Arthur Benjamin
Encyclopedia
Arthur Leslie Benjamin was an Australian composer
, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rhumba
, composed in 1938.
, but at age 3 his parents moved to Brisbane
. At the age of six he made his first public appearance as a pianist and his formal musical training began three years later with the Brisbane City organist, George Sampson. In 1911, Benjamin won a scholarship from Brisbane Grammar School
to the Royal College of Music
(RCM), where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford
, harmony and counterpoint with Thomas Dunhill
, and piano with Frederick Cliffe.
In 1914 he joined the Officer Training Corps, receiving a temporary commission in April 1915. He served initially in the infantry as 2nd Lieutenant with the 32nd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and in November 1917 he was attached to the Royal Flying Corps. On 31 July 1918 his aircraft was shot down over Germany by the young Hermann Göring
, and he spent the remainder of the war as a German prisoner of war
at Ruhleben
camp near Berlin
. There he met the composer Edgar Bainton
, who had been interned since 1914, and who was later to become Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music
.
The manuscript of the unpublished Violin Sonata in E minor bears the date 1918, the only surviving work of that year and one of very few to be written by Benjamin during the war.
He returned to Australia in 1919 and became piano professor at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, Sydney. He returned to England in 1921 to become piano professor at the RCM. Following his appointment in 1926 to a professorship which he held for the next thirteen years at the RCM, Benjamin developed a distinguished career as a piano teacher. His better-known students from that era include Muir Mathieson
, Peggy Glanville-Hicks
, Miriam Hyde
, Joan Trimble
, Stanley Bate
, Bernard Stevens
, Lamar Crowson
, Alun Hoddinott
, Dorian Le Gallienne
, Natasha Litvin
(later Stephen Spender
's wife and a prominent concert pianist), William Blezard
and Benjamin Britten
, whose Holiday Diary suite for solo piano is dedicated to Benjamin and mimics many of his teacher’s mannerisms.
He continued writing chamber works for the next few years – Three Pieces for violin and piano (1919–24); Three Impressions (voice and string quartet, 1919); Five Pieces for Cello (1923); Pastoral Fantasy (string quartet, 1924), which won a Carnegie Award that year; Sonatina (violin and piano, 1924).
Orchestral works became more common after 1927 — Rhapsody on Negro Themes (MS 1919); Concertino for piano and orchestra (1926/7); Light Music Suite (1928); Overture to an Italian Comedy
(1937); Cotillon Suite (1938). There also appeared over twenty meticulously crafted songs and choral settings.
He was also an adjudicator and examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music
, which led him to places such as Australia, Canada and the West Indies
. It was in the West Indies that he discovered the native tune on which he based his best-known piece, Jamaican Rhumba, one of Two Jamaican Pieces
, composed in 1938, for which the Jamaican government gave him a free barrel of rum a year as thanks for making their country known.
The Violin Concerto of 1932 was premiered by Antonio Brosa
with Benjamin conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra
. In 1935 he accompanied the 10-year-old Canadian cellist Lorne Munroe
on a concert tour of Europe. Three years later he wrote a Sonatina for Munroe, who later became the principal cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra
and the New York Philharmonic
, and also recorded the piece.
His Romantic Fantasy for Violin, Viola and Orchestra was premiered by Eda Kersey
and Bernard Shore in 1938, under the composer. Its first recording was by Jascha Heifetz
and William Primrose
.
He resigned from his post at the RCM and left to settle in Vancouver
, Canada, where he remained for the duration of the war. In 1941 he was appointed conductor of the newly formed Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Symphony Orchestra, holding the post until 1946. During this time he gave “literally hundreds” of Canadian first performances. After a series of radio talks and concerts in addition to music teaching, conducting and composing, he became a major figure in Canadian musical life. He frequently visited the United States, broadcasting and arranging many performances of contemporary British music. He was also Resident Lecturer at Reed College, Portland, Oregon
between 1944 and 1945.
Almost unknown today, Arthur Benjamin's Symphony was given its British premiere at the Cheltenham Festival
in July 1948 by Sir John Barbirolli
and the Hallé Orchestra
. Further performances by the same artists took place in Manchester
, Liverpool
and the Royal Albert Hall
in London the following year. After one more performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in August 1954, conducted by the composer, the work appears to have been utterly neglected until it was recorded in recent times by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra
, conducted by Christopher Lyndon Gee.
The other major work of the period was the Sonata for Viola and Piano of 1942, also known as Elegy, Waltz and Toccata and bearing the dedication "Written for and dedicated to William Primrose". Benjamin simultaneously prepared the work as a Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, which was given its premiere by Frederick Riddle
and the Hallé Orchestra on 30 June 1948, again conducted by Barbirolli. Riddle later recorded the work in its sonata version with the pianist Wilfred Parry for the BBC. Both the Sonata and the Symphony reflect not just the sombre mood of the times but also the darker territory that Benjamin had begun to explore.
Other orchestral and concertante works written in Canada were the Sonatina (1940), Ballade (1944), Suite for Flute and Strings (1945), Prelude to Holiday (1941), Red River Jig (1945), the orchestral setting of the Two Jamaican Pieces (1942), From San Domingo (1945), Caribbean Dance (1946) and two Mendelssohn
transcriptions: Præludium and Prelude and Fugue (1941). The Oboe Concerto on themes of Cimarosa (1942) was an orchestration of harpsichord pieces by Domenico Cimarosa
; for many years it was frequently mis-labelled as "Cimarosa's Oboe Concerto, arranged by Arthur Benjamin".
The Elegiac Mazurka of 1941 was commissioned as part of the memorial volume 'Homage to Paderewski
’ in honour of the Polish pianist who had died that year. In 1945 a shortened piano solo arrangement of the Jamaican Rhumba was published.
Returning to England in 1946, he resumed teaching at the RCM. In 1949, Benjamin wrote his piano concerto Concerto quasi una Fantasia. The concerto, written to a commission from the Australian Broadcasting Commission
, served as the solo vehicle for Benjamin's Australian concert tour of 1950 and was premiered by him on 5 September 1950 with Eugene Goossens
and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
. It was repeated in a further seven Australian cities. These were Benjamin's final performances as a pianist.
The other major original works written during the 1950s were the Harmonica Concerto (1953), written for Larry Adler
, who performed it many times and recorded it at least twice; the ballet Orlando’s Silver Wedding (1951), Tombeau de Ravel for clarinet and piano, a second string quartet (1959) and the Wind Quintet (1960). He had a lasting admiration for Maurice Ravel
, whose influence is most obvious in Tombeau de Ravel and the much earlier Suite of 1926 for piano solo.
He was honoured by the Worshipful Company of Musicians
by the award of the Cobbett Medal later that year (1957).
His private students included John Carmichael
.
Arthur Benjamin died on 10 April 1960, at the age of 66, at the Middlesex Hospital
, London
, from a re-occurrence of the cancer
that had first attacked him three years earlier. An alternative explanation of the immediate cause of death is hepatitis
, contracted while Benjamin and his partner, Jack Henderson, a Canadian who worked in the music publishing business, were holidaying with the Australian painter Donald Friend
in Ceylon
(now Sri Lanka
).
. Another one-acter, Prima Donna (1932) had to wait until 23 February 1949 for its premiere, at the Fortune Theatre in London. Its libretto was by Cedric Cliffe, son of Benjamin's piano teacher at the RCM Frederic Cliffe. Both these works met with critical success.
A Tale of Two Cities
(1950), and Mañana were full-length operas. The librettist for the former was again Cedric Cliffe. First produced by Dennis Arundell during the Festival of Britain
in 1951, it won a gold medal and was later broadcast in a live performance by BBC Radio 3 on 17 April 1953. After this performance, Benjamin revised the piece into its final version. The opera was successfully produced in this form in San Francisco in April 1960, only days before his death. Mañana was commissioned in 1955 and produced by BBC television on 1 February 1956. Unfortunately, it was judged a flop at the time and never revived.
A fifth opera, Tartuffe, with a libretto by Cedric Cliffe based on Molière
, was unfinished at Benjamin's death. The scoring was completed by the composer Alan Boustead and the work produced by the New Opera Company at Sadler’s Wells on 30 November 1964, conducted by Boustead. This appears to have been this opera’s only performance.
’s The Man Who Knew Too Much
(1934, remade 1956), for which Benjamin composed the extended Storm Clouds Cantata
. Other scores included those for Alexander Korda
's 1947 film of An Ideal Husband
, The Conquest of Everest
, The Cumberland Story (1947), Steps of the Ballet (British Council/Central Office of Information 1948), The Crowthers of Bankdam (Holbein Films 1947), Above Us the Waves
(1955) and Fire Down Below
(1957/60). While most of his music scores are archived in the British Library
, his film scores are completely lost. Apart from the Boosey & Hawkes
edition of An Ideal Husband the only surviving score is the Storm Clouds Cantata.
) is dedicated to Benjamin. Benjamin, in turn, later dedicated the three-page Saxophone Blues (1929) to Howells.
The Australian pianist and composer Ian Munro
, who has a special affinity with Arthur Benjamin and has recorded many of his piano works, has written a small biography of Benjamin. The first major biography of Arthur Benjamin has been written by Wendy Hiscocks as her doctoral thesis at the Australian National University
, and will be published in 2010 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death.
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of Jamaican Rhumba
Two Jamaican Pieces
Two Jamaican Pieces is an orchestral suite composed in 1938 by Arthur Benjamin and using melodies from the West Indies. It is in two sections, Jamaican Song and Jamaican Rhumba. The latter has become Benjamin's most popular work, and is frequently heard in an arrangement by the composer for two...
, composed in 1938.
Biography
Arthur Benjamin was born in SydneySydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, but at age 3 his parents moved to Brisbane
Brisbane
Brisbane is the capital and most populous city in the Australian state of Queensland and the third most populous city in Australia. Brisbane's metropolitan area has a population of over 2 million, and the South East Queensland urban conurbation, centred around Brisbane, encompasses a population of...
. At the age of six he made his first public appearance as a pianist and his formal musical training began three years later with the Brisbane City organist, George Sampson. In 1911, Benjamin won a scholarship from Brisbane Grammar School
Brisbane Grammar School
Brisbane Grammar School is an independent, non-denominational, day and boarding school for boys, located in Spring Hill, an inner suburb of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia...
to the Royal College of Music
Royal College of Music
The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...
(RCM), where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford
Charles Villiers Stanford
Sir Charles Villiers Stanford was an Irish composer who was particularly notable for his choral music. He was professor at the Royal College of Music and University of Cambridge.- Life :...
, harmony and counterpoint with Thomas Dunhill
Thomas Dunhill
Thomas Frederick Dunhill was an English composer and writer on musical subjects. He is best-known for his song-cycle The Wind among the Reeds.-Life and career:Thomas Dunhill was born in Hampstead, London...
, and piano with Frederick Cliffe.
In 1914 he joined the Officer Training Corps, receiving a temporary commission in April 1915. He served initially in the infantry as 2nd Lieutenant with the 32nd Battalion of the Royal Fusiliers and in November 1917 he was attached to the Royal Flying Corps. On 31 July 1918 his aircraft was shot down over Germany by the young Hermann Göring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
, and he spent the remainder of the war as a German prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
at Ruhleben
Ruhleben
The Ruhleben barracks is part of the German Naval establishment located in Plön, Holstein, Germany.From 1940 to 1945 it was home to the III U-Boat Training Division . On April 22, 1945 Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz moved the headquarters of the Naval High Command there...
camp near Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. There he met the composer Edgar Bainton
Edgar Bainton
Edgar Leslie Bainton was a British composer, most celebrated for his church music. Perhaps his most famous piece is the liturgical anthem And I saw a new heaven, but during recent years Bainton's other musical works - neglected for decades - have been increasingly often heard in the concert...
, who had been interned since 1914, and who was later to become Director of the New South Wales State Conservatorium of Music
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
The Sydney Conservatorium of Music is one of the oldest and most prestigious music schools in Australia...
.
The manuscript of the unpublished Violin Sonata in E minor bears the date 1918, the only surviving work of that year and one of very few to be written by Benjamin during the war.
He returned to Australia in 1919 and became piano professor at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music, Sydney. He returned to England in 1921 to become piano professor at the RCM. Following his appointment in 1926 to a professorship which he held for the next thirteen years at the RCM, Benjamin developed a distinguished career as a piano teacher. His better-known students from that era include Muir Mathieson
Muir Mathieson
James Muir Mathieson was a Scottish conductor and composer. Mathieson was almost always described as a "Musical Director" on a large number of British films.-Career:...
, Peggy Glanville-Hicks
Peggy Glanville-Hicks
Peggy Glanville-Hicks was an Australian composer.- Biography :Peggy Glanville-Hicks was born Melbourne in 1912. At age 15 she began studying composition with Fritz Hart in Melbourne...
, Miriam Hyde
Miriam Hyde
Miriam Beatrice Hyde AO, OBE was an Australian composer, pianist, poet and music educator.She composed over 150 works for piano, songs and other instrumental and orchestral works and performed as a concert pianist with eminent conductors including Sir Malcolm Sargent, Sir Bernard Heinze and...
, Joan Trimble
Joan Trimble
Joan Trimble was an Irish composer and pianist.- Education and career :She studied at the Trinity College, Dublin, the Royal Irish Academy of Music, and the Royal College of Music....
, Stanley Bate
Stanley Bate
-Life:Bate received early training in music and had composed two operas by age twenty. He studied under Ralph Vaughan Williams, R.O. Morris, Gordon Jacob, and Arthur Benjamin, and then in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and in Berlin with Paul Hindemith. He wrote incidental music for performances at...
, Bernard Stevens
Bernard Stevens
Bernard Stevens was a British composer.Born in London, Stevens studied English and Music at the University of Cambridge with E. J. Dent, then at the Royal College of Music with R.O. Morris and Gordon Jacob from 1937 to 1940...
, Lamar Crowson
Lamar Crowson
John Lamar Crowson was an American concert pianist and a chamber musician....
, Alun Hoddinott
Alun Hoddinott
Alun Hoddinott CBE , was a Welsh composer of classical music, one of the first to receive international recognition.-Life and works:...
, Dorian Le Gallienne
Dorian Le Gallienne
Dorian Leon Marlois Le Gallienne was an Australian composer, teacher and music critic.-Biography:Dorian Le Gallienne was born in Melbourne in 1915. His father, an actor, was born in France, and his mother, a pianist who had studied with G. W. L. Marshall-Hall, was the daughter of the Assistant...
, Natasha Litvin
Natasha Spender
Natasha Spender, Lady Spender was an English pianist and author. She was the wife of the writer Sir Stephen Spender....
(later Stephen Spender
Stephen Spender
Sir Stephen Harold Spender CBE was an English poet, novelist and essayist who concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle in his work...
's wife and a prominent concert pianist), William Blezard
William Blezard
William Blezard was a talented pianist and composer who was musical director to Noël Coward, Marlene Dietrich and Joyce Grenfell.- Personal life :...
and Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
, whose Holiday Diary suite for solo piano is dedicated to Benjamin and mimics many of his teacher’s mannerisms.
He continued writing chamber works for the next few years – Three Pieces for violin and piano (1919–24); Three Impressions (voice and string quartet, 1919); Five Pieces for Cello (1923); Pastoral Fantasy (string quartet, 1924), which won a Carnegie Award that year; Sonatina (violin and piano, 1924).
Orchestral works became more common after 1927 — Rhapsody on Negro Themes (MS 1919); Concertino for piano and orchestra (1926/7); Light Music Suite (1928); Overture to an Italian Comedy
Overture to an Italian Comedy
The Overture to an Italian Comedy for orchestra was composed in 1936 by Australian composer Arthur Benjamin; it was first performed in London on 2 March 1937, under the direction of Gordon Jacob....
(1937); Cotillon Suite (1938). There also appeared over twenty meticulously crafted songs and choral settings.
He was also an adjudicator and examiner for the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music
Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music
ABRSM is an internationally recognised educational body and charity that provides examinations in music The organisation, based in London, UK, runs exams in centres all over the world...
, which led him to places such as Australia, Canada and the West Indies
British West Indies
The British West Indies was a term used to describe the islands in and around the Caribbean that were part of the British Empire The term was sometimes used to include British Honduras and British Guiana, even though these territories are not geographically part of the Caribbean...
. It was in the West Indies that he discovered the native tune on which he based his best-known piece, Jamaican Rhumba, one of Two Jamaican Pieces
Two Jamaican Pieces
Two Jamaican Pieces is an orchestral suite composed in 1938 by Arthur Benjamin and using melodies from the West Indies. It is in two sections, Jamaican Song and Jamaican Rhumba. The latter has become Benjamin's most popular work, and is frequently heard in an arrangement by the composer for two...
, composed in 1938, for which the Jamaican government gave him a free barrel of rum a year as thanks for making their country known.
The Violin Concerto of 1932 was premiered by Antonio Brosa
Antonio Brosa
Antonio Brosa was a Spanish violinist . He was a great friend of Benjamin Britten, who consulted him on the difficulties of Britten's concerto. He premiered Benjamin Britten's violin concerto op. 15 at Carnegie Hall on 28th March 1940, playing on his Vesuvius Stradivarius of 1727 with the New York...
with Benjamin conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation and one of the leading orchestras in Britain.-History:...
. In 1935 he accompanied the 10-year-old Canadian cellist Lorne Munroe
Lorne Munroe
Lorne Munroe is a cellist. He was principal cellist for the Philadelphia Orchestra between 1951 and 1964 and principal cellist for the New York Philharmonic from 1964 through 1996. He was a featured soloist more than 150 times during the thirty-two seasons he played for the New York Philharmonic...
on a concert tour of Europe. Three years later he wrote a Sonatina for Munroe, who later became the principal cellist with the Philadelphia Orchestra
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is a symphony orchestra based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States. One of the "Big Five" American orchestras, it was founded in 1900...
and the New York Philharmonic
New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic is a symphony orchestra based in New York City in the United States. It is one of the American orchestras commonly referred to as the "Big Five"...
, and also recorded the piece.
His Romantic Fantasy for Violin, Viola and Orchestra was premiered by Eda Kersey
Eda Kersey
Eda Kersey was a British violinist who was renowned for her brilliant playing. She premiered a number of important works but her career was cut short by her early death....
and Bernard Shore in 1938, under the composer. Its first recording was by Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz
Jascha Heifetz was a violinist, born in Vilnius, then Russian Empire, now Lithuania. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time.- Early life :...
and William Primrose
William Primrose
William Primrose CBE was a Scottish violist and teacher.-Biography:Primrose was born in Glasgow and studied violin initially. In 1919 he moved to study at the then Guildhall School of Music in London. On the urging of the accompanist Ivor Newton, Primrose moved to Belgium to study under Eugène...
.
He resigned from his post at the RCM and left to settle in Vancouver
Vancouver
Vancouver is a coastal seaport city on the mainland of British Columbia, Canada. It is the hub of Greater Vancouver, which, with over 2.3 million residents, is the third most populous metropolitan area in the country,...
, Canada, where he remained for the duration of the war. In 1941 he was appointed conductor of the newly formed Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) Symphony Orchestra, holding the post until 1946. During this time he gave “literally hundreds” of Canadian first performances. After a series of radio talks and concerts in addition to music teaching, conducting and composing, he became a major figure in Canadian musical life. He frequently visited the United States, broadcasting and arranging many performances of contemporary British music. He was also Resident Lecturer at Reed College, Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
between 1944 and 1945.
Almost unknown today, Arthur Benjamin's Symphony was given its British premiere at the Cheltenham Festival
Cheltenham Festival
The Cheltenham Festival is one of the most prestigious meetings in the National Hunt racing calendar in the United Kingdom, and has race prize money second only to the Grand National...
in July 1948 by Sir John Barbirolli
John Barbirolli
Sir John Barbirolli, CH was an English conductor and cellist. Born in London, of Italian and French parentage, he grew up in a family of professional musicians. His father and grandfather were violinists...
and the Hallé Orchestra
The Hallé
The Hallé is a symphony orchestra based in Manchester, England. It is the UK's oldest extant symphony orchestra , supports a choir, youth choir and a youth orchestra, and releases its recordings on its own record label, though it has occasionally released recordings on Angel Records and EMI...
. Further performances by the same artists took place in Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
and the Royal Albert Hall
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall situated on the northern edge of the South Kensington area, in the City of Westminster, London, England, best known for holding the annual summer Proms concerts since 1941....
in London the following year. After one more performance by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in August 1954, conducted by the composer, the work appears to have been utterly neglected until it was recorded in recent times by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra
Queensland Symphony Orchestra
The Queensland Symphony Orchestra is an Australian orchestra, based principally in Brisbane in the state of Queensland.The QSO played its first concert on 26 March 1947, with the orchestra consisting of 45 musicians, conducted by Percy Code. John Farnsworth Hall was recruited from the Sydney...
, conducted by Christopher Lyndon Gee.
The other major work of the period was the Sonata for Viola and Piano of 1942, also known as Elegy, Waltz and Toccata and bearing the dedication "Written for and dedicated to William Primrose". Benjamin simultaneously prepared the work as a Concerto for Viola and Orchestra, which was given its premiere by Frederick Riddle
Frederick Riddle
Frederick Riddle OBE was an important British violist. He was considered to be in the line from Lionel Tertis and William Primrose, through to the violists of today such as Lawrence Power.-Biography:...
and the Hallé Orchestra on 30 June 1948, again conducted by Barbirolli. Riddle later recorded the work in its sonata version with the pianist Wilfred Parry for the BBC. Both the Sonata and the Symphony reflect not just the sombre mood of the times but also the darker territory that Benjamin had begun to explore.
Other orchestral and concertante works written in Canada were the Sonatina (1940), Ballade (1944), Suite for Flute and Strings (1945), Prelude to Holiday (1941), Red River Jig (1945), the orchestral setting of the Two Jamaican Pieces (1942), From San Domingo (1945), Caribbean Dance (1946) and two Mendelssohn
Felix Mendelssohn
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Barthóldy , use the form 'Mendelssohn' and not 'Mendelssohn Bartholdy'. The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians gives ' Felix Mendelssohn' as the entry, with 'Mendelssohn' used in the body text...
transcriptions: Præludium and Prelude and Fugue (1941). The Oboe Concerto on themes of Cimarosa (1942) was an orchestration of harpsichord pieces by Domenico Cimarosa
Domenico Cimarosa
Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school...
; for many years it was frequently mis-labelled as "Cimarosa's Oboe Concerto, arranged by Arthur Benjamin".
The Elegiac Mazurka of 1941 was commissioned as part of the memorial volume 'Homage to Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski GBE was a Polish pianist, composer, diplomat, politician, and the second Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland.-Biography:...
’ in honour of the Polish pianist who had died that year. In 1945 a shortened piano solo arrangement of the Jamaican Rhumba was published.
Returning to England in 1946, he resumed teaching at the RCM. In 1949, Benjamin wrote his piano concerto Concerto quasi una Fantasia. The concerto, written to a commission from the Australian Broadcasting Commission
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation, commonly referred to as "the ABC" , is Australia's national public broadcaster...
, served as the solo vehicle for Benjamin's Australian concert tour of 1950 and was premiered by him on 5 September 1950 with Eugene Goossens
Eugène Aynsley Goossens
Sir Eugene Aynsley Goossens was an English conductor and composer.-Biography:He was born in Camden Town, London, the son of the Belgian conductor and violinist Eugène Goossens and the grandson of the conductor Eugène Goossens...
and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
The Sydney Symphony Orchestra , commonly known as the Sydney Symphony, is an Australian symphony orchestra based in Sydney...
. It was repeated in a further seven Australian cities. These were Benjamin's final performances as a pianist.
The other major original works written during the 1950s were the Harmonica Concerto (1953), written for Larry Adler
Larry Adler
Lawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler was an American musician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed works for him...
, who performed it many times and recorded it at least twice; the ballet Orlando’s Silver Wedding (1951), Tombeau de Ravel for clarinet and piano, a second string quartet (1959) and the Wind Quintet (1960). He had a lasting admiration for Maurice Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
, whose influence is most obvious in Tombeau de Ravel and the much earlier Suite of 1926 for piano solo.
He was honoured by the Worshipful Company of Musicians
Worshipful Company of Musicians
The Worshipful Company of Musicians is one of the Livery Companies of the City of London. Its history dates back to at least 1350. Originally a specialist guild for musicians, its role became an anachronism in the 18th century, when the centre of music making in London moved from the City to the...
by the award of the Cobbett Medal later that year (1957).
His private students included John Carmichael
John Carmichael (composer)
John Carmichael OAM is an Australian pianist, composer and music therapist who has long been resident in the United Kingdom. One of his best known works is the Concierto folklorico for piano and string orchestra. His works for piano form much of his musical output, although he composes for many...
.
Arthur Benjamin died on 10 April 1960, at the age of 66, at the Middlesex Hospital
Middlesex Hospital
The Middlesex Hospital was a teaching hospital located in the Fitzrovia area of London, United Kingdom. First opened in 1745 on Windmill Street, it was moved in 1757 to Mortimer Street where it remained until it was finally closed in 2005. Its staff and services were transferred to various sites...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, from a re-occurrence of the cancer
Cancer
Cancer , known medically as a malignant neoplasm, is a large group of different diseases, all involving unregulated cell growth. In cancer, cells divide and grow uncontrollably, forming malignant tumors, and invade nearby parts of the body. The cancer may also spread to more distant parts of the...
that had first attacked him three years earlier. An alternative explanation of the immediate cause of death is hepatitis
Hepatitis
Hepatitis is a medical condition defined by the inflammation of the liver and characterized by the presence of inflammatory cells in the tissue of the organ. The name is from the Greek hepar , the root being hepat- , meaning liver, and suffix -itis, meaning "inflammation"...
, contracted while Benjamin and his partner, Jack Henderson, a Canadian who worked in the music publishing business, were holidaying with the Australian painter Donald Friend
Donald Friend
Donald Stuart Leslie Friend was an Australian artist, writer and diarist.- Early life :Born in Sydney, precociously talented both as an artist and a writer, Friend grew up in the artistic circle of his bohemian mother...
in Ceylon
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
(now Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
).
Operas
Benjamin wrote four operas. The one-act opera The Devil Take Her, to a libretto by Alan Collard and John B. Gordon, was first produced at the RCM on 1 December 1931, conducted by Sir Thomas BeechamThomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet CH was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Liverpool Philharmonic and Hallé orchestras...
. Another one-acter, Prima Donna (1932) had to wait until 23 February 1949 for its premiere, at the Fortune Theatre in London. Its libretto was by Cedric Cliffe, son of Benjamin's piano teacher at the RCM Frederic Cliffe. Both these works met with critical success.
A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities
A Tale of Two Cities is a novel by Charles Dickens, set in London and Paris before and during the French Revolution. With well over 200 million copies sold, it ranks among the most famous works in the history of fictional literature....
(1950), and Mañana were full-length operas. The librettist for the former was again Cedric Cliffe. First produced by Dennis Arundell during the Festival of Britain
Festival of Britain
The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition in Britain in the summer of 1951. It was organised by the government to give Britons a feeling of recovery in the aftermath of war and to promote good quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities. The Festival's centrepiece was in...
in 1951, it won a gold medal and was later broadcast in a live performance by BBC Radio 3 on 17 April 1953. After this performance, Benjamin revised the piece into its final version. The opera was successfully produced in this form in San Francisco in April 1960, only days before his death. Mañana was commissioned in 1955 and produced by BBC television on 1 February 1956. Unfortunately, it was judged a flop at the time and never revived.
A fifth opera, Tartuffe, with a libretto by Cedric Cliffe based on Molière
Molière
Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature...
, was unfinished at Benjamin's death. The scoring was completed by the composer Alan Boustead and the work produced by the New Opera Company at Sadler’s Wells on 30 November 1964, conducted by Boustead. This appears to have been this opera’s only performance.
Films
Benjamin was equally active as a writer of music for films, beginning in 1934 with The Scarlet Pimpernel, an adaptation of music from the Napoleonic era, and Alfred HitchcockAlfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
’s The Man Who Knew Too Much
The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934 film)
The Man Who Knew Too Much is a British suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, featuring Peter Lorre, and released by Gaumont British. It was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period....
(1934, remade 1956), for which Benjamin composed the extended Storm Clouds Cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
. Other scores included those for Alexander Korda
Alexander Korda
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian-born British producer and film director. He was a leading figure in the British film industry, the founder of London Films and the owner of British Lion Films, a film distributing company.-Life and career:The elder brother of filmmakers Zoltán Korda and Vincent...
's 1947 film of An Ideal Husband
An Ideal Husband (1947 film)
An Ideal Husband, also known as Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, is a 1947 film adaptation of the play by Oscar Wilde. It was made by London Film Productions and distributed by British Lion Films and Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation . It was produced and directed by Alexander Korda from a...
, The Conquest of Everest
The Conquest of Everest
The Conquest of Everest is a 1953 British documentary film directed by George Lowe about various expeditions to the summit of Mount Everest. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature....
, The Cumberland Story (1947), Steps of the Ballet (British Council/Central Office of Information 1948), The Crowthers of Bankdam (Holbein Films 1947), Above Us the Waves
Above Us the Waves (film)
Above Us the Waves is a 1955 war film directed by Ralph Thomas. It tells the story of human torpedo and midget submarine attacks on the German battleship Tirpitz. It is based on true-life attacks on the Tirpitz, first using manned torpedoes , and then the Royal Navy's midget X-Craft submarines in...
(1955) and Fire Down Below
Fire Down Below (1957 film)
Fire Down Below is a 1957 adventure drama film starring Rita Hayworth, Jack Lemmon and Robert Mitchum and was directed by Robert Parrish.It was based on Max Catto's 1954 novel and filmed by Warwick Films on location in Trinidad and Tobago in Technicolor and CinemaScope.-Plot:After the Korean War,...
(1957/60). While most of his music scores are archived in the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
, his film scores are completely lost. Apart from the Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes
Boosey & Hawkes is a British music publisher purported to be the largest specialist classical music publisher in the world. Until 2003, it was also a major manufacturer of brass, string and wind musical instruments....
edition of An Ideal Husband the only surviving score is the Storm Clouds Cantata.
Premieres as pianist
Arthur Benjamin gave a number of important premieres including:- Herbert HowellsHerbert HowellsHerbert Norman Howells CH was an English composer, organist, and teacher, most famous for his large output of Anglican church music.-Life:...
' Piano Concerto No. 1 (1913) - Arthur BlissArthur BlissSir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
's suite Masks for solo piano by (2 February 1926). - Constant LambertConstant LambertLeonard Constant Lambert was a British composer and conductor.-Early life:Lambert, the son of Russian-born Australian painter George Lambert, was educated at Christ's Hospital and the Royal College of Music...
's Piano Concerto (18 December 1931, Lambert conducting) - the British premiere of George GershwinGeorge GershwinGeorge Gershwin was an American composer and pianist. Gershwin's compositions spanned both popular and classical genres, and his most popular melodies are widely known...
's Rhapsody in BlueRhapsody in BlueRhapsody in Blue is a musical composition by George Gershwin for solo piano and jazz band written in 1924, which combines elements of classical music with jazz-influenced effects....
.
Tributes from other composers
Herbert Howells wrote an orchestral suite The Bs, in five movements, each celebrating a close friend. The work was first performed in 1914, and ends with an heraldic march movement entitled "Benjee", saluting Arthur Benjamin, who the previous year had given the premiere of Howells' Piano Concerto No. 1. Howells' orchestral piece Procession (written for the 1922 PromsThe Proms
The Proms, more formally known as The BBC Proms, or The Henry Wood Promenade Concerts presented by the BBC, is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in London...
) is dedicated to Benjamin. Benjamin, in turn, later dedicated the three-page Saxophone Blues (1929) to Howells.
The Australian pianist and composer Ian Munro
Ian Munro (pianist)
Ian Munro is an Australian pianist, composer, writer and music educator. His career has taken him to over 30 countries in Europe, Asia, North America and Australasia.-Biography:...
, who has a special affinity with Arthur Benjamin and has recorded many of his piano works, has written a small biography of Benjamin. The first major biography of Arthur Benjamin has been written by Wendy Hiscocks as her doctoral thesis at the Australian National University
Australian National University
The Australian National University is a teaching and research university located in the Australian capital, Canberra.As of 2009, the ANU employs 3,945 administrative staff who teach approximately 10,000 undergraduates, and 7,500 postgraduate students...
, and will be published in 2010 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his death.