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Music as Autobiography: Roberto Gerhard’s Violin Concerto

Roberto Gerhard’s Violin Concerto, completed in 1945, but not performed until 1950, is one of his most eclectic. It is full of references, most of which relate to his musical past. As he himself described the work, it is ‘intensely biographical’. It utilises music Gerhard composed in his final year of study with Schoenberg (1929) as well as making a 70th birthday tribute to that composer in the second movement which begins with the row from Schoenberg’s Fourth String Quartet. References to composers as diverse as Berg and Waldteufel also appear. There are also quotations from the Marseillaise and references to Catalan music which place the work in its historical context. This essay is the first to interpret this extremely rich and important work, which is a key to understanding Gerhard at a crucial turning point in his career. My interest in this work is long standing, having attended a performance at the Proms with the composer’s widow in 1975. For this reason I chose this work as the subject of a keynote lecture for the first Roberto Gerhard International Conference in Huddersfield in 2010. The essay forms part of the Gerhard Companion, the significance of which is described in Output 3. 8500 words.