Gerald MooreCBE (30 July 1899 – 13 March 1987) was anEnglishclassicalpianist best known for his career as acollaborative pianist for many distinguished musicians. Among those with whom he was closely associated wereDietrich Fischer-Dieskau,Kathleen Ferrier,Elisabeth Schumann,Hans Hotter,Elisabeth Schwarzkopf,Victoria de los Ángeles andPablo Casals.
Moore gave lectures on stage, radio and television about musical topics. He also wrote about music, publishing volumes of memoirs and practical guides to interpretation oflieder.
Moore was born inWatford,Hertfordshire, on 30 July 1899,[1] the eldest of four children of David Frank Moore, owner of a men's outfitting company, and his wife Chestina,née Jones.[2] He was educated atWatford Grammar School, and took piano lessons from a local teacher.[3] Though innately musical, withperfect pitch, Moore was a reluctant piano student: he later said that his mother had to drag him to the piano, "an unwilling, snivelling child – I did not absorb music into my being until my middle twenties."[4]
When Moore was 13 the family emigrated toToronto, Ontario, Canada, where he studied with the pianistMichael Hambourg, a former pupil ofAnton Rubinstein.[5] Moore was distracted from his musical studies by a strong attraction toAnglo-Catholicism; he thought for some time that he had a vocation to become a priest.[6] In 1915 Hambourg died, after which his son, the cellistBoris Hambourg, took Moore as his accompanist on a tour of forty engagements in western Canada.[2]
On his return to Toronto Moore was engaged as organist atSt. Thomas’s Anglican Church, and later as acinema organist, providing a musical accompaniment to silent films. This post was reasonably remunerative, but Moore described a cinema organ as an "instrument of torture … shar[ing] pride of place for sheer horror with the saxophone, the harmonica and the concertina."[7] His parents concluded that Toronto was not the place for him to build the career as a pianist that they hoped for. They sent him back to England, to lodge with relatives in London, and pursue his studies with Michael Hambourg's pianist son,Mark.[8]
While studying with Mark Hambourg, Moore earned money as an accompanist. The director of theGuildhall School of Music,Landon Ronald, heard him play at a recital and advised him to pursue a career as an accompanist.[9] He toured as accompanist for the singerVladimir Rosing along with pianistMyra Hess in the north of England in late 1922.[10]
In 1921 Moore made his first gramophone recording, accompanying the violinistRenée Chemet forHis Master's Voice.[11] They made several more recordings together,[12] but Moore's preference was for accompanying singers rather than instrumentalists. He recorded frequently withPeter Dawson in the early 1920s, and went on a recital tour of Britain with him; it was Dawson who recommended him to the tenorJohn Coates, who became an important influence on Moore's career.[13]
Moore accompanied virtually every eminent solo singer and instrumentalist in recitals and raised the art of accompanying at the piano from servility to the highest prestige.
Moore credited much of his early success to his five-year partnership with Coates, whom Moore credits with turning him from an indifferent accompanist into one who was sensitive to the music and the soloist, and an equal partner in performance.[14] Another influence, figuring prominently in Moore's memoirs, was the pianistSolomon, whose technique Moore admired and studied.[15]
By the end of the 1930s Moore was so well known as an accompanist thatMyra Hess invited him to give a talk about his profession at one of her of lunchtime concerts at theNational Gallery. The pianistJoseph Cooper wrote of this, and later similar talks, "He revealed a sense of verbal timing of which any professional comic would be proud. His unique blend of wit and wisdom not only pleased the cognoscenti but also won over ordinary people who had no idea that classical music could be fun."[2] Moore's first book,The Unashamed Accompanist (1943), had its origins in these talks.[2]
Moore is credited with doing much to raise the status of accompanist from a subservient role to that of an equal artistic partner.Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau wrote in his introduction to the German edition ofThe Unashamed Accompanist, "There is no more of that pale shadow at the keyboard; he is always an equal with his partner".[16] Moore valiantly protected this status of his art, complaining when accompanists he admired were not given billing in concert. He quoted with disapproval the remark made by a singer toCoenraad V Bos, an accompanist of an earlier generation, "You must have played well today, for I did not notice you."[17][n 1]
It is debatable, however, whether he succeeded in convincing the British Establishment of his time, of the uplifted status of his art. Whereas prominent conductors and singers, for example, in the British musical theatre tended to be awarded knighthoods, in 1954 Moore was appointed aCommander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), a lower ranked award.
Moore retired from public performances in 1967, with a farewell concert in which he accompanied three of the singers with whom he was long associated: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau,Victoria de los Ángeles andElisabeth Schwarzkopf. This famed concert at London'sRoyal Festival Hall - recorded by EMI and reissued in 1987 as CDC 749238 - concluded with Moore playing alone — an arrangement for solo piano ofSchubert'sAn die Musik. He made his last studio recording in 1975.
In his memoirs Moore wrote that his services were not needed atBenjamin Britten'sAldeburgh Festival, "as the presiding genius there is the greatest accompanist in the world." In 1967, the chief music critic ofThe Times, William Mann held that the preeminence was Moore's: "the greatest accompanist of his day, and perhaps of all time."[20] In 2006Gramophone magazine invited eminent present-day accompanists to name their "professional's professional"; the joint winners were Britten and Moore.[21]
He died at home in the village ofPenn, Buckinghamshire in 1987.[1][22]
Moore contributed a chapter on "The Accompanist" toA Career in Music (1950,OCLC 3411544) edited by Robert Elkin, with chapters byHarriet Cohen,George Baker and nine others.
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