Bernard Benoliel
Amsterdam waiters knew him as the American who came to compose in the café. He chose a table and then worked for hours with music paper, pencil and eraser. Music and commotion in the background? No problem for Bernard Jack Benoliel (1943-2017). He friendly chatted with curious staff. To conclude with: ‘So, now you know more about my music than the world outside.’
Only after his death did the tide turn. In 2021, the first album in a series of Benoliel’s collected work, consisting of sixteen compositions, was released. ‘Idiosyncratic music with great theatrical storytelling power’, reviewed de Volkskrant (four stars). Now there is part two, with tantalizing titles such as Sinfonia Cosmologica and A Transcendental Requiem. High time for a closer introduction. Who was Bernard Jack Benoliel? And why did his music stay under the radar?
“The most extraordinary man I have known,” says Bruce Walter Roberts. He is Benoliel’s former business partner and the driving force behind the CD series. ‘Bernard and I had a modest real estate company, it will be liquidated next year. I hope there is enough money left to complete the CD series.’ According to Roberts, a Briton, Benoliel was quintessentially American. ‘Naturally friendly, he laughed a lot. He was entertaining when he wanted to, but he could also be sharp. We were inseparable for the last twenty years. Sometimes people asked if we were lovers. No, we said: blood brothers.’
Cousin of Francis Ford Coppola
Bernard Jack Benoliel was born in Detroit. His French father had come from Marseille by boat. His mother belonged to the Italian immigrant Coppola family; famed director Francis Ford Coppola was a cousin. Benoliel studied piano and trumpet in Detroit and moved to New York to compose. Stefan Wolpe became his teacher, the stubborn German who had fled from the Nazis.
Wolpe immersed Benoliel in a variety of styles, from jazz to twelve-tone music to the dark orchestration art of the Italian Ferruccio Busoni. Early on he recognized Benoliel’s ‘highly personal way’ of composing, with large-scale pieces and a great sense of self-criticism.
‘Bernard always saw music from a literary-philosophical perspective,’ says Roberts. ‘Nietzsche, Jung, Thomas Mann, he always walked around with something to read. I once took him to a philosopher’s conference in Cambridge. He had animated discussions, something I have never seen him do with composers.’
Benoliel’s wide view was accompanied by vast musical formations. For example, he arranged his requiem for amplified violin, a large choir and a small choir, an orchestra with a load of brass and a load of percussion. Invoking Sonic Stone, a discourse on medieval church building, not only uses voice, piano, organ and horns, but also timpani, two wind machines and an amplified viola.
Lack of time to rehearse
The idiosyncratic line-ups did not promote the playing of his music. Benoliel earned his money with ‘ordinary’ work: at a music publisher in New York; at a London foundation for English composers; as a co-partner in real estate. In 1986 he bought an apartment on Amsterdam’s Reguliersgracht. Roberts: ‘He often went from London to compose for a long weekend. No one will bother me there, he would say.’ In 2001, with a Dutch passport in his pocket, he settled there permanently.
His music came to the attention of Han Reiziger, the renowned classical music man of the VPRO, who showed interest. Gaudeamus, the foundation for contemporary music, programmed a concert with chamber music. But the plan to get Sinfonia Cosmologica on the stands of a radio orchestra failed due to a lack of rehearsal time.
The limited resonance of his art did not seem to bother Benoliel. ‘He was a visionary who thought: my time will come. I admire that enormously,” says Ulrich Pöhl, artistic director of the Utrecht ensemble for new music Insomnio. Pöhl and associates recorded the first album in the Benoliel series, for which the German label Encora released about six CDs. ‘We put a lot of rehearsal time into it. Benoliel’s pieces are rhythmically very complex, sometimes bordering on unplayable. If the notes are not exactly lined up, it becomes a pointless exercise.’
Smoked salmon with champagne
Pöhl understands why Benoliel did not connect with Dutch musical life. ‘At that time, almost everything revolved around the Hague School of Louis Andriessen. Benoliel’s aesthetic was rooted in the lush late Romantic orchestral tradition, while Dutch composers had turned away from the symphony orchestra. They preferred to write for small, specialized clubs such as Reinbert de Leeuw’s Schönberg Ensemble.’ Roberts: ‘Bernard sent them another piece of his work. Never heard anything about it. He also thought Andriessen was a highly overrated composer.’
Benoliel’s death, on March 2, 2017, went unnoticed by the music world. Roberts: ‘He had leukemia and perhaps felt the end coming. His last meal was smoked salmon with champagne. Acquaintances in the real estate world were amazed when they heard that he was a composer.’
The double album Aeronauts, with Jan Hage (organ), Insomnio, the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra and Latvija State Choir conducted by René Gulikers, is released on the Encora label.
Destroyed music
Bernard Jack Benoliel completed sixteen works, ranging in length from two minutes to an hour. He instructed his good friend and business partner Bruce Walter Roberts to destroy all his unfinished compositions. Roberts: ‘There was a Second Symphony, piano music, everything. He really wanted to prevent anyone from stealing his ideas.’
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2024-01-01 13:47:47
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