Presentation of The Roberto Gerhard Companion — Ashgate Publishing

The Roberto Gerhard Companion – Edited by Monty Adkins, University of Huddersfield, UK, and Michael Russ, University of Huddersfield, UK

This book builds on the outcomes of two recent international conferences and includes contributions by scholars from Spain, the USA and UK. The essays collected here explore themes and trends within Gerhard’s work, using individual or groups of works as case studies. Among  the themes presented are the way Gerhard’s work was shaped by his Catalan heritage, his education under Pedrell and Schoenberg, and his very individual reaction to the latter’s teaching and methods, notably Gerhard’s very distinctive approach to serialism.

The influence of these and other cultural and literary figures is an important underlying theme that ties essays together. Exiled from Catalonia from 1939, Gerhard spent the remainder of his life in Cambridge, England, composing a string of often ground-breaking compositions, notably the symphonies and concertos composed in the 1950s and 1960s. A particular focus in this book is Gerhard’s electronic music. He was a pioneer in this genre and the book will contain the first rigorous studies of this music as well as the first accurate catalogue of this electronic output. His ground-breaking output of incidental music for radio and the stage is also given detailed consideration.

Now available from Ashgate…

Contents:

• Preface; Introduction, Monty Adkins and Michael Russ
• Early works and life of Roberto Gerhard, Mark E. Perry
• ‘Unquestionably decisive’: Roberto Gerhard’s studies with Arnold Schoenberg, Diego Alonso Tomás
• ‘Promoting and diffusing Catalonian musical heritage’: Roberto Gerhard and Catalan folk music, Julian White
• Roberto Gerhard’s ballets: music, ideology and passion, Leticia Sánchez de Andrés
• Roberto Gerhard, Shakespeare and the Memorial Theatre, Samuel Llano
• Music as autobiography: Roberto Gerhard’s Violin Concerto, Michael Russ
• Two men in tune: the Gerhard-Camus relationship, Belén Pérez Castillo
• Roberto Gerhard’s serial procedures and formal design in String Quartets Nos 1 and 2, Rachel E. Mitchell
• Composing with sets: Roberto Gerhard’s Concerto for Piano and String Orchestra, Michael Russ
• Roberto Gerhard the serial symphonist, Darren Sproston
• In search of a ‘third way’, Monty Adkins
• The influence of electronic music on Roberto Gerhard’s Symphony No 4 ‘New York’, Carlos Duque
• Roberto Gerhard’s BBC sound compositions, Gregorio Garciá Karman
• Select bibliography
• Index.