The Mad Boy, Lord Berners, My Grandmother, and Me by Sofka Zinovieff Page A

all), the composer Gavin Bryars describes him as one of the few truly original British composers of the twentieth century. ‘In his music, Gerald Berners is true to himself. It is a key to his character and his emotions.’
    The fact that this young, unknown English amateur was supported by leading professionals as dynamic as Stravinsky and the Italian composer Alfredo Casella was very encouraging. The former described him as ‘an amateur, but in the best – literal – sense, I would not consider him amateurish, as we now use the word’.49 And in 1917, the musical journal the Chesterian revealed that M. Igor Stravinsky had recently written to them saying that ‘Mr Tyrwhitt is not only a composer of unique talent, but also a very typical and very representative character of his race.’50
    Technically an amateur, Gerald was professional enough to have his Spanish parody, Fantaisie Espagnole, performed at the British premiere of The Rite of Spring in 1921, with Stravinsky present. And it was a major triumph that Diaghilev chose him as the composer for a ballet to be performed ‘in accordance with Lord Rothermere’s wish’, in London in 1926.51 The Triumph of Neptune was choreographed by George Balanchine, had a story by Gerald’s friend Sacheverell Sitwell, and took pantomime and a playful Victorian aesthetic as its inspiration. There are not only sailors, policemen and street-hawkers but also flying fairies, ogres and goddesses. Hornpipes and polkas are danced next to London Bridge and then in the Ogres’ Palace and the Frozen Forest. Gerald’s music combined charming dance pieces and comic burlesque with a characteristic hint of irony, and at one performance Diaghilev was said to have laughed ‘till the tears ran down his face’.52 The first night was a great success; flowers were showered on the entire cast as well as Gerald and Sacheverell.53
    F GERALD HAD BEEN BROUGHT UP in the provinces, oppressed by the need to be manly and surrounded by horses and dogs and people who were traditional and conservative, he had left all that behind him. He had become a European: he spoke and read widely in French, German and Italian (even his music had foreign titles); and he was a modernist as interested in the ‘free atonality’ of Schoenberg as in the romance of Wagner or the immediacy of popular music. If not quite an enfant terrible, then he certainly knew a good number of them and used some of their techniques. In his memoir of childhood, he wrote, ‘In those days the Three R’s, Russians, Radicals and Roman Catholics, inspired many Victorians with an unholy terror.’ His mother had opted for a Swiss governess to teach the young Gerald French, rather than ‘confide a little protestant soul to a Papist’. He must have found it deeply satisfying to see how he had surrounded himself in Rome with these three Rs, with his friendships and collaborations with Stravinsky and Diaghilev, not to mention his innumerable Italian and French friends who belonged to the Catholic Church.
    By the time Gramophone magazine surveyed some public figures about their favourite music in 1926, Gerald was able to give witty responses that showed the daring yet unpretentious breadth of his interests and how far he had travelled from his childhood:
    My favourite song is ‘The Last Rose of Summer’; my favourite composer Bach; my favourite tune is the third of Schoenberg’s Six Pieces, because it is so obscure that one is never likely to grow tired of it (which you must admit is as good a reason for preferring a tune as any other); and if by ‘singer’ you mean any kind of singer then the one I prefer is Little Tich [a tiny comic music-hall performer]. But, on the other hand, if you mean merely concert singers, please substitute Clara Butt [an imposingly tall and loud contralto].54
    Gerald’s composition ‘L’Uomo dai baffi’ (’The Man with the Moustache’) was performed by Casella at a marionette show in the Teatro dei Piccoli in