(Having gone through Sara's splendid Index of Composer Threads I have identified 65 composers who have no thread devoted to them and whose music I admire. So, on the basis of trying to add one every or most days
......)
Stanley Bate was one of the more tragic figures of mid 20th century British music. He grew up in Plymouth and showed precocious talent as a very young man. Bate studied at the Royal College of Music in London as a pupil of Vaughan Williams, Gordon Jacob and Arthur Benjamin. He then went to Europe to study under Hindemith and Nadia Boulanger.
Bate married the Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks and travelled with her to the USA and Australia. In common with a number of other British composers(Benjamin Britten and Richard Arnell spring to mind) Bate was in the USA when the Second World War broke out in 1939. Like Arnell Bate had considerable success during the period from 1940 onwards in having his music played in the US, conducted (as was Arnell's) by eminent conductors including Sir Thomas Beecham.
Bate was divorced from Peggy Glanville-Hicks in 1948 and subsequently married a Brazilian diplomat. He returned to Britain in 1949 but-again the parallel with Arnell is remarkable-found that his absence from his native country for so long had done him no favours. He enjoyed a brief period of exposure when his Third Symphony was performed at the Cheltenham Festival in 1954 conducted by Barbirolli but his last few years were extraordinarily sad. He continued to compose-almost frantically it seemed-but his lifestyle became increasingly chaotic. Bate died at the age of 47-of utter exhaustion or alcohol abuse(or indeed both).
In total Bate composed four symphonies, of which Nos. 2, 3 and 4 are extant, five piano concertos(the fifth unfinished), one double piano concerto, three violin concertos and concertos for viola, for cello and for harpsichord.
For many years a substantial number of British music lovers have been asking and hoping for an opportunity to hear some of Bate's music. At last that opportunity has been granted with the recent release by that wonderful company Dutton of three cds containing respectively the Third Symphony, the Fourth Symphony and the Viola Concerto.
To my mind these cds have been a revelation. Yes, it is true that Bate was to a considerable degree in thrall to his teacher Vaughan Williams...but there is no real harm in that
The symphonies are hugely impressive works and have received very favourable reviews in the music press in this country. They are grand, thrilling, sometimes quite angry works which combine the influences of RVW, Hindemith, Shostakovich and some of the American symphonists Bate must have been familiar with during his sojurn in the States(Harris, Piston, Schuman, for example). The Viola Concerto is (hugely) influenced by RVW but a quite superb work in its own right, beautiful and moving in my estimation.
My (reasonably well-informed) guess is that Dutton do intend to give us some of the other concertos and they should be well worth hearing in due course.
There is a very detailed and highly informative article about this splendid, previously almost completely forgotten composer and his tragically short life here-
http://www.musicweb-international.com/bate/index.htm...and I commend this article to anyone interested in exploring the music. I can assure a number of members here with whose musical tastes I am familiar that they will almost certainly be very impressed by Stanley Bate if they have not already encountered the music.
