Editing Roberto Gerhard

{{Short description|Spanish and British composer (1896–1970)}}
[[File: RobertoGerhardImage.jpg|thumb|Roberto Gerhard]]
'''Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder''' ({{IPA|ca|ruˈβɛɾd ʒəˈɾaɾt}}; 25 September 1896 – 5 January 1970) was a Spanish and British composer, musical scholar, and writer, generally known outside his native region of [[Catalonia]] as '''Roberto Gerhard'''.<ref name=grove>Malcolm MacDonald. 'Gerhard, Roberto' in ''Grove Music Online'' (2001)</ref>

== 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]].

== Music ==

=== 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 [[Béla Bartók|Bartók]] and [[Igor Stravinsky|Stravinsky]]. This was the idiom whose major achievements included the ballets ''Soirées de Barcelone'' and ''Don Quixote'', the Violin Concerto and the opera ''[[The Duenna (opera)|The Duenna]]''.

Gerhard often said that he stood by the ''sound'' of his music: 'in music the sense is in the sound'.<ref>Composer's Note to the published score of ''Libra'', Oxford University Press 1970; other programme notes have the same statement in varying words and word-orders</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gerhard|first=Roberto|year=1960|title=Functions of the series in twelve-note composition}} Originally a talk given at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Reprinted in {{Cite book|title=Gerhard on Music – Selected Writings|year=2000|publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=9781315200583|editor-last=Bowen|editor-first=Meirion|oclc=1003950418}}{{page needed|date=September 2019}}</ref>

=== Selected list of 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 Camus]]), the ballets ''Pandora'' and ''Ariel'', 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.<ref>[https://heritagequay.org/rgda/electronic-music/works-of-electronic-music/king-lear-1955/ Heritage Quay (University of Huddersfield). Roberto Gerhard Digital Archive]</ref>

==== Symphonies ====
* Symphony ''Homenaje a Pedrell'' (1941)<ref name=chan3>[https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209693 'Gerhard, Symphony Homenaje a Pedrell', Chandos 9693]</ref>
* Symphony No. 1 (1952–53)<ref name=s1>[https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2018/Apr/Gerhard_sy1_ADE045.htm 'Gerhard, Symphony No. 1', Dorati Edition ADE45 (2018)]</ref>
* Symphony No. 2 (1957–59); recomposition as ''Metamorphosis'', unfinished (1967–68)<ref name=chan2/>
* Symphony No. 3 ''Collages'' (for orchestra and tape) (1960)<ref name=chan>[https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209556 'Gerhard, Symphony No. 3', Chandos 9556 (1979)]</ref>
* Symphony No. 4 ''New York'' (1967)<ref name=ny>[https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2008/Mar08/Gerhard_symphony4_SRCD274.htm 'Gerhard, Symphony No. 4, Violin Concerto', Lyrita SRCD.274 (2008)]</ref>
* 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'', ballet (original version 1940–41, rev. 1947–49)<ref name=dq>[https://musicwebinternational.com/2024/08/gerhard-don-quixote-and-alegrias-suite-chandos/ 'Gerhard: Don Quixote (complete ballet)', Chandos CHAN 20268 (2024), reviewed at ''MusicWeb International'']</ref>
* ''Alegrias'', Divertissement flamenco (1942)<ref name=dq/>
* ''Pandora'', ballet (1943–44, orch. 1944–45)
* [[The Duenna (opera)|''The Duenna'']], English opera after Sheridan (1947–49). Radio performance was in 1949, at BBC; its first scenic performance was in 1992 at [[Teatro de la Zarzuela]], Madrid, and [[Gran Teatre del Liceu]], Barcelona.{{Citation needed|date=June 2015}}<!--There was a production at the Staatstheater in Wiesbaden on 27 June 1951, but it is not clear whether this was staged, or just a concert performance.--> The [[Bielefeld Opera]] and conductor [[Geoffrey Moull]] performed ''The Duenna'' in a new production in 1994. The ''Wiener Zeitung'' at the time remarked that the work is "a rediscovered stroke of genius".<ref>Theater in Bielefeld 1975–1998, Kerber Verlag, Bielefeld, Redaktion Heidi Wiese, Heiner Bruns, Alexander Gruber, Fritz Stockmeier 1998, {{ISBN|3-933040-03-5}}</ref><ref>[https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209520 'La Dueña, Premiere Recording', Chandos CHAN 9520 (1997)]</ref>
* ''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)<ref name=ny/>
* Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1951)<ref name=chan/>
* Concerto for Harpsichord, String Orchestra and Percussion (1955–56)<ref name=chan3/>
* Concerto for Orchestra (1965)<ref name=chan2>[https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/CHAN%209694 'Gerhard, Concerto for Orchestra', Chandos 9694 (1999)]</ref>

==== Orchestral works ====
* ''Albada, Interludi i Dansa'' (1936)
* ''Dances from Don Quixote'' (1940-41)<ref name=s1/>
* ''Pedrelliana (En memoria)'' (1941; revised 1954)<ref name=dq/>
* ''Epithalamion'' (1966)<ref name=chan/>
* Various suites from ''Soirées de Barcelone'', ''Alegrias'', ''Pandora''

==== Chamber and instrumental music ====
* ''Sonatine a Carlos'', piano (1914)
* Trio in B major for violin, cello and piano (1918)<ref>[https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2012/May12/Gerhard_Trio_8572647.htm 'Spanish Classics', Trio Arriga, Naxos 8.572647 (2012)]</ref>
* Trio No. 2 for violin, cello and piano (1918)
* ''Dos Apunts'', piano (1921–22)<ref name=piano/>
* 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, his first serial work)<ref>[https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2020/Sep/Gerhard-quintet-article.pdf France, John. 'Roberto Gerhard’s Wind Quintet – An Early Recording' (2020)]</ref>
* Andantino, clarinet, violin and piano (period 1928–29)
* [[String Quartet No. 1 (Gerhard)|String Quartet No. 1]] (1950–55)<ref name=sq>[https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev//2013/Sept13/Gerhard_quartets_AECD1225.htm 'Roberto Gerhard, Complete String Quartets', AEON AECD 1225 (2013)]</ref>
* Sonata, viola and piano (1948; recomposed 1956 as sonata for cello and piano)
* Capriccio, solo flute (1949)
* 3 Impromptus, piano (1950)<ref name=piano>[https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/MP%203867 'Gerhard, Piano Music (Complete)', Marco Polo 3867 (1996)]</ref>
* ''Secret People'' (study for the film score) for clarinet, violin and piano (1951–52)
* Nonet (1956–57)<ref name=non>[https://www.chandos.net/products/catalogue/S3%203615 'Gerhard, Nonet, Hymnody & Leo', Barcelona 216, STR33615SD (2003)]</ref>
* Fantasia, guitar (1957)<ref name=guit>[https://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2019/Feb/Gerhard_Mompou_95679.htm 'Gerhard & Mompou, Complete Music for Solo Guitar', Brilliant Classics 95679 (2019)]</ref>
* String Quartet No. 2 (1961–62)<ref name=sq/>
* ''Concert for 8'' (1962)
* Chaconne, violin solo (1959)<ref name=sq/>
* ''[[Hymnody]]'' for large wind ensemble, two pianos and percussion (1963)<ref name=non/>
* ''For whom the bell tolls'', for solo guitar (1965)<ref name=guit/>
* ''Gemini'', Duo for violin and piano (1966)
* ''Libra'', sextet (1968)
* ''Leo'', Chamber Symphony (1969)<ref name=non/>

==== 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)
* [[Seven Cantares for soprano and guitar (Gerhard)|''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)
* ''Caligula'' (1960–61)
* ''10 Pieces'' for tape (c. 1961)
* ''Sculptures I-V'' (1963)
* ''DNA in Reflection'' (1963)
* ''Anger of Achilles'' (1964) with [[Delia Derbyshire]][https://web.archive.org/web/20141218114438/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)

==== Film music ====
* ''[[Secret People (film)|Secret People]]'' (1952)
* ''[[This Sporting Life]]'' (1963)

== Articles and broadcasts by Gerhard ==

* 'Roberto Gerhard's Symphony': ''Radio Times'', Oct 23, 1959, p.&nbsp;9 (An introduction to the Second Symphony, which was commissioned by the BBC and first performed and broadcast on Oct 28, 1959. Gerhard also contributed an item on the work to 'Music Magazine' on the BBC Home Service, Oct 25, 1959.)
* Gerhard worked with [[Lionel Salter]] on a radio series, ''The Heritage of Spain'', broadcast on the BBC [[BBC Third Programme|Third Programme]] in 26 parts from January 1954.<ref>[https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/page/5b55b09b293e4be3b72cf69c227ae063 'The Heritage of Spain', ''Radio Times''], Issue 1573, 3rd Jan 1954, p. 21</ref>

== Sources ==
* Monty Adkins, Michael Russ. ''[https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/publications/the-roberto-gerhard-companion The Roberto Gerhard Companion]'', Ashgate (2013) {{ISBN|978-1-40944-515-9}}
* Gerhard, Roberto, and Meirion Bowen. 2000. ''Gerhard on Music: Selected Writings'', edited by Meirion Bowen. Aldershot [Hants, UK] and Burlington [Vermont]: Ashgate. {{ISBN|0-7546-0009-2}}
* [[Joaquim Homs]]. ''Robert Gerhard y su obra''. (Ethos-Musica; 16). Universidad de Oviedo, 1987. {{ISBN|84-505-6080-2}}
* Homs, Joaquim. 1991. ''Robert Gerhard i la seva obra''. Barcelona: Biblioteca de Catalunya. {{ISBN|84-7845-109-9}}
* ''Proceedings of the 1st International Roberto Gerhard Conference : May 27–28th 2010''. England: Centre for Research in New Music, University of Huddersfield, 2010. {{ISBN|978-1-86218-088-8}}
* London Sinfonietta. 1974. Programme book for The complete Instrumental and Chamber Music of Arnold Schoenberg and Roberto Gerhard. London: London Sinfonietta.
* Paloma Ortiz-de-Urbina. ''Arnold Schönberg und Roberto Gerhard. Briefwechsel. Kritische Ausgabe''. Peter Lang, Berna, 2019. <nowiki>ISBN 978-3-0343-3754-0</nowiki>), {{doi|10.3726/b15301I}} Open Access: <nowiki>https://www.peterlang.com/document/1110910</nowiki>
* Paloma Ortiz-de-Urbina. ''Arnold Schoenberg and Roberto Gerhard. Correspondence. Critical Edition,'' Generalitat de Catalunya, Departament de Cultura, Biblioteca de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2020. <nowiki>ISBN 9788418199073</nowiki>.
* Monty Adkins, Rachel Mann. ''Roberto Gerhard. Re-Appraising a Musical Visionary in Exile''. Proceedings of the British Academy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022
* ''The Score'', September 1956. On the occasion of Gerhard's birthday, with articles by [[Donald Mitchell (writer)|Donald Mitchell]], [[Norman Del Mar]], [[John Gardner (composer)|John Gardner]], [[Roman Vlad]], [[David Drew (music critic)|David Drew]], [[Laurence Picken]] and Gerhard himself. 
* [[Francis Routh|Routh, Francis]]. ''Contemporary British Music'' (1972), pp. 175-187.

== References ==
{{reflist|2}}

==Further reading==
*Nash, Peter Paul. 1981. [https://www.jstor.org/stable/946161 "The Wind Quintet"]. ''[[Tempo (journal)|Tempo]]'', new series, no. 139 (December): 5–11.
* Diego Alonso. "Un hito de la modernidad musical española: el primer ''Apunt'' para piano de Roberto Gerhard", ''Acta musicologica'', Vol. 89, Nº 2, 2017, págs. 171-194
* Diego Alonso. "“A Heretic in the Schoenberg Circle: Roberto Gerhard’s First Engagement with Twelve-Tone Procedures in Andantino”, Twentieth-Century Music 16 / 3 (2019): 557-588. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1478572219000306  
* Diego Alonso. “Homage to Schoenberg and Bartók: Symmetry, Transpositional Combination and Octatonicism in the First Movement of Roberto Gerhard’s Quartetto No. 3.” Music Analysis 39 / 2 (2020), 190–213.  https://doi.org/10.1111/musa.12156
* [[List of émigré composers who came to live and work in Britain|List of émigré composers in Britain]]

== External links ==
*{{IMSLP|id=Gerhard, Roberto}}
* {{Find a Grave|5887947}}
*[http://www.boosey.com/composer/Roberto+Gerhard Roberto Gerhard at Boosey & Hawkes]
*[http://www.bnc.cat/eng/Collections/Search-the-collections/Gerhard-Robert Personal papers of Robert Gerhard in the Biblioteca de Catalunya]

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gerhard, Roberto}}
[[Category:1896 births]]
[[Category:1970 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century Spanish classical composers]]
[[Category:20th-century male composers]]
[[Category:Twelve-tone and serial composers]]
[[Category:Second Viennese School]]
[[Category:Composers from Catalonia]]
[[Category:Spanish male classical composers]]
[[Category:Spanish opera composers]]
[[Category:Male opera composers]]
[[Category:Opera composers from Catalonia]]
[[Category:Ballet composers]]
[[Category:Spanish people of German descent]]
[[Category:Pupils of Arnold Schoenberg]]
[[Category:20th-century Spanish musicians]]
[[Category:People from Valls]]
[[Category:20th-century Spanish male musicians]]