Robert Russell Bennett was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on June 15,
1894. He began his music study in Kansas City: piano with his mother;
violin and several other instruments with his father; and harmony with
Carl Busch. While still a boy he wrote and had published several
compositions. He came to New York in 1916, worked for a while as copyist
at G. Schirmer, then during World War I served for a year in the United
States Army. After the war he spent several years in Paris studying
composition with Nadia Boulanger; during this period he was twice the
recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 1926-1927 he received honorable
mention for his first symphony, in a contest sponsored by _Musical
America_; in 1930 he received two awards from RCA Victor, one for
_Sights and Sounds_, an orchestral tone poem, the other for his first
successful and widely performed work, the symphony _Abraham Lincoln_.
Since then Bennett has worked fruitfully in three distinct areas. As a
composer of serious works he has produced several operas (including
_Maria Malibran_), symphonies and other significant orchestral
compositions. As an orchestrator for the Broadway theater, he has been
involved with some of the foremost stage productions of our times
including musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter,
and Lerner and Loewe, and many others. He has also written compositions
of a more popular nature, compositions which, while fully exploiting the
resources of serious music, are nevertheless filled with popular or jazz
materials. Among the last are his effective symphonic adaptations of
music from George Gershwin’s _Porgy and Bess_; _Oklahoma!_ and _South
Pacific_ of Rodgers and Hammerstein; and _Kiss Me Kate_ of Cole Porter.
In each instance, the main melodies are brilliantly orchestrated and
skilfully combined into an integrated synthesis so that each becomes a
coherent musical composition.
The _March_, for two pianos and orchestra, (1930) makes delightful use
of jazz melodies and rhythms. There are here four connected movements,
each in march time. The first movement, in a vigorous style, leaps from
one brief motive to another without any attempt at development. In the
second, a sustained melody, first for solo oboe and later for the piano
with full orchestra, is placed against a shifting rhythm. The third is a
serious recitative culminating in an episode in which the classic
funeral march is given sophisticated treatment. The fourth movement
begins with a _marche mignonne_ and concludes with a forceful, at times
overpowering, statement of the funeral-march theme of the third
movement.
While the _Symphony in D_ (1941) is scored for symphony orchestra and
has been played by many leading American orchestras, it is music with
its tongue in the cheek, and is consistently light and humorous. This
symphony was written to honor the Brooklyn Dodger baseball team (that
is, when they were still in Brooklyn)—ironically enough an ode to a
colorful team by a composer who has been a lifelong rooter of its most
bitter rival, the New York Giants (once again, when they were still at
the Polo Grounds). There are four brief movements. The first, subtitled
“Brooklyn Wins,” “means to picture the ecstatic joy of the town after
the home team wins a game,” as the composer has explained. This is
followed by a slow (_Andante lamentoso_) movement, appropriately
designated as “Brooklyn Loses”—music filled with “gloom and tears, and
even fury.” The third movement, a scherzo, is a portrait of the club’s
then (1941) president, Larry MacPhail, and his pursuit of a star
pitcher. “We hear the horns’ bay call—then we hear him in Cleveland,
Ohio, trying to trade for the great pitcher, Bob Feller. He offers
Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Bridge as an even trade, but the
Cleveland management says ‘No’ in the form of a big E-flat minor chord.
After repeated attempts we hear the hunting horns again, as he resumes
the hunt in other fields.” The finale is a choral movement, and like
that of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, an ode to joy. “It is purely
fictitious, this text, but it speaks for itself. The subtitle of this
finale is ‘The Giants Come to Town.’”
Bennett has written two delightful orchestral compositions derived from
the songs of Jerome Kern. One is _Symphonic Study_, a synthesis of some
of Kern’s best-loved melodies, and _Variations on a Theme by Jerome
Kern_. Both of these compositions are discussed in the section on Kern.
Bennett’s symphonic treatment of George Gershwin’s _Porgy and Bess_,
entitled _Symphonic Picture_, is commented upon in the Gershwin section,
specifically with _Porgy and Bess_; Bennett’s symphonic treatment of the
music of Cole Porter’s _Kiss Me Kate_, and of _Oklahoma!_ and _South
Pacific_ is spoken of in the sections devoted to Cole Porter and Richard
Rodgers, respectively. Bennett has also orchestrated, and adapted into a
symphonic suite, the music from Richard Rodgers’ _Victory at Sea_,
described in the Richard Rodgers section.