Humphrey Searle

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Humphrey Searle

Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 – 12 May 1982) was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, who was briefly his teacher.Template:Sfn As a writer on music, Searle published texts on numerous topics; he was an authority on the music of Franz Liszt, and created the initial cataloguing system for his works.Template:Sfn

Biography

Searle was the son of Humphrey and Charlotte Searle and, through his mother, a grandson of Sir William Schlich. He was born in Oxford where he was a classics scholar before studying—somewhat hesitantly—with John Ireland at the Royal College of Music in London, after which he went to Vienna on a six-month scholarship to become a private pupil of Anton Webern, which became decisive in his composition career.Template:Sfn

Searle was one of the foremost pioneers of serial music in the United Kingdom, and used his role as a producer at the BBC from 1946 to 1948 to promote it. He was General Secretary of the International Society for Contemporary Music from 1947 to 1949. He accepted this post with the encouragement of the new president, Edward Clark. For Clark, he composed the Quartet for Clarinet, Bassoon, Violin and Viola, Op. 12, a musical palindrome.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Gold Coast Customs, Op. 15, was his first large scale serial work. It is a setting of the jazz-influenced poem by Edith Sitwell, scored for speakers, male chorus and orchestra, and the first of a trilogy of pieces for speaker and orchestra, to be followed by Riverrun, Op. 20 (1951, words by James Joyce) and The Shadow of Cain, Op. 22 (1952, words again by Edith Sitwell). The premiere of Gold Coast Customs took place at BBC Broadcasting House on 17 May 1949, with Edith Sitwell and Constant Lambert as the speakers.<ref>Radio Times, Issue 1335, 15 May 1949, p.13</ref>

Searle wrote his Piano Sonata, Op. 21 for a recital at the Wigmore Hall on 22 October 1951, given by the Australian pianist Gordon Watson to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the birth of Franz Liszt. (Watson also performed the complete Transcendental Études on that occasion.<ref name=raven>Template:Cite web</ref>) The Sonata was loosely based on Liszt's Sonata in B minor and has been described as "probably, both the finest and most original piano work ever produced by a British composer".<ref name=wright>Template:Cite web</ref>

Other works of note include a Poem for 22 Strings (1950), premiered at Darmstadt, a Gogol opera, The Diary of a Madman (1958, awarded the first prize at UNESCO's International Rostrum of Composers in 1960), and five symphonies, the first of which was commercially recorded by the London Philharmonic Orchestra in 1960, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Writing in 1994, Ottó Károlyi described the Symphony No. 5 as "a biographical programmatic symphony that sets out to depict, by purely musical means, highlights of Webern's life from his youth to his untimely death".<ref>Otto Karolyi. Modern British Music (1994), pp. 85-88</ref> All five symphonies have since been recorded by the Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Alun Francis.<ref>Humphrey Searle: the Complete Symphonies, CPO 999 375-2 (1998)</ref>

He also composed film scores, including music for The Baby and the Battleship (1956), Beyond Mombasa (1956), Action of the Tiger (1957), The Abominable Snowman (1957), Law and Disorder (1958), Left Right and Centre (1959), October Moth (1960) and The Haunting (1963), as well the 1965 Doctor Who serial The Myth Makers.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Searle also contributed humorous compositions to some of the Hoffnung Music Festivals, including a setting of Young Lochinvar and a parody of serialism, Punkt Kontrapunkt.<ref>Humphrey Searle, Quadrille with a Raven (memoirs), retrieved 5 September 2012</ref>

Searle taught throughout his life; his notable students included Hugh Davidson, Brian Elias, Michael Finnissy, Jonathan Elias, Nicola LeFanu, Alistair Hinton, Geoffrey King, and Graham Newcater and Wolfgang Rihm.Template:Sfn Template:See LMST

Searle wrote the monographs Twentieth Century Counterpoint and The Music of Franz Liszt. He also developed the most authoritative catalogue of Liszt's works, which are frequently identified using Searle's numbering system, abbreviated as "S.".

Searle married Fiona Nicholson in 1960. He died in London in 1982, aged 66.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

List of works

SourceTemplate:Sfn Template:Div col

Operas

Ballets

  • Noctambules (1956)
  • The Great Peacock (1957–58)
  • Dualities (1963)

Orchestral

Piano concertos

  • Piano Concerto No. 1 (1944)
  • Piano Concerto No. 2 (1955)

Suites

  • Suite No. 1 for Strings (1942)
  • Suite No. 2 (1943)
  • Night Music (1943)
  • Poem for 22 Strings (1950)
  • Concertante for Piano, Strings and Percussion (1954)
  • Scherzi (1964)
  • Hamlet Suite (1968)
  • Zodiac Variations (1970)
  • Tamesis (1979)

Chorus and instruments

  • Gold Coast Customs (1947–49) for speakers, male chorus and orchestra
  • The Riverrun (Joyce) (1951) for speakers and orchestra
  • The Shadow of Cain (1952) for speakers, male chorus and orchestra
  • Jerusalem (1970) for speakers, tenor, chorus and orchestra
  • My Beloved Spake (1976) for chorus and organ
  • Dr Faustus (1977) for solo woman, chorus and orchestra

Voice and orchestra

  • 3 Songs of Jocelyn Brooke (1954) for high voice and ensemble
  • Oxus (1967) for tenor and orchestra
  • Contemplations (1975) for mezzo-soprano and orchestra
  • Kubla Khan (1973) for tenor and orchestra

Unaccompanied chorus

  • The Canticle of the Rose (Sitwell, 1965)
  • Rhyme Rude to My Pride (1974) for male chorus

Chamber music

  • Bassoon Quintet (1945)
  • Intermezzo for 11 Instruments (1946)
  • Quartet for Clarinet, Bassoon, Violin and Viola, Op. 12 (1948; a musical palindrome)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
  • Passacaglietta in nomine Arnold Schoenberg (1949) for string quartet
  • Gondoliera (1950) for celesta and piano
  • 3 Cat Poems (1951/53): "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" for speaker, flute, cello and guitar and "Two Practical Cats" for speaker, flute/piccolo, cello and guitar
  • Suite for Clarinet and Piano (1956)
  • Three Movements for String Quartet (1959)
  • Cello Fantasia (1972)
  • Il Penseroso e L'Allegro (1975) for cello and piano

Song cycle

  • Les fleurs du mal (1972) for tenor, horn and piano

Songs

  • Two Songs of A.E. Housman, op. 9 (1946): March Past (On the idle hill of summer) and The Stinging-Nettle, for voice and piano
  • Counting the Beats (1963) for high voice and piano

Piano

  • Sonata (1951)
  • Suite (1955)
  • Prelude on a Theme by Rawsthorne (1965)

Guitar

  • Five Op.61 (1974)

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Selected bibliography

SourceTemplate:Sfn

References

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Sources

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