Sir Lennox Berkeley (1902–1989)

British composer Sir Lennox Berkeley left works among a vast array of genres, including symphonies, concertos, chamber music, operas, film scores and music for television. After studying French at Merton College, Oxford, where he wrote some early compositions including songs on WH Auden, Berkeley travelled to Paris, staying there on and off from 1926 to 1932. After having met Ravel through family friends in 1922, he had decided to pursue composition lessons, on Ravel’s suggestion. For six years he studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. While in Paris he met Stravinsky and Poulenc; Berkeley and Poulenc became lifelong friends. It would likely have been at the Boeuf Sur Le Toit nightclub, in Paris, that Berkeley met Jean Cocteau, as well as other French and international luminaries.

 

Berkeley returned to Britain in 1935, the year his oratorio Jonah, his first major work, was first performed. This year alsomarked the beginning of another important phase in his life. Berkeley met fellow British composer Benjamin Britten in 1936 and they collaborated together in 1937 on Mont Juic, a suite for orchestra based on Catalan folk tunes they had heard in Barcelona in 1936. He also had relationship with Britten.

 

Having become a Catholic in 1929, Berkeley was beset by a conflict between his faith and his sexuality. He married Freda Bernstein in 1946, who had been his secretary at the BBC, which she had joined in 1944. Berkeley had joined the BBC in 1942, initially as a talks producer then as an orchestral planner. Before marrying Freda Berkeley had been living with RAF pilot Peter Fraser. Despite friends’ scepticism about the marriage being a success, Freda is quoted as saying ‘I knew it would work out in the end.’

 

It was shortly after joining the BBC that Berkeley gained notoriety in Britain, in 1943 conducting the LPO in the premiere of his First Symphony. After leaving the BBC in 1946, he conducted the premiere of his Stabat Mater in Zurich in 1947, while in 1948 Kathleen Ferrier gave the premiere of his Four Poems of St Teresa of Avila. His Piano Concerto was premiered the same year by Colin Horsley with the LSO at the Proms. His Concerto for Two Pianos was also premiered that year by Phyllis Sellick and Cyril Smith, with the LSO conducted by Malcolm Sargent. 1954 to 1956 saw notable premieres of operas: A Dinner Engagement (Aldeburgh Festival), Nelson (Sadler’s Wells) and Ruth (English Opera Group, 1956). 

 

Berkeley went on to become a distinguished composition teacher, holding a post at the Royal Academy of Music from 1946–68. Among his most important works are the Divertimento (1943), String Trio (1943), Piano Sonata (1945), Four Poems of Teresa of Avila for Contralto and Orchestra (1947), Stabat Mater (1947), Concerto for Two Pianos (1948), Sonatina for Guitar (1957), his four symphonies and his operas.