Editing Roberto Gerhard (section)

== Life ==
Gerhard was born in [[Valls]], near [[Tarragona]], Spain. His father was of German and Swiss ancestry; his mother was from [[Alsace-Lorraine]]. He studied piano with [[Enrique Granados]] and composition with scholar-composer [[Felip Pedrell]], teacher of [[Isaac Albéniz]], Granados and [[Manuel de Falla]]. Gerhard visited Falla in Granada, but dismissed him as a possible teacher<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Sánchez de Andrés |first=Leticia |title=Pasión, desarraigo y literatura. El compositor Robert Gerhard |journal=Musicalia Scherzo |publication-place=Madrid |publication-date=2013 |page=55}}</ref> and decided to shut himself away in a Catalan farmhouse<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ortiz-de-Urbina |first=Paloma |title=Arnold Schoenberg and Roberto Gerhard. Correspondence. Critical Edition |publisher=Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura |year=2020 |isbn=9788418199073 |location=Barcelona |page=20}}</ref> to reflect on his professional future and concentrate on his work. Seeking systematicity, he turned his gaze to German avant-garde music and decided to send a long letter to the composer [[Arnold Schoenberg]], enclosing his compositions, on 21 October 1923, begging to be accepted as his pupil.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ortiz-de-Urbina |first=Paloma |title=Arnold Schoenberg and Roberto Gerhard. Correspondence. Critical Edition |publisher=Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura |year=2020 |isbn=9788418199073 |location=Barcelona |page=35}}</ref> After the latter's acceptance, Gerhard immediately left for Vienna. He was Schoenberg's only Spanish pupil. Gerhard studied with Schoenberg in Vienna and Berlin between 1923 and 1928, and the teacher-pupil relationship became a lifelong friendship, as is shown in the complete correspondence published between the two composers.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ortiz-de-Urbina |first=Paloma |title=Arnold Schoenberg and Roberto Gerhard. Correspondence. Critical Edition |publisher=Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura |year=2020 |isbn=9788418199073 |location=Barcelona}}</ref>

In 1928, Gerhard returned to Barcelona. 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 [[Anton Webern]] to Barcelona, and was the principal organizer of the [[XIV International Society for Contemporary Music Festival|1936 ISCM Festival]]. He also collected, edited, and performed folksongs and Spanish music from the [[Renaissance]] to the eighteenth century.<ref name=grove/>

Gerhard supported the Republican cause in 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). He was forced to flee to France in 1939 and later that year settled in [[Cambridge]], England. Until the death of [[Francisco Franco]], his music was virtually proscribed in Spain, to which he never returned except for holidays. Apart from scores 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 ''Homenaje a Pedrell'', a symphony in memory of Pedrell, and the first version of the ballet ''Don Quixote''. The period culminated with ''The Duenna'', a Spanish opera on an English play by [[Richard Brinsley Sheridan]], which is set in Spain. The [[Royal Opera House|Covent Garden]] production of ''Don Quixote'' and the BBC broadcasts of ''The Duenna'' popularized Gerhard's reputation in the UK, but not in Spain.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.boosey.com/pages/cr/composer/composer_main.asp?composerid=2716&ttype=BIOGRAPHY&ttitle=Biography |title=Roberto Gerhard Biography|publisher=Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.|access-date=2008-08-14}}</ref>

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 [[Ascension Parish Burial Ground, Cambridge|Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground]] in Cambridge, with his wife Leopoldina 'Poldi' Feichtegger Gerhard (1903–1994).<ref name=grove/>

His archive is kept at [[Cambridge University Library]]. Other personal papers of Gerhard are preserved in the [[Biblioteca de Catalunya]]. The vast majority of the correspondence between Gerhard and Arnold Schoenberg can be found at the [[Arnold Schönberg Center]].