In 1959, The Deluge, a cantata for soprano, contralto and instrumental ensemble to a textual content, derived from the writings of Leonardo da Vinci by the Soviet movie director Sergei Eisenstein, obtained a extremely profitable premiere. It was composed by Alexander Goehr, who has died aged 92, utilizing the difficult 12-note idiom pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg, the Austrian modernist of the primary half of the century, as his start line.
Nonetheless, a second Eisenstein cantata – Sutter’s Gold, for baritone, refrain and orchestra – prompted a disaster for Goehr when it was mounted on the Leeds competition two years later. The newbie refrain couldn’t deal with its calls for, bringing dwelling to the composer the frustration felt by performers who had been bent on making music purely for the pleasure of doing so.
Resolving to discover a approach out of the post-Schoenbergian deadlock in direction of which, he thought, European avant-garde composers akin to Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen had steered composition within the Nineteen Fifties, Goehr struggled to find different methods ahead.
A few of his instrumental and orchestral works of this era had been actually profitable, akin to his First Piano Trio (1966) and Romanza for cello and orchestra (1968), the latter written for Jacqueline du Pré. The drama of stay theatre, enlivened by Brechtian and different concepts, provided one other aspect to his output; he created, in Naboth’s Winery (1968), Shadowplay (1970) and Sonata About Jerusalem (1971), a small-scale form of music-theatre, simply as many different composers had been doing at this era – and within the Music Theatre Ensemble, a short-lived firm to carry out it.
Nonetheless dissatisfied, nevertheless, Goehr as soon as once more reconsidered his complete compositional method. The white-note sonorities of Psalm IV for voices, viola and organ (1976) signalled a transfer to a extra clear sound world: a brand new form of modal concord that was, as well as, rigorously managed by way of recourse to the technical machine often known as figured bass, a notation for chord sequences widespread within the seventeenth and 18th centuries. He thought afresh about easy methods to write tonal music that was legitimate for our personal instances.
Fusions of previous and current had been to dominate the composer’s output for nearly half a century. Each orchestral works and chamber music continued to function: Symphony with Chaconne (1987) and the Piano Quintet (2000), as an illustration, take varied classical textures and procedures as their departure factors. The opera Behold the Solar (1985) was so badly obtained at its premiere that it was by no means staged once more.
Later, nevertheless, what some today name “repurposing” impressed Goehr to attempt yet one more method to music drama: in Arianna, premiered in 1995 on the Royal Opera Home, Covent Backyard, he reconstructed Monteverdi’s late opera of the identical title, assembling on and round its solely surviving components – Ottavio Rinuccini’s libretto and a single aria, the well-known Lamento d’Arianna – a curious cross between Monteverdian and late-Twentieth-century idioms.
Born in Berlin to a Jewish musical household, simply months earlier than Hitler got here to energy, Alexander (often known as Sandy) was swiftly eliminated to the UK, alongside along with his mother and father, Laelia (nee Rivlin), a pianist, and Walter, a former pupil of Schoenberg who grew to become properly often known as a conductor, notably of latest music. Walter Goehr performed the world premiere of Michael Tippett’s A Youngster of Our Time and the UK premiere of Oliver Messiaen’s Turangalîla Symphony. Although Sandy didn’t obtain a lot compositional encouragement from Walter, he grew up in a family crammed with music and musicians. In 1963, he wrote the Little Symphony, most likely his first broadly identified composition, in his father’s reminiscence, following his demise in 1960.
Educated at Berkhamsted college, Hertfordshire, Sandy was concerned with the Socialist Zionist Affiliation. This resulted in a transfer to Manchester, and shortly to composition research with Richard Corridor at what was then the Royal Manchester (now Royal Northern) School of Music.
Like his fellow college students within the metropolis, Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies, Goehr grew to become often known as a member of the New Music Manchester Group, which had some success with their joint promotions within the mid-Nineteen Fifties. Goehr went on to review with Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod in 1955-56 in Paris, the place he was briefly promoted by Boulez.
Because the British musical world nonetheless remained very parochial within the 50s, Goehr’s experiences, when nonetheless so younger, of each his Schoenbergian heritage and the newest actions of the European avant garde helped to strengthen his place as a strong advocate of the brand new. First working for a number of years as a BBC music producer (1960-67), after which educating at Yale College and at Southampton, Goehr ultimately grew to become a college professor: first at Leeds (1971-76) after which at Cambridge, the place he taught till his retirement in 1999 and was subsequently an emeritus professor. His broadcasting actions (he was the BBC’s Reith lecturer in 1987) and his educating of a number of generations of British composers – amongst them George Benjamin, Julian Anderson and Thomas Adès – had been supplemented by a number of books, together with Composing a Life (2023).
His tutorial profile typically appeared to overshadow his composing profession; solely in his early years was he ever as outstanding as Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies.
Goehr was married 3 times: first, in 1954, to Audrey Baker, an artist, their marriage ending in divorce in 1971; second, in 1972, to Anthea Staunton, an administrator, a wedding additionally dissolved; and at last, in 1982, to Amira Katz, who teaches within the division of Asian research on the Hebrew College of Jerusalem. She survives him, together with three daughters from his first marriage, Lydia, Julia and Clare, and a son, Lorenzo, from the second.
