Sir Richard Rodney BennettCBE (29 March 1936 – 24 December 2012) was an English composer and pianist. He was noted for his musical versatility, drawing from such sources asjazz,romanticism, andavant-garde; and for his use oftwelve-tone technique andserialism.[2][3] His body of work included over 200 concert works and 50 scores for film and television. He was also active in jazz, as a composer, a pianist, and an occasional vocalist.
Bennett was born atBroadstairs, Kent, but was raised in Devon duringWorld War II.[5] His mother, Joan Esther, née Spink (1901–1983)[6] was a pianist who had trained withGustav Holst and sang in the first professional performance ofThe Planets.[7][8] His father,Rodney Bennett (1890–1948), was a children's book author, poet and lyricist, who worked withRoger Quilter on his theatre works and provided new words for some of the numbers in theArnold Book of Old Songs.
Bennett was a pupil atLeighton Park School.[9] He later studied at theRoyal Academy of Music withHoward Ferguson andLennox Berkeley. Ferguson regarded him as extraordinarily brilliant, having perhaps the greatest talent of any British composer in his generation, though lacking in a personal style. During this time, Bennett attended some of theDarmstadt summer courses in 1955, where he was exposed toserialism. He later spent two years in Paris as a student of the prominent serialistPierre Boulez between 1957 and 1959.[10] He always used both his first names after finding another Richard Bennett active in music.
Bennett taught at theRoyal Academy of Music between 1963 and 1965, at thePeabody Institute inBaltimore, United States from 1970 to 1971, and was later International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy of Music between 1994 and the year 2000. He was appointed a Commander of theOrder of the British Empire (CBE) in 1977, and wasknighted in 1998.[4]
Bennett produced over 200 works for the concert hall, and 50 scores for film and television. He was also a writer and performer ofjazz songs for 50 years. Immersed in the techniques of the Europeanavant-garde via his contact with Boulez, Bennett subsequently developed his own dramato-abstract style. In his later years, he adopted an increasingly tonal idiom.
In later years, in addition to his musical activities, Bennett became known as an artist working in the medium of collage.[11] He exhibited these collages several times in England, including at the Holt Festival, Norfolk[12] in 2011, and at the Swaledale Festival, Yorkshire, in 2012.[13] The first exhibition of his collages was in London in 2010, at the South Kensington and Chelsea Mental Health Centre, curated by the Nightingale Project, a charity that takes music and art into hospitals. Bennett was a patron of this charity.[14] Bennett is honoured with four photographic portraits in the collection of theNational Portrait Gallery, London.
Bennett was gay[15] and in 1995Gay Times nominated him as one of the most influential gay people in music.[16] He was based in New York City from 1979 until his death there in 2012.[5]
Anthony Meredith's biography of Bennett was published in November 2010.[17] Bennett is survived by his sister Meg (born 1930), the poetM. R. Peacocke, with whom he collaborated on a number of vocal works.
Bennett's cremated remains are buried in Section 112, Plot 45456 atGreen-wood Cemetery,Brooklyn. His grave is marked by a grey granite headstone.[18]
Despite his early studies inmodernist techniques, Bennett's tastes were eclectic. He wrote in a wide range of styles, includingjazz, for which he had a particular fondness. Early on, he began to write music for feature films. He said that it was as if the different styles of music that he was writing went on 'in different rooms, albeit in the same house'.[11] Later in his career the different aspects all became equally celebrated – for example in his 75th birthday year (2011), there were numerous concerts featuring all the different strands of his work. At the BBC Proms for example hisMurder on the Orient Express Suite was performed in a concert of film music, and in the same season hisDream Dancing andJazz Calendar were also featured. Also at theWigmore Hall, London, on 23 March 2011 (a few days before his 75th birthday), a double concert took place in which hisDebussy-inspired pieceSonata After Syrinx was performed in the first concert, and in the Late Night Jazz Event which followed, Bennett and Claire Martin performed his arrangements of the Great American Songbook (Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hart and so on). See also Tom Service's appreciation of Bennett's music published inThe Guardian in July 2012.[19]
Scena II (1973) - for solo cello; commissioned by the Music Department of theUniversity College of North Wales, Bangor, with funds from Welsh Arts Council, first performed by Judith Mitchell 25 April 1974
Sonatina (1981) - for solo clarinet
After Syrinx I (1982) - for oboe and piano
Summer Music (1982) - for flute and piano
Sonata (1983) - for solo guitar
After Syrinx II (1984) - for solo marimba
Morning Music (1986) - for wind band
Over the Hills and Far Away (1991) - for piano 4 hands
The Four Seasons (1991) - for symphonic wind ensemble
Dream Sequence (1992) - for cello and piano, first performed in December 1994 at theWigmore Hall, London byJulian Lloyd Webber and John Lenehan (1992)
Ballad in Memory of Shirley Horn (2006) - For clarinet and piano, written the year after her death to commemorate her
LilliburleroVariations (2008) - for two pianos, commissioned by the Dranoff 2 Piano Foundation in Miami
The Glory and the Dream (2000), chorus a cappella and 1 instrument, textWordsworth
A Farewell to Arms (2001)
The Garden – A Serenade to Glimmerglass (2006) - commissioned by Nicholas Russell forGlimmerglass Opera in honour of Stewart Robertson for its Young American Artists Program
A History of the Thé Dansant for mezzo-soprano and small orchestra (2011)
Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol 2 (2018) -Concerto for Stan Getz; Symphony No. 2;Serenade;Partita. BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, John Wilson, Chandos
Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol 3 (2019) - Symphony No. 1;A History of the Dansant;Reflections on a 16th Century Tune;Zodiac. BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, John Wilson, Chandos
Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol 4 (2020) -Aubade; Piano Concerto;Anniversaries;Country Dances, Book One,Troubadour Music. BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, John Wilson, Chandos
Bennett: Orchestral Works, Vol 5 (2025) - Concerto for Orchestra;Sonnets to Orpheus,Diversions. BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, John Wilson, Chandos
