RONALD SENATOR

'...a very distinguished composer...' (THE NEW YORK TIMES)

Ronald Senator studied composition at Oxford with Egon Wellesz, the formidable disciple of Arnold Schonberg, and has since established an international reputation both as a composer and, like Schonberg, as a leading innovator in musical education.  Dr. Senator has been a Professor of Music at London University, at the Guildhall School, and at the Europe University and visiting professor at many universities in the USA, Canada and Australia.  He has toured widely under the auspices of the British Council, conducting his own works in many countries and was a founding member of the Montserrat Composers' Association, founding Director of the National Association of Music Theatre, and is an executive of the Composers' Guild.

Senator's radical methods in education, which are based on the universal operations by which all music is formed, were developed at London University, where he directed a team of some hundred teachers and researchers, in a program sponsored by the National Research Development Corporation, which now includes computer software.

The composer's output so far has been six musicals and operas, oratorios and cantatas, Chamber music, and Orchestral music.  The HOLOCAUST REQUIEM, which is in this hire catalogue, was written as a memorial to the million children who perished in the Nazi Holocaust. Truly ecumenical in its message, when premiered at Canterbury Cathedral in 1986 it was under the auspices of the United Nations, the B'nai Brith, the German Government, and the International Council of Christians and Jews.  The event was reported worldwide and broadcast on TV and several times on the BBC, with regular broadcasts still happening in New York.  After its premiere in New York in 1990 it was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.  The performance by the Moscow Philharmonic in October 1992 was attended by the Metropolitan of the Orthodox Russian Church and other Christian sects in Russia.  This was subsequently made into a video for screening in the West and in Russia.  Performances of this REQUIEM are planned for 1994 in Frankfurt, Tel Aviv, and possibly Prague and Sydney.   

Senator's art has been nourished by worldwide experience and his outreach is to the whole world - he is Lengnick's new Renaissance man! 

SOME WORKS 

Orchestral/Choral

Holocaust Requiem (formerly Kaddish for Terezin) 

Opera

Insect Play (lib. Ursula Vaughan Williams), The Wolf of Gubbio 

Piano

Sonata, Spring Changes, Mobiles, Seaside Holiday, Don Quixote, The Toy Box 

Vocal

Cabaret, A Poet to His Beloved, Greenwood and Paradise, Sun’s in the East

Solo Instrument

Polish Suite (violin or viola or ‘cello)
Tarantella for solo flute