Continental Britons: Mátyás Seiber (1905-1960)

Over the next few weeks, I want to look at three of four composers who are defined as Continental Britons.  This will feature Mátyás Seiber, Franz Reizenstein and Hans Gál. Notes on a few others may follow. I will include details of ‘If you can only hear one work…’ which is simply a personal choice.

There than seventy composers and musicians came to Britain in the years prior to the outbreak of the Second World War to escape Nazi persecution. Some were to remain here: others such as Ernst Toch were to pass quickly onward to the United States. Unfortunately, it was not always a happy story. Several musicians who made their way to these shores were subsequently interned by the British government in one or other of the camps created for this purpose. It would be wrong to suggest that these were exceptionally harsh compared to similar camps in Germany: however, it did often deny the composers (and others) their ability to ‘make music,’ their access to books and it clearly limited their freedom of movement.

Where these composers are recalled today, there is a tendency to ascribe to them the musical characteristics of being proto-Hindemith or members of Schoenberg’s serial school. Whilst this is partially true, it is not the whole story. The composers were all individuals who adopted one theoretical system or another or none to suit their personal requirements. The British musical environment influenced these composers as much as they themselves influenced subsequent developments in post-war music.

Many listeners will have heard the music of Mátyás Seiber without realising it. Several examples spring to mind: firstly, film scores such as those of A Town Like Alice (1956), starring Peter Finch and Virginia McKenna, and the cartoon version of George Orwell’s Animal Farm (1954); and secondly, the hit song By the Fountains of Rome which reached Number 27 in the 1956 pop charts (the singer was David Hughes). Other versions of this song were made by Manuel and the Music of the Mountains and Victor Silvester.  There cannot be many pupils of Kodály who have achieved this honour.  Some of Seiber’s music echoes jazz. The collaboration between the composer and Johnny Dankworth to produce the stunning Improvisations for Jazz Band and Orchestra (1959) is a splendid example that should be better known.  The Jazzolette No.2 (1932) is another good instance, although this is more modernist music than jazz pastiche.

Yet scratch a little deeper and a very different composer emerges. Jazz was an interest, but not necessarily a preoccupation. Seiber was adept at using the twelve-tone method (serialism,) in a very personal manner, as well as more traditional sounds as evinced in his film scores. Other important influences were Bartok and folksong. Key achievements are Seiber’s opera, Eva spielt mit Puppen (1934), the concerted works for flute, violin, viola and cello and the Bessardo Suite no.2 for strings (1942). Major choral pieces include what may be regarded as his masterpiece, Ulysses, a cantata for tenor solo, chorus and orchestra to words from the iconic novel by James Joyce (1947). It is unfortunate that in the early 21st century he is best recalled his Three Hungarian Folk Songs which are three slight, but finely crafted, part-songs.

Mátyás Seiber was born in Budapest on 4th May 1905. He studied cello with Adolf Shiffer and composition with Zoltan Kodály at the Budapest Academy between 1919 and 1924.  In 1928 Seiber taught the Jazz Class at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt am Main.  His other activities included conducting several of the city’s theatre orchestras and playing cello with the Lenzewski Quartet. His experience was not limited to composing music: he played in a ship’s orchestra and visited Russia as a music critic.

Due to Hitler’s intolerance of jazz and Jews, Seiber was dismissed from his teaching post. He settled in London during 1935. Here he worked in Schott’s music-publishing house, taught at Morley College and founded the Dorian Singers.  In 1943 he and fellow émigré composer Francis Chagrin founded the Society for the Promotion of New Music. In the post-war years he devoted himself to conducting, teaching and composing. Mátyás Seiber died in a car crash in the Kruger National Park, Johannesburg, on 24th September 1960.  

Mátyás Seiber’s pupils included Don Banks, Peter Racine Fricker, Anthony Gilbert, Anthony Milner and Hugh Wood.

If you can only hear one work by Mátyás Seiber…

Seiber wrote in a variety of styles, so no one piece is representative, yet the Elegy for viola and orchestra (1951-3) is a work that encompasses the composer’s more serious side without making excessive demands on the listener: it makes use of relatively gentle dissonances. This work is not a serial composition, neither does jazz, folksong or ‘film’ music play any part in the work’s development.

The Donaueschingen Festival in Germany commissioned the Elegy; it was completed in 1953. The structure of the work is straightforward, but Seiber has managed to create a variety of moods in what is a typically inward-looking work. Hugh Wood has noted the Elegy’s considerable diversity, including fanfares of muted trumpets and richly contrived string chords in what is essentially a rhapsodic work.  Dyneley Hussey in the Musical Times (November 1960) has described the Elegy as exhibiting ‘gentle, lyrical tenderness… [which was the] very embodiment of the gentleness and charm that radiated from [Seiber’s] personality.’

The Elegy for viola and orchestra has been released on Lyrita (SRCD348) with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by the composer. The violist is Cecil Aronowitz. Unfortunately, this work has not been uploaded to YouTube. However, readers with access to the Naxos Music Library through their local libraries will be able to here this great recording.
With thanks to the English Music Festival, where much of this note was first published in their house journal Spirited (Winter 2016/2017)