fbpx
Wikipedia

Benjamin Frankel

April 16, 2023

This article is about the British composer. For the American rabbi, see Benjamin Frankel (rabbi).

Benjamin Frankel (31 January 1906 – 12 February 1973) was a British composer. His best known pieces include a cycle of five string quartets, eight symphonies, and concertos for violin and viola. He was also notable for writing over 100 film scores and working as a big band arranger in the 1930s. During the last 15 years of his life, Frankel also developed his own style of 12-note composition which retained contact with tonality.

Biography

Frankel was born in London on 31 January 1906, the son of Polish Jewish parents.[1] He began to learn the violin at an early age, showing remarkable talent; at age 14, his piano-playing gifts attracted the attention of the American pianist and teacher Victor Benham (1867-1936) who persuaded his parents to let him study music full-time.[2]

He spent six months in Germany in 1922, then returned to London, where he won a scholarship from the Worshipful Company of Musicians and attempted his first serious compositions while earning his income as a jazz violinist, pianist and arranger. Known then as Ben Frankel, his jazz work can be heard on recordings by Fred Elizalde's band.[3] He also played violin with Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans.[4]

By the early 1930s, Frankel was in demand as an arranger and musical director in London, working with several dance bands. He wrote several popular dance band arrangements for Henry Hall's BBC Dance Orchestra, including "Learn To Croon", "Don't Blame Me", "Weep No More My Baby", "April in Paris" and "In Town Tonight". He wrote many arrangements and scores for theatre and film music but gave up theatre work in 1944.

He did, however, retain an interest in film composing until his death, writing over 100 scores. These included The Seventh Veil (1945), The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Importance of being Earnest (1952), Night of the Iguana (1964), and Battle of the Bulge (1965),[5] as well as the first British (partly) serial film score, to The Curse of the Werewolf (1961).[6]

From 1941 until 1952 he was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but resigned his membership in protest against the Slánský trial.[7]

During and after the war Frankel started to become widely known as a composer of works in traditional classical form. One of the first to gain attention was the Sonata No 1 for solo violin of 1942, which was dedicated to the Austrian-born violinist and viola player Max Rostal.[8] Rostal made the premiere recording in 1944.[9]

He went on to perform Frankel's most famous work, the Violin Concerto "in memory of 'the six million'" (a reference to the Jews murdered during the Holocaust), commissioned for the 1951 Festival of Britain, and was the soloist in the Viola Concerto for BBC radio broadcasts in 1970 and 1972.[10] The core of Frankel's output are the eight symphonies (composed between 1958 and 1971)[11] and the five string quartets (composed between 1945 and 1965). His friend Hans Keller was a champion of his concert music and did much to promote its performance at home and abroad.[12]

In 1955 Frankel succeeded Edward Clark as Chairman of the ISCM. That year issues arose about certain expenses Clark had claimed while he was chairman. Clark alleged that Frankel had accused him of fraud. Frankel denied he had ever made such a claim, but nevertheless said that such a claim, had he made it, would have been true. This amounted to slander as far as Clark was concerned, and he sued Frankel in the High Court, calling the composers Christian Darnton and Bernard Stevens as witnesses.[13] While Frankel's alleged slander itself was unproven, the jury exonerated Clark of any wrongdoing and he felt this meant his integrity was intact.[14] Clark's wife Elisabeth Lutyens ever after referred to Frankel as "composer and ex-colleague".[6]

Born and raised in Hammersmith, Frankel lived in London for many years, most notably at 17 Soho Square between 1953 and 1957, where he was the host of a circle of artists including the poet Cecil Day Lewis and film director Anthony Asquith. From 1952 there was also a house in Sussex, Rodmell Hiil, Rodmell, near Lewes. The writer Leonard Woolf lived next door.[15] In 1958 he re-located to Locarno in Switzerland.[5] He married three times: first in 1932 to Joyce Stanmore Rayner (divorced 1944), then to Phyllis Anna Leat (1944 until her death in 1967), and finally to Xenia Hamilton-Kennaway in 1972, not long before his death.[16] There were two sons and one daughter by the first marriage.[5]

Frankel died in London on 12 February 1973 while working on the three-act opera Marching Song and a ninth symphony, which had been commissioned by the BBC. When he died, Marching Song had been completed in short score; it was orchestrated by Buxton Orr, a composer who had studied with Frankel and whose advocacy has been at least partly responsible for the revival of interest in his works.[2]

Posthumous reputation

In the twenty years following his death, Frankel's works were almost completely neglected. Thea King's landmark recording of the Clarinet Quintet with the Britten Quartet released in 1991 was the first commercial recording of his music since his death.[17] A major turning point, however, came in the mid-1990s when German record company CPO (Classic Produktion Osnabrück, since bought by JPC) decided to partner with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to record Frankel's complete oeuvre.[18] This allowed for the first time an appraisal of his output. CPO recorded all the symphonies (conducted by Werner Andreas Albert) and all the string quartets (by the Nomos Quartet), and in 1998 issued the world premiere recordings of the Violin Concerto, Viola Concerto and Serenata Concertante.[19] With recordings now available, BBC Radio 3 featured him as the Composer of the Week, first in 1996 and again in 2006.

Selected works

Symphonies

  • Symphony No. 1 – Op. 33, three movements (1958)[20]
  • Symphony No. 2 – Op. 38, three movements (1962)
  • Symphony No. 3 – Op. 40, one movement (1964)
  • Symphony No. 4 – Op. 44, three movements (1966)
  • Symphony No. 5 – Op. 46, three movements (1967)
  • Symphony No. 6 – Op. 49, five movements (1969)
  • Symphony No. 7 – Op. 50, four movements (1970)
  • Symphony No. 8 – Op. 53, four movements (1971)

Concertos

  • Violin Concerto To the memory of the six million, Op. 24, four movements (1951)
  • Serenata Concertante for piano trio and orchestra, one movement (in parts), Op. 37 (1960)
  • Viola Concerto, Op. 45, three movements (1967)

Orchestral

  • Three Sketches for Strings (originally for quartet), Op. 2 (1920s?)
  • Solemn Speech and Discussion, Op. 11
  • Youth Music, four pieces for small orchestra, Op. 12
  • May Day (a panorama, prelude for orchestra), Op. 22 (dedicated to Hugo Rignold) (1948 – 27 December 1949)[21]
  • Mephistopheles' Serenade and Dance, Op. 25 (1952)
  • Shakespeare Overture, Op. 29
  • Overture to a Ceremony, Op. 51

Chamber

  • Three Piano Studies, Op. 1 (1926)
  • String Trio no. 1, Op. 3
  • Sonata for Viola Solo, Op. 7 (early 1930s)
  • Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano, Op. 10, three movements (1940)
  • Violin Solo Sonata No. 1, Op. 13 (before 1943)
  • String Quartet No. 1, Op. 14, four movements (ca. 1944 – 1945)
  • String Quartet No. 2, Op. 15, five movements (1944)
  • String Quartet No. 3, Op. 18, five movements (ca. 1947)
  • Early Morning Music, trio for oboe, clarinet and bassoon, three movements (1948)
  • String Quartet No. 4, Op. 21, four movements (ca. 1949)
  • Quartet for Piano and Strings, Op. 26, three movements (issued ca. 1962 but written during the 1950s)
  • Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, Op. 28, three movements (1956)
  • Inventions in Major/Minor Modes, cello and piano, Op. 31
  • String Trio No. 2, Op. 34, three movements (c. 1960)
  • Cinque Pezzi Notturni for eleven instruments, Op. 35, five pieces (1959)
  • Violin Solo Sonata No. 2, Op. 39, three movements (1962)
  • Pezzi pianissimi for clarinet cello and piano, Op. 41, four pieces (1964)
  • String Quartet No. 5, Op. 43, five movements (1965)

Vocal

  • The Aftermath, Op. 17, song cycle with orchestra (1947), words Robert Nichols[22]
  • Eight songs, Op. 32 (1959)

Film scores

References

  1. ^ "Benjamin Frankel: British Composer-". Musicweb-international.com. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  2. ^ a b "Frankel, Benjamin". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.10150. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  3. ^ "Ben Frankel". Discogs.com. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  4. ^ "Mickey Clark". Facebook.com. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  5. ^ a b c Kennaway, E.D: Benjamin Frankel in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)
  6. ^ a b Huckvale, David (10 January 2014). Hammer Film Scores and the Musical Avant-Garde. McFarland. ISBN 9780786451661. Retrieved 26 July 2020 – via Google Books.
  7. ^ According to The Evening Standard of 12 December 1952.
  8. ^ "Description Page of Frankel Sonata". Chester Novello. Retrieved 7 November 2007.
  9. ^ "2x 78rpm MAX ROSTAL Violin Solo: FRANKEL SONATA Unaccompanied ! TOP COPIES !". eBay.com. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  10. ^ "Viola Concerto, BBC broadcast, 15 December 1972". YouTube. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  11. ^ Orr, Buxton. 'Benjamin Frankel's Symphonies and the Death of Tonality', in The Listener, 12 October 1972, p 483
  12. ^ Keller, Hans (1970). "Frankel and the Symphony". The Musical Times. 111 (1524): 144–147. doi:10.2307/956730. JSTOR 956730. Retrieved 26 July 2020 – via JSTOR.
  13. ^ Meirion and Susie Harries. A Pilgrim Soul: The Life and Work of Elisabeth Lutyens (1989), p. 176-7
  14. ^ Jennifer Doctor, 'Clark, (Thomas) Edward (1888–1962)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Retrieved 31 January 2013
  15. ^ Glendinning, Victoria. Leonard Woolf: A Biography (2006), p. 373
  16. ^ Russell, Ken. Classic Widows, television documentary, 1995
  17. ^ Kennaway, E.D.: "Benjamin Frankel: A Forgotten Legacy", in Musical Times, February 1992, p 69-70
  18. ^ Kennaway, Dimitri (2000). The CPO recordings. MusicWeb International. Retrieved 11 September 2011
  19. ^ "Chandos Records Classical Music CDs and MP3 Downloads OnLine". Chandos.net. Retrieved 26 July 2020.
  20. ^ Tracey, Edmund. 'The Melodic Style of Benjamin Frankel', in The Listener, 27 October 1969, p 757
  21. ^ Augener miniature score, manuscript facsimile, published in 1950
  22. ^ Gill, Robert. 'The Music of Benjamin Frankel' in The Listener, 3 March 1949, p 376
  23. ^ Frankel's contribution to the soundtrack of The Seventh Veil was overshadowed by classical piano works that were also included by Grieg, Rachmaninov, Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin.
  24. ^ The light concert piece Carriage and Pair is based on the soundtrack of this film

External links

  • Benjamin Frankel at IMDb
  • British Music Society Lecture-Recital Has authorised sound samples
  • The Benjamin Frankel Society
  • Online exhibition on Benjamin Frankel to mark his centenary
  • Benjamin Frankel and Hans Keller, drawing by Milein Cosman

April 16, 2023
benjamin, frankel, this, article, about, british, composer, american, rabbi, rabbi, january, 1906, february, 1973, british, composer, best, known, pieces, include, cycle, five, string, quartets, eight, symphonies, concertos, violin, viola, also, notable, writi. This article is about the British composer For the American rabbi see Benjamin Frankel rabbi Benjamin Frankel 31 January 1906 12 February 1973 was a British composer His best known pieces include a cycle of five string quartets eight symphonies and concertos for violin and viola He was also notable for writing over 100 film scores and working as a big band arranger in the 1930s During the last 15 years of his life Frankel also developed his own style of 12 note composition which retained contact with tonality Contents 1 Biography 2 Posthumous reputation 3 Selected works 4 References 5 External linksBiography EditFrankel was born in London on 31 January 1906 the son of Polish Jewish parents 1 He began to learn the violin at an early age showing remarkable talent at age 14 his piano playing gifts attracted the attention of the American pianist and teacher Victor Benham 1867 1936 who persuaded his parents to let him study music full time 2 He spent six months in Germany in 1922 then returned to London where he won a scholarship from the Worshipful Company of Musicians and attempted his first serious compositions while earning his income as a jazz violinist pianist and arranger Known then as Ben Frankel his jazz work can be heard on recordings by Fred Elizalde s band 3 He also played violin with Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Hotel Orpheans 4 By the early 1930s Frankel was in demand as an arranger and musical director in London working with several dance bands He wrote several popular dance band arrangements for Henry Hall s BBC Dance Orchestra including Learn To Croon Don t Blame Me Weep No More My Baby April in Paris and In Town Tonight He wrote many arrangements and scores for theatre and film music but gave up theatre work in 1944 He did however retain an interest in film composing until his death writing over 100 scores These included The Seventh Veil 1945 The Man in the White Suit 1951 The Importance of being Earnest 1952 Night of the Iguana 1964 and Battle of the Bulge 1965 5 as well as the first British partly serial film score to The Curse of the Werewolf 1961 6 From 1941 until 1952 he was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain but resigned his membership in protest against the Slansky trial 7 During and after the war Frankel started to become widely known as a composer of works in traditional classical form One of the first to gain attention was the Sonata No 1 for solo violin of 1942 which was dedicated to the Austrian born violinist and viola player Max Rostal 8 Rostal made the premiere recording in 1944 9 He went on to perform Frankel s most famous work the Violin Concerto in memory of the six million a reference to the Jews murdered during the Holocaust commissioned for the 1951 Festival of Britain and was the soloist in the Viola Concerto for BBC radio broadcasts in 1970 and 1972 10 The core of Frankel s output are the eight symphonies composed between 1958 and 1971 11 and the five string quartets composed between 1945 and 1965 His friend Hans Keller was a champion of his concert music and did much to promote its performance at home and abroad 12 In 1955 Frankel succeeded Edward Clark as Chairman of the ISCM That year issues arose about certain expenses Clark had claimed while he was chairman Clark alleged that Frankel had accused him of fraud Frankel denied he had ever made such a claim but nevertheless said that such a claim had he made it would have been true This amounted to slander as far as Clark was concerned and he sued Frankel in the High Court calling the composers Christian Darnton and Bernard Stevens as witnesses 13 While Frankel s alleged slander itself was unproven the jury exonerated Clark of any wrongdoing and he felt this meant his integrity was intact 14 Clark s wife Elisabeth Lutyens ever after referred to Frankel as composer and ex colleague 6 Born and raised in Hammersmith Frankel lived in London for many years most notably at 17 Soho Square between 1953 and 1957 where he was the host of a circle of artists including the poet Cecil Day Lewis and film director Anthony Asquith From 1952 there was also a house in Sussex Rodmell Hiil Rodmell near Lewes The writer Leonard Woolf lived next door 15 In 1958 he re located to Locarno in Switzerland 5 He married three times first in 1932 to Joyce Stanmore Rayner divorced 1944 then to Phyllis Anna Leat 1944 until her death in 1967 and finally to Xenia Hamilton Kennaway in 1972 not long before his death 16 There were two sons and one daughter by the first marriage 5 Frankel died in London on 12 February 1973 while working on the three act opera Marching Song and a ninth symphony which had been commissioned by the BBC When he died Marching Song had been completed in short score it was orchestrated by Buxton Orr a composer who had studied with Frankel and whose advocacy has been at least partly responsible for the revival of interest in his works 2 Posthumous reputation EditIn the twenty years following his death Frankel s works were almost completely neglected Thea King s landmark recording of the Clarinet Quintet with the Britten Quartet released in 1991 was the first commercial recording of his music since his death 17 A major turning point however came in the mid 1990s when German record company CPO Classic Produktion Osnabruck since bought by JPC decided to partner with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation to record Frankel s complete oeuvre 18 This allowed for the first time an appraisal of his output CPO recorded all the symphonies conducted by Werner Andreas Albert and all the string quartets by the Nomos Quartet and in 1998 issued the world premiere recordings of the Violin Concerto Viola Concerto and Serenata Concertante 19 With recordings now available BBC Radio 3 featured him as the Composer of the Week first in 1996 and again in 2006 Selected works EditSymphonies Symphony No 1 Op 33 three movements 1958 20 Symphony No 2 Op 38 three movements 1962 Symphony No 3 Op 40 one movement 1964 Symphony No 4 Op 44 three movements 1966 Symphony No 5 Op 46 three movements 1967 Symphony No 6 Op 49 five movements 1969 Symphony No 7 Op 50 four movements 1970 Symphony No 8 Op 53 four movements 1971 Concertos Violin Concerto To the memory of the six million Op 24 four movements 1951 Serenata Concertante for piano trio and orchestra one movement in parts Op 37 1960 Viola Concerto Op 45 three movements 1967 Orchestral Three Sketches for Strings originally for quartet Op 2 1920s Solemn Speech and Discussion Op 11 Youth Music four pieces for small orchestra Op 12 May Day a panorama prelude for orchestra Op 22 dedicated to Hugo Rignold 1948 27 December 1949 21 Mephistopheles Serenade and Dance Op 25 1952 Shakespeare Overture Op 29 Overture to a Ceremony Op 51Chamber Three Piano Studies Op 1 1926 String Trio no 1 Op 3 Sonata for Viola Solo Op 7 early 1930s Trio for Clarinet Cello and Piano Op 10 three movements 1940 Violin Solo Sonata No 1 Op 13 before 1943 String Quartet No 1 Op 14 four movements ca 1944 1945 String Quartet No 2 Op 15 five movements 1944 String Quartet No 3 Op 18 five movements ca 1947 Early Morning Music trio for oboe clarinet and bassoon three movements 1948 String Quartet No 4 Op 21 four movements ca 1949 Quartet for Piano and Strings Op 26 three movements issued ca 1962 but written during the 1950s Quintet for Clarinet and Strings Op 28 three movements 1956 Inventions in Major Minor Modes cello and piano Op 31 String Trio No 2 Op 34 three movements c 1960 Cinque Pezzi Notturni for eleven instruments Op 35 five pieces 1959 Violin Solo Sonata No 2 Op 39 three movements 1962 Pezzi pianissimi for clarinet cello and piano Op 41 four pieces 1964 String Quartet No 5 Op 43 five movements 1965 Vocal The Aftermath Op 17 song cycle with orchestra 1947 words Robert Nichols 22 Eight songs Op 32 1959 Film scores Radio Parade of 1935 1935 No Monkey Business 1935 Music Hath Charms 1935 Love in Exile 1936 Public Nuisance No 1 1936 Flight from Folly 1945 The Seventh Veil 1945 23 The Years Between 1946 Dear Murderer 1947 Night Beat 1947 Bond Street 1948 Daybreak 1948 London Belongs to Me 1948 Trottie True 1948 The Chiltern Hundreds 1949 Give Us This Day 1949 Double Confession 1950 So Long at the Fair 1950 24 Night and the City UK version 1950 The Clouded Yellow 1951 The Man in the White Suit 1951 Appointment with Venus 1951 Mr Denning Drives North 1951 The Importance of Being Earnest 1952 The Net 1953 Always a Bride 1953 Malaga 1954 The Young Lovers 1954 Up to His Neck 1954 Aunt Clara 1954 A Kid for Two Farthings 1955 Storm Over the Nile 1955 The End of the Affair 1955 Footsteps in the Fog 1955 The Prisoner 1955 The Iron Petticoat 1956 Brothers in Law 1957 Happy Is the Bride 1958 Orders to Kill 1958 I Only Arsked 1958 Libel 1959 Summer of the Seventeenth Doll 1959 Surprise Package 1960 The Curse of the Werewolf 1961 Guns of Darkness 1962 The Old Dark House 1963 The Night of the Iguana 1964 Battle of the Bulge 1965 References Edit Benjamin Frankel British Composer Musicweb international com Retrieved 26 July 2020 a b Frankel Benjamin Grove Music Online doi 10 1093 gmo 9781561592630 article 10150 ISBN 978 1 56159 263 0 Retrieved 26 July 2020 Ben Frankel Discogs com Retrieved 26 July 2020 Mickey Clark Facebook com Retrieved 26 July 2020 a b c Kennaway E D Benjamin Frankel in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography 2004 a b Huckvale David 10 January 2014 Hammer Film Scores and the Musical Avant Garde McFarland ISBN 9780786451661 Retrieved 26 July 2020 via Google Books According to The Evening Standard of 12 December 1952 Description Page of Frankel Sonata Chester Novello Retrieved 7 November 2007 2x 78rpm MAX ROSTAL Violin Solo FRANKEL SONATA Unaccompanied TOP COPIES eBay com Retrieved 26 July 2020 Viola Concerto BBC broadcast 15 December 1972 YouTube Archived from the original on 22 December 2021 Retrieved 26 July 2020 Orr Buxton Benjamin Frankel s Symphonies and the Death of Tonality in The Listener 12 October 1972 p 483 Keller Hans 1970 Frankel and the Symphony The Musical Times 111 1524 144 147 doi 10 2307 956730 JSTOR 956730 Retrieved 26 July 2020 via JSTOR Meirion and Susie Harries A Pilgrim Soul The Life and Work of Elisabeth Lutyens 1989 p 176 7 Jennifer Doctor Clark Thomas Edward 1888 1962 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Oxford University Press 2004 Retrieved 31 January 2013 Glendinning Victoria Leonard Woolf A Biography 2006 p 373 Russell Ken Classic Widows television documentary 1995 Kennaway E D Benjamin Frankel A Forgotten Legacy in Musical Times February 1992 p 69 70 Kennaway Dimitri 2000 The CPO recordings MusicWeb International Retrieved 11 September 2011 Chandos Records Classical Music CDs and MP3 Downloads OnLine Chandos net Retrieved 26 July 2020 Tracey Edmund The Melodic Style of Benjamin Frankel in The Listener 27 October 1969 p 757 Augener miniature score manuscript facsimile published in 1950 Gill Robert The Music of Benjamin Frankel in The Listener 3 March 1949 p 376 Frankel s contribution to the soundtrack of The Seventh Veil was overshadowed by classical piano works that were also included by Grieg Rachmaninov Beethoven Mozart and Chopin The light concert piece Carriage and Pair is based on the soundtrack of this filmExternal links EditBenjamin Frankel at IMDb British Music Society Lecture Recital Has authorised sound samples The Benjamin Frankel Society British Library Frankel Exhibition Online exhibition on Benjamin Frankel to mark his centenary Benjamin Frankel and Hans Keller drawing by Milein Cosman Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Benjamin Frankel amp oldid 1146414538, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

article

, read, download, free, free download, mp3, video, mp4, 3gp, jpg, jpeg, gif, png, picture, music, song, movie, book, game, games.