Frank Martin

Geneva-born, Frank Martin studied composition with Joseph Lauber and read mathematics and physics before devoting himself to music. He was past fifty when the Petite symphonie concertante for harp, harpsichord, piano and two string orchestras was first performed in Zurich under Paul Sacher in 1946. From the 1930s he borrowed the twelve-note row from Schoenberg and used it on his own terms — as a means of ordering chromatic harmony rather than as a system — retaining tonal centres and melodic lines. His works include Le Vin herbé, a chamber oratorio on the Tristan legend, the Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, the Violin Concerto, the Shakespeare opera Der Sturm and the large sacred works Golgotha and In terra pax. The unaccompanied Mass for Double Choir he wrote in his thirties and then kept private for four decades, unwilling to have it performed; its premiere took place in Hamburg in 1963. He settled in the Netherlands in 1946 and worked there until his death in 1974. The youngest of ten children of a Calvinist pastor, he worked closely with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze in the 1920s and taught rhythm theory and improvisation at his institute and chamber music at the Geneva Conservatory, later composition in Cologne, and he founded a school of his own, the Technicum Moderne de Musique. He established the Chamber Music Society of Geneva and directed it for a decade, and in the 1940s headed the Swiss musicians' association. Honorary doctorates came from Geneva and Lausanne, and honorary membership from the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, and the Federal Republic of Germany gave him its Order of Merit.