{"id":49261,"date":"2024-11-08T11:24:55","date_gmt":"2024-11-08T10:24:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/a56483ea-8e92-4227-865a-da73a8fc14c4"},"modified":"2024-11-08T12:07:18","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T11:07:18","slug":"lord-berners-a-true-english-eccentric","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcmusicmagazine\/rss_feed\/lord-berners-a-true-english-eccentric\/","title":{"rendered":"Lord Berners: a true English eccentric"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By <\/p>

Published: Friday, 08 November 2024 at 10:24 AM<\/p>

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In 2018 we\u2019re far from the heyday of the 19th-century Romantic<\/a><\/strong> age, when the image formed of the great artist as a tormented genius. When it comes to classical composers, though, old notions can still linger at the back of our minds.<\/p>

Shouldn\u2019t a real composer live in a garret, be dirt poor, with a bothersome family and some fatal infirmity, and forever be kicking against society, battling to get the music out to an uninterested, uncomprehending world?\u00a0You could label this characterisation an example of the Beethoven<\/a><\/strong> syndrome, with maybe some of Schubert<\/a><\/strong> thrown in.\u00a0<\/p>

Murder schemes, all-night drinking, saucy shenanigans: 15 reckless and rebellious composers<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul>
Yet if this is the lurking caricature of an artist, what do we do with the peacock figure of Lord Berners, the fastidious British composer, writer, painter and all-round eccentric aristocrat? He doesn\u2019t fit the picture at all. Born in 1883 as Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt, he ascended to the family\u2019s baronetcy in 1918 when three intervening uncles fell off a bridge after attending a funeral.<\/p>

1927: Lord Berners with Ballets Russes dancers Serge Lifar and Alexandra Danilova in a performance of ‘Triumph of Neptune’, for which Berners wrote the music. Pic: Sasha\/Getty Images – Sasha\/Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure>
Who was Lord Berners?<\/h2>
Well, the above story was what Lord Berners once spread abroad\u2026 but it wasn\u2019t true. But then so many facts about Berners\u2019s life still read like fiction, lifted perhaps from his amusing novels, in one of which, Far from the Madding War<\/em>, our hero pops up as Lord FitzCricket \u2013 a dilettante composer, writer and painter who was \u2018astute enough to realise that, in Anglo-Saxon countries, art is more highly appreciated if accompanied by a certain measure of eccentric publicity\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>
Berners certainly achieved a good deal of that before and after his death in 1950. There are the pigeons he dyed in different colours to prettify the grounds of his estate in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, and chime with the monochrome hues he supposedly chose for specific meals \u2013 pink, say, or blue. There\u2019s the clavichord wedged inside his Rolls Royce, to satisfy urges to compose on the move.<\/p>
There are the pigeons he dyed in different colours to prettify his grounds<\/h6>
There are also the disconcerting masks he wore (\u2018I get very bored with my own face\u2019), or his pet giraffe; and the time he painted a friend\u2019s beloved horse in his drawing room, or jumped at Salvador Dali\u2019s suggestion to put the grand piano in the swimming pool, each black note decorated with a chocolate \u00e9clair.\u00a0<\/p>

<\/div> <\/figure> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Eccentric… but also a true musical talent<\/h3> <p>But if Berners\u2019s creative output consisted solely of memorable remarks and dotty party tricks, he\u2019d quickly be boring to contemplate. Nearly 70 years after his death, he remains significant because his music, modest in size but not in quality, is so satisfyingly individual.<\/p> <p>It certainly delighted <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/igor-stravinsky\">Stravinsky<\/a><\/strong>, who once declared him to be the best 20th-century British composer. It pleased Diaghilev, too (he of the seminal <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/ballets-russes-guide\">Ballets Russes<\/a><\/strong> ballet company), who in 1926 commissioned a ballet from him, <em>The Triumph of Neptune<\/em>.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/best-british-composers\">Best British composers: ranking Britain’s 25 greatest composers (and where to start with each)<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lord Berners : The Triumph of Neptune, Suite from the ballet (1926)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/N5kifiZ0G5Y?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>Berners’s music changed in temper over the years, but the key ingredients, some contradictory, always remained: avant-garde grit meets traditional craftsmanship; cosmopolitan flamboyance runs alongside English reserve; stylistic satire is warmed by affection; and humour comes tinged with nostalgia, sometimes melancholy. If we cherish <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/erik-satie\">Satie<\/a><\/strong>, as we do, we should definitely cherish Lord Berners as well.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/how-satie-liberated-music\">‘His music could have come from another planet’: how French composer Erik Satie liberated music<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/six-best-satie-works\">Six of the best: Satie works<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">An early epiphany<\/h3> <p>Lord Berners’s early years, described in his autobiographical book <em>First Childhood<\/em> and its successors, were not very nourishing. His father, Captain Hugh Tyrwhitt, was mostly absent on naval duties. His mother liked culture in the superficial way common among upper-class Victorians, but saved her real passion for horses and field sports, which tended to bore the young Gerald.<\/p> <p>His own cultural interests went much deeper, and it\u2019s striking how his feelings for music, literature and the visual arts went hand-in-hand from the start. He became fascinated by the look of musical notation on paper, dancing over the staves; also by a book\u2019s tantalising description of <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/richard-wagner\">Wagner<\/a><\/strong>\u2019s operas.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/wagner-ring-cycle\">Greed, lust and corruption: why Wagner\u2019s epic Ring Cycle is still the greatest show on earth<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Polka for Piano Solo\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/f-vYDVxUj1Y?list=OLAK5uy_kYbtWP1gpW2Ioiw4BOP66XkrALCvHqbTI\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>Then, aged 14 or so, he saw the score of<em> <\/em>Wagner’s <em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/works\/guide-wagners-das-rheingold\">Das Rheingold<\/a><\/strong><\/em> in a shop. Bull\u2019s eye. \u2018There they were,\u2019 he later wrote, \u2018the Rhinemaidens swimming about in shimmering semi-quavers, Alberich clambering up from the depths of the Rhine\u2026\u2019\u00a0 He was hooked for life; not on Wagner \u2013 that passion faded, along with any clamour for the grandiose \u2013 but certainly on music and its prime place among the arts.\u00a0<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">‘Call a halt to this stupid cleverness in music’<\/h3> <p>By then Berners was at Eton, wilting under a conventional public school regime. His best education came when his mother cut Eton short and packed him off to France and Germany to develop the linguistic skills required in the diplomatic service, the career path chosen for him. Continental life and culture considerably widened his horizons. In 1909 he began as an attach\u00e9 at the British Embassy in Constantinople.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/best-german-composers\">The best German composers of all time <\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>By 1911 he was in Rome where, after only <em>ad hoc<\/em> instruction, he began to make his name as a composer of gnarled, futuristic piano pieces. Kindly received by Stravinsky and Alfredo Casella, they were not always cherished when they reached audiences at home. The composer Joseph Holbrooke labelled his early music \u2018an insensate din\u2019, while the distinguished critic Ernest Newman thwacked it away in 1919 by announcing that it was high time to \u2018call a halt for this rather stupid sort of cleverness in music\u2019. \u00a0<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Valse Brillante from Valses Bourgeoises - Lord Berners: played by Peter Lawson and Alan MacLean\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/xog2BN99BPM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>When Newman wrote that, the big upheaval of 1918 had just happened: not the end of the First World War, but the metamorphosis of Gerald Tyrwhitt into the 14th Baron Berners, wealthy master of Faringdon House and several country estates. As such, he had no financial need for any career, neither as a diplomat or a professional composer.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Parties, luncheons, surreal soir\u00e9es<\/h3> <p>But he certainly had social responsibilities, generally executed with panache. Into the grounds of Faringdon for parties, luncheons, and surrealistic soir\u00e9es came many of the most fashionable among Europe\u2019s cultural and political \u00e9lite, bastions of the advanced in music, art and literature.<\/p> <p>Among his various friends and associates, Lord Berners could number several of the leading artistic and academic figures of his day. There were, for instance, the scribbling Sitwell siblings, Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, and the politically variegated Mitford sisters, one of whom, Diana, commissioned him to write a \u2018Fascist March\u2019.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2024\/11\/Untitled-design-2024-11-08T092807.231.jpg\" alt=\"Lord Berners horse\" class=\"wp-image-215423\"\/> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> Lord Berners watches Penelope Betjeman leave his home, Faringdon House, with her Arab pony after sitting for a portrait, 4th July 1938. Sitting on the steps are Diana Radclyffe and Robert Heber-Percy, Berners’ partner, known as the ‘Mad Boy’. (Photo by Fox Photos\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images) – Fox Photos\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <p>Other associates include eccentric fashionista Elsa Schiaparelli; acidulous novelist Evelyn Waugh; classicist and wit Maurice Bowra; experimental wordsmith Gertrude Stein, and the inevitable Salvador Dali. All of these, plus many besides, added their own definitive hue to the composer\u2019s already colourful existence.<\/p> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A crammed, complicated life<\/h3> <p>And from 1932 onwards, around and about, there was always Berners\u2019s companion Robert Heber Percy: almost 30 years younger, handsome, a daredevil, nicknamed \u2018The Mad Boy\u2019. What with composing, writing and painting mixed in, alongside bouts of depression, this was a crammed, complicated life.<\/p> <ul class=\"wp-block-list\"> <li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/articles\/music-depression\">Depression and mental illness can inspire extraordinary works of art. Just ask these four great composers<\/a><\/strong><\/li> <\/ul> <p>Some friends were useful subjects for teasing, like the composer <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/walton-william\">William Walton<\/a><\/strong>, the former bright spark who in Berners\u2019s eyes seemed in danger of turning into the new <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/edward-elgar\">Elgar<\/a><\/strong>. Other relationships went through cold spells, as with photographer and designer Cecil Beaton, one of the characters naughtily featured in Berners\u2019s parody lesbian novel, <em>The Girls of Radcliff Hall<\/em>.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2024\/11\/Untitled-design-2024-11-08T085036.812.jpg\" alt=\"Lord Berners, Evelyn Waugh at art exhibition\" class=\"wp-image-215415\"\/> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> Lord Berners (left) with English author Evelyn Waugh (1903 – 1966) and Lady Rosebery at an art exhibition. Pic: Hulton Archive\/Getty Images – Hulton Archive\/Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Berners’s output… small, but distinctive<\/h2> <p>As it drew to a close, according to Heber Percy, Berners continually mused over what he saw as lost chances: \u2018If I hadn\u2019t been asked out to lunch every day I\u2019d have written better music. If I\u2019d been poor I\u2019d have written much better music.\u2019 Had he been a professional composer and nothing else, the volume of his output might well have increased: even with lost or incomplete works added, the catalogue list assembled by the Berners champion Peter Dickinson only stretches to 37 items. But it is questionable whether the music itself would have packed the same originality or offbeat charm. \u00a0<\/p> <p>And it\u2019s not as if the works created \u2013 piano sets, songs, five ballet scores, a one-act opera, music for three films, a handful of short orchestral pieces \u2013 were ever flimsy, undernourished, or \u2018amateur\u2019. He worked hard at his craft, selecting his material, designing and polishing, just as he did with the quiet, clear writing of his books or the best of his delicate landscape paintings (influenced by the French painter <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalgallery.org.uk\/artists\/jean-baptiste-camille-corot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jean-Baptiste-Camille\u00a0Corot<\/a><\/strong>).<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lord Berners: Caprice P\u00e9ruvien (1938)\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/JGfNTtWtMoI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">No other British composer wrote music like this<\/h3> <p>An early avant-garde piano piece like <em>Le Poisson d\u2019Or<\/em> of 1915, Stravinsky\u2019s favourite, might not sound like a jewel; but a jewel it remains with its intricate juggling of repeated phrases, circling round like the goldfish in its bowl. No other British contemporary composer wrote music like this, or approached the dissonant bombardments of the extraordinary <em>Fragments psychologiques<\/em> \u2013 music brutally chiselled, without one wasted note.<\/p> <p>He was equally unique in his sophisticated satire and humour, famously audible in the <em>Trois petites marches fun\u00e8bres <\/em>of 1916, a set topped by gleeful cascades illustrating the funeral of a wealthy aunt. Every work from his years in Rome established a distinctive musical personality: quizzical, unsentimental, in love with repeated patterns but also disruptions and shifting keys; mindful of Stravinsky and <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.classical-music.com\/features\/composers\/arnold-schoenberg\">Schoenberg<\/a><\/strong>; cosmopolitan, not English.\u00a0<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lord Berners - Funeral March for a Rich Aunt (HQ)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7NcVbEN_btk?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Berners’s ballet music: charming, ironic, chromatic<\/h3> <p>As Faringdon replaced Rome, and Tyrwhitt became Berners, surface changes occurred. The 1919 <em>Fantaisie espagnole<\/em>, a friendly parody of Spanish colourings and rhythms, started the process. The pivotal work, however, is the Diaghilev ballet, <em>The Triumph of Neptune<\/em>: a triumph, as well, of reaching out to wider audiences, and putting his gifts for parody and pastiche \u2013 his musical masks \u2013 to dramatic use.<\/p> <p>Berners was made for the ballet world. Four other theatre scores followed, crowned by the unique <em>A Wedding Bouquet <\/em>(1937), spattered with sung words by Gertrude Stein with a nod in the background to Stravinsky\u2019s <em>Les Noces<\/em>. The ballet music, charming, ironic, peppered with characterisically cockeyed chromatics, continued into the 1940s, Berners\u2019s most difficult decade. He felt the war badly and felt his world collapsing, along with his health. By the time of his death, even his close friends could recognise that he\u2019d outlived his time.\u00a0<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"900\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2024\/11\/Untitled-design-2024-11-08T085314.808.jpg\" alt=\"Lord Berners and Gertrude Stein\" class=\"wp-image-215416\"\/> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> 1937: Lord Berners with American author Gertrude Stein in front of a poster for his ballet ‘Wedding Bouquet’, based on a play by Stein. Pic: Gordon Anthony\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images – Gordon Anthony\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <p>But the music has not. Nor have his books, all back in print. His spirit of gaiety and personal accoutrements still linger too. Only this April remnants of his Faringdon possessions went before the auctioneer\u2019s hammer. These included a four-poster bed with fancy glass pillars; a gramophone<br\/> with a gaudy green horn; Stravinsky\u2019s music proofs; decorous watercolours; Victorian wax animals; rococo armchairs. This wasn\u2019t Beethoven\u2019s world, or Schubert\u2019s. But it still produced art that matters.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"950\" height=\"800\" src=\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/43\/2024\/11\/Untitled-design-2024-11-08T092322.805.jpg\" alt=\"Les Sir\u00e8nes Margot Fonteyn Frederick Ashton Cecil Beaton Lord Berners\" class=\"wp-image-215422\"\/> <figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"> 1946: English ballet dancer Margot Fonteyn (1919 – 1991) in ‘Les Sirenes’, with Robert Helpmann and Frederick Ashton. Music by Lord Berners, choreography by Frederick Ashton, designs by Cecil Beaton. (Photo by Baron\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images) – Baron\/Hulton Archive\/Getty Images <\/figcaption> <\/figure> <h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">How to get into Lord Berners’s strange and captivating world<\/h2> <p>Until the 1970s, the small field of Berners recordings was dominated by Thomas Beecham\u2019s two accounts of the suite from <em>The Triumph of Neptune<\/em>: music that still provides the friendliest entry point for Berners\u2019s delightful art. There\u2019s a spirited 1986 account of the suite by Barry Wordsworth and Liverpool forces (Cala), with sparkling earlier orchestral scores in support; the complete ballet is available from David Lloyd Jones in the series of Berners CDs issued some 20 years ago by Marco Polo.<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lord Berners : Fantaisie espagnole for orchestra (1918-19)\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/fg9BmsH4l5s?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <p>Others, conducted by Kenneth Alwyn, offer convenient if not stellar accounts of his later ballets, including the idiosyncratic <em>A Wedding Bouquet<\/em>. For the more avant-garde core of Berners\u2019s output, Heritage\u2019s two-disc <em>Lord Berners Collection<\/em> is indispensable, uniting the contents of two splendid surveys of his piano music and songs from Peter and Meriel Dickinson (1977) and Felicity Lott and Peter Lawson (1996).<\/p> <figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube\"> <div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\"> <iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Lord Berners - A Wedding Bouquet\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ltPNrkEoe7E?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen=\"\"\/> <\/div> <\/figure> <h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Berners books<\/h3> <p>Nor should you forget Berners\u2019s books. The most immediately beguiling are <em>First Childhood<\/em>, <em>A Distant Prospect<\/em>, <em>The Chateau of R\u00e9senlieu <\/em>and <em>Dresden<\/em>, four small, drily observant and witty autobiographical volumes. Sample sentence: \u2018The English are seldom at their best at breakfast time and when they are it is even more depressing.\u2019 The same American publisher, Turtle Point Press, also offers his <em>Collected Tales and Fantasies<\/em>, a handy bundle of six entertaining short novels, variously concerned with a camel, a composer\u2019s problem finishing a symphony, and Cleopatra\u2019s nose.\u00a0<\/p> <p>Reading about Berners\u2019s life and circle is also essential. Mark Amory\u2019s <em>Lord Berners: The Last Eccentric<\/em> is an elegant, sympathetic biography. Sofka Zinovieff\u2019s lavishly appointed <em>The Bad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother and Me<\/em>, a wider family history, enjoyably expands our knowledge (sometimes alarmingly, too). And there are multiple insights in Peter Dickinson\u2019s <em>Lord Berners Composer, Writer, Painter<\/em>, a wonderful compendium of comment, facts, facts, fascinating interviews, and 32 colour pages of Berners\u2019s art.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n<hr class=\"no-tts wp-block-separator\"\/>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Published: Friday, 08 November 2024 at 10:24 AM In 2018 we\u2019re far from the heyday of the 19th-century Romantic age, when the image formed of the great artist as a tormented genius. When it comes to classical composers, though, old notions can still linger at the back of our minds. 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