Alan Rawsthorne

Alan Rawsthorne (2 May 1905 – 24 July 1971) was a British composer. He was born in Haslingden, Lancashire, and is buried in Thaxted churchyard in Essex.

Early years

Alan Rawsthorne was born in Deardengate House, Haslingden, Lancashire (Anon. 2015a), to Hubert Rawsthorne (1868–1943), a well-off medical doctor, and his wife, Janet Bridge (1877/8–1927) (McCabe 2004). Despite what appears to have been a happy and affectionate family life with his parents and elder sister, Barbara (the only sibling), in beautiful Lancashire countryside, as a boy Rawsthorne suffered from fragile health (McCabe 2004; Green 1971). Although he did at various times attend schools in Southport, much of Rawsthorne's early education came through private tutoring at home (McCabe 2004). Despite a childhood aptitude for music and literature, Rawsthorne's parents tried to steer him away from his dreams of becoming a professional musician. As a result, he unsuccessfully tried to take on degree courses at Liverpool University, first in dentistry and then architecture. Concerning dentistry, Rawsthorne is on record as having said "I gave that up, thank God, before getting near anyone's mouth", while his friend Constant Lambert quipped "Mr Rawsthorne assures me that he has given up the practice of dentistry, even as a hobby" (Anon. 2006).

Career

In 1925, Rawsthorne was finally able to enrol at the Royal Manchester College of Music (Anon. 2015b), where his teachers included Frank Merrick for the piano and Carl Fuchs for the cello. In 1927, Rawsthorne's mother died aged just forty-nine. After graduating from the Royal Manchester College of Music around 1930, Rawsthorne spent the next couple of years pursuing his piano training with Egon Petri at Zakopane in Poland, and then briefly also in Berlin (McCabe 2004).

On his return to England in 1932, Rawsthorne took up a post as pianist and teacher at Dartington Hall in Devon, where he became composer-in-residence for the School of Dance and Mime (Belcher 1999a). In 1934, Rawsthorne left for London to try his fortune as a freelance composer. His first real public success arrived four years later with a performance of his Theme and Variations for Two Violins at the 1938 International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival in London. The next year, his large scale Symphonic Studies for orchestral was performed in Warsaw, again at the ISCM Festival. The first in a line of completely assured orchestral scores, the Symphonic Studies, which can be heard as a concerto for orchestra in all but name, rapidly helped Rawsthorne establish himself as a composer possessing a highly distinctive musical voice (Evans 2001; Belcher 1999b).

Other acclaimed works by Rawsthorne include a viola sonata (1937), two piano concertos (1939, 1951), an oboe concerto (1947), two violin concertos (1948, 1956), a concerto for string orchestra (1949), and the Elegy for guitar (1971), a piece written for and completed by Julian Bream after the composer's death. Other works include a cello concerto, three acknowledged string quartets among other chamber works, and three symphonies.

Rawsthorne wrote a number of film scores. His best–known work in this field was the music for the 1953 British war film The Cruel Sea (Swynnoe 2002, 161), and his other scores included many popular British films, such as The Captive Heart (1946), School for Secrets (1946), Uncle Silas (1947), Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), Where No Vultures Fly (1951), West of Zanzibar (1954), The Man Who Never Was (1956) and Floods of Fear (1958).

Family

Rawsthorne was married to Isabel Rawsthorne (née Isabel Nicholas), an artist and model well known in the Paris and Soho art scenes. Her contemporaries included André Derain, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso and Francis Bacon. Isabel Rawsthorne was the widow of composer Constant Lambert and stepmother to Kit Lambert, manager of the rock group the Who, who died in 1981. Isabel died in 1992. Alan Rawsthorne was her third husband; Sefton Delmer (the journalist and member of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War) was her first husband. Isabel was Alan Rawsthorne's second wife, his first wife being Jessie Hinchliffe, a violinist in the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Compositions

Ballet
  • Madame Chrysanthème (1955)

Orchestral
  • Symphonies
    • Symphony No. 1 (1950)
    • Symphony No. 2 A Pastoral Symphony (1959)
    • Symphony No. 3 (1964)
  • Symphonic Studies (1938)
  • Concerto for String Orchestra (1949)
  • Cortèges, Fantasy Overture (1945)
  • Divertimento for Chamber Orchestra (1962)
  • Elegiac Rhapsody for Strings (1963)
  • Hallé Overture
  • Improvisations on a Theme by Constant Lambert (1960)
  • Light Music for Strings (1938)
  • Suite from Madame Chrysanthème
  • Overture for Farnham
  • Prisoners' March – from film The Captive Heart
  • Music from film The Cruel Sea
  • Street Corner Overture
  • Theme, Variations and Finale
  • Triptych for orchestra

Concertante
  • Cello Concerto (1966)
  • Clarinet Concerto (1936–37)
  • Oboe Concerto (1947)
  • Piano
    • Piano Concerto No. 1 (1939, revised 1942)
    • Piano Concerto No. 2 (1951)
    • Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra (1968)
  • Violin
    • Violin Concerto No. 1 (1948)
    • Violin Concerto No. 2 (1956)
  • Concertante Pastorale for flute, horn and orchestra (1951)

Chamber
  • String Quartets
    • String Quartet No. 1 (1939)
    • String Quartet No. 2 (1954)
    • String Quartet No. 3 (1965)
  • Concertante for Piano and Violin (1937)
  • Concerto for Ten Instruments (1961)
  • Clarinet Quartet (1948)
  • Quintet for Piano, Oboe, Clarinet, Horn & Bassoon (1963)
  • Piano Quintet (1968)
  • Sonatina for Flute, Oboe and Piano (1936)
  • Suite for Flute, Viola and Harp (1968)
  • Theme and Variations for Two Violins (1937)
  • Piano Trio (1962)

Instrumental
  • Violin Sonata (1960)
  • Viola Sonata (1937, revised 1953)
  • Cello Sonata (1949)
  • Suite for Treble Recorder & Piano
  • Elegy for Guitar (1971)

Piano
  • Ballade in G sharp minor (Dated Christmas 1929)
  • Piano Sonatina (1949)
  • Four Romantic Pieces (1953)
  • Bagatelles (1938)
  • Ballade (1967)
  • The Creel: suite for piano duet

Vocal orchestral
  • Carmen Vitale: choral suite
  • A Canticle of Man: chamber cantata
  • The God in a Cave: cantata
  • Medieval Diptych 962
  • Practical Cats for speaker and orchestra
  • Tankas of the Four Seasons

Choral
  • Canzonet from A Garland for the Queen (France n.d.)
  • Four Seasonal Songs
  • Lament for a Sparrow
  • The Oxen
  • A Rose for Lidice

Vocal
  • Three French Nursery Songs
  • We Three Merry Maids
  • Two Songs to Words by John Fletcher
  • Carol
  • Saraband (with Ernest Irving)
  • Scena Rustica for soprano and harp
  • Two Fish

References
  • Anon. 2006. "Alan Rawsthorne", on The Friends of Alan Rawsthorne website. Retrieved 2011-10-14.
  • Anon. 2015a. "Alan Rawsthorne". Oxford University Press website (retrieved 2015–06–11).
  • Anon. 2015b. "Alan Rawsthorne", Naxos Records website. Retrieved 2015-06-11.
  • Belcher, John M. 1999a. "Orchestral Works" (booklet notes). Naxos Records 8.553567.
  • Belcher, John M. 1999b. Booklet notes to Rawsthorne: Cello Concerto, Symphonic Studies, Oboe Concerto. Naxos Records 8.554763.
  • Dressler, John Clay. 2004. Alan Rawsthorne: A Bio-Bibliography. Bio-Bibliographies in Music, no. 97. Westport, CT: Praeger. ISBN 0-313-30589-7.
  • Evans, Peter. 2001. "Rawsthorne, Alan". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
  • France, John. n.d. "English Choral Music: A Garland for the Queen". MusicWeb International (accessed 18 September 2018).
  • Green, Gordon. 1971. "The Pre-War Years". Programme note for Alan Rawsthorne Memorial Concert, Wigmore Hall, 24 November 1971.
  • McCabe, John. 1999. Alan Rawsthorne: Portrait of a Composer. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816693-1.
  • McCabe, John. 2004. "Rawsthorne, Alan (1905–1971)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edition), Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2011-10-14. (subscription required)
  • Swynnoe, Jan G. 2002. The Best Years of British Film Music: 1936–1958. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-0-85115-862-4.
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