Mátyás Seiber Explained

Birth Date:4 May 1905
Birth Place:Budapest, Hungary
Death Date:24 September 1960
Death Place:Kruger National Park, South Africa
Citizenship:Hungary
United Kingdom
Occupation:Composer

Mátyás György Seiber (in Hungarian ˈmaːcaːʃ ˈʃaibɛr/,[1] sometimes given as Matthis Seyber; 4 May 190524 September 1960) was a Hungarian-born British composer who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1935 onwards. His work linked many diverse musical influences, from the Hungarian tradition of Bartók and Kodály, to Schoenberg and serial music, to jazz, folk song, and lighter music.

Early life

Seiber was born in Budapest. His mother, Berta Patay was a reputed pianist and teacher, so the young Seiber gained considerable skill with that instrument first. At the age of ten, he began to learn to play the cello. After attending grammar school, where he was regarded as "outstanding" in mathematics and Latin according to the almanacs of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music, he studied the cello and composition from 1918 to 1925, and composition with Zoltán Kodály from 1921 to 1925. For his degree, he wrote his String Quartet No. 1 (in A minor). Pieces composed at this time, such as the Serenade for Six Wind Instruments of 1925, show him combining traditional Hungarian folk tunes with the forms of Western art music.[2] Seiber submitted his Serenade to a composition contest in Budapest shortly after its completion. When the piece did not win, despite jury member Bela Bartók’s insistence in its superiority to its competition, the famous composer left the jury in protest.[3] Seiber toured Hungary with Zoltán Kodály, collecting folk songs, and built on the research of Kodály and Béla Bartók. He also developed an interest in medieval plainchant.

Career

In 1925, Seiber accepted a teaching position at a private music school. In 1926, he took a position to play the cello in the orchestra of a ship from to North and South America. This was where he became acquainted with jazz.

In 1928 he became director of the jazz department at the Hoch Conservatory in Frankfurt, which offered the first academic jazz courses anywhere.[4] [5] His text book Schule für Jazz-Schlagzeug was written in 1929, as a practical summary of his theoretical requirements. Two of his articles of great importance were published in the journal Melos: "Jazz als Erziehungsmittel" (1928) and "Jazz-Instrumente, Jazz-Klang und Neue Musik" (1930). After the jazz department was closed by the Nazis in April, 1933, Seiber left Germany. He returned to Hungary but did not settle there.

Seiber emigrated to England in 1935 and settled in London. He only became a British citizen after the war.[6] Seiber taught composition and cello privately while working as a consultant for the subsidiary of Schott Music in London and composed film music. Michael Tippett invited him to be a professor of composition at Morley College in London, and from 1942 he was on the staff there; he became a teacher of composition, music aesthetics, and music theory. His many students included Don Banks, John Exton, Peter Racine Fricker, Alan Gibbs,[7] Anthony Gilbert, Stanley Glasser, Michael Graubart, Barry Gray, Karel Janovický, Ingvar Lidholm, Malcolm Lipkin, David Lumsdaine, John McCarthy, John Mayer, Anthony Milner, Peter Schat, Wally Stott (who later became Angela Morley) and Hugh Wood. During this period, he created and trained his choir, the Dorian Singers.

His friendships and work associations embraced many soloists, including Tibor Varga, Dennis Brain, Norbert Brainin, guitarists Julian Bream and John Williams, percussionist Jimmy Blades, folk singer Bert Lloyd, Max Rostal and tenor Peter Pears.[8]

He was a founder member of the Society for the Promotion of New Music, actively promoting new music throughout his life.

Personal life

In 1946 Seiber married the modern dancer Lilla Bauer (1912–2011), another Hungarian émigré.[9] [10] She was a lecturer at Goldsmiths’ College in London. They moved out of London to Caterham Surrey, in 1949. They are survived by their daughter Julia Seiber Boyd.[11]

In 1960 Seiber was invited to do a lecture tour in South Africa, but he died there in Kruger National Park as the result of a car accident. Kodály dedicated his choral work titled Media vita in morte sumus to the memory of his former student.

Music

Seiber's music is eclectic in style, showing the influences of Bartók, Kodály, Schoenberg, serialism, jazz, and Hungarian folk song, and his output includes film and lighter music.[12] Often, individual pieces use a combination of these influences. For instance, the two Jazzolettes for wind and percussion (1929 and 1932, composed in Frankfurt) make liberal use of jazz effects and rhythms that displace the bar lines, but also show his first explorations of twelve-note techniques. His wartime, Fantasia concertante for violin and orchestra, premiered in 1945 and recorded by Andre Gertler, and the later work Permutationi a Cinque (1948) for wind ensemble, illustrate Seiber's very free use of serialism.[13] Permutationi a Cinque explicitly uses permutations of motifs that eventually come together to reveal a twelve-tone series - but it is all done with lightness and humour.[2]

Seiber's vocal output includes the large scale cantata Ulysses (1947) on words by James Joyce, another Joyce-related work, Three Fragments from "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", and choral arrangements of Hungarian and Yugoslav folk songs. He also wrote one opera, Eva spielt mit Puppen (1934),[14] and the ballet The Invitation. Other works include the two orchestral Besardo suites,[13] a clarinet concertino, three strings quartets, and scores to animated films produced by Halas & Batchelor, including Animal Farm (1954).[15] The substantial Sonata for violin and piano, a commission for the Cheltenham Festival, was completed just before his death in 1960.

Two comic operas, A Palágyi Pekek and Balaton, were composed for the Hungarian theatre in London, the "Londoni Pódium". A Palágyi Pékek, (libretto, György Mikes) (1943), was the first collaboration of Mátyás Seiber and George Mikes. Balaton, (libretto, György Mikes) (1944), as George Mikes has reported, was aired during the war by the BBC and, after the end of the war even made it to Budapest.[16] A setting of the Scottish "poet and tragedian" William McGonagall's work, The Famous Tay Whale was written for the second of Gerard Hoffnung's music festivals in 1958.

Seiber used a pseudonym for his jazz works and popular music: G. S. Mathis or George Mathis (a rearrangement of his name using Anglicised forms).[17] In 1957 he was awarded the Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically for "By the Fountains of Rome," which was a hit that year in the UK Single Charts, making it to the Top Twenty. (The lyrics were by Norman Newell, and it was sung by David Hughes).[18]

Compositions (selected)

Seiber's compositions at Schott Music[19] and the British Library.[20]

Orchestral

Instrumental and chamber music

Vocal works with orchestra

A cappella choral music

Songs for solo voice/choral and accompaniment

Stage/ballet

Arrangements

Seiber's compositions and arrangements under the name G. S. Mathis and G. B. Mathis.[22]

Selected filmography

Further reading

External links

Notes and References

  1. https://www.classiccat.net/seiber_m/biography.php
  2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upIR-ZIxjLI Matyas Seiber - Traveller between Worlds
  3. https://www.rcm.ac.uk/singingasong/stories/matyasseiber-travellerbetweenworlds/
  4. "This was actually the first academic program for the study of jazz anywhere in the world." Kathryn Smith Bowers, "East Meets West. Contributions of Mátyás Seiber to Jazz in Germany." Jazz and the Germans, (Ed. Michael J. Budds), Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2002,, S. 122.
  5. See article and references here: Timeline of jazz education
  6. Web site: Problematic Tendencies: Émigré Composers in London, 1933–1945. Florian Scheding. 2017-09-18. 253. 2020-11-16.
  7. https://seibermusic.org.uk/biography/
  8. Web site: Schott Music.
  9. https://seibermusic.org.uk/biography/
  10. https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person/mp140311/lilla-seiber-nee-bauer Lilla Bauer, National Portrait Gallery
  11. https://www.rcm.ac.uk/singingasong/oralhistorycategory3/juliaseiberboyd/
  12. https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000025337 Wood, Hugh and Cooke, Mervyn. 'Seiber, Mátyás (György)' in Grove Music Online
  13. http://www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2021/Dec/Seiber-sinfonietta-HC21043.htm 'Seiber: Orchestral Works'. Hanssler HC21043 (2021), reviewed at MusicWeb International
  14. http://opera.stanford.edu/composers/S.html Opera Glass
  15. http://www.suppressedmusic.org.uk/newsletter/articles/005.html The Seiber Centenary: 2005 and Beyond by Julia Seiber Boyd ICSM Online Journal 09 August 2005
  16. Book: Twentieth-Century Music and Politics: Essays in Memory of Neil Edmunds edited by Pauline Fairclough Page 226., 222., 225.. 9781317005803. Fairclough. Pauline. 17 February 2016. Routledge.
  17. https://bll01.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,G.%20S.%20Mathis&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=Not_BL_Suppress&vid=44BL_INST:BLL01&lang=en&offset=0
  18. Seiber Boyd, Julia. "The Seiber Centenary: 2005 and Beyond", Suppressed Music, 9 August 2005.
  19. https://www.schott-music.com/en/catalogsearch/result/index/?cat=3&product_list_limit=100&q=Mátyás%20%20Seiber&product_list_order=name&product_list_dir=asc
  20. https://bll01.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,Mátyás%20Seiber&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=Not_BL_Suppress&vid=44BL_INST:BLL01&lang=en&offset=0
  21. Recorded on Adrift, Delphine Trio, TRPTK TTK0113 (2024)
  22. https://bll01.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/search?query=any,contains,G.%20S.%20Mathis&tab=LibraryCatalog&search_scope=Not_BL_Suppress&vid=44BL_INST:BLL01&lang=en&offset=0

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