Francis James Brown (composer)

Francis James (Jim) Brown (October 1925 – January 2008) was a composer with a global perspective. He integrated cultural influences and lifestyles into his music. With over 600 compositions in his oeuvre, Mr. Brown wrote for piano, all instruments, orchestra, ballet, film, voice, opera, chorus, organ as well as Broadway shows. With a style that bridged mid-20th century into the early 21st century, his music has vibrant shapes, rhythmic drive, delicate expression and sophisticated melodic lines.

Early Life

Born in Rochester, New York on October 26, 1925, composer Francis James Brown was the son of Francis James Brown, Sr. and Opel Brown.

Jim‘s musical talent was apparent and encouraged by his parents as he was able to play piano with both hands at age three. He was a creative and happy child enjoying family skiing trips as well as school plays. His mother would design and produce the costumes and sets.

His father became Professor of Sociology at New York University which afforded him time to author books on the subject. Moving to New York City when Jim was five years old opened the door for his music education. A year later, he won a scholarship to the David Mannes Music School to study piano, harmony, composition and violin. Jim enjoyed reading opera and orchestral scores at the piano as well as improvising. Attending a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal at the Metropolitan Opera brought tears of deep emotion and a firm decision to devote his life to composition and performance.

Furthering his studies of the arts, at age 14 and for the next two years, Jim studied acting with Maria Auspenskaya of the Moscow Art Theatre. With his accomplished pianistic skills, he was invited to join a jazz band whose regular summer job was playing in the Catskill Mountains.

During his early teenage years, the unraveling of his parents’ marriage began to have a serious impact on Jim. His mother’s emotional demands on her son included threats of suicide. With the outbreak of World War II, Jim’s father was called to Washington, DC to work on President Roosevelt’s Education Committee. Post war and for the Truman administration, his father was responsible for the GI Bill and was sent to Russia to observe Stalin’s education policies. While in Washington, his father met his second wife and divorced Jim’s mother which led to her suicide in 1944.

With the emotional tumult of his mother’s death and even though music was the most important presence in his life, Jim thought music would lose its almost holy status were he to pursue it in college. Understanding his son’s talent, his father encouraged him to continue his musical studies. In 1943 he was accepted at Eastman School of Music with a full scholarship and returned to the city of his birth, Rochester, New York.

Over the next four years, Jim studied piano, composition and conducting. Chosen to represent Eastman School of Music at an inter-University Composers Forum with Julliard School of Music, his song cycle, “Three Songs” (from Bells and Grass) with poetry by Walter de la Mare was performed in New York City. As World War II continued to rage during his college years, Jim’s summer vacations were spent working in an ammunition factory.

Graduation from Eastman School of Music was in Spring 1947. Immediately, the composer returned to New York City to begin his professional career.

Professional Years

New York City 1947-1960

In New York City, Jim entered the city’s artistic life as composer, performer and rehearsal accompanist for ballet and opera. Living a Bohemian Greenwich Village life with his roommates and friends, William FlanaganPage title or URLhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Flanagan_(composer) and Edward AlbeePage title or URLhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Albee, the three, to earn extra income, would bicycle about the city delivering telegrams.

During these years, Brown, as a ballet accompanist, worked with Martha Graham, Hanya Holm and the Ballet Theatre. His commissioned ballet, The Circus, toured the East Coast. Jim’s Fantasy for Piano was performed at New York City’s Town Hall.

Having been awarded a Tanglewood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanglewood scholarship in the summer of 1951, Jim studied with composer and teacher Luigi Dallapicollahttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Dallapiccola. During his residence he performed his piano work Très, Très Petite Suit. In addition, his song cycle, Three, with words by e.e. cummings, was performed.

Jim returned to New York City in the Fall of 1951 where he worked with Virgil Thompson for the Broadway production of Four Saints in Three Acts Page title or URLhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Saints_in_Three_Acts. Additionally, he assisted with Ballet Ballads by John La Touche and Jerome Morrass. At the invitation of John Murray Anderson, director of the Broadway show, New Faces of 1952 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Faces_of_1952, Brown composed all the dance music for the revue. He was given no acknowledgement in the program or publicity.

A one-year Fulbright scholarship in 1952 allowed Jim to resume his studies with Dallapiccola in Florence, Italy. His intense study time allowed him to work with librettist Rosyrie Schulman and the two commenced work on the opera, The Highboy. Performances of his Très, Très Petite Suite and Three were given in Perugia and a performance of his Cinque Liriche in Rome in 1953.

Returning to the United States that same year, Brown resumed the hectic life of a classical musician striving to make a living in New York City. Broadway called again with Jim working for Hermione Gringold and Cyril Ritchard in John Murray Anderson’s musical revue, AlmanacPage title or URLhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Murray_Anderson_Almanac.

Over the years of living in New York City, Brown studied composition with Israel Citkowitz, Roger Sessions and Alexei Haieff. He continued his piano studies with Kyriena Zioloti .

Professional Years (1960-2008)

1960s

In the early 1960s, Brown made his home in Greece. There, for the next 40 years, he performed piano recitals and concerts of his own works. Numerous compositions were based on his life and experiences in his adopted country. Jim became fluent reading, writing and speaking Greek.

With his arrival in his adopted country, the composer completed his first opera, The Highboy and worked on a musical based on the Greek theme, Icarus or Damn It, Dionysus, Do. He served as music director for a production of The Fantasticks performed in Greek. The premiere of his song cycle, Three for soprano and string quartet with poetry by James Merrill was given on the island of Aegina. The French Institute in Athens presented his string orchestra piece, Arsis.

1970s

Among his commissions during the 1970s was one from the United States Information Service (USIS). Jim composed his musical, The Yankee Doodle Show in 1976 and served as music director. He wrote his “Sonata Number 2: Polytechnic - November 14, 1973” which was performed as a ballet in Athens. His “Sonata for Clarinet and Violoncello” was presented in Caracas, Venezuela.

By the mid-1970s, Jim continued his involvement with dance when he collaborated with the Athens Government School of Dance. Together with soprano Mary Gifford and clarinetist Peter Goldberg, the trio performed concerts in Athens and Thessaloniki performing his “Three Folk Songs” and “Pastorale”. He returned to the United States touring and performing his piano work, “1+5+6: Twelve Faces of Greece”.

The year 1977 was an intense year of composing and performing for Jim Brown. He was composer, arranger and musical director for the children’s musical Leonora and the Nightingale that had a four month run in Athens. The British Council in Athens hosted a performance of his songs for soprano and baritone including his duet, “In Such a Night” from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. He collaborated on a Greek musical, The Golden Age. EMI released his first children’s record, The Travels of Odysseus and his second children’s record, The Golden Fleece was released the following year.

For a concert featuring songs by American composers, Jim’s “Tria Traghoudia” with words by K.P. Cavafy and “Three Songs” (from Bells and Grass) with poems by Walter de la Mare was performed at the Hellenic American Union in Athens. Jim set to music Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke’s poems Tria Pilmata Angalica (Three Angel Poems).

1980s

As collaborative composer using the pseudonym, Joseph James, Brown wrote the score for the movie, Priest of Love https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082940/, based on the life of author D. H. Lawrence. “One of the greatest triumphs of Francis James Brown, the American composer, was ….. the score of the feature film Priest of Love .”

“Writing about the score for ‘Priest of Love,’ Christopher Miles notes: ‘On one London summer evening Jim ….. came to our Chelsea House. Jim started to play a beautiful, romantic but unsentimental melody. Immediately I felt it was just right, embracing the strength of Lawrence’s relationship to Frieda with a hint of Wagnerian turbulence.…” Released in 1981, the movie starred Ava Gardner, John Gielgud, Janet Sussman and Ian McKellan.

The decade of the 1980s was one of travel between Greece, London and the United States. Jim and his wife, Mary Gifford Brown, purchased a 250 year old farm house on the Greek Island of Andros in 1982. They then divided their time between the island and London.

His commissioned chamber music work, The Gododdin, a modern realization of the Celtic poem by Desmond O’Grady was scored for boy soprano, mezzo, baritone and narrator, flute, whip tambourine, penny whistle, anvil, villean pipes, bodhran harp, violin solo and string quartet. Jim toured the United States and Europe performing his “Sonatina Romantique” composed in 1981.

At their home on Andros in 1982, the composer completed his musical, Cyclops with book and lyrics by Rush Rehm that was based on the Euripides satyr play. Mary and Jim gave concerts at Stanford University, San Francisco State University, Berkeley University and Princeton University. His Sonata for Clarinet and Cello was performed at the New Mexico Music Festival in Taos during August of that year.

In February 1983, Brown’s Cyclops/Nobody’s Musical was given its premiere at Stanford University where Jim was guest lecturer. The following month the couple presented a concert of his piano works and songs at the university. In April, the couple performed at Princeton University with Brown playing his “Sonata No. 2: Polytechnic – November 14, 1973” and Mary singing a selection of his songs. The same concert was performed at the British Council in Athens, Greece in December.

At the invitation of the USIS in Athens, Greece, Brown performed his “Sonata No. 2 - Polytechnic – November 14, 1973”. As reviewed in Kathemerini:

“A sonata for piano No. 2 titled, Polytechnic – November 14, 1973, reconstructed with a liveliness all the turmoil, the anger, the fierce clash and dramatic climax of the events of that day by modes of expression that were forceful, immediate and chosen from phrasing and piano techniques of the whole century, assimilated into a personal style where persistent massive and tempestuous shapes and aggressiveness are predominant and where even the gentlest melodic lines are threatening rather than calm.” In addition to the piano sonata, his settings of five Greek poems by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke were included on the concert. The recital was repeated at the University of California – Berkeley.

“With dramatic foresight and precision and accuracy of expression, with simple and extremely effective means, Brown’s music enlarged the uncompromisingly severe ironic commentary of five poems from “Contrary Love” by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke, which the poet herself read.”

Allea III, a Boston based contemporary music ensemble, performed Brown’s Emily Dickinson songs for soprano and orchestra. Jim returned to the West coast lecturing on composition at the Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles. With Mary, the two presented their Greek Inspiration concert of piano and vocal works.

Returning to England, Brown’s The Most Hated Man was presented at Shrewsbury Music Hall in Shrewsbury in April 1989. His expansive dramatic vocal and piano work The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christopher von Rilke with text by Fred Perles was performed in London. Later that year Mary and Jim performed Songs of Innocence, Experience and Prophecy at Leighton House in London.

1990s

During this decade, numerous concerts featuring the composer’s music were performed in London, England.

Moschatel, a children’s musical was performed with chamber orchestra and soloists at the Shrewsbury Musical Hall in April 1990.

Conductor John Gibbons led London’s Kew Sinfonia with mezzo-soprano Vivian Tierney in a performance of Jim’s Three Songs with poetry by James Merrill. Gibbons presented Brown’s charming and lively choral pieces, Jumblies, The Jumblie Girl and The Dong with the Luminous Nose at Bedford Park Church in London. The works are scored for chorus, soloists and orchestra. In 1996 the Kew Sinfonia performed Jim’s Percussion Concerto with Daniella Ganeva as featured soloist.

Soprano Alexandra Gravas sang Jim’s Voices from Greece and other of his Greek songs at Festival Hall, London, in September 1999.

In honor of American Ambassador to Greece, Robert Kelley, the Browns were invited to perform a concert of Jim’s Greek music at Princeton University in Princeton, NJ. Included on the program were song settings of the poets Cavafy and Sikelianos.

Celebrating Rabindranath Tagore’s birthday in May 1998, the Indian High Commission at Mayfair in London presented Brown’s work Love’s Question. In his program notes for the concert Brown remarked,

“I wrote these three songs in October 1993 after listening to Tagore’s own music for the Bengal songs for many months. The first and third have a continuous rhythmic drone underlying them. The rippling vocal line constantly moving above this is like a religious evocation of the mystery of love. The second song in the accompaniments evokes the sound of the sitar, the constant, unchanging harmony again characteristic of Indian music. The voice part is free to express all of the subtle nuances and sensuality of this uniquely beautiful tribute to love.”

In 1999 two of Brown’s works were given their premieres. At Westminster Abbey, organist Robert Quinney performed the St. Matthew Suite. Thailand’s Chulalonghorn University auditorium was the setting for Brown’s Clarinet Concerto played by Peter Goldberg and the Bangkok Symphony.

2000s

The year 2000 brought another performance of the St. Matthew Suite at Westminster Cathedral in January. A concert featuring his Quintet for Clarinet and Strings was given at the Bradbourne House in West Malling, England in March. Returning to Greece that summer, Jim and Mary performed a recital of Très, Très Petite Suite and a selection of songs at the Venetian Museum in Naxos, Greece.

Dividing their time between England and Greece in 2001, Jim gave a piano recital at the British Music Information Centre performing his “Passacaglia and Fugue”. In September at the Municipal Theatre in Hora, Greece, Jim and Mary performed his Levidis songs, Glezos songs and other Greek works.

At Westminster Cathedral, Robert Quinney performed “In Search of St. Anthony” in November 2003.

Welsh baritone, Jeremy Huw Williams, accompanied by Nigel Foster, performed Brown’s two song cycles, Sept Melodies des Illuminations, poetry by Arthur Rimbaud, and The Lay of Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke with poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke, at London’s National Opera Studio in 2005. A CD of the two works was released by Kissan Productions later that year.

“In his essay ‘Transposing Rilke,’ about a song cycle based on a translation by Alfred Perles of The Lay of Love and Death of Christopher Rilke Brown wrote: ‘ Whenever I am commissioned to set poetry, I spend a period of time immersing myself in as much knowledge of the poet’s life and work as I can.. my aim is to be able to climb inside his mind…The [Rilke] work covers every emotion from erotic and sexual awakening to the nightmarish violence and futility of war….During Christopher Rilke’s nightmare I make use of polytonality to symbolise the violence of his dream. The final words of the Lay describe the aftermath of the young man’s death and are spoken and sung.’”

In 2006, for the 50th anniversary of poet Walter de la Mare’s death, Jim was commissioned to set, “De Mortuis – Traveller’s Rest”. The concert sponsored by the poet’s brother, Giles de la Mare, featured baritone Jeremy Huw Williams and pianist Nigel Foster who premiered the songs at Leighton House in London. Included in the concert were other settings of de la Mare’s poems composed by Brown.

In New York City during October 2016, a concert entitled, The Lyric Theatre of Francis James Brown was presented at the Kosciuszko Foundation. With music director and pianist, Martin Hennessy, baritone Dimitrie Lazich and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Merrill, they performed Brown’s Five Songs to poems of William Blake, Songs of Experience, the Sonatina Romantique, Three Songs to Poems of Rabindranath Tagore and The Lay of the Love and Death of Cornet Christopher Rilke.

Francis James Brown died on January 18, 2008. An In Memorium concert was given at St. John’s Smith Square in London in March 2009. Pianists, singers, organists and instrumentalists came together to perform a wide range of Jim’s musical gifts to the world.

“At the time of Jim’s passing, Christopher Miles, director of Prince of Love Page title or URLhttps://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082940/, said about him:

‘Apart from the many excellent pieces and operas he wrote as Joseph James, there was a lighter side to his talent when he accompanied his wife Mary in cabaret. The songs were performed by them with such brio that it is hard to realise that one side of this talented partnership is no longer with us.’”

Personal Life

In 1974, Jim met his future wife, Mary Gifford at the British Council in Athens, Greece, where they were performing his setting of the King Arthur story. With Jim teaching in the Classics and Music Department of Stanford University and lecturing at the Schoenberg Institute in Los Angeles, the coupled married in 1983.

Mary and Jim split their year residing in London and on the Greek Island of Andros. They frequently hosted musical evenings with local residents and guests. The couple continued to perform recitals of Jim’s music at universities and concert halls throughout the United States and Europe.

Before his death, Jim completed the orchestration for his opera, “Buddha”, and wrote “24 Preludes for Piano”. He composed until the last days of his life.

Francis James Brown died on January 18, 2008 in London. A memorial concert of his music including vocal, instrumental, piano and organ works was held at St. John’s, Smith Square, London, on March 17, 2009.

Surviving the composer are his widow, Mary Gifford Brown, sons Dr. Giles Harborne, Bernard Harborne, daughter Suzanna Prizeman, eleven grandchildren and one great grandchild.

External links

WEBSITE: https://www.francisjamesbrown.com

RECORDINGS: You Tube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdSclZrJrRc3SYwO3TPRRyg/videos

MUSIC/LETTERS/PHOTO COLLECTION held at: Eastman School of Music/Sibley Music Library ​https://www.esm.rochester.edu/sibley/files/2015/12/Francis-James-Brown.pdf

References

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