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William (Havergal) Brian (January 29, 1876 – November 28, 1972), was a British composer. January 29 is the 29th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ...
1876 (MDCCCLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ...
November 28 is the 332nd day (333rd on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian Calendar. ...
1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday. ...
A composer is a person who writes music. ...
Brian acquired a legendary status at the time of his rediscovery in the 1950s and 1960s for the number of symphonies he had managed to write (thirty-two, an unusually large number for any composer since Beethoven), and for his creative persistence in the face of almost total neglect during the greater part of his long life. Even now none of his works can be said to be performed with any frequency, but few composers who have fallen into neglect after an early period of success have continued to produce so many serious and ambitious works so long after any chance of performance would seem to have gone for good. // Recovering from World War II and its aftermath, the economic miracle emerged in West Germany and Italy. ...
The 1960s decade refers to the years from January 1, 1960 to December 31, 1969, inclusive. ...
A symphony is an extended composition usually for orchestra and usually comprising four movements. ...
1820 portrait by Joseph Karl Stieler Beethoven redirects here. ...
Biography William Brian (he adopted the name "Havergal" from a local family of hymn-writers) was born in Dresden, a district of Stoke-on-Trent, and was one of a very small number of composers to originate from the English working class. After attending an elementary school he had difficulty finding any congenial work, and taught himself the rudiments of music. For a time he was organist of Odd Rode Church just across the border in Cheshire. In 1895, he heard a choir rehearsing Elgar's King Olaf, attended the first performance and became a fervent enthusiast of the new music being produced by Richard Strauss and the British composers of the day. Through attending music festivals he made the lifelong friendship of his near-contemporary composer Granville Bantock (1868 – 1946). A hymn is a type of song, usually religious, specifically written for the purpose of praise, adoration or prayer, and typically addressed to a god or other religiously significant figure. ...
This page is about Stoke-on-Trent in England. ...
Motto: (French for God and my right) Anthem: God Save the King/Queen Capital London (de facto) Largest city London Official language(s) English (de facto) Unification - by Athelstan AD 927 Area - Total 130,395 km² (1st in UK) 50,346 sq mi Population - 2006 est. ...
The term working class is used to denote a social class. ...
The Cheshire Plain - photo taken adjacent to Beeston Castle The Cheshire Plain - photo taken towards Merseyside The Cheshire Plain panorama - photo taken from Mid-Cheshire Ridge Cattle farming in the county Black-and-white timbered buildings on Nantwich High Street Cheshire (or, archaically, the County of Chester)[1] is a...
1895 (MDCCCXCV) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Thursday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
A choir or chorus is a musical ensemble of singers. ...
Sir Edward Elgar Sir Edward Elgar, 1st Baronet, OM, GCVO (2 June 1857 – 23 February 1934) was an English Romantic composer. ...
This article is about the German composer of tone-poems and operas. ...
Sir Granville Bantock (August 7, 1868, London - October 16, 1946, London) was a British composer of classical music. ...
1868 (MDCCCLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Wednesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Friday of the 12-day-slower Julian calendar. ...
Year 1946 (MCMXLVI) was a common year starting on Tuesday. ...
In 1907 his first English Suite attracted the attention of Henry Wood who performed it at the London Proms. It was an overnight success and Brian obtained a publisher and performances for his next few orchestral works. Why he never succeeded in maintaining his success is a matter for debate, but it was probably due to his shyness with strangers and lack of confidence on public occasions. Whatever it was, the offers of performance soon dried up. 1907 (MCMVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Wednesday of the 13-day-slower Julian calendar). ...
Sir Henry Joseph Wood (3 March 1869 - 19 August 1944) was a British orchestral conductor, the founder of the famous Promenade Concerts. ...
This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ...
A Promenade concert in the Royal Albert Hall, 2004. ...
At this point a development unusual in British 20th century musical history transformed Brian's life, for better or for worse has never been decided. He was offered a yearly income of £500 (then a respectable lower-middle-class salary) by a local wealthy businessman, Herbert Minton Robinson, to enable him to devote all his time to composition. It seems Robinson expected Brian soon to become successful and financially independent on the strength of his compositions. This never happened. For a while Brian worked on a number of ambitious large-scale choral and orchestral works, but felt no urgency to finish them, and began to indulge in hitherto-undreamt-of pleasures, such as expensive foods and a trip to Italy. (19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999...
Arguments over the money and an affair with a young servant led to the collapse of his marriage. Brian fled to London and although Robinson deeply disapproved of the incident he continued to provide Brian with money until his own death, though most of the allowance went to Brian's estranged wife. The affair became a lifelong relationship. Gradually Brian began composing again, and, living in conditions of the most basic poverty, eventually obtained work of a musical kind, copying and arranging, and writing for the journal Musical Opinion.
Nothing was a success for Brian; even his war service was short and farcical, and gave him the material for his first opera The Tigers. In the 1920s he at last turned to symphonies, though he had written more than ten before one of them was first performed in the early 1950s. This was due to his discovery by Robert Simpson, himself a significant composer and BBC Music Producer, who asked Sir Adrian Boult to programme the Eighth Symphony in 1954. From then on Brian composed another twenty-two symphonies, many of the later ones short, single or two-movement works, and several other pieces. The Teatro alla Scala in Milan. ...
The 1920s was a decade sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ...
// Recovering from World War II and its aftermath, the economic miracle emerged in West Germany and Italy. ...
Robert (Wilfred Levick) Simpson (March 2, 1921 - December 21, 1997) was an English musicologist and composer best known for his symphonies and string quartets. ...
The British Broadcasting Corporation, usually known as the BBC (and also informally known as the Beeb or Auntie) is one of the largest broadcasting corporations in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the UK alone and with a budget of more than £4 billion. ...
Sir Adrian Cedric Boult (April 8, 1889 - February 22, 1983) was an English conductor. ...
Music In 1961, Brian's largest surviving work, the Gothic Symphony, which had been written between 1919 and 1927, was first performed at Central Hall, Westminster, in a partly amateur performance conducted by Bryan Fairfax, and in 1966 the first fully-professional performance was given at the Royal Albert Hall conducted by Boult, both occasions largely the result of Simpson's lobbying. The latter performance was broadcast live and many people heard their first music of Brian that evening. This encouraged considerable interest, and by his death six years later several of his works had been performed and the first commercial recordings had begun to appear. For a few years after Brian's death, while Simpson still had influence at the BBC, there was a revival of interest with a number of recordings and performances; two biographies and a three-volume study of his symphonies appeared. The reputation of his music has always been restricted to enthusiasts and has never achieved the popularity of, say, Vaughan Williams. 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (the link is to a full 1961 calendar). ...
Havergal Brians Symphony No. ...
Year 1919 (MCMXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display the full calendar). ...
1927 (MCMXXVII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will take you to calendar). ...
Westminster is a district within the City of Westminster in London. ...
1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1966 calendar). ...
Royal Albert Hall The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences is an arts venue dedicated to Queen Victorias husband and consort, Prince Albert. ...
The British Broadcasting Corporation, usually known as the BBC (and also informally known as the Beeb or Auntie) is one of the largest broadcasting corporations in the world in terms of audience numbers, employing 26,000 staff in the UK alone and with a budget of more than £4 billion. ...
Ralph Vaughan Williams Ralph Vaughan Williams, OM (October 12, 1872 – August 26, 1958) was an influential English composer. ...
The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra made the very first commercial recording of Havergal Brian’s music. Symphonies Nos. 10 and 21, conducted by James Loughran and Eric Pinkett respectively, were recorded at the De Monfort Hall, Leicester in 1972. The producer was Robert Simpson and the LP was released by Unicorn Records to great critical acclaim in 1973. A special edition of the television programme Aquarius gave considerable coverage to the recording session and a camera crew also joined members of the orchestra during a visit they made to the composer’s home in Shoreham (see external links below). Following the success of the Unicorn issue, a second Brian album was recorded by the LSSO in 1974 at Hove Town Hall and Leicester De Montfort Hall with the conducting being shared by Laszlo Heltay and Eric Pinkett. This CBS release included the 22nd Symphony, Brian’s setting of the 23rd Psalm (which clearly belongs to the mainstream British choral tradition of Vaughan Williams and Parry) and the English Suite Rustic Scenes which contains some highly original music. The Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra is a youth orchestra based in Leicester, England. ...
James Loughran (born 30 June 1931 in Glasgow, Scotland) is a Scottish conductor. ...
Leicester (pronounced ) is the largest city in the East Midlands of England. ...
Unicorn-Kanchana[1] was an independent record label. ...
Shoreham-by-Sea, West Sussex, England, is bordered on the north by the South Downs, on the west by the Adur valley and on the south by the River Adur and Shoreham Beach. ...
The town of Hove is a next-door neighbour of Brighton, on the south coast of England. ...
In 1979, Cameo Classics embarked on a project to record all of Brian's orchestral music in collaboration with the Havergal Brian Society. It started with the English Suite No.1, Doctor Merryheart, and Fantastic Variations on an Old Rhyme. In 1980 came the second LP containing In Memoriam, For Valour, and Festal Dance. The project was completed in 1981 with the recordings of Burlesque Variations on an Original Theme, and Two Herrick Songs, "Requiem for the Rose" and "The Hag". The recordings were produced by David Kent-Watson with the Hull Youth Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Heald-Smith. For the recording of Brian's complete Piano Music, Cameo Classics went digital. Peter Hill's outstanding performances on a Bosendorfer Imperial at the Northern College of Music earned high praise from John Ogden in his review for Records and Recording.
Legacy More of Brian's works have been published since the 1980's and '90's, making it perhaps less likely that his music will continue to be neglected, and the scarcity of well-rehearsed performances or mature interpretations that had previously made the quality of his music difficult to assess has been partially corrected through the series of professional performances of many of Brian's symphonies that have been issued by the Marco Polo record label on CD. Some of these have now gone out of print, but are available through such outlets as Amazon.com's affiliates. Some have been issued on the budget-priced label Naxos.
External links
Books - Eastaugh, Kenneth. Havergal Brian, the making of a composer. London: Harrap. c 1976. ISBN 0-245-52748-6
- MacDonald, Malcolm. The Symphonies of Havergal Brian (Discussion in 3 volumes—volume 1: Symphonies 1–12; volume 2: Symphonies 13–29; volume 3: Symphonies 30–32, Survey, and Summing-up.) London: Kahn & Averill, 1974 – 1983. ISBN 0-900707-28-3.
- MacDonald, Malcolm, ed. Havergal Brian on music: selections from his journalism. London: Toccata Press, c 1986. ISBN 0-907689-19-1 (v.1).
- Nettel, Reginald. Ordeal by Music: The Strange Experience of Havergal Brian. London and New York: Oxford University Press. c 1945.
- Nettel, Reginald (also Foreman, Lewis). Havergal Brian and his music. London: Dobson. c 1976. ISBN 0-234-77861-X.
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