Composer, born in Valls, NE Spain. He studied piano with Granados (19156), and composition with Felipe Pedrell (191622) and Schoenberg (19238). He left Barcelona to settle in England in 1939, becoming a British subject (1960). There he wrote most of his music, which was characterized by virtuosic orchestral, rhythmic, and melodic inventiveness. He composed ballets, an opera The Duenna (19457), five symphonies, concertos for violin and piano, chamber music, incidental music, and some electronic music.
Life
Gerhard (who only consistently adopted the form ‘Roberto’ after he was exiled from Spain) was the son of a German-Swiss father and an Alsatian mother. He studied piano with Granados and composition with the great scholar-composer Felipe Pedrell, teacher of Albéniz, Granados and Falla.
Identified with the Republican cause throughout 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), Gerhard was forced to flee to France in 1939 and later that year settled in Cambridge, England. Apart from copious work 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 Symphony in memory of Pedrell and the first version of the ballet Don Quixote. 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.
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 Soirées de Barcelone and pieces for a wide variety of chamber ensembles, including Sardanas for the indigenous Catalan street band, the cobla.
Stylistic Evolution
For 20 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 Bartók and Stravinsky. This was the idiom whose major achievements included the ‘Ballet Catalan’ Soirées de Barcelone, the ballet Don Quixote, the Violin Concerto and the opera The Duenna. In a notable series of works, such as the First Symphony and First String Quartet, which began to win him real international recognition for the first time, it became his principal mode of discourse.
Gerhard often said that he stood by the sound of his music: ‘It is the sound that must make the sense’. Whereas in the Third and Fourth Symphonies, for instance, these techniques result in music of majesty and high drama, in the Concerto for Orchestra the element of play, of inordinate instrumental virtuosity enjoyed for its own sake, is paramount.
Selected List of Works
Symphonies
Symphony ‘Homenatje a Pedrell’ (1941) Symphony No.1 (1952-53) Symphony No.2 (1957-59); recomposition as Metamorphosis, unfinished (1967-68) Symphony No.3 Collages (for orchestra and tape) (1960) Symphony No.4 ‘New York’ (1967) Symphony No.5 (fragment only) (1969) (for Chamber Symphony ‘Leo’ see Chamber Music)Stage Works
Ariel, Ballet (1934) Soirées de Barcelone, ballet in 3 tableaux (1937-39; 1944-45) The Duenna, opera after Sheridan (1947-49) El barbarillo de Lavapies, arrangement and orchestration of the zarzuela (1874) by Francisco Barbieri (1954) Lamparilla, German-language Singspiel loosely based on El barbarillo de Lavapies with additional music and original overture by Gerhard (1955-56)Concertos
Concertino for string orchestra (1929) Violin Concerto (1942-43) Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra (1951) Concerto for Harpsichord, String Orchestra and Percussion (1955-56) Concerto for Orchestra (1965)Orchestral Works
Albada, Interludi i Dansa (1936) Epithalamium (1966) Various suites from Soirées de Barcelone, Don Quixote, Alegrias, PandoraChamber and Instrumental Music
Sonatine a Carlos, piano (1914) Trio in B major for violin, cello and piano (1918) Trio (‘no.2’) for violin, cello and piano (1918) Dos Apunts, piano (1921-22) 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) Andantino, clarinet, violin and piano (period 1928-9) String Quartet No.1 (1950-55) Sonata, viola and piano (1948; recomposed 1956 as sonata for cello and piano) Capriccio, solo flute (1949) 3 Impromptus, piano (1950) Secret People (study for the film score) for clarinet, violin and piano (1951-52) Nonet (1956-57) Fantasia, guitar (1957) String Quartet No.2 (1961-62) Concert for 8 (1962) Chaconne, violin solo (1959) Hymnody for large wind ensemble, 2 pianos and percussion (1963) Gemini, Duo for violin and piano (1966) Libra, sextet (1968) Leo, Chamber Symphony (1969)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 Cancons populars catalanes for voice and piano (1928-29; six numbers orchestrated 1931 as 6 Cancons 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) 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) 10 Pieces for tape (c.1961) Sculptures I-V (1963) DNA in Reflection (1963) also tape component in Symphony No.3 and in many film, radio and theatre scoresFantasias on themes from Zarzuelas
(for light orchestra; Valverde (1943) Gigantes y Cabezudos, after Caballero (c.1943) La Viejecita, after Caballero (c.1943)
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