munich under the direction of Christoph von Dohnányi with Ingeborg Hallstein and Martha Mödl in the leading roles.

Bennett himself described the music accompanying various films, including Mord im Orient-Express (1974), as musical journalism . This work earned him on the one hand a whole series of awards and on the other hand the financial independence that allowed him to create the music that was close to his heart.

From some meetings with the guitarist Julian Bream , works such as the Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra , a long Sonata for Solo Guitar and others emerged. Today they form an important part of the contemporary guitar repertoire.

In his last years he concentrated primarily on jazz and found his way back to a more tonal way of composing, which, however, continued to incorporate serial and chromatic expressions. He also accompanied the singers Mary Cleere Haran and Marian Montgomery .

In 1977 Richard Rodney Bennett was honored with the Order of the British Empire . In 1999 he was beaten to the Knight Bachelor . Critics refer to him as one of the most versatile contemporary composers.

Filmography (selection)

Other compositions (selection)

Awards

Various Grammy and Emmy nominations as well

  • three Oscar nominations - 1975: Murder on the Orient Express ; 1973: Nikolaus and Alexandra ; 1968: The mistress of Thornhill
  • 1995 - ASCAP Film and Television Music Awards for Four Weddings and a Funeral
  • 1975 - BAFTA Awards : Anthony Asquith Award for Film Music for Murder on the Orient Express

literature

  • Richard Rodney Bennett - “My only ambition is to write music that the people I believe in need!” Interview with Jean-Claude Kuner, in: Filmharmonische Blätter. Issue 2 / Winter-Spring 1986, pp. 23-30.
  • Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, compositeur éclectique. In: Le Monde of November 2, 2005, p. 10. (French)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sad news: Richard Rodney Bennett is dead ( January 24, 2013 memento in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Composer Sir Richard Rodney Bennett dies aged 76
personal data
SURNAME Bennett, Richard Rodney
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British composer and pianist
DATE OF BIRTH March 29, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Broadstairs , Kent
DATE OF DEATH December 24, 2012
Place of death New York City