John Linton Gardner,
CBE was an English composer of classical music died he was 95..
(2 March 1917 – 12 December 2011)
Biography
Gardner was born in
Manchester, England and brought up in
Ilfracombe, North Devon. His father Alfred Linton Gardner was a local
physician and amateur composer who was killed in action in the last months of the First World War. His grandfather was
John Twiname Gardner, also a G.P. and composer. His mother, Emily Muriel Pullein-Thompson, was the sister of
Captain Harold J "Cappy" Pullein-Thompson, who was the father of the
Pullein-Thompson sisters and their brother, the playwright
Denis Cannan.
Gardner was educated at
Eagle House School, Sandhurst,
Wellington College and
Exeter College, Oxford.
[1] An important figure in his early life was
Hubert J. Foss of
Oxford University Press, who published the
Intermezzo for Organ in 1936 and introduced him to the composer
Arthur Benjamin, to whom Gardner dedicated his
Rhapsody for Oboe and String Quartet (1935). This work had its first performance at the
Wigmore Hall in February 1936. The String Quartet No. 1 (1938) was broadcast from Paris by the
Blech Quartet in 1939, and the anthem
The Holy Son of God most High (1938) was also published by OUP. At Oxford Gardner was friendly with
Theodor Adorno with whom he played piano duets.
Then came the War. Gardner completed two terms as music master at
Repton School, where one of his pupils was the composer
John Veale, then a sixth former. In 1940 he enlisted and working first as a Bandmaster and then as a Navigator with
Transport Command. It was during the War that ideas for the Symphony No.1 began to form.
"
My first symphony assembled itself in my mind in stages during
the last year or two of the War. The opening even goes back further to a
short piano piece I wrote in 1939 or 1940. At that time I'd no idea
that it could be the beginning of a symphony, though I was aware that it
hardly constituted a complete piano piece.
Other elements in the score started variously as a mid-war setting of passages from Blake's Book of Thel,
a theme I conceived for a set of variations and, in the case of the
main theme of the finale, a transformation of the opening of the finale.
of my first string quartet which had in fact gained two or three
performances in Paris and England by the Blech Quartet in 1939 but with
which I was deeply unsatisfied and which I eventually withdrew.
I do not believe it is exceptional for a big work to derive from
several sources – there are many examples of such a process in the
origin of many of Brahms' best known pieces : the first piano concerto, for example, the German Requiem and the Violin Concerto.
In my case it was, of course, because I was serving in the R.A.F.
around the World and could only conceive music in the scrappiest manner
on odd pieces of paper in the most unsympathetic ambiances.
Demobilisation, therefore, came as a blessed chance to write at length,
which is what I did during the bitter Winter of 1946–7 on those evenings
when I did not have to be in attendance at the Royal Opera House,
Covent Garden, were I earned my living as a repetiteur. In June 1947 I
reached the end of the fair full score, put it aside and began to write
an opera that never got performed."
Gardner regarded the end of the War as a new start, set aside his
juvenile works and began again from Opus 1. He took a job as a
repetiteur at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
John Barbirolli discovered the First Symphony (Op. 2) when Gardner was given the opportunity of playing through his
Nativity Opera.
According to Gardner this work is "unperformable", which fact was
quickly grasped by Barbirolli; however, when Barbirolli asked to see
other works, Gardner showed him the Symphony. The first movement needed
some re-working because Barbirolli was not convinced it made sense in
its original form. The work was scheduled for the 1951
Cheltenham Festival
where it caused a minor sensation. Here was a huge, powerful work,
brilliantly scored and masterfully structured, by a composer of whom
almost no-one had heard!
Many major commissions followed and Gardner was suddenly able to call
himself "a composer". He resigned the job at the Opera House and there
followed a remarkable period of creativity.
Cantiones Sacrae, Op. 11,
Variations on a Waltz of Carl Nielsen, Op. 13 and the ballet
Reflection, Op. 14, were all written in 1951 and 1952 and first performed during 1952. He re-wrote
A Scots Overture, previously a military band piece, for the 1954 season of
Promenade Concerts in 1954. In May 1957
Sadler's Wells put on the opera
The Moon and Sixpence, which they had commissioned, and two other major works were premiered that year, the Piano Concerto No. 1 (
Cyril Preedy and Barbirolli at the Cheltenham Festival) and the
Seven Songs, Op. 36 in Birmingham, a work which Gardner wrote as "light relief" while working on the other major works.
In 1956 he was invited by
Thomas Armstrong to join the staff of the
Royal Academy of Music, where he would teach for the best part of thirty years. A few years later he took a part time job as Director of Music at
St Paul's Girls' School, following
Gustav Holst and
Herbert Howells, and was for a time Director of Music at
Morley College.
These teaching posts led to the composition of some of his most
enduring works, and together with the many holiday courses he worked on
as a conductor(Canford, Dartington, ESSYM, Bernard Robinson's Music
Camp, etc., etc.) ensured that he was able to bring practical experience
and knowledge to bear on his compositions.
He married Jane Abercrombie, the daughter of
Nigel Abercrombie
(Secretary General of the Arts Council 1963–1968) and the soprano
Elisabeth Abercrombie, in 1955 and has three children, Christopher
(1956), Lucy (1958) and Emily (1962). After the War he lived in South
London – in Morden, New Malden and Ewell.
Gardner composed prolifically throughout his life, and his works are
listed on his website (see link below). Among the major works are two
more symphonies, two more operas –
The Visitors (1972) and
Tobermory (1976), concertos for Trumpet, Flute, Oboe and Recorder and Bassoon, many cantatas, including
The Ballad of the White Horse, Op. 40 (1959),
Five Hymns in Popular Style, Op. 54 (1962),
A Burns Sequence, Op. 213 (1993), as well as much choral, chamber, organ, brass and orchestral music.
Gardner's best known work is the Christmas carol
Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, which was written for St Paul's, as was another popular carol setting,
The Holly and the Ivy.
[2]
He was made a Commander of the
Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1976.
His final work was a Bassoon Concerto, Op. 249, written in 2004 for Graham Salvage, the principal bassoonist of the
Hallé Orchestra,
which was premiered at the Budleigh Salterton Festival in July 2007, by
Graham Salvage with the Festival Orchestra conducted by Nicholas
Marshall.
His music, apart from "Tomorrow shall be my dancing day" has been
largely unrepresented on commercial records, but in recent years a
number of new recordings have been issued, including the 3rd Symphony,
Oboe Concerto, Flute Concerto and Petite Suite for Recorder and Strings.
In September 2007, however, Naxos issued his Symphony No. 1, Piano
Concerto and the overture
Midsummer Ale.
David Lloyd-Jones conducted the Royal Scottish National Orchestra with Peter Donohoe as the solo pianist.
To see more of who died in 2011
click here
.JPG)
