Orlando Morgan
Encyclopedia
Robert Orlando Morgan was an English music teacher, composer and musicologist
. He is best remembered as an influential teacher at the Guildhall School of Music
in London, where he taught for 64 years, from 1887 to 1951, as Professor of Pianoforte and Composition. His pupils included the composer Benjamin Frankel
and the pianist Dame Myra Hess
.
In 1910 Morgan composed many songs and classical pieces, as well as the music for the last Savoy opera
, Two Merry Monarchs
. It had poor notices and a brief run. Morgan wrote no more operas, but continued to compose prolifically throughout his life.
, the son of Peter and Elizabeth Morgan. In 1880, at the age of 15, he entered the Guildhall School of Music
. As a student at the Guildhall, he won the Merchant Taylors' scholarship and the Webster prize, becoming a teacher and examiner at the school by the age of 22. In February 1893, he won the Yate prize for composition. In 1894, at the Grand Concours Internationale de Composition Musicale at Brussels, Morgan received the first prize and gold medal.
and the pianist Dame Myra Hess
.
A diversion in his normal teaching curriculum was what Fred Astaire
called "an attempt" to teach harmony and composition to Astaire and Noël Coward
in 1923. Morgan played over a piece that Coward had written and objected to his harmonisation. Coward later recalled, "I was told by my instructor that I could not use consecutive fifths
. He went on to explain that a gentleman called Ebenezer Prout
had announced many years ago that consecutive fifths were wrong and must in no circumstances be employed.… I argued back that Debussy
and Ravel
had used consecutive fifths like mad.… I left his presence forever with the parting shot that what was good enough for Debussy and Ravel was good enough for me."
As a musicologist, Morgan was known for his practical approach. The Times
said of his editions of the classics, "They are meant for performance rather than for the study. The performer is not bothered by extensive footnotes and alternative readings, but has a clear and on the whole reliable text from which to work." Morgan's editions include Bach
's Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues
and French Suites; Beethoven
's Sonatas; and Schumann's
's Novelletten
, Kinderszenen
and Album für die Jugend
. In the 1970s, his edition of the Forty-Eight was regarded as "still the best of all student editions".
s, The Crown of Thorns, Zitella and The Legend of Eloisa; two song-cycles for four voices, In Fairy Land and Love Rhapsodies; more than 200 songs and pianoforte pieces; and a comic opera, Two Merry Monarchs
. Dedicatees of his works included a wide range of performers including Wilhelm Backhaus
, Clara Butt
, Benno Moiseiwitsch
, Landon Ronald
and Myra Hess. The Times
wrote of him, "though he manifested sensitiveness and good workmanship, he failed to awaken any lasting impression in original composition." Many of his songs were ballads, perhaps the best-knows of which is "Clorinda", with a lyric by John Bledlowe. It is his only recorded composition. Others were "Fair Rosalind", "At Christmastide", "Before the Dawn", "My Gentle White Dove", "Where the Lotus Blooms" and "When Snowflakes Dance". Charles Woodhouse arranged Morgan's Bourree and Musette for student orchestra.
Morgan's Two Merry Monarchs was the last Savoy opera
, produced in 1910 by C. H. Workman. Morgan's contribution to the piece received generally negative reactions in the press. The Times pronounced the music "not very distinguished". The Sunday Times
even hinted at plagiarism: "The music was tuneful in parts, sometimes strangely familiar." The Daily Telegraph
was mostly critical, writing "the composer falls below the level of accomplishment one might have reasonably expected. There are numbers in the piece, however, which seem to point to his possession of a gift for facile melody. ... The scoring throughout is decidedly thin even for musical comedy." The Evening Standard and St. James, however, had some praise for the music, saying: "It is not extraordinary, but neither is it commonplace except occasionally. He does not write particularly well for the voice, but he has, generally, originality and is always melodious. Some of his songs, not the purely sentimental ones, are fresh, 'catchy', well-written and full of tune."
Two Merry Monarchs had one of the shortest runs of any Savoy opera, a total of 43 performances, from 10 March to 23 April 1910. After the end of the Savoy run, the piece transferred to the Strand Theatre
under another management. It ran there for a week, but any prospect of a longer run vanished with the death of King Edward VII
on 6 May. London theatres closed, as a mark of respect, and the show toured over the summer. When the Strand reopened in September, Two Merry Monarchs was gone from the bill.
Musicology
Musicology is the scholarly study of music. The word is used in narrow, broad and intermediate senses. In the narrow sense, musicology is confined to the music history of Western culture...
. He is best remembered as an influential teacher at the Guildhall School of Music
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama is an independent music and dramatic arts school which was founded in 1880 in London, England. Students can pursue courses in Music, Opera, Drama and Technical Theatre Arts.-History:...
in London, where he taught for 64 years, from 1887 to 1951, as Professor of Pianoforte and Composition. His pupils included the composer Benjamin Frankel
Benjamin Frankel
Benjamin Frankel was a British composer. Frankel's most famous pieces include a cycle of five string quartets and eight symphonies as well as a number of concertos for violin and viola; his single best-known piece is probably the First Sonata for Solo Violin, which, like his concertos, resulted...
and the pianist Dame Myra Hess
Myra Hess
Dame Myra Hess DBE was a British pianist.She was born in London as Julia Myra Hess, but was best known by her middle name. At the age of five she began to study the piano and two years later entered the Guildhall School of Music, where she graduated as winner of the Gold Medal...
.
In 1910 Morgan composed many songs and classical pieces, as well as the music for the last Savoy opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...
, Two Merry Monarchs
Two Merry Monarchs
Two Merry Monarchs is an Edwardian musical comedy in two acts with a book by Arthur Anderson and George Levy, lyrics by Anderson and Hartley Carrick, and music by Orlando Morgan. It opened at the Savoy Theatre in London on 10 March 1910, under the management of C. H. Workman, and ran there for 43...
. It had poor notices and a brief run. Morgan wrote no more operas, but continued to compose prolifically throughout his life.
Early years
Morgan was born in ManchesterManchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
, the son of Peter and Elizabeth Morgan. In 1880, at the age of 15, he entered the Guildhall School of Music
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama is an independent music and dramatic arts school which was founded in 1880 in London, England. Students can pursue courses in Music, Opera, Drama and Technical Theatre Arts.-History:...
. As a student at the Guildhall, he won the Merchant Taylors' scholarship and the Webster prize, becoming a teacher and examiner at the school by the age of 22. In February 1893, he won the Yate prize for composition. In 1894, at the Grand Concours Internationale de Composition Musicale at Brussels, Morgan received the first prize and gold medal.
Teacher and musicologist
As a teacher, Morgan's tenure at the Guildhall was exceptionally long. When he retired as Professor of Pianoforte and Composition in 1951 at the age of 85, he had completed 64 years of service. Among his pupils were the composer Benjamin FrankelBenjamin Frankel
Benjamin Frankel was a British composer. Frankel's most famous pieces include a cycle of five string quartets and eight symphonies as well as a number of concertos for violin and viola; his single best-known piece is probably the First Sonata for Solo Violin, which, like his concertos, resulted...
and the pianist Dame Myra Hess
Myra Hess
Dame Myra Hess DBE was a British pianist.She was born in London as Julia Myra Hess, but was best known by her middle name. At the age of five she began to study the piano and two years later entered the Guildhall School of Music, where she graduated as winner of the Gold Medal...
.
A diversion in his normal teaching curriculum was what Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
called "an attempt" to teach harmony and composition to Astaire and Noël Coward
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what Time magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise".Born in Teddington, a suburb of London, Coward attended a dance academy...
in 1923. Morgan played over a piece that Coward had written and objected to his harmonisation. Coward later recalled, "I was told by my instructor that I could not use consecutive fifths
Perfect fifth
In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is a musical interval encompassing five staff positions , and the perfect fifth is a fifth spanning seven semitones, or in meantone, four diatonic semitones and three chromatic semitones...
. He went on to explain that a gentleman called Ebenezer Prout
Ebenezer Prout
Ebenezer Prout , was an English musical theorist, writer, teacher and composer, whose instruction, afterwards embodied in a series of standard works, underpinned the work of many British musicians of succeeding generations....
had announced many years ago that consecutive fifths were wrong and must in no circumstances be employed.… I argued back that Debussy
Claude Debussy
Claude-Achille Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he was one of the most prominent figures working within the field of impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions...
and Ravel
Maurice Ravel
Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer known especially for his melodies, orchestral and instrumental textures and effects...
had used consecutive fifths like mad.… I left his presence forever with the parting shot that what was good enough for Debussy and Ravel was good enough for me."
As a musicologist, Morgan was known for his practical approach. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
said of his editions of the classics, "They are meant for performance rather than for the study. The performer is not bothered by extensive footnotes and alternative readings, but has a clear and on the whole reliable text from which to work." Morgan's editions include Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...
's Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues
The Well-Tempered Clavier
The Well-Tempered Clavier , BWV 846–893, is a collection of solo keyboard music composed by Johann Sebastian Bach...
and French Suites; Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential composers of all time.Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of Cologne and part of...
's Sonatas; and Schumann's
Robert Schumann
Robert Schumann, sometimes known as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is regarded as one of the greatest and most representative composers of the Romantic era....
's Novelletten
Novelletten Op. 21 (Schumann)
The Novelletten, Op. 21, is a set of 8 pieces for solo piano, written by Robert Schumann in 1838.-Background:The Novelletten were composed during February 1838, a period of great struggle for the composer...
, Kinderszenen
Kinderszenen
Kinderszenen , Opus 15, by Robert Schumann, is a set of thirteen pieces of music for piano written in 1838. In this work, Schumann provides us with his adult reminiscences of childhood. Schumann had originally written 30 movements for this work, but chose 13 for the final version...
and Album für die Jugend
Album für die Jugend
Album for the Young , Op. 68, was composed by Robert Schumann in 1848 for his three daughters. The album consists of a collection of 43 short works. Unlike the Kinderszenen, they are suitable to be played by children or beginners. The second part, starting at Nr...
. In the 1970s, his edition of the Forty-Eight was regarded as "still the best of all student editions".
Composer
Morgan was a prolific composer. Among his works were three cantataCantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
s, The Crown of Thorns, Zitella and The Legend of Eloisa; two song-cycles for four voices, In Fairy Land and Love Rhapsodies; more than 200 songs and pianoforte pieces; and a comic opera, Two Merry Monarchs
Two Merry Monarchs
Two Merry Monarchs is an Edwardian musical comedy in two acts with a book by Arthur Anderson and George Levy, lyrics by Anderson and Hartley Carrick, and music by Orlando Morgan. It opened at the Savoy Theatre in London on 10 March 1910, under the management of C. H. Workman, and ran there for 43...
. Dedicatees of his works included a wide range of performers including Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus
Wilhelm Backhaus was a German pianist and pedagogue.Born in Leipzig, Backhaus studied at the conservatoire there with Alois Reckendorf until 1899, later taking private piano lessons with Eugen d'Albert in Frankfurt...
, Clara Butt
Clara Butt
Dame Clara Ellen Butt DBE , sometimes called Clara Butt-Rumford after her marriage, was an English contralto with a remarkably imposing voice and a surprisingly agile singing technique. Her main career was as a recitalist and concert singer.-Early life and career:Clara Butt was born in Southwick,...
, Benno Moiseiwitsch
Benno Moiseiwitsch
Benno Moiseiwitsch CBE was a Ukrainian-born British pianist.-Biography:Born in Odessa, Ukraine, Moiseiwitsch began his studies at age seven at the Odessa Music Academy. He won the Anton Rubinstein Prize when he was just nine years old. He later took lessons from Theodor Leschetizky in Vienna...
, Landon Ronald
Landon Ronald
Sir Landon Ronald was an English conductor, composer, pianist, singing teacher and administrator...
and Myra Hess. The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
wrote of him, "though he manifested sensitiveness and good workmanship, he failed to awaken any lasting impression in original composition." Many of his songs were ballads, perhaps the best-knows of which is "Clorinda", with a lyric by John Bledlowe. It is his only recorded composition. Others were "Fair Rosalind", "At Christmastide", "Before the Dawn", "My Gentle White Dove", "Where the Lotus Blooms" and "When Snowflakes Dance". Charles Woodhouse arranged Morgan's Bourree and Musette for student orchestra.
Morgan's Two Merry Monarchs was the last Savoy opera
Savoy opera
The Savoy Operas denote a style of comic opera that developed in Victorian England in the late 19th century, with W. S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan as the original and most successful practitioners. The name is derived from the Savoy Theatre, which impresario Richard D'Oyly Carte built to house...
, produced in 1910 by C. H. Workman. Morgan's contribution to the piece received generally negative reactions in the press. The Times pronounced the music "not very distinguished". The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is a British Sunday newspaper.The Sunday Times may also refer to:*The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times *The Sunday Times...
even hinted at plagiarism: "The music was tuneful in parts, sometimes strangely familiar." The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
was mostly critical, writing "the composer falls below the level of accomplishment one might have reasonably expected. There are numbers in the piece, however, which seem to point to his possession of a gift for facile melody. ... The scoring throughout is decidedly thin even for musical comedy." The Evening Standard and St. James, however, had some praise for the music, saying: "It is not extraordinary, but neither is it commonplace except occasionally. He does not write particularly well for the voice, but he has, generally, originality and is always melodious. Some of his songs, not the purely sentimental ones, are fresh, 'catchy', well-written and full of tune."
Two Merry Monarchs had one of the shortest runs of any Savoy opera, a total of 43 performances, from 10 March to 23 April 1910. After the end of the Savoy run, the piece transferred to the Strand Theatre
Novello Theatre
The Novello Theatre is a West End theatre on Aldwych, in the City of Westminster.-History:The theatre was built as one of a pair with the Aldwych Theatre on either side of the Waldorf Hotel, both being designed by W. G. R. Sprague. The theatre opened as the Waldorf Theatre on 22 May 1905, and was...
under another management. It ran there for a week, but any prospect of a longer run vanished with the death of King Edward VII
Edward VII of the United Kingdom
Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...
on 6 May. London theatres closed, as a mark of respect, and the show toured over the summer. When the Strand reopened in September, Two Merry Monarchs was gone from the bill.