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Fritz Hart
Fritz Bennicke Hart (11 February 1874 – 9 July 1949) was an English composer, conductor, teacher and unpublished novelist, who spent considerable periods in Australia and Hawaii.
Hart was born in Brockley, originally in the English county of Kent but now part of the London Borough of Lewisham, the eldest child of Frederick Robinson Hart and his wife Jemima (Jemmima) Waters, née Bennicke. Both his parents were musical. From the age of six, Fritz sang in the parish choir his father ran, and his mother was a piano teacher. He spent three years as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, under Sir Frederick Bridge, and then went to the Royal College of Music in 1893, where he became acquainted with Gustav Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, William Hurlstone, Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Ireland. At one student concert in 1896, Hart played the cymbals, Vaughan Williams the triangle, Holst the trombone, and Ireland also played. Composition was not one of Hart's subjects at the RCM, but he nevertheless came under the influence of Charles Villiers Stanford.
He became one of Holst's closest friends, and they frequently collaborated. Holst set several of Hart's poems to music as songs or part-songs, and Hart wrote librettos for Holst's early operatic works.
Hart toured with a theatre company, during which time he wrote incidental music for Julius Caesar. He also wrote music for Romeo and Juliet, which he conducted himself. He then worked for various touring companies, which gave him exposure to operettas, musical comedy, dramatic incidental music and opera. He married in 1904, and his first child was born the following year.
Hart sailed to Australia aboard R.M.S. China in May 1909, as part of a company contracted by J. C. Williamson's to play the operetta King of Cadonia. The initial contract for 12 months was extended to four years. In 1913 Hart and Alfred Hill founded the short-lived Australian Opera League. The first programme, on 3 August 1914, included the first performance of Hart's opera Pierrette.
In 1913 George Marshall-Hall, who founded Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and subsequently the rival Albert Street Conservatorium, left for London and Hart took over his lecturing duties at the latter institution, Eduard Scharf acting as director. A year later Marshall-Hall sent instruction that the Conservatorium was to be closed down, and Scharf found employment with the University, but other staff refused to resign and appointed Hart director. In 1915 Marshall-Hall was re-appointed professor of music at the University of Melbourne in 1915, and open to a merging of the two institutions but such was the anti-German attitude during World War I that the predominantly German staff expected adverse discrimination from the strongly pro-British University. Their fears were well-founded, as the brilliant pianist Scharf was dismissed on account of his birthplace, and ended up in a camp for enemy aliens. Nellie Melba established her school of singing there in 1915, and she and her pupils helped shape Hart's work as a composer. He had the overall responsibility for her students' musical training, many of whom made their marks internationally. The institution was renamed the Melba Conservatorium in 1956, after Hart's death.
In 1924 Hart was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music. In 1927 he became acting conductor for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO), and in 1928, after the death of Alberto Zelman, the permanent conductor. In 1932 the Melbourne University Conservatorium Orchestra and the MSO amalgamated under the joint conductorship of Hart and Bernard Heinze. In 1929 the MSO was the first Australian orchestra to play open-air concerts. These were in Melbourne's Alexandra Gardens, under the baton of Hart. These 'Popular Concerts' were made possible through a donation by Sidney Myer. Hart was highly regarded as a teacher, his pupils including Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Margaret Sutherland, Hubert Clifford and Robert Hughes.
After 1937 Hart returned to Melbourne only once, for the jubilee of the Albert Street conservatorium in July 1945 when he conducted several of his works.
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Fritz Hart
Fritz Bennicke Hart (11 February 1874 – 9 July 1949) was an English composer, conductor, teacher and unpublished novelist, who spent considerable periods in Australia and Hawaii.
Hart was born in Brockley, originally in the English county of Kent but now part of the London Borough of Lewisham, the eldest child of Frederick Robinson Hart and his wife Jemima (Jemmima) Waters, née Bennicke. Both his parents were musical. From the age of six, Fritz sang in the parish choir his father ran, and his mother was a piano teacher. He spent three years as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, under Sir Frederick Bridge, and then went to the Royal College of Music in 1893, where he became acquainted with Gustav Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, William Hurlstone, Ralph Vaughan Williams and John Ireland. At one student concert in 1896, Hart played the cymbals, Vaughan Williams the triangle, Holst the trombone, and Ireland also played. Composition was not one of Hart's subjects at the RCM, but he nevertheless came under the influence of Charles Villiers Stanford.
He became one of Holst's closest friends, and they frequently collaborated. Holst set several of Hart's poems to music as songs or part-songs, and Hart wrote librettos for Holst's early operatic works.
Hart toured with a theatre company, during which time he wrote incidental music for Julius Caesar. He also wrote music for Romeo and Juliet, which he conducted himself. He then worked for various touring companies, which gave him exposure to operettas, musical comedy, dramatic incidental music and opera. He married in 1904, and his first child was born the following year.
Hart sailed to Australia aboard R.M.S. China in May 1909, as part of a company contracted by J. C. Williamson's to play the operetta King of Cadonia. The initial contract for 12 months was extended to four years. In 1913 Hart and Alfred Hill founded the short-lived Australian Opera League. The first programme, on 3 August 1914, included the first performance of Hart's opera Pierrette.
In 1913 George Marshall-Hall, who founded Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and subsequently the rival Albert Street Conservatorium, left for London and Hart took over his lecturing duties at the latter institution, Eduard Scharf acting as director. A year later Marshall-Hall sent instruction that the Conservatorium was to be closed down, and Scharf found employment with the University, but other staff refused to resign and appointed Hart director. In 1915 Marshall-Hall was re-appointed professor of music at the University of Melbourne in 1915, and open to a merging of the two institutions but such was the anti-German attitude during World War I that the predominantly German staff expected adverse discrimination from the strongly pro-British University. Their fears were well-founded, as the brilliant pianist Scharf was dismissed on account of his birthplace, and ended up in a camp for enemy aliens. Nellie Melba established her school of singing there in 1915, and she and her pupils helped shape Hart's work as a composer. He had the overall responsibility for her students' musical training, many of whom made their marks internationally. The institution was renamed the Melba Conservatorium in 1956, after Hart's death.
In 1924 Hart was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Music. In 1927 he became acting conductor for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO), and in 1928, after the death of Alberto Zelman, the permanent conductor. In 1932 the Melbourne University Conservatorium Orchestra and the MSO amalgamated under the joint conductorship of Hart and Bernard Heinze. In 1929 the MSO was the first Australian orchestra to play open-air concerts. These were in Melbourne's Alexandra Gardens, under the baton of Hart. These 'Popular Concerts' were made possible through a donation by Sidney Myer. Hart was highly regarded as a teacher, his pupils including Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Margaret Sutherland, Hubert Clifford and Robert Hughes.
After 1937 Hart returned to Melbourne only once, for the jubilee of the Albert Street conservatorium in July 1945 when he conducted several of his works.