20 Facts About Havergal Brian

William Havergal Brian was a prominent 20th-century English composer, librettist, and church organist.

Havergal Brian is best known for having composed 32 symphonies, an unusually high number amongst his contemporaries, 25 of them after the age of 70.

Havergal Brian composed five operas and a number of other orchestral works, as well as songs, choral music and a small amount of chamber music.

Havergal Brian continued to be extremely productive late into his career, composing large works even into his nineties, most of which remained unperformed during his lifetime.

William Havergal Brian was born on 29 January 1876 in Dresden, in the Potteries district of Staffordshire, near the Stoke-on-Trent suburb of Longton.

Havergal Brian was one of a very small number of composers to originate from the English working class.

Havergal Brian sent a sample composition to Elgar who gave him encouragement.

Havergal Brian became a fervent enthusiast of the new music being produced by Richard Strauss and the British composers of the day.

In 1898, Havergal Brian married Isabel Priestley, by whom he had five children.

The work proved popular and Havergal Brian obtained a publisher and performances for his next few orchestral works, although this initial success was not maintained.

Havergal Brian fled to London and, although Robinson continued to provide him with money until his own death, most of the allowance went to Havergal Brian's estranged wife after 1913.

Havergal Brian subsequently worked at the Audit Office of the Canadian Expeditionary Force until December 1915.

Havergal Brian eventually obtained work of a musical kind, copying and arranging, and writing for the journal The British Bandsman.

Havergal Brian's music is fundamentally tonal rather than atonal and shows little or no influence of dodecaphony; however, it is often punctuated with violent and occasionally dissonant passages.

Havergal Brian's music has several recognisable hallmarks: the liking of extreme dotted rhythms, deep brass notes, and various uncharacteristic harp, piano and percussion timbres, and other unusual orchestral sounds and textures.

However fragmentary Havergal Brian's music is, he maintains symphonic cohesion by long-term tonal processes, where the music is aiming towards a key, rather than being in a home key and returning to it.

Havergal Brian usually alludes to the classical four-movement structure of the symphony, even in single-movement works.

Havergal Brian's music has generally been championed by a small number of enthusiasts rather than enjoying a more general popularity, and continues to divide opinion.

The first commercial recording of Havergal Brian's music was made by the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra in 1972, when Symphonies Nos.

Many of the original recordings on various labels are being reissued, and by the end of 2018 all of Havergal Brian's symphonies had at least one official recording, although not necessarily in print.