Fritz Hart facts for kids

Fritz Bennicke Hart (born February 11, 1874 – died July 9, 1949) was a talented English composer, conductor, and teacher. He also wrote novels, though they were never published. Fritz Hart spent many years living and working in both Australia and Hawaii.

Early Life and Music Beginnings

Fritz Hart was born in a place called Brockley, which was in Kent, England, but is now part of London. He was the oldest child of Frederick and Jemima Hart. Both of his parents loved music.

From the young age of six, Fritz sang in the church choir that his father led. His mother was a piano teacher, so music was always around him. He spent three years singing as a chorister at Westminster Abbey, a very famous church, learning from Sir Frederick Bridge.

In 1893, Fritz went to the Royal College of Music. There, he met other students who would become famous composers, like Gustav Holst, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and John Ireland. At one student concert in 1896, they even played instruments together in a fun way: Hart played the cymbals, Vaughan Williams played the triangle, Holst played the trombone, and Ireland also joined in.

Even though composing wasn't his main subject, he learned a lot from Charles Villiers Stanford, another important composer.

After college, Hart traveled with a theater group. He wrote music for plays like Julius Caesar and Romeo and Juliet. He even conducted his own music for Romeo and Juliet. Working with these touring companies taught him a lot about different types of stage music, such as operettas, musical comedies, and operas. He got married in 1904, and his first child was born the next year.

Life in Australia

In May 1909, Fritz Hart sailed to Australia on a ship called R.M.S. China. He was part of a group hired to perform an operetta called King of Cadonia. His first contract was for 12 months, but he ended up staying for four years!

In 1913, Hart and another composer, Alfred Hill, started a group called the Australian Opera League. It didn't last very long, but on August 3, 1914, they performed Hart's own opera, Pierrette, for the first time.

Hart became a teacher at the Albert Street Conservatorium in Melbourne. Later, he was appointed director of the Conservatorium.

A famous singer named Nellie Melba started her singing school there in 1915. She and her students helped shape Hart's work as a composer. He was in charge of their musical training, and many of her students became internationally known. After Hart passed away, the school was renamed the Melba Conservatorium in 1956.

In 1924, Fritz Hart was recognized as a Fellow of the Royal College of Music. He also became a conductor for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra (MSO) in 1927. After the death of the previous conductor, Alberto Zelman, Hart became the permanent conductor in 1928.

In 1932, the Melbourne University Conservatorium Orchestra and the MSO joined together. Hart shared the conducting duties with Bernard Heinze. In 1929, the MSO became the first Australian orchestra to play concerts outdoors. These "Popular Concerts" took place in Melbourne's Alexandra Gardens, with Hart conducting. A generous donation from Sidney Myer made these concerts possible.

Hart was also a highly respected teacher. Some of his students who became well-known composers include Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Margaret Sutherland, and Hubert Clifford.

After 1937, Hart only returned to Melbourne once. This was in July 1945 for a special celebration of the Albert Street Conservatorium. During this visit, he conducted some of his own musical pieces.

Two portraits of Fritz Hart exist. One was painted by Max Meldrum and is in the National Gallery of Australia. Another portrait, painted by A. D. Colquhoun, is kept at the National Library of Australia.

Life in Hawaii

In December 1931, Fritz Hart was invited to be a guest conductor for the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra in Hawaii. He enjoyed it so much that he returned every year, staying from December to April.

Hart's first wife passed away in 1935. In September 1937, he married an American woman named Marvel Allison. That same year, he became the permanent conductor of the Honolulu Symphony Orchestra. He also became the first professor of music at the University of Hawaii. He held both of these important positions until he retired in 1942. However, he continued to conduct the Symphony Orchestra until he passed away.

Fritz Hart died on July 9, 1949, in Honolulu, Hawaii, due to a heart condition. He was cremated and is remembered by his son and his second wife.

His Music

Fritz Hart was especially good at writing music for voices. He wrote 23 operas in total. Most of these (18) were composed while he was in Melbourne, Australia, and four were written in Hawaii. Seven of his operas were performed in Australia during his lifetime.

He was very interested in writers from the "Celtic Twilight" movement, which focused on Irish myths and folklore. He used stories and poems by famous writers like W. B. Yeats, J. M. Synge, and Augusta Gregory for his operas. He also set texts by Shakespeare, and even parts of the Bible, to music.

Hart wrote an amazing 514 songs! About half of these were composed in Melbourne, and the rest were split between England and Hawaii. He also wrote four large pieces for choirs, as well as other songs for groups of singers without instruments. He loved the poetry of Robert Herrick and set 126 of his poems to music. His choral works also used words by poets like Shelley and Walt Whitman.

He also composed a symphony in 1934, along with 14 other orchestral pieces. He wrote many works for smaller groups of instruments and for solo instruments, including two string quartets and three violin sonatas.

Here are some of his selected operas:

• The Land of Heart's Desire (1914)
• Riders to the Sea (1915)
• Deirdre of the Sorrows (1916)
• Ruth and Naomi (1917, Melbourne)
• Malvolio (1918, Melbourne)
• The Fantasticks (1919, Melbourne)
• Deirdre in Exile (1926, Melbourne)
• The Woman who Laughed at Faery (1929, Melbourne)
• St George and the Dragon (1931, Melbourne)
• Even Unto Bethlehem (1943, Honolulu)

Some of his choral works include:

• New Year's Eve
• Salve Caput Cruentatum (1925)
• O Gloriosa Domina (1925)
• Natural Magic
• Joll's Credo (1934)

His Writing

When he was a student at the Royal College of Music, Fritz Hart wrote poetry. Some of his poems were even set to music by his friend Gustav Holst. Holst used Hart's words for two unpublished operas, The Revoke (1895) and The Idea (1898), as well as for a partsong and a children's chorus.

While living in Melbourne, Hart published a book of his own poems called Appassionata: Songs of Youth and Love. Later, when he was in Hawaii, he wrote 23 novels, but none of them were ever published.