Eric Hudes Obituary

 

 

ERIC HUDES

 

Eric Hudes died on Friday 6 February. He would have been 89 in May.

 

Eric was born in London in May 1920, but from early childhood lived in Manchester before moving to Essex. In his early days he collaborated with Joan Littlewood at Theatre Workshop in Manchester, D.G. Bridson of the BBC, and the Laban Art of Movement Studio. From 1960 he wrote mainly concert music, and his first acknowledged works date from this time.

 

I first met Eric in the early 1970s at Durham University at one of the excellent SPNM weekends that meant so much to composers of our generation. We became colleagues, working together first with Anglian Edition, a composers' co-operative founded by Eric. His co-founder members included William Alwyn, Doreen Carwithen, Imogen Holst, Elizabeth Maconchy, Bernard Stephens and Hugh Wood. The concert giving counterpart of A.E. was the East Anglian New Music Society, which gave concerts throughout East Anglia, mainly at Woodbridge School in Suffolk. From 1984 Eric joined me as co-Director of Colchester New Music. We established a fruitful working relationship with Colchester Institute School of Music, Essex University and Colchester Sixth Form College through our Composers' Days (now New Music Days)

 

In the early 1990s we formed our own ensemble, the Mercia Ensemble, led by the Australian violinist Lesley Larkum, who were frequently joined by the soprano Lindsay Gowers, who lives in Manningtree. The violinist, Beth Spendlove and her Kingfisher String Quartet also performed frequently for us. At its height, CNM was able to promote up to four concerts a year. Works first performed in Colchester were often repeated at the BMIC before they moved from Stratford Place off Oxford Street. On several occasions we collaborated with New Music Brighton. CNM was a regular winner of the PRS Enterprise Award, and later received funding from the PRS Foundation; other funding coming from the Arts Council England, BT and Colchester Borough Council.

 

Eric will be remembered by many not only as an enthusiastic promoter of his own music, but for his tireless work on behalf of other composers and their music. He always ensured that the best available performers were there to do justice to the music, including the pianists the late Christopher Kite, Jonathan Darnborough, Richard Deering and Anthony Green, the Manson Ensemble form the Royal Academy of Music, The Langdon Chamber Players and Gemini

 

Eric described himself as a ‘self taught' composer. Composers who greatly influenced him were Bach (I found half a dozen copies of The Art of Fugue in various editions when going through his papers), Beethoven, Stravinsky and his beloved Bartok. Eric read avidly. In his article On being a self-taught composer in the Composer magazine of Winter 1980-81, Eric mentions Josef Rufer's Composition with Twelve Notes ..., Hindemith's Craft of Musical Composition and Messiaen's Technique of my Musical Language, and having "looked into" Joseph Schillinger's System of Composition. It was the (Schoenbergian) twelve tone method combined with classical (Beethovenian) sonata form that informed much of Eric's instrumental music; he, as it were, took up where Schoenberg had left off in the 1930s. To my mind, his masterpiece was the String Quartet No 3 of 1989, its three movements, centred on a scherzo (very Bartokian), are permeated by the motive EAH (Eric A. Hudes). This motif is used most affectingly to generate the bare fifths in the middle of the scherzo and at the beautiful ending of the final slow section. The 3rd Quartet has deservedly been one of Eric's most performed works. Apart from the three String Quartets, Eric's mature output can be divided into piano music, vocal music (predominantly for soprano solo) with ensemble or piano, and ensemble music. One of the most successful pieces of vocal music, Sappho Kunopis kai Mantis  (Sappho, Bitch! and Philosopher) for soprano and clarinet was first performed at Woodbridge School in 1990 by Sandra Lissenden (soprano) and Andrew Sparling of Tapestry. Eric always claimed that there was not anything specifically Jewish about his music. Nevertheless, his extremely telling Divrei Kohelet was a world premier at Long Melford in Suffolk in May 1994 and was repeated at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London in the following  July. The performers were Lindsay Gowers, and the cellist of the Langdon Chamber Players, Andrew Fuller. The intense Cantata for high voice and string trio, Wakenings, to poems by David Gascoyne, a friend of Eric's, received its first performance in 1996 by Lindsay Gowers and members of the Mercia Ensemble at Stratford Place. Among his ensemble pieces the delightful Piano Quartet No 2 (1991) was performed at the BMIC (Stratford Place) in November 1992 with Nicholas Hodges (then still at Cambridge) as pianist. Eric's works for solo piano form a large part of his output. Judging by the number of performances it received, Precis-Canto-Paraphrase (1987), was a favourite not only of Eric himself, but also of performers. I remember Eric saying to me before the first performance, "You'll like the Canto." I did! The Piano Sonata No 2 (1982) was likewise frequently performed. It is the most "classical" of the three sonatas, the movements being: allegro moderato, allegro scherzando, lento sostenuto and comodo, the last a set of variations. The Third Piano Sonata is entirely different, a single movement work veering rapidly between forthright, almost aggressive gestures and gentle lyricism. EAH is again prominent, and this is perhaps the most ‘autobiographical' of Eric's scores. In spite of its single movement, Eric claimed the piece "contains various elements of [the] sonata ‘principle', [particularly the] principle of dramatic contrast..." The Romanza for violin and piano was first performed at Woodbridge School in 1989 by the dedicatees, the violinist Beth Spendlove and the pianist Michael Dussek. This piece will be performed in the concerts given by Gemini at the New Music Day in Colchester on 27 May as a tribute to Eric's memory.  

 

Eric's interests were very wide, covering most things from Jewish and Christian theology to philosophy, poetry and literature. He was particularly fond of T.S. Eliot and we made forays into Finnegan's Wake together. We had one pact. I wouldn't mention cricket and steam engines if he didn't mention politics!

 

After an accident in 1995 which left him blind in one eye Eric was forced to give up an active life in music; but he continued to compose or edit his music. The last two years of his life were spent in a nursing home; even so he kept himself up to date with musical affairs and happenings.

 

Eric leaves a widow, Joan, a daughter, Leonie, a son, Jonathan, a granddaughter, Rebecca, grandsons, Joshua and Daniel, a greatgranddaugghter, Isabelle and a greatgrandson, Ethan.

 

Alan Parsons

 

 

The following tributes by Frank Bayford and Derek Foster are reproduced with kind permission from Modus Music no 35

 

The composer Eric Hudes died in February this year at the age of 88.

He was the first to come to the defence of 'Compass' when it was in its infancy, by publishing a letter in 'Composer' magazine (No.62, Winter 1977/8) after what he called 'perhaps unnecessarily patronising comments' about Compass had appeared in the previous issue. He felt that any organisation that encouraged 'interest in and performance of works by living composers should be nurtured'.

This letter did indeed give the 'Compass' committee at that time an incentive to continue with its efforts, especially in promoting concerts. A little later, Compass joined forces with Eric's own 'Mercia Music' organisation to give a concert, on 27th January 1981, at the British Music Information Centre, Stratford Place, London. The programme included Eric's own impressive 'Sappho Fragments' song-cycle, as well as works by Frank Stiles, Derek Foster, Latif Freedman, Malcolm Dedman and Frank Bayford.

He was a charming man, full of enthusiasm, and an ever-enquiring and perceptive voice at meetings of the former Composers' Guild of Great Britain.                FB.

 

 

Eric Hudes won a composition competition for piano music in 1966 with his Nine Variants. He had written music for the theatre and radio as well as the concert music, which now, with his adoption of a more serial technique, was to become his main output. The competition had been promoted by the Waltham Forest Contemporary Music Society (later renamed the Society for Modern Music). I helped to run the society, and must have met him about this time. I was in my early twenties, ‘wet behind the ears', and he in his forties; I might have found him intimidating, but he was not in the least condescending, indeed very genuine and pleasant, with a wealth of anecdotes, full of humour; he showed a generous interest in my music and that of others.

Indeed, this interest extended to his forming Anglian Edition, one of the first composer cooperative publishing ventures; by 1979 the edition represented 14 composers. He also took a leading role in the running of the concert-promoting organisations East Anglian New Music Society, and later Mercia Music.

As Frank Bayford has indicated above, Eric was supportive of Compass in our concert-giving activities. When Compass decided to form Modus Music, a similar composer-cooperative publisher, we were much encouraged in this by the example of Anglian.

Mercia Music was later subsumed into Colchester New Music, run by Alan Parsons, and now with Julia Usher as co-Director. Eric remained active in Anglian and CNM for many years. His music is now published by Bardic Edition.     

 

DF.

 

For a full catalogue of Eric's music go to Bardic Edition and follow the links to Eric Hudes.