Noticias
Ha fallecido el compositor Alexander Goehr
Redacción
El compositor británico Alexander Goehr falleció ayer 26 de agosto en su domicilio del condado de Cambridge, en cuya Facultad de Música seguía ocupando el puesto de "Profesor emérito". Aunque es uno de los principales compositores británicos, y uno de los fundadores del New Music Manchester Group junto a Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies y el pianista John Ogdon, Goehr nació en Berlín en 1932, si bien abandonó el país junto a su familia ya en 1933, cuando Hitler subió al poder en Alemania.
Hijo del director de orquesta Walter Goehr, quien se había formado con Schoenberg, y de una destacada pianista, inició sus estudios musicales en su temprana infancia, influido además por los diversos amigos de su padre que frecuentaban su casa. Posteriormente realizó estudios musicales formales en el Royal Manchester College of Music con Richard Hall, trasladándose en 1955 a París, donde fue alumno de Olivier Messiaen e Yvonne Loriod. A comienzos de la década de 1960 comenzó a trabajar en la BBC y creó el Music Theatre Ensemble. Su padre estrenó algunas de sus obras y además le permitió familiarizarse estrechamente con algunas obras y compositores que dirigió (como la Sinfonía Turangalila en Gran Bretaña), al tiempo que mantenían serias discrepancias estilísticas, pues su padre siempre fue mucho más afín a las vanguardias de la Guerra Fría e incluso a la Escuela de Dramstadt.
Desde finales de la década de 1960 Alexander Goehr se orientó hacia la enseñanza, siendo profesor en el New England Conservatory de Boston, y en la universidades de Yale, y Leeds (1971) hasta que en 1976 fue nombrado profesor de la Facultad de Música de la Universidad de Cambridge, puesto en el que permaneció el resto de su vida. Entre sus alumnos figuran los compositores Thomas Adès, George Benjamin, Julian Anderson, Chen Yi, Nicolas Hodges, o Ye Xiaogang, así como musicólogos como Nicholas Cook.
Nota de la editorial Schott
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Alexander Goehr at the age of 92. Distinguished composer and teacher, Goehr’s substantial impact on contemporary music in Britain and abroad is perceptible through his significant compositional output as well as the many noteworthy composers whom he taught.
Goehr was born in Berlin on 10 August 1932, the son of conductor Walter Goehr, and brought to England in 1933. He studied with Richard Hall at the Royal Manchester College of Music and with Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod in Paris. In Manchester, Goehr was a conduit between the recent music of continental modernism and his fellow students, and together with Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and John Ogdon, he formed the New Music Manchester Group. In the early 1960’s he worked for the BBC and formed the Music Theatre Ensemble, the first ensemble devoted to what has become an established musical form. From the late 1960’s onwards he taught at the New England Conservatory Boston, Yale, Leeds and in 1975 was appointed to the chair of the University of Cambridge, where he remained Emeritus Professor until his death. He also taught in China and was twice Composer-in-Residence at Tanglewood.
The year of Goehr's appointment at Cambridge coincided with a turning point in his output, with the composition of a white-note setting of Psalm IV (1976). The simple, bright modal sonority of this piece marked a departure from post-war serialism and a commitment to a more transparent soundworld. Goehr found a way of controlling harmonic pace by fusing his own modal harmonic idiom with the long abandoned practice of figured bass, achieving a highly idiosyncratic fusion of past and present. The output of the ensuing years testifies to Goehr's desire to use this new idiom to explore ideas and genres that were already constant features of his work.
Goehr’s orchestral works include four symphonies, concertos for piano, violin, viola and cello, works for chamber, string and wind orchestra, as well as ensemble works. He wrote five operas, a number of ambitious vocal scores, and a rich body of chamber music. Goehr held a particularly close working relationship with Oliver Knussen, who recorded and gave premiere performances of many works including ... a musical offering (J. S. B. 1985)... (1985), Idées Fixes (1997) and To These Dark Steps/The Fathers Are Watching (2011-12) for tenor, children's choir and ensemble. Associations with other world-class orchestras, soloists and conductors produced numerous works: The cello concerto Romanza (1968) was written for Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim, Bernard Haitink and the London Philharmonic Orchestra premiered Metamorphosis/Dance (1973-74), Boston Symphony Orchestra premiered Colossos or Panic (1991-92) under Seiji Ozawa, and Two Sarabandes (2014) was commissioned by Bamberg Symphony who premiered the work with Lahav Shani.
Through the chamber music medium, Goehr gained an unprecedented rhythmic and harmonic immediacy, while his music remained ever permeable by the music and imagery of other times and places. Marching to Carcassonne (2003) for Peter Serkin and London Sinfonietta, flirts with neoclassicism and Stravinsky. The set of solo piano pieces Symmetries Disorder Reach (2007), a barely disguised baroque suite, was premiered by Huw Watkins, and …between the lines… (2013), written for the Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, traces its lineage back to Schoenberg and Schubert and Shakespeare inspired Since Brass, nor Stone... written for percussionist Colin Currie and the Pavel Haas Quartet which won the chamber category of the 2009 British Composer Awards.
Goehr’s work and commitment to new music was recognised in his lifetime by numerous prestigious organisations. An honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a former Churchill Fellow, in 2019 Goehr was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Philharmonic Society in recognition of his lifelong contribution to musical culture. An archive of Goehr’s manuscripts is curated by the Berlin Akademie der Künste where it will be available to future students of composition and researchers.
The collaborative book Composing a Life by Goehr and composer-musicologist and former pupil Jack Van Zandt was published by Carcanet in October 2023. One of Goehr’s final work, Ondering (2023) for string quartet was premiered by the Villiers Quartet at the Royal Northern College of Music to mark the occasion.
The world premiere of Goehr’s Seven Laments for solo clarinet performed by Ib Hausmann will be part of Langenselbolder Klassik-Festival in October 2024 and Ensemble 10:10 conducted by Geoffrey Paterson will perform Sinfonia (1979) in Liverpool in March 2025.
Sandy (to all who knew him) passed away on 26 August 2024 at home in Cambridgeshire.
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