Richard Rodney Bennett

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety seven, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a composer. Gifted and prolific, his output includes not only opera, symphonies and concertos, but the scores of more than fifty films, including Far From the Madding Crowd, Murder on the Orient Express, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. His childhood was repressed, he says, his education at the Royal Academy of Music rather lax, so he learned his craft in his twenties under the watchful eyes of pioneers such as Pierre Boulez and Elizabeth Luttyans. He also enjoys performing jazz and has appeared regularly with some of the world's leading jazz singers. His music, he says, may not be memorable for ever, but it does get through to the audiences. He is Richard Rodney Bennett, which is quite a mouthful in itself, Richard. Well why why so many names?

Richard Rodney Bennett1:14

Well, when I started in the business, there were various other people called Richard Bennett. I don't know where they went, but um so I used my middle name.

Presenter1:21

There you are, but you could have stayed Richard Bennett all the way, couldn't you?

Richard Rodney Bennett1:21

You could have said Richard Bay.

Richard Rodney Bennett1:23

Yes, yes.

Presenter1:24

But um you are, as I've described, a a jack, if not a master, of so many musical trades. Is that quote of of yours that I used accurate, that what you need to do is communicate with audiences? That's what it's about.

Richard Rodney Bennett1:35

I do. Some composers don't. I think when you're when you're learning your craft, when you're twenty years old, you're too involved in technique and fashion and so on really to want to communicate with people. And then later on as I, so to speak, grew up, I realized that I really wanted A to give music to the players, which they would really want to play, as opposed to go to going through agony playing it, which a lot of players do with contemporary music, but also to to bring pleasure, sounds a bit soppy, but for people to enjoy what I was doing.

Presenter2:03

Hmm.

Richard Rodney Bennett2:04

And I hate the idea of the modern music the modern composer as somebody who tortures his audience and the player.

Presenter2:04

But

Presenter2:10

Of course you also have that direct communication with audience when you perform, when you play jazz. That's sheer enjoyment, it is.

Richard Rodney Bennett2:14

You play jazz. That's the pure enjoyment isn't it? For many years I and several of my contemporaries, composers like Peter Maxwell Davis and so on, performed a great deal because in the fifties and sixties when we were growing up musically so little contemporary music was being played and if we didn't play it very few people would play it. But the jazz performing or cabaret whatever you like to call it is a very very personal thing. It's your interpretation of the material.

Presenter2:41

But it's also quite different. Of course, because you you've got to raise your eyes from the keyboard and you've got to look at the audio.

Richard Rodney Bennett2:45

Oh yes.

Richard Rodney Bennett2:46

Well that was when when I started singing with Marion Montgomery I had it was terribly hard.

Richard Rodney Bennett2:52

And a friend of mine called Dan Klein, who was a uh a classical tenor, said look at the exit sign and it was a very good tip because people think you're looking at them. I can deal with it now, but I prefer not to see people's faces.

Presenter3:04

Do.

Richard Rodney Bennett3:05

Mm.

Presenter3:05

But and when you then after you'd performed, as it were, if you ever played a classical piece, was it difficult not to look at the audience?

Richard Rodney Bennett3:12

Yes.

Richard Rodney Bennett3:13

One had a terrible tendency to to want to grin at them and and and talk to them. And matter of fact, when for example I do concerts with John Hall, the great saxophone player, um we tend to talk to the audience about the pieces because it's welcoming them in. It's not just going on the stage sort of boot faced and sitting down and playing and walking off again, which to me is very strange.

Presenter3:28

It's a Tim Dawkins.

Presenter3:33

Let me try out a a theory of your professional existence on you and tell me if it's right

Presenter3:37

That that the jazz and that performance is for kicks, sheer enjoyment. The film music you do, you enjoy it, but it also happens to make you a good amount of money. And both of those make it possible for you to do what you really want to do, which is compose social media.

Richard Rodney Bennett3:50

Do what you

Richard Rodney Bennett3:52

I wouldn't say but the jazz was for kicks. I mean that sounds like, you know, ho ho ho and tea. And that's it's very hard work and I'm not exactly a perfectionist, but I do work very hard to do it as well as possible. But it is a great pleasure.

Richard Rodney Bennett4:05

and performing classical music was by no means always a pleasure.

Richard Rodney Bennett4:09

nor is writing film music which can be agony.

Presenter4:12

But what you really want to do is write serious music and music.

Richard Rodney Bennett4:15

I don't know what I wanted anymore. I'm having a little holiday.

Presenter4:19

Okay, you're on holiday to a desert island here, I'm afraid. Um tell me about the first record you're going to play on it.

Richard Rodney Bennett4:24

Well, everything in in that I've chosen is to do with friends of mine.

Richard Rodney Bennett4:29

I mean, I cannot choose the ten greatest masterpieces of all time. I cannot. I want music, some music that I was involved in.

Richard Rodney Bennett4:38

but all performed in some way by friends of mine, and first

Richard Rodney Bennett4:42

Piece is John Hall, the great saxophone player, playing my theme, I'm sorry to say, from the television series Tender is the Night. And this is where I met John on the recording session. I said I want a great saxophone player and there was this big l guy looking like a football player who made the most exquisite sound.

Presenter5:30

John Hall playing the theme from the television adaptation of Tender is the Night, composed by my castaway Richard Rodney Bennett, with John Lenahan on piano. And of course you went on to write a a a saxophone concerto for Stan Goetz, didn't you? Yes.

Richard Rodney Bennett5:42

Yes. I met Stan Getz um at a party and and I'd always idolized him and he he he needed a a a piece that he could get up and play with an orchestra as opposed to, you know, jazz with a s a small group.

Richard Rodney Bennett5:55

And I did, and I also wrote a a saxophone sonata for John Hall, for the soprano saxophone, which he was playing on that cut. And I suppose it's probably the first soprano saxophone sonata, but why not? It's a beautiful instrument.

Presenter6:06

Beautiful instrument. And you've done what percussion a percussion concerto every evening, Glenny and a guitar concerto for John.

Richard Rodney Bennett6:12

That's what I was saying about wanting to give music to players who needed it. I mean, they don't need another violin machine from anybody.

Presenter6:17

Hm. Tell me how you write the film music. Uh uh what happens? Do you become part of the production team?'Cause I mean you've written for you know big director, John Schlesinger, Bolting, Ken Russell

Richard Rodney Bennett6:26

The film is well out of the way.

Richard Rodney Bennett6:31

Um you come in, they're still sort of ditzing about with it and cutting bits out and so on.

Richard Rodney Bennett6:37

I try not to think about where I'm going to put music to begin with. I just try and assimilate it, you know, what the style and get a feeling for the colour of the thing. For example, I just finished a film which I think is my best score, and it's also for my favourite director, who is John Schlesinger. And it's a film, it's Sweeney Todd with Ben Kingsley and Joanna Lumley, and it's a marvellous film. And you know, Sweeney Todd is pretty gory. the pies, right? And John Schlesinger, who's intensely musical, had laid as a temporary soundtrack, which many directors do, which is fine, a harpsichord concerto by Poulenk, which is very sort of rather prim and mysterious. And you know, the tinkling harpsichord, rather than bang, bang, and screams. And it was so brilliant because it it made me realize how the music should work. Every film should work in a different way. It'd be a different colour, be a different instrumentation. It's not just you're not just painting the walls pink, you know.

Presenter7:33

Record number two. Tell me about it.

Richard Rodney Bennett7:35

All right. Um this is um a a a wave towards somebody who is my one of my idols, the Hollywood composer um and jazz arranger Johnny Mandel.

Richard Rodney Bennett7:45

from a score he wrote for a very strange movie called Agatha.

Richard Rodney Bennett7:49

With Vanessa Redgrave and Dustin Hoffman, and it was about the mysterious days when Agatha Christie disappeared.

Richard Rodney Bennett7:57

And um I think she had some sort of mental breakdown or something and disappeared in the nineteen twenties.

Presenter8:33

The title music from the soundtrack of the film Agatha, composed and arranged by Johnny Mandel. You apparently started composing at the age of five, Richard. That was very precocious.

Richard Rodney Bennett8:42

Well, you know what, I think composers don't actually s start. People say, When did you write your first piece? That's like asking a child, When did you do your first drawing?

Richard Rodney Bennett8:50

You mess around, you know, you finger paint or whatever, and then gradually something comes out which looks like something.

Presenter8:51

Plus

Presenter8:55

So you wrote notes on a page. Yes, and my mother was good.

Richard Rodney Bennett8:56

Yes, and my mother had been a composer and was a very good pianist and I used to pretend I was writing music by drawing dots and lines and giving them titles. I was much more into titles than the actual notes.

Presenter9:07

What sort of titles?

Richard Rodney Bennett9:09

Well, I remember I wrote a piece my first existing piece is from when I was about five, I suppose, and it's called From Neptune's Caverns, which I thought was the most lovely title possible. Um and it was all very romantic. Um and then gradually, gradually I started actually to be able to write tunes down. So it was a slow process.

Presenter9:27

And you used to harmonize nursery rhymes.

Richard Rodney Bennett9:29

I used to harmonize nursing homes. I I was sent to the pictures quite a lot with one or other of my sisters to get me out of the house, stop me playing the piano,'cause I was always banging away and trying to play the Warsaw concerto or whatever it was.

Presenter9:40

But your mother your mother apparently thought you were too romantic. She sort of poured cold water on you.

Richard Rodney Bennett9:40

But you can't do that.

Richard Rodney Bennett9:45

And my mother was a rather inhibiting lady. But I started to, um, hear music at the movies. I mean, Gershwin and and, you know, music of nineteen forties musicals.

Richard Rodney Bennett9:55

And um since I didn't really know the tunes I used to try and harmonize nursery rhymes like like popular tunes. It sounds a bit bizarre now, but it's true.

Presenter10:02

And you listen to jazz?

Richard Rodney Bennett10:04

In those days there wasn't that that this huge gulf between jazz and pop music that there is now. And I mean I remember Ella Fitzgerald, for example, having hit songs during the war.

Richard Rodney Bennett10:14

So there it wasn't there wasn't the great divide.

Presenter10:16

But again, your parents apparently poured cold water on this because they thought that listening to jazz on the radio was a bad habit you'd grow out of. I thought it wasn't.

Richard Rodney Bennett10:23

Quite right, and you must admit it's slightly odd for a little boy in the depths of Devonshire.

Richard Rodney Bennett10:28

Not having been told that this was worth listening to, just being avidly listening to Elephant School or whatever on the radio.

Presenter10:35

And what about your relationship with your father? He was

Richard Rodney Bennett10:37

He was a rather shadowy figure. Um he was a a writer um of children's books basically, um, Rodney Bennett, and um he was he was not very strong, he had a heart condition, so I was rather kept away from him. And later on when I went you know, I was in living in America and I I went into therapy because I had to stop smoking and I suddenly realized that I resented terribly the fact that I I didn't know him.

Presenter11:01

Yeah.

Richard Rodney Bennett11:01

And he used to beat us, and it was not that happy.

Richard Rodney Bennett11:05

Really?

Presenter11:06

B badly?

Richard Rodney Bennett11:07

No.

Richard Rodney Bennett11:08

But it leaves a memory which is not a happy one.

Presenter11:10

Hmm.

Presenter11:11

However, at at the age of fifteen you you were still writing music avidly and um you wrote what was described by one critic as a very respectable string quartet. And then at sixteen you wrote a piece for soprano, chorus and orchestra, and uh you were on your way, really. You got a scholarship, I think, didn't you?

Richard Rodney Bennett11:28

I thought my writing music f then was so glamorous to me. It was just so thrilling, you know, and reading in encyclopedia and so on about whoever the composers were, you know, was so glamorous. It was like reading about film stars. And I got a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music, yes.

Presenter11:44

Tell me about record number three.

Richard Rodney Bennett11:45

Well, this ties up very well because my favourite English composer from a very early age was William Walton.

Richard Rodney Bennett11:52

And I loved him. He was a very funny man, a very dry man, and we were very happy, you know, talking to one another. I remember laughing a lot.

Presenter12:49

Yehudi Menouin playing part of the opening movement of William Balton's violin concerto with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by William Balton.

Presenter12:57

Now, Richard Rodney Bennett, you hold the International Chair of Composition at the Royal Academy these days, so we have to be careful what what I lead you into saying about it. But apparently back in nineteen fifty three you didn't think much of it.

Richard Rodney Bennett13:08

It's a very different thing now.

Presenter13:10

Hmm.

Richard Rodney Bennett13:10

Back in those days it was very unprofessional. It was very

Richard Rodney Bennett13:15

Conservative, it was very lax, the teaching. I think you used that word earlier.

Presenter13:19

But you know,

Richard Rodney Bennett13:19

And I wanted a professional training.

Presenter13:21

You were interested in modern music as when and they didn't offer anything

Richard Rodney Bennett13:24

Well, not really, but we we I mean, the best thing I did at the Academy was to s start playing contemporary music with my friends in a little little modern music society.

Presenter13:33

Was that approved of or not?

Richard Rodney Bennett13:34

Note

Presenter13:35

I see.

Richard Rodney Bennett13:35

Yeah.

Presenter13:36

Um but you'd become interested in it, as I say, uh the music of Webern and Schoenberg and the twelve-note technique.

Presenter13:44

Can you explain what was, what is

Richard Rodney Bennett13:46

In the turn around the turn of this century

Richard Rodney Bennett13:50

the the whole system of keys, you know, things being in G major, C major, whatever, started to go out the window and it really, with uh Wagner and Mahler and so on, the whole tonality began to sort of shatter.

Richard Rodney Bennett14:01

And then all the wonderful things that were happening around the First World War in music, with all the great twentieth century music composers sort of growing up.

Richard Rodney Bennett14:09

The key system went out the window. And so Schoenberg came up with an idea that music should be reorganized in a slightly different way. And instead of having a piece being in C major, i.e. C is the most important note, that all notes should be equally important. And he devised the idea of using what he called a series, which was the notes of the chromatic scale being organized into a certain shape, which gave rise to all the music in the piece. And like a lot of very highly technical things, the results actually were not necessarily very attractive to begin with. But I really say that with feeling.

Presenter14:48

They weren't.

Presenter14:49

There were eight onals.

Richard Rodney Bennett14:50

Yes, and pe yes, because because because the floor, so to speak, had gone from under people's feet. They didn't have firm ground to stand on.

Presenter14:55

They didn't

Presenter14:57

What was attractive about it for you, then?

Richard Rodney Bennett14:59

Um so much music that I was interested in used that kind of technique, and also the idea of taking a tiny thing, i. e. an arrangement of notes, and making o an entire, if you like, a symphony out of it, was so marvellous.

Presenter15:14

And who taught you?

Richard Rodney Bennett15:15

Yeah.

Presenter15:15

Do you Uh

Richard Rodney Bennett15:15

Uh

Presenter15:15

Do that.

Richard Rodney Bennett15:15

Well, the m big influence on my teenage years was an extraordinary lady called Elizabeth Lutyens, and she was a very

Richard Rodney Bennett15:24

I suppose you'd say my mother would have said a very bohemian lady. And she drank too much, and she smoked too much, and she cursed too much, and she had terrible troubles in her family, and she was an absolutely riveting, glamorous person to me.

Richard Rodney Bennett15:38

And she was the pioneer of using this kind of technique in England.

Presenter15:42

And why is there none of it in on your list of eight rocks here?

Richard Rodney Bennett15:45

Because it's basically not music I necessarily listen to for pleasure.

Presenter15:50

So why did you want to write it then? You must have listened to it for pleasure then?

Richard Rodney Bennett15:57

I don't know about yes, I suppose pleasure, yes, certainly. But um one says the tech

Presenter16:02

So it was a technical expression.

Richard Rodney Bennett16:03

I mean imagine if if I'd been an abstract painter.

Richard Rodney Bennett16:07

in the early sixties and over the years I'd gradually come to to admit representational ideas into my painting. It's not that I'm betraying the original thing, it's just that one's needs and one's creative output changes over the years. But I wouldn't have been able to to write with uh the um fluency that I write now if I hadn't been through a very strict technical discipline in my early years.

Presenter16:30

And you put a lot of that down to Pierre Boulez and the Maria.

Richard Rodney Bennett16:32

Pierre Bourez was my my well, at one time I guess my mentor and I studied with him in Paris when I was twenty, twenty one and he was the first musician I'd ever met who really um shook me, who really scared me.

Presenter16:46

He really took you apart, you see.

Richard Rodney Bennett16:47

If you really took me apart.

Presenter16:48

What w in what way? What did you do?

Richard Rodney Bennett16:50

Because I'd been writing s since I was five or six. I was immensely fluent. I'd started doing movies when I was nineteen. Um I could write in all kinds of styles and this did none of this impressed him in the s the slightest degree. Rather the opposite, I think. He gave me a very tough training and I was very grateful to him and I always have been.

Presenter17:10

Record number four.

Richard Rodney Bennett17:12

It's always a joy meeting young musicians of enormous talent, and I have two of them in this programme. And somebody I've met recently is an a young American pianist, I guess, thirty, thirty one, called Bill Sharlapp. And he to me is a great jazz pianist. And he loves tunes.

Richard Rodney Bennett17:30

Like I love tunes. I mean tunes from some of the great American musicals and so on.

Richard Rodney Bennett17:35

And on this track he's playing a tune from Brigadoon called The Heather on the Hill.

Presenter18:08

Bill Sharlapp playing The Heather on the Hill from Brigadoon.

Presenter18:11

So Richard, you did music for feature films. Now you'd have already done, I think, three before you were twenty one. So you'd established an income. And then when you were twenty four, you were commissioned to write a one act opera for Saddle as Wells. Was that a a big breakthrough for you?

Richard Rodney Bennett18:25

Yes, it was. Um I I'd always loved singers. And even as a child I used to accompany one of my sisters who was studying singing and I always loved poetry, I guess through my father. And so when I had a commission to write a one act opera, it wasn't that enormous a step, but it took me onto a um um a s a scale of writing which I'd never attempted before, even though the opera was only half an hour.

Presenter18:47

Even though they

Presenter18:48

But this was modern music, this was serialism.

Richard Rodney Bennett18:49

This was serialism. Yes, yes. This was a contemporary style of writing. And I I worked with a writer who later became very famous called Adrian Mitchell. And we did a a story that was to do with somebody thinking about suicide at the top of a hop a high building. The ledge, yes. The ledge. And because I wanted somebody in some extreme of emotion.

Presenter19:07

The ledger is called

Richard Rodney Bennett19:15

And it was very exciting and I think perhaps now I haven't heard it for so many years, but it did lead to various other things and I did write three other operas.

Presenter19:22

We read the minds of someone.

Richard Rodney Bennett19:23

You read the minds of someone.

Presenter19:25

And then after that came your first and second symphonies and your first piano concerto. This was all during the sixties. And at the same time I think you were releasing soundtracks, weren't you, of your film music?

Richard Rodney Bennett19:29

Yeah.

Richard Rodney Bennett19:34

No, a bit, yes.

Presenter19:36

Far from the Madden.

Richard Rodney Bennett19:38

Billion dollar brains of manning crime, quite a number.

Presenter19:41

the sixties, as I say, in London, you know, where it was at.

Richard Rodney Bennett19:44

Yeah.

Presenter19:45

But you seem to have had a a bad time with the press, and in the end you went, didn't you? You left us.

Richard Rodney Bennett19:50

Oh, I th that's a very compressed version of my life. Sorry. You know, in this country, if you do have a big success, there always comes a point when you get punished for it.

Richard Rodney Bennett19:59

And in 1979, for a whole lot of reasons, I moved to live in New York. Some personal reasons, some professional reasons. I wanted to have more time free to write. I wanted to stop teaching and performing so much. I wanted to stop sitting on committees and so on, which you do if you're in the profession. And I moved to New York, which I'd always loved, and I've been very happy there ever since.

Presenter20:23

Next piece of music.

Richard Rodney Bennett20:24

Um, okay. All my life I've worked with singers and I think I have a vocation as, if you like, an accompanist.

Richard Rodney Bennett20:34

And I've had many partnerships with singers, both classical and um jazz influenced. And the one the partnership I'm involved in now, which I think is the best partnership I've ever had, is with the American singer Mary Clear Harran.

Speaker 421:00

Your sweet expression.

Speaker 421:04

The smile you gave me.

Speaker 421:08

The way you look

Speaker 421:10

When we met

Speaker 421:14

It's easy to remember.

Presenter21:19

Mary Clare Harran singing Laurence Hart's song Easy to Remember from Mississippi. That was arranged and played by my castaway Richard Rodney Bennett. You said just now that you uh had a vocation as an accompanist, but at the same time at some point you came through from that, didn't you? You stopped doing that and you started to perform yourself directly and not just accompany.

Richard Rodney Bennett21:41

Yes, um I'd always loved lyrics. And I should have said earlier that my father, in addition to writing children's books, wrote um some of the most famous um drawing room ballad lyrics of the twenties with composers like Eric Coates, so I always knew about song lyrics. And I think um in in jazz, particularly if you're a pianist, you don't have to have a great voice to put over

Speaker 221:57

Cause

Richard Rodney Bennett22:03

Um these these kind of songs. I mean that

Presenter22:05

Are you saying you don't have a great voice?

Richard Rodney Bennett22:08

Well, I uh

Richard Rodney Bennett22:10

I don't. I mean, I don't have a technical great voice, but I do um have a a voice that will convince um listeners of the emotions that I'm expressing.

Presenter22:20

Just again, it's this message, isn't it? I think again you've said it's sort of like whispering something in someone's ear if they're lying.

Richard Rodney Bennett22:22

Yeah, you've said it's sort of like

Richard Rodney Bennett22:24

Someone

Richard Rodney Bennett22:25

I love singing, singing lyrics, I really do.

Presenter22:27

Uh

Presenter22:28

But I get the impression that that you know you played all that down, your liking for jazz and and and perhaps liking the kind of performances we've been talking about. It was a very private thing for you for quite a long time. Were you afraid that the classicists wouldn't take you seriously?

Richard Rodney Bennett22:43

Seriously. Slightly. But then when I went into film films when I was twenty or whatever, there was a certain amount of sniffy behaviour. I mean, people sort of forgot, I suppose, that William Walton and Benjamin Britton and and Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Arland and Arnold Bax and all kinds of English composers had done serious film scores.

Richard Rodney Bennett23:05

And also when I, as it were, came out as a jazz pianist, although I'd always done it, now it was ah, it's their problem, it's not my problem.

Presenter23:14

But you had to be older and and big enough. Yes, yes.

Richard Rodney Bennett23:16

Yes, yes. And basically, as I said much earlier in this programme, I've I've never cared much. I've just gone ahead and done the things I believed in.

Presenter23:23

Record number six.

Richard Rodney Bennett23:25

A few years ago I went up to Glasgow because I was going to be in a concert series up there and I went to look at the hall and there was a girl singing there that night and as soon as she walked onto the stage I said to my friend who I was with, that is a star and her name was Claire Martin and she's a dynamite girl and of great intelligence with a wonderful voice, terrific jazz sense and on this track she's actually singing a song by another friend of mine called Blossom Deary who's a great jazz singer.

Speaker 423:53

Bye-bye come to boy.

Speaker 423:57

Bail.

Speaker 423:59

No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 424:02

Fail!

Speaker 424:05

Shabbat

Speaker 424:08

Are you mom?

Speaker 424:10

Show me you

Speaker 424:14

So no yo no yona

Presenter24:22

Claire Martin and Bye-bye Country Boy, written by Blossom Dairy and Jack Siegel. So how do you do it, Richard? Write music. You're in this apartment in New York, sitting there. Are you sitting at a piano or are you sitting at the piano?

Richard Rodney Bennett24:34

I'm sitting near the piano. I don't one thing I do not do

Richard Rodney Bennett24:39

Um is just fiddle about on the piano till something comes out through my fingers. That is not composition, that's just messing improvising or messing about or whatever. But I like to have a piano when I'm writing just to sort of perform the music to myself and see how it feels. I mean I can I can read music like I'm reading this sheet of paper in front of me with all the details of my records on, but it's not the same as, so to speak, having it read out by an actor.

Presenter25:05

But you can look at that sheet of paper and clear it in your head.

Richard Rodney Bennett25:06

Oh yes, I can't.

Presenter25:08

Yes. And are you frightened? Are you worried? Yeah.

Richard Rodney Bennett25:11

Yeah, that's a very interesting question.

Richard Rodney Bennett25:14

Yes. If I'm doing a commercial score, I mean, you there's no time to sit around and thinking um and think, Oh my god, I can't do it this time.

Richard Rodney Bennett25:23

And you just have to plunge in.

Richard Rodney Bennett25:25

But if I'm writing if I had to sit down tomorrow and start writing a symphony, I would be in

Richard Rodney Bennett25:29

stated like I'd never written music before in my life.

Presenter25:32

But you've also said that it is a kind of practical process, a technical process. It's not, and I quote you, a flood of God-given inspiration.

Richard Rodney Bennett25:41

Heavens No.

Richard Rodney Bennett25:42

I mean, um I've been professional composer for some forty years and heaven help me if I'd sat around and waited for divine light to come down from the sky. You it's technique. It's a lot of imagination, a lot of technique and a great deal of hard work. And every now and again an idea comes along and you think that is brilliant. That's what I've been waiting for.

Presenter26:03

Number seven.

Richard Rodney Bennett26:03

Okay.

Richard Rodney Bennett26:05

One of the nicest things I think about succeeding in one's profession is you get to be friends with people you admire enormously. And early in this programme I played a soundtrack thing from Johnny Mandel, who's one of my idols. And the next one is the greatest French horn player in the world, Barry Tuckwell. And he's playing a beautiful tune, early Jerome Cohen tune from 1917 called Till the Clouds Roll By, which had a lyric by P. G. Woodhurse. And it also involves a tune called Look for the Silver Lining.

Presenter27:14

BARY TUCKWELL playing Till the Clouds Roll By, written by Jerome Kern and arranged by Richard Rodney Bennett. Richard, you're sixty one, you're rich, you're successful, you know I'm rich. Well, you must be. You live in New York, you've lived there for seventeen years, very chic on the Upper West Side. Is that where you belong now, or will you come back home one day?

Richard Rodney Bennett27:24

How do you know I'm rich?

Richard Rodney Bennett27:32

I wouldn't live anywhere else.

Presenter27:34

Really? Why?

Richard Rodney Bennett27:36

Because I think it it's a very nice part of New York. It's a city that I love. I have a great many friends there. I have a kind of nice social life. I mean, just playing cards and going out to dinner and so

Presenter27:45

So you play cards. What what do you play with cards?

Richard Rodney Bennett27:47

Talker.

Presenter27:47

Poker, play poker with them. You cook for them?

Richard Rodney Bennett27:49

I love to cook.

Presenter27:50

Mm.

Richard Rodney Bennett27:51

I'm I'm sort of becoming quite a good cook, not a fancy cook.

Richard Rodney Bennett27:54

Not a snob cook. I hate that kind of food. But I do I do love

Richard Rodney Bennett27:58

Having people over to my house.

Presenter28:00

Are you all quite domestic by now?

Richard Rodney Bennett28:01

We contribute it.

Presenter28:02

So this desert island's not going to pose any practical problems.

Richard Rodney Bennett28:05

No.

Presenter28:06

But socially you are going to be devastated.

Richard Rodney Bennett28:08

Yes, uh yes, hm.

Presenter28:10

Will you go quietly mad?

Richard Rodney Bennett28:11

There no.

Richard Rodney Bennett28:12

Not at all. I'm very re I'm very resourceful.

Richard Rodney Bennett28:15

And I entertain myself. This is one legacy of my upbringing. I've always entertained myself and sometimes it's involved, you know, playing with crafts, books, cooking, anything.

Richard Rodney Bennett28:27

I'm good at living on my own. I like it.

Presenter28:30

Last record.

Richard Rodney Bennett28:31

Um again, one of my idols.

Richard Rodney Bennett28:35

Shirley Horne, the one of the greatest, even if she's still a secret, one of the best regarded, best-loved jazz artists of all.

Speaker 428:47

All I want is a room somewhere.

Speaker 428:55

Far away from the cold night air.

Speaker 429:01

With one enormous chair

Speaker 429:08

Oh, wouldn't it be lovely?

Speaker 429:12

Uh

Presenter29:14

Shirley Horne and wouldn't it be lovely? It's going to be very romantic and really rather sexy aren't it? Nothing atonal about it, is there?

Richard Rodney Bennett29:20

And rather sexy of my eyelid, yes.

Richard Rodney Bennett29:23

I don't know.

Presenter29:25

What about if you could only take one of them?

Richard Rodney Bennett29:27

That's a terrible question. I think it would be

Richard Rodney Bennett29:30

I'm madly looking at the list. I think it would be the the viola concert the violin concerto of William Walton,'cause we only played a teeny bit of it and it's a major work that goes on forever and I've known it not forever, for a long time. I've known it since I was a child and I still love it.

Presenter29:44

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Richard Rodney Bennett29:47

This is difficult. Um I read a great deal. I devour books and I re-read them.

Richard Rodney Bennett29:52

But I do find reading poetry, which I've always done, and setting poetry, of course, to music, I don't take it all in the first time.

Richard Rodney Bennett29:59

So I love anthologies of poetry.

Richard Rodney Bennett30:02

Because I can go back to them and every time I find out more and things I didn't understand the first time, suddenly there's they're speaking to you. And my favorite um anthologist from whom I've learnt a very great deal of poetry is Edith Sitwell.

Richard Rodney Bennett30:18

And my favorite anthology of hers is The Atlantic Book of British and American Poetry, and a lot of my texts that I've set have come from that. And even though it's in two volumes, I'll tie it up very tightly.

Presenter30:30

Don't tell me that. And your luxury.

Richard Rodney Bennett30:33

Well

Richard Rodney Bennett30:34

I thought about this a lot. I can uh do all kinds of handcrafts and I can knit. I'm a very good knitter.

Richard Rodney Bennett30:40

I just taught myself for something to do in front of the television. And I want a a six millimetre, th thirty six inch circular needle, that's to say with a point at both ends. And so I can knit myself sweaters from palm trees and stuff.

Presenter30:57

A fronded sweater. Richard Rodney Bennett, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert iron discs.

Richard Rodney Bennett31:02

Thank you.

Speaker 231:11

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.