RIC GRAEBNER
A brief introduction
Dr David C F Wright
Eric Hans Graebner
was born on the eighth of January 1943.
He was actually named Hans Eric since
his parents wished to return to Austria
once the Second World War was over.
But he is known today as Ric.
He was born at Berrington
near Shrewsbury and is a British national.
His father, Hans, was an administrator
for British Rail. His mother had a similar
position, also with British Rail, and
her name was Lilly Kornmehl. She played
the piano and enjoyed listening to serious
music. Ric has a brother, Ronald, who
was born in 1946, and was a semi-professional
footballer.
Ric's paternal grandfather
and great uncle had some musical interests
and his maternal uncle was Walter Loessor,
a concert pianist and sometime assistant
to Bruno Walter. Ric believes that he
is also distantly related to Joseph
Joachim and Paul Wittgenstein.
As a child, Graebner
was apparently obsessed with the family's
wind-up gramophone. He began piano lessons
with a Miss Dodd when he was only four
years of age. Later he had piano lessons
with Rev. Daniels and then Barnham Johnson,
Head of Music at Shrewsbury Public School,
took up the oboe with Thea Stainer,
whose husband is a descendant of Sir
John Stainer, and the organ with David
Willcocks. His schools were St Giles,
Shrewsbury (1947- 1951), Lancastrian
(1951- 54) and Priory School (1954-
1961) all in Shrewsbury. He won awards
at school and achieved O and A levels
in GCSE. For A levels there was the
strong influence of his classics-obsessed
teacher persuading him to take Latin
and Greek whereas he wanted to take
science and mathematics. He was offered
a concession that he could do music!
From 1961 to 1964 he
was a student at Kings College, Cambridge
receiving a BA in music with a double
first! Among his tutors were John Exton,
Nicholas Temperley and Philip Radcliffe.
He then proceeded to York University
studying under Wilfrid Mellers and David
Blake and playing the Beethoven Cello
Sonatas with fellow student Moray Welsh
and, achieving a Doctor of Philosophy
degree specialising in Berlioz's opera.
He enjoyed the music of Wagner, Mahler,
Schoenberg and Stravinsky and did not
care for Viennese waltzes. Literary
works that appealed to him, and still
do, are the works of Dostoevsky, Dickens,
Kafka and Thomas Hardy.
When he was four he
tried composing and produced a waltz.
But he made his first impact as a pianist
in 1952 with Bach's Partita in E in
his home town of Shrewsbury. His teacher
insisted that he play it from memory
but half way through he forgot what
was to come next and improvised the
rest. Everyone was too polite to comment.
His first professional
performance of one of his own works
was of his Piano Trio of 1963 given
by the Orion Trio and his first broadcast
was in 1979 of his String Quartet no.
1 played by the Guadagnini Quartet.
His interests were
always expanding. He read up on the
works of Milton Babbitt and others and
two of his own works Aspects of Three
Tetrachords, a work for tape, and Thalia
for two pianos. Thalia established him
as a composer which, along with the
Capriccio for violin and piano, are
two of his most important and impressive
works.
Some music lovers sometimes
become almost paranoid about influences
in music. Graebner may show influences
of all great composers from Haydn to
Stravinsky. He used to compose at the
piano but now with a computer and he
can compose from five minutes a day
to four hours a day perhaps up to 90
bars or just one note. As with most
composers the mornings are the best
time to compose and, also in common
with many composers, he finds writing
for the guitar not easy.
His son, Alasdair,
who was born in 1968 is following an
artistic career being the chief technician
at the Peacock Theatre in London at
the time of writing.
Like every good musician,
Graebner has scrapped some of his music
and may disown some pieces but not necessarily
for musical reasons. He approves of
serial music provided the composer is
in control of this highly disciplined
way of composition. He considers that
aleatoric music in certain situations
might be appropriate. Electronic music
he does not see as a genre or mere technique
but an effective and economic means
of production. I am not qualified to
discuss his electronic scores although
I should record that Venus in Landscape
is one of the works that gives the composer
the most pleasure.
His opinions of musicians
are precise and very rewarding. He speaks
about the conductors Christoph Dohnanyi
and Pierre Boulez who bring out the
unobvious in the score so that "you
can hear
what the violas and the second trumpet
are doing." As for composers he believes
that Mendelssohn and Dvořák are
under-rated and that this is also the
case for Parry and Lili Boulanger. He
believes Parry is technically good and
has fine ideas and is as competent
as Brahms. He admires Thomas Ades and
finds Robin Holloway interesting
All composers should
be honest but some are afraid to speak
about music they do not like for fear
that their own popularity will suffer.
Graebner does not respond to Handel
opera, early Verdi, Chopin and some
Schumann. As a composer himself he likes
to feel that his work can be understood
by a wide-ranging public but, obviously,
on different levels. A warm response
is encouraging but could be due to other
considerations and not necessarily the
quality of the piece. This is true of
many of us. We may endure a piece and
then rejoice at its loud and impressive
ending but not necessarily enjoying
what has gone before. We can be misled
into liking a piece because of association
or because the harpist was so sexually
attractive.
As a person, Ric is
more outgoing at a personal level than
at a professional level. He is a perfectionist
and easily annoyed with irrelevant social
conventions such as annual Christmas
cards to people you have not seen or
spoken to for years or the convention
of stuffy dress codes. He does not care
for competitiveness in music and enjoys
collaboration such as the mixed media
approach as, for example, music with
mime or music with dance where the visual
aspects are often vital. But he accepts
that a composer's lot can be isolated.
His Wind Quintet was
premiered by the Vega Quintet in the
spring of 2003.
Many people are somewhat
ignorant in their not wishing to hear
works that are electronic or advanced
and this decision does rob them of some
fine and fascinating music. Ric's String
Quartets are notable works and Thalia
is a tremendous piece that I would not
wish to be without.
David C F Wright
Copyright David C F Wright 2003.
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