Composer Alexander Goehr, the penultimate representative of the so-called Manchester School – that group of rebel angels that emerged from the Royal Manchester (now Northern) College of Music in the 1950s – has died at a venerable age.
The son of composer and conductor Walter Goehr, a Schoenberg pupil, Alexander was born in Berlin in 1932. The influence of Olivier Messiaen (his father conducted the U.K. premiere of Messiaen’s “Turangalila Symphony;” Alexander later studied with the composer) colored his own personal approach to the twelve-tone method.
Interestingly, Goehr’s first important, though likely least influential, teacher was Allan Gray (birth name Józef Żmigrod), also a Schoenberg disciple, who made his hay as a film composer. Schoenberg had already been rolling his eyes at Gray’s involvement in cabaret and theater. One can only assume what he made of this later development. (Of course, Schoenberg himself considered scoring “The Good Earth” in Hollywood, but priced himself out.) Gray would soon find employment providing music for Powell-Pressburger films like “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp.” He also wrote the score for “The African Queen.”
Despite, or perhaps because of, his own experiences, Goehr’s father did not encourage his son’s pursuit of a musical career. He would have preferred him to study classics at Oxford.
At Manchester, Alexander fell in with angry young men Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Elgar Howarth, and John Ogdon. They may have presented a tough face, but after-hours, they would geek out talking about things like medieval modes. Together, they founded New Music Manchester. The works they championed were hardly easy listening.
Ogdon soon gained fame as a pianist, Howarth, now the group’s sole surviving member, kept bread on the table as a trumpeter and conductor, Maxwell Davies cannily developed a sideline of light music classics and was later 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.
While in Paris to study with Messiaen, Goehr became friends with Pierre Boulez, who served as a mentor in the late ‘50s. Eventually they parted ways, after Goehr became disenchanted with the strictures of serialism and craved greater artistic freedom, in regard to spontaneity and personal choice. Messiaen also sparked his interest in non-Western music, including Indian raga.
Questions of his personal evolution aside, in “Englands green & pleasant Land,” Goehr, in common with his classmates Maxwell Davies and especially Birtwistle, would continue to be regarded by casual concertgoers as an overgrown enfant terrible. At an age when many seriously begin to contemplate retirement, Goehr retained his influence and reputation as a prominent figure of the avant-garde. Yet in his later work, he seemed to step up his engagement with earlier historical styles and, as a result, wound up composing some of his most immediately appealing music.
I don’t claim to be a Goehr expert, nor should this post be taken as a comprehensive overview of his life or career. I suppose I know about as much about him as any fanatical classical music record collector might, but even a scroll through his Wikipedia page reveals that, for whatever effort I may have made here, I still have merely skimmed the surface.
Among other things I neglected to mention, he also held a number of prestigious academic posts, culminating in a professorship at Cambridge University from 1976 to 1999.
Goehr’s death at 92 was reported yesterday. I would have gotten this up sooner, but I spent this morning at the DMV!
Piano Concerto (1972), composed for Daniel Barenboim; played here by Peter Serkin
String Quartet No. 4 “In Memoriam John Ogdon” (1990)
“Metamorphosis/Dance,” inspired by Homer’s “The Odyssey”
“Fugue on the Notes of Psalm IV” (1976)
Interview with Alexander Goehr
PHOTOS:
Top, left to right: Alexander Goehr, Harrison Birtwistle, Audrey Crawford, formerly Goehr (front), John Ogdon (rear), Elgar Howarth, Peter Maxwell Davies, and John Dow in 1955;
Bottom: Goehr interviewed in 2014
