When composer Alexander Goehr died last August, I erroneously reported – and then, when the error was pointed out to me, emended it – that the final representative of the so-called Manchester School had died at a venerable age. Now, truly, with the death of Elgar Howarth, the last of the Mancunian mavericks has left us. Howarth died yesterday at the age of 89.
One of that squad of rebel angels that emerged from the Royal Manchester (now Northern) College of Music in the 1950s, Howarth joined fellow students and angry young men Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Alexander Goehr, and John Ogdon in championing works that were hardly easy listening. To this end, they formed New Music Manchester. Collectively, they may have presented a tough face, but after-hours, they would geek out talking about things like medieval modes.
Howarth was reared in a family of brass players. His father taught him cornet and trumpet. His brother was a trombonist. He received his formal education at Manchester University and RMCM.
Of his college cohort, Ogdon gained fame as a pianist, Goehr evolved into a post-serialist avant-gardist steeped in Messiaen and world music, Maxwell Davies acquired a reputation as a symphonist (although he retained his impish glint), all the while cannily developing a sideline of light music classics, and was eventually appointed Master of the Queen’s Music, and Birtwistle, for all his notoriety, was regarded as one of the most important British composers of his generation.
Howarth kept bread on the table as a trumpeter and conductor. He found employment in the Covent Opera Orchestra, before advancing to principal trumpet of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. He also appeared frequently with the London Sinfonietta, to which he would later return as a guest conductor.
He cut his teeth on the podium as conductor of the Royal Philharmonic, in the early 1970s, for Frank Zappa’s film and album “200 Motels.” In 1967, he had arranged and performed, as one of four trumpeters, the fanfares for the Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour.”
His impact on the brass band world was considerable. He took both the Grimethorpe Colliery Band and Black Dyke Mills Band to the BBC Proms. He was also closely associated with the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble. He commissioned and arranged works by William Walton, Harrison Birtwistle, Hans Werner Henze, Toru Takemitsu, and many others. His virtuosic arrangement of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition” was widely praised.
Howarth went on to lead all the major British orchestras, in both concert hall and recordings. He was especially associated with the works of Birtwistle and György Ligeti. (He gave first performances of four of Birtwistle’s operas as well as Ligeti’s “Le Grand Macabre.”) But his repertoire was broad, also encompassing works from the 18th and 19th centuries, and he appeared often with other well-known orchestras on mainland Europe. He was nearly as seasoned an opera conductor as he was a director of brass bands.
In 2003, it was revealed that he had rejected the royal honor of a CBE. Howarth may have of necessity operated around the fringes of the establishment, but beneath that veneer of respectability still lurked a rebel angel.
R.I.P.
“Pictures at an Exhibition”
Conducting Birtwistle
Zappa
Conversation with Elgar Howarth
Howarth talks about his involvement with the Grimethorpe Colliery Band in 1972
