Ronald Senator & Miriam Brickman

RONALD SENATOR BORN LONDON, APRIL 17, 1926. DIED NEW YORK, APRIL 29, 2015, AGED 89

THE COMPOSER and educator Ronald Senator, who died with his wife, the concert pianist Miriam Brickman in an overnight fire at their Yonkers, New York home, was best known for his Holocaust Requiem, a powerful oratorio based on children’s poems and diaries from Terezín (Theriesenstadt) for cantor, children’s choir, choir and orchestra.

It was first performed at Canterbury Cathedral in 1986, under the joint auspices of the B’nai B’rith, the United Nations, the West German Government and the Council of Christians and Jews. The late Rabbi Hugo Gryn, himself a Holocaust survivor, blew the shofar.

Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize following its New York première in 1990 under Lukas Foss, it subsequently formed the centrepiece at the 1995 Terezín 50th anniversary commemoration in the presence of the President of the Czech Parliament, with worldwide media coverage. The couple were well- known figures in the London Jewish music scene ever since the B’nai B’rith (later JMI) festivals in the 1980s and 1990s, giving concerts in London as recently as 2010.

Senator had a long career as a composer, publisher, author and educator. He attended Hertford College of Oxford University, where he studied composition with Egon Wellesz, and where he began a series of publications under the Counterpoint imprint that featured the work of authors such as Paul Nash and Franz Kafka, as well as future notables, including Lawrence Durrell and Lucian Freud.

Senator’s Holocaust Requiem, also known as Kaddish for Terezín, was written both in memory of his first wife, Dita Branicky, an Auschwitz survivor who died in 1981, and the children of Terezín. Other performances of this work include New York in 1990, Moscow in 1993, and Rome one month after the 9/11 attacks in 2001, at the Concert

Composer, writer and educator Ronald Senator: his Holocaust Requiem gave voice to victims and survivors for Peace and for Interfaith Dialogue.

He studied with Arnold Cooke at London University from 1957–60, and became a a lecturer then senior lecturer in music between 1960 and 1981. Senator earned his doctorate there, and directed the Social Science Research Council’s Programme, which involved 60 teachers and explored the prob-

Miriam Brickman: adventurous pianist of warmth, flair and virtuosity lems of teaching music in a multicultural society. He published his theory of the universal roots of all music in his book The Gaia of Music, linked to his work in music education, and the acclaimed autobiographical Requiem Letters (Boyars 1995), a tribute to his first wife, a survivor of Auschwitz.

In 1981, Senator was appointed Professor of Composition at the Guildhall School of Music; he also held visiting professorships at universities in Australia, the United States, and Canada. He composed six operas and musicals, as well as chamber and piano music, much of it performed and recorded by his wife. They included Trotsky in New York, with a libretto by Anthony Burgess, and his chamber works were often composed for eminent colleagues such as the singers Sybil Michelow, Jane Manning and Willard White, the violist Rivka Golani, and the clarinetist Stanley Drucker.

Senator also composed several operas and musicals for children, including A Cartload of Shoes, an oratorio with words by Brecht and Primo Levi. A founder member of the Montserrat Composers’ Association of Sacred Music, he was also founding director of the National Association of Music Theatre (UK).

Concerts devoted entirely to Senator’s music were given in Sydney (1978), and in New York, London, Moscow and St Petersburg between 1990 and 2006.

He was the author of several books, including Requiem Letters, which was described by Publishers Weekly as “a deeply moving and haunting autobiographical memoir”.

In his later years, Senator was passionately devoted to writing poetry, stories, and memoirs, which he selfpublished in a series of books. Ranging from autobiography to science fiction, they expressed a zeal for life and ideas that belied his advanced years. The couple married in 1986 and had no children

Ronald is survived by three nieces and a nephew, several cousins, and many dear friends.

MIRIAM BRICKMAN BORNMASSACHUSETTS,DECEMBER6, 1933. DIED APRIL 29, 2015, AGED 81

THE AMERICAN pianist Miriam Brickman died with her husband, composer and educator Ronald Senator, in a fire at their home in Yonkers New York. A graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, she was a chamber musician and soloist with leading orchestras, including the Moscow Philharmonic and the Brooklyn Philharmonic, under the batons of such conductors as Maxim Shostakovich and Lukas Foss. She performed at major concert halls worldwide including four South-east Asian tours and four Russian tours.

In addition to international radio and TV broadcasts she recorded several CDs, including music by her husband, Ronald Senator, and works written for her by contemporary composers. The couple dlivided their time between London and New York.

I recall with fondness their many concerts in London, often mixing words and music, such as a lecture and recital on Holocaust themes, in which Ronald Senator radiated a special warmth and gentle manner, always wise and searching, complemented by intensely moving interpretations by Miriam Brickman.

Her adventurous programmes for the B’nai B’rith (later JMI) Jewish Music Festivals in the 1980s and 1990s championed unfamiliar composer such as Auschwitz survivor Simon Laks, and London-based Czech composer Antonin Tucapsky.

Her flair and virtuosity were to be seen in fiery accounts of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue or Ernest Bloch’s Poems of the Sea, which she last played in the Bloch Jubilee Festival held in Cambridge in 2007, interspersing the music with readings from the Walt Whitman poems that inspired it.

More recently the couple performed together on cruises including on the QE2, and Miriam Brickman played in homes, hospitals and prisons. One prisoner admitted he would have committed suicide but for her.

Miriam and her husband were generous and gregarious and enjoyed a wide artistic circle, hosting concerts and encouraging young musicians. She is survived by her twin brother, Arthur, and 10 nephews and nieces.