Albert Ketèlbey

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1 Biography
2 Works
3 Connected individuals
4 Sources and References
5 External links

Albert William Ketèlbey (9 August 1875 - 26 November 1959) was an English composer, conductor and pianist.

[edit] Biography

Ketèlbey was born in Birmingham, England, as son of George Ketelbey [no accent], and Sarah Aston. At the age of eleven he wrote a piano sonata that won praise from Edward Elgar. Ketèlbey attended the Trinity College of Music in London, where he showed his talent for playing various orchestral instruments reflected in the masterfully colourful orchestration, especially of oriental inspiration, that became his trademark, and beat the runner-up, Gustav Holst, for a musical scholarship. He used the pseudonyms Raoul Clifford and Anton Vodorinski for some of his earlier works (some reference books mistakenly give Vodorinski as his true name and Ketèlbey as the pseudonym). His name is frequently misspelt Ketelby.

Being appointed musical director of London's Vaudeville Theatre, he continued writing diverse vocal and instrumental music. Later, he became famous for composing lightweight, popular music, much of which was used as accompaniments to silent films, and as mood music at tea dances. Success enabled him to relinquish his London appointments

Once, whilst conducting a programme of his own music at a Royal Command Performance, Ketèlbey gave a second rendering of the State Procession Movement of his Cockney Suite during the interval, at the request of King George V, who had arrived too late to hear it performed at the beginning of the programme.

He was active in several other fields including being music editor to some well-known publishing houses and for some years Musical Director of the Columbia Graphophone Company.

He had a long and happy marriage to a singer, Charlotte Siegenberg (born 1871, died 1947). After her death he married Mabel Maud Pritchett. There were no children by either marriage.

He died at his home, Egypt Hill, in Cowes, where he had moved to in order to concentrate on writing and his hobby of playing billiards.

[edit] Works

His most famous compositions include:

The Heart's Awakening (1908)
In a Monastery Garden (1915) - at age 40, the hit that made his name
Phantasy for String Quartet Listed but never found(1915)
In the Moonlight (1919)
In a Persian Market (1920) - in 2006, a syncopated arrangement of this tune was used in a TV commercial for TomTom automotive navigation systems
Romantic Suite (1922)
Appy 'Ampstead (1924)from Cockney Suite
In a Chinese Temple Garden (1925)
By the Blue Hawaiian Waters (1927)
In the Mystic Land of Egypt (1931)
From a Japanese Screen (1934)
Italian Twilight (1951)
Cockney Suite
Jungle Drums
Tangled Tunes
Bank Holiday ('Appy 'Ampstead')
Bells across the Meadows
Dance of the Merry Mascots
The Clock and the Dresden Figures
With Honours Crowned

[edit] Connected individuals

Ketèlbey's nephew, the pianist Sir Clifford Curzon, recalled in his BBC Desert Island Discs broadcast, 'Little Clifford was supposed to be in bed but he never was, he was out sitting on the landing, listening to my uncle playing through the well of the stairway of my father's old house, and so the first [pieces of] music I really heard were these immortal melodies of Ketèlbey.'

Graham Ovenden, an English painter, fine art photographer, writer and architect, was taught music privately by Albert Ketèlbey.

[edit] Sources and References

Brian Jones in the booklet with the Philips Digital Clssics CD 400011-2 (1981 rcording)
The Faber Companion to 20th Century Popular Music, Phil Hardy 2001
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, Edinburgh 1990
The Times, London 1908, 1915, 1922