Joseph Holbrooke - Music

Music

See also: List of compositions by Joseph Holbrooke

Holbrooke was fascinated by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe which deal with the supernatural and the macabre, eventually producing over thirty compositions which he referred to as his "Poeana". These included orchestral works (The Raven, Ulalume, The Sleeper, Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum), a double concerto for clarinet and bassoon (Tamerlane), choral works (a choral symphony Homage to E.A. Poe and a poem for chorus and orchestra The Bells), a ballet (The Masque of the Red Death), a multitude of chamber works (such as the Clarinet Quintet Ligeia, the Trio Fairyland and the Nonet Irene) and several piano pieces.

During the early 1920s he became interested in writing in the new jazz idiom:

"Quite recently Mr. Josef Holbrooke, one of our greatest living composers, announced his intention of writing jazz music. He complained in his usual forcible style of the lack of appreciation for his music and the music of his contemporaries, and he then proceeded to give us an idea of the "higher" jazz music which he intends to write."

"At the instigation of Mrs Holbrooke, who alleged he was getting old, he took up dancing a few months ago. He has now reached the stage where, on the slightest provocation he will demonstrate a step for anybody anywhere. 'I've got foxtrot on the brain', said Mr Holbrooke."

He produced several foxtrots and valses for dance orchestra and, perhaps uniquely amongst prominent British composers, also composed and compiled suites of pieces for theatre orchestras to accompany silent films. He was also notably productive in writing original works for both brass band and military band.

Throughout his career he continually revised his compositions: titles were changed with an almost casual regularity (for instance, the opera Pierrot and Pierrette became The Stranger, the opera-ballet The Wizard became The Enchanter and the dramatic overture for brass band 1914 became Clive of India), many works were assigned several different opus numbers at different times, he borrowed music from one piece to another and recast works in different forms: for example, The Pit and the Pendulum draws its material from the opera-ballet The Enchanter, Symphony No.7 (Al Aaraaf) is a transcription for string orchestra of a String Sextet, The Masque of the Red Death which was originally another orchestral poem became a ballet, and what was illustrative of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Skeleton in Armour was seemingly also a close depiction of Byron's The Corsair, whilst several different versions of his orchestral variations on Auld Lang Syne exist with a number of the supposed 'musical portraits' apparently applicable simultaneously to different contemporaries. Larger scores, particularly the operas in the Cauldron of Annwn trilogy, were also quarried to produce a variety of subsidiary works. Trios became quartets, quintets became sextets, chamber works and piano suites were augmented with additional movements only to be subsequently contracted by the removal of others, pieces for clarinet and piano were arranged for brass band and works which figure prominently in early promotional catalogues subsequently vanish from later ones :

"I cannot steady myself in the case of Holbrooke by copying a list of compositions because the list now would run from page to page, dates and serial opus numbers clashing, chronology all askew."