ABSTRACT
Near the end of Roberto Gerhard’s life, Barrie Gavin at BBC Television was able to direct a 50-minute documentary about him – a serious arts programme of the sort considered an almost extinct species. In 1973, the conductor David Atherton and the London Sinfonietta mounted a memorable series of concerts in London, featuring the chamber music of Gerhard and of his teacher Schoenberg. Gerhard was multi-lingual – speaking and writing fluently in Catalan, Spanish, German, French and English – and alert to etymological nuances of all kinds. In Gerhard’s own development, the five years he spent first in Vienna, then in Berlin, studying with Schoenberg proved absolutely crucial – manifestly the turning-point in his career. Writing, lecturing and broadcasting so frequently, Gerhard naturally drew upon a personal store of anecdotes and quotations that recur in more than one context. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
