Joseph Holbrooke
Joseph Charles Holbrooke, sometimes given as Josef Holbrooke, was an English composer, conductor, and pianist.
Life
Early years
Joseph Holbrooke was born Joseph Charles Holbrook in Croydon, Surrey. His father, also named Joseph, was a music hall musician and teacher, and his mother Helen was a Scottish singer. He had two older sisters and two younger brothers, both of whom died in infancy. The family travelled around the country, with both parents participating in musical entertainments. Holbrooke's mother died in 1880 from tuberculosis, leaving the family in the care of Joseph senior, who settled the family in London and took the position of pianist at Collins's Music Hall, Islington, and later at the Bedford Music Hall. Holbrooke was taught to play the piano and the violin by his father, who was not averse to the use of violence as a method of instruction, and played in music halls himself before entering the Royal Academy of Music as a student in 1893, where he studied under Frederick Corder for composition and Frederick Westlake for piano.Whilst at the academy he composed several works, chiefly piano miniatures, songs and some chamber music, which were performed at student concerts: at one recital, he substituted one of his own compositions in preference to Schumann's Toccata, incurring the wrath of the Principal, Sir Alexander Campbell Mackenzie. He won several Academy prizes, including the Potter Exhibition for pianoforte, the Sterndale Bennett Scholarship, the Heathcote Long Prize for pianoforte and, in his final year, the Charles Lucas Prize for composition.
After graduating Holbrooke sought a variety of occupations. In 1898 he undertook a tour of Scotland accompanying the music hall singer Arthur Lloyd, but the venture failed and he was forced to return to live with his father in London. He then moved out of the family home to Harringay where he began to teach music privately, but once again without financial success. Around this time he decided to change his name from Holbrook to Holbrooke, probably in order to avoid confusion as his father was also still teaching privately. He subsequently adopted the variant Josef Holbrooke which he continued to use inconsistently throughout the remainder of his life.
Responding to an advertisement in Musical News, Holbrooke travelled to Horncastle in Lincolnshire where he briefly lived with and served as musical companion to the Reverend Edward Stewart Bengough. He was soon travelling again, conducting a touring pantomime during the 1899-1900 Christmas season. Once more, the enterprise collapsed and Holbrooke was left stranded and virtually destitute, at which point Bengough sent him money to enable him to return to London.
Success
Whilst on tour, Holbrooke had sent the score of his orchestral poem The Raven to August Manns, conductor at the Crystal Palace. Manns accepted the work for performance and gave the premiere on 3 March 1900, whilst later that same year the orchestral variations on Three Blind Mice were also heard. In 1901 he won the Lesley Alexander Prize for chamber music with his Sextet in F minor and also received an invitation from Granville Bantock to become a member of the staff at the Birmingham and Midland Institute School of Music. He accepted the position, living with the Bantocks whilst teaching at the institution, but rapidly became dissatisfied with the routine and returned to London in 1902.There followed a decade of prestigious commissions and performances, with notable works including the poem for chorus and orchestra Queen Mab, the orchestral poem Ulalume, the scena for baritone and orchestra Marino Faliero, the Bohemian Songs for baritone and orchestra, the poem for chorus and orchestra The Bells, the orchestral suite Les Hommages and the choral symphony Homage to E.A. Poe. During this period Holbrooke also won a further prize, this time with his Fantasie Quartet, Op.17b entered for the 1905 chamber music competition initiated by Walter Willson Cobbett.
In 1907 Holbrooke was approached by the poet Herbert Trench who wished the composer to set his extended poem on immortality Apollo and the Seaman. This Holbrooke duly did, although only the final section of the poem is actually sung, the rest of the score being a purely orchestral illustration of the verses. The completed work, styled "An Illuminated Symphony", was first performed at Queen's Hall on 20 January 1908, conducted by Thomas Beecham: on this occasion the orchestra and chorus were hidden from the audience behind an elaborate screen whilst the text of the poem was projected onto the screen using lantern slides at corresponding points in the music. The rehearsals for Apollo and the Seaman were attended by Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden who shortly after the first performance approached Holbrooke with one of his own poems, entitled Dylan - Son of the Wave: this resulted in the composition of the opera Dylan, first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, conducted by Artur Nikisch, on 4 July 1914. The staging included another technological wonder:
Collaboration on two further operas, The Children of Don and Bronwen, brought about the completion of Holbrooke's most ambitious project, a trilogy under the collective title The Cauldron of Annwn setting Scott-Ellis' versions of tales from the Welsh Mabinogion. Until his death in 1946, Scott-Ellis effectively acted as patron to Holbrooke, subsidising performances and publication of many of his works.
Throughout this period, Holbrooke also enjoyed a successful career as a virtuoso concert pianist. Besides his own compositions, his repertoire included the Toccata by Robert Schumann, Islamey by Mily Balakirev, Scriabin's Piano Sonata No.1, the fantasie Africa for piano and orchestra by Saint-Saëns, Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No.1 and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No.2.
Controversy
In 1902 Holbrooke had begun his own series of chamber music concerts to promote his music alongside new works by his British contemporaries. Audiences would regularly find admonishing notes printed in their programmes:When war broke out in 1914 he turned his attention to vigorously denouncing both the lack of support given to British music and the continued favour afforded to that of other countries, especially Germany. He published a series of five essays entitled British Music Versus German Music which appeared weekly in The New Age between 5 November and 3 December 1914:
The personal tone which informed much of the writing was too strong for some commentators who saw it as blatant self-promotion:
The fact that Holbrooke had recently issued a number of works under a pseudonym was also seized upon and viewed with suspicion:
Undoubtedly, Holbrooke was a difficult and prickly person to deal with professionally. Shortly before a concert in Bournemouth on 22 February 1917, where the composer was to give a performance of his piano concerto Gwyn ap Nudd, the conductor Dan Godfrey was compelled to hastily insert apology slips into each of the programmes to the following effect:
In fact, what had annoyed Holbrooke was the greater prominence which the printed advertisements gave to Vladimir Pachmann who was due to play two days later: he felt that this was yet another instance where a foreigner was being given undue celebrity to the detriment of a native pianist. Such outbursts of pique were characteristic and he gained the reputation of a troublesome and cantankerous eccentric:
Neglect
Following the First World War, with his own music increasingly side-lined, Holbrooke continued ever more vehemently to berate his critics. A particular target was Ernest Newman, initially an enthusiast for Holbrooke's music but who latterly became cool towards the composer:At the same time, Holbrooke continued to vigorously and vociferously promote compositions by other contemporary British composers both through performance at his own chamber music concerts and in print:
Perhaps Holbrooke found some satisfaction in seeing his war-time attitude towards greater British representation in concert-halls echoed retrospectively, albeit without the same controversy:
Performances of his own music continued sporadically, but included several of great importance: The Children of Don was given five times at the Vienna Volksoper under Felix Weingartner, and three times in Salzburg under Ludwig Kaiser, in 1923; Bronwen was first performed in Huddersfield by The Carl Rosa Opera Company on 1 February 1929 and then taken on tour; and the ballet Aucassin and Nicolette was performed over two hundred times by the Markova-Dolin Ballet Company during the 1935-36 season. Holbrooke had spent extended periods of time at Harlech, Wales, since around 1915, Scott-Ellis having provided him with a number of residences, and in the early 1920s he moved with his family to a house which he appropriately named Dylan. In the early hours of 9 November 1928, whilst the rest of the family were in London, fire broke out and the house was completely gutted: Holbrooke sustained serious head injuries and his music library was destroyed. This disaster precipitated a return to London where, having bought back many of the copyrights on his earlier works, Holbrooke set up his own publishing house "Modern Music Library", operating from his various London homes: through this outlet he ensured that his compositions remained available and also issued several printed catalogues of his works.
From about the age of forty he began to suffer problems with his hearing, eventually becoming profoundly deaf, an affliction which tended to increase his isolation and irascibility. The condition also served to curtail his career as a concert pianist: when Holbrooke revised his Piano Concerto The Song of Gwyn ap Nudd in 1923 it was for a performance given by Frederic Lamond.
A "Holbrooke Music Society" was founded in 1931 to promote the composer's works, Scott-Ellis being the patron and Granville Bantock acting as president. Until Bantock's death in 1946, Holbrooke maintained frequent correspondence with the older composer, railing against the BBC's apparent unwillingness to broadcast performances of his music. Despite his neglect by the musical establishment, Holbrooke continued to compose throughout the 1930s and 1940s, working on several large-scale projects including an opera-ballet Tamlane, two further choral symphonies, Blake and Milton, both of which were probably unfinished, and choral settings of Kipling's poetry, also unfinished. He also devoted much of his time to revising and recasting his earlier works.
Holbrooke lived at various London addresses including 22 Harringay Grove, Hornsey, Vale House, Tufnell Park, 60 Boundary Road, St John's Wood, 48 Boundary Road, St John's Wood, and 55 Alexandra Road, St John's Wood. Between September 1940 and March 1941, at the height of the Blitz, he moved out of London to live with friends in Taunton, Somerset, before returning to the capital permanently in the summer. He died at 55 Alexandra Road, St John's Wood on 5 August 1958 at the age of eighty and was survived by his wife Dorothy Elizabeth Hadfield whom he had married in 1904. The couple had five children: Mildred, Anton, Barbara, Gwydion and Diana, the last of whom was married to the renowned clarinettist Reginald Kell. The youngest son changed his name to Gwydion Brooke and became a pre-eminent English bassoonist, also actively promoting the music of his father through a continuation of the "Modern Music Library", renamed "The Blenheim Press".