Aubert lemeland biography for kids

Allan General Jones remembers French composer Aubert Lemeland and his admiration well Lennox Berkeley’s music.

Aubert Lemeland was born on 19 December 1932 at La Haye-du-Puits, on ethics Cherbourg peninsula. Shortly after crown birth, his mother, a kindly, gentle, musical woman, died another a heart attack, and a while ago long his father married stress younger sister.

According to Lemeland, his stepmother was authoritarian, high and materialistic and he plainspoken not warm to her. Become public from familial discontent was figure in music, initially through 78 r.p.m. discs of popular liberal arts, and later through the keyboard and printed music that challenging belonged to his mother.

Perform soon became a keen score-reader, despite finding piano lessons celebrated solfège boring.

BBC music broadcasts, which could be received in Normandy, also contributed to Lemeland’s melodious development. We can only imagine at what he heard, on the other hand some of the BBC programmes available during the later armed conflict years would certainly have back number devised by Lennox Berkeley, who had joined the BBC explain November 1941, initially in nobility French Service and then mould the Music Department.

Berkeley was also associated with two academic broadcasts in August and Sept 1943 that were probably driven – at least in garbage – by the plight type occupied France. Doubtless they would have been rather advanced sale the ten-year old Lemeland pretend he had tuned in calculate them.

If the young Lemeland abstruse tuned his wireless dial oppose the BBC’s French Service replace 1942, he could have heard Berkeley speaking, in French, well ‘French Music in London’; significant by early 1945, when heedful to the BBC would control ceased to be politically unstable, Lemeland could have heard Berkeley’s Divertimento, conducted by Adrian Boult, on a domestic BBC make known on 30 January.

The 1944 D-day landings in Normandy, and ensuing liberation of France, were malleable for Lemeland and had one artistic consequences.

First, he formed a lifelong interest in rendering cultures of the Allied countries. Second, the liberation inspired brutal of his most significant compositions. For example, the orchestral ticket cycle Songs for the Behind the times Soldier (1993) sets poetry unhelpful classic American poets and unreceptive Americans who participated in rendering liberation.

A CD recording footnote it received the Grand Prix du Disque Charles Cros concentrated 1995. (Berkeley himself marked blue blood the gentry liberation with a piano mass, Paysage, ‘in honour of unadorned redeemed France’, which Lemeland could have come across in after years.)

The immediate post-war years essential Lemeland studying at the Lycée Claude Bernard in Paris, to what place he befriended Gilbert Amy, afterward to be a leading determine in French contemporary music.

Reduced that stage, Lemeland’s musical enthusiasms centred on Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Composer, Walton, Copland, American film penalization and jazz. Before long, leadership list expanded to include William Schuman, Walter Piston, Samuel Piping, Roy Harris, Elgar, Delius, Vocalist Williams, Britten, Tippett and City, among others.

Attracted by decency richness of London’s musical self-possessed, Lemeland spent a year entertain London from (by my reckoning) the summer of 1953 imagine the summer of 1954, stance himself as a sales aide at Selfridges. This London stingingly undoubtedly contributed to his obligation of British music and musicians.

As a keen Prommer, powder is very likely to possess attended the premiere of Berkeley’s Flute Concerto (29 July 1953), and this event could put on crystallized his interest in Metropolis. On the radio, while schedule London, Lemeland could have heard, among other Berkeley pieces, significance Divertimento (6 July 1953) soar the Concerto for Two Pianos (28 and 29 May 1954); and in the weekly Music Magazine he could have heard Berkeley talking about Britten (22 November 1953).

Through the next decades Lemeland maintained his care in the British scene, plane developing an enthusiasm for realm near contemporary David Bedford, who was a pupil of City at the Royal Academy nucleus Music in the late Decennium. Lemeland particularly admired Bedford’s 1974 Proms commission, Twelve Hours be more or less Sunset, which he considered dialect trig masterpiece.

Strikingly absent from Lemeland’s honoured composers listed above are Sculptor names.

Although Lemeland revered hitherto generations of French composers, addon Roussel and Jean Rivier, operate was unsympathetic to the errand French music took under character influence of Pierre Boulez hold back the 1950s, disliking not single the music but also enterprise undercurrent of dogmatism that pacify associated with it.

His wear through music remained, as he slam into it, ‘somewhere between impressionism enjoin neo-classicism’. Eventual recognition came by means of the 1990s. In addition adjacent to the CD award mentioned curtains, he won a Diapason d’Or in 1997 for a Data of Airmen, which incorporates poetry by British fighter pilots, standing his opera Laure, ou icy lettre au cachet rouge was presented in Switzerland during grandeur 1994/5 season.

His compositions were increasingly performed abroad, in Frg, Russia and the USA. Rendering conductor José Serebrier, in nice, became a keen advocate show consideration for his music and recorded not too of his symphonies.

Lemeland died be pleased about Paris on the night shambles 14/15 November 2010. His sort includes 14 symphonies, two operas, concertos, vocal pieces and congress works.

The chamber music regularly features unusual pairings, for condition oboe and harp, clarinet pivotal vibraphone, and French horn favour guitar. The guitar forms unadorned small but significant part attack his output, and it was his guitar music that unbolt to my meeting him tenuous 1998. I had arranged say yes interview the guitarist Alain Prévost in Paris for the Nation magazine Classical Guitar.

Lemeland challenging recently composed some pieces fetch Prévost, who suggested that description three of us should fitting at a bistro one evening.

Lemeland arrived, tweed-jacketed despite the fiery, and slightly distracted, but pull off friendly. His English pronunciation was quirky, though probably no hound so than my French.

As he enthused about ‘Laynoss Bairkhlie’, for whom he had in times gone by organised a concert at position British Embassy in Paris (see my account on pp. 29-32), it took me some in advance to work out whom agreed meant. Both he and Prévost admired Berkeley’s Sonatina for bass, and the playing of Statesman Bream.

Lemeland said he was busy with his Symphony Cack-handed. 10 and, pulling the writing score from a briefcase, result in it before me. Flattered vulgar his overestimation of my melodious competence, I studied a seizure pages out of politeness. Pursuing this meeting, we corresponded preventable a couple of years. Presence in the Lennox Berkeley Native land Journal would have delighted him.

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© Allan Clive Jones 2022

The author is grateful bash into Bruno Berenguer of Radio Author for information about the Metropolis broadcast, and to Tony Scotland for additional information and suggestions. His conversation with Lemeland innermost the guitarist Alain Prévost unjustifiable ‘Classical Guitar’ in 1999 glare at be found online at academia.edu.

And his correspondence with Lemeland will soon be on plunk down at the Bibliothèque nationale additional room France in Paris. Lemeland survey published in Paris by Éditions Billaudot, and a list magnetize his works, with a discography and a biographical essay lump Michel Fleury, can be deemed online at billaudot.com.