H. C. Robbins Landon; Times UK obit
Hyfler/Rosner
November 25, 2009
H. C. Robbins Landon: musicologist and author
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6930238.ece
H. C. Robbins Landon was in every sense a scholar on a
generous scale. Amply proportioned physically, vastly
energetic in his Haydn researches across half a dozen
European countries, indefatigable as author and musical
editor, barely stoppable in the flow of his conversation,
enthusiastic to both students and radio and television
audiences, "Robbie" was one of the most important but also
most popular musicologists of his time.
If the popularity earned him some suspicion, especially in
the academic circles of his native US, he cared little and
was happy to live his life in various European countries and
work especially with British students.
Howard Chandler Robbins Landon was born in Boston,
Massachusetts, in 1926, the son of William Grinnell Landon
(of Huguenot descent) and Dorothea Robbins. When he was 2,
the family moved to an estate in Lancaster, where he grew up
in comfortable rural circumstances.
An early enthusiasm for music survived somewhat erratic
schooling, and at the age of 13 he encountered the composer
who was to absorb the major part of his musical energies,
Haydn. Astonished to find how much music Haydn had written
and how little most of it was known, he sought out the great
Haydn scholar Karl Geiringer at Boston University and
announced that he had arrived as a student. Geiringer taught
him much, especially the importance of combining musicology
with music-making.
Taking a position as correspondent for a radio station in
1947, Robbins Landon paid his own fare to Europe and made
his way to Vienna, where he was able to combine his
obligatory two years' service in the US Army with writing,
performing and exploring the city's musical life.
Once back in Boston, he helped to form the Haydn Society
with the aim of making records and publishing a new complete
edition. A legacy from an uncle in 1949 enabled him to
return to Vienna, where he threw himself into an ambitious
recording programme. The immediate success of this won
commercial support, and he was able to embark on exploring
libraries for authentic or long-lost musical material to
support both recordings and editions.
Robbins Landon's energy in pursuing his quest for Haydn
material became legendary. Difficulties in Iron Curtain
travel were brushed aside, the confidence of bureaucrats and
diplomats won, castles, monasteries and churches besieged
with requests for permission to investigate long-ignored
cupboards, organ lofts or basements. He was tireless in
persuading owners, abbots and officials to open up for him;
and to arrive in a library he had recently explored was to
encounter a trail of exhausted but respectful librarians. In
these enterprises he was often helped by his wife, Christa
Fuhrmann, a distinguished scholar in her own right as
Christa Landon. (Their marriage was later dissolved.)
The fruits of his researches were both practical and
scholarly. The Symphonies of Joseph Haydn (1955), a landmark
in 18th-century musical studies, discussed all 107 works on
the basis of accurately established scores, and set them in
context. In 1956 he broadcast four ambitious programmes for
the BBC that demonstrated gifts as a communicator that were
later to be amply displayed in many television programmes.
He went on to draw attention to Haydn's Masses and the still
less well-known or widely regarded operas in new editions,
also being responsible for recordings that won public
enthusiasm. In 1957 he began writing for The Times,
initially as "A Correspondent" or later "Our Special
Correspondent", guarding this anonymity in a sometimes
resentful Vienna while privately dropping it when the
newspaper's prestige could help him in Iron Curtain
countries.
Moving to Italy in 1960 with Else Radant, whom he had
married in 1957, he settled in a large, beautiful, haunted
Tuscan villa, where he continued to write with undiminished
energy. A stream of scholarly articles poured from him,
always on the classical period but embracing Mozart and
Beethoven as well as Haydn. He continued to travel widely,
while spending the winter months in Vienna, and to
contribute scholarly articles to many journals.
He was also involved in many significant performances, such
as the production of Haydn operas at the Holland Festival,
and from 1969 to 1973 a complete cycle of all Haydn's
symphonies recorded for Decca by Antal Dorati. He
reconstructed or completed various Haydn fragments or
unfinished works, so idiomatically as sometimes to confuse
other scholars as to where Haydn's work stopped and his own
began. From 1969 to 1978 he returned to America annually for
semesters of teaching and lecturing. When financial and
other considerations made it necessary for him to sell the
house at Buggiano Castello in 1975 and move back to Vienna,
he concentrated on what was to be one of his major
achievements, the five volumes of his massive Haydn
biography published between 1976 and 1980.
Robbins Landon had also formed a connection with University
College Cardiff, as honorary professorial fellow, from 1971
to 1978, when he became the John Bird Professor of Music.
Though he received no salary, he was provided with
accommodation and conditions that enabled him to continue
research and teaching, as well as participating in a Haydn
Festival at Bridgnorth, Shropshire. However, tax
considerations compelled him to make another move, and in
1984 he settled finally in France at the Ch�teau de
Foncoussi�res in the Tarn. He continued writing, his
interests turning in particular towards Mozart, on whom he
published three very successful books between 1983 and
1991 - a slim volume Mozart and the Masons (1983), 1791:
Mozart's Last Year (1988) and Mozart: The Golden Years
(1989) - as well as Handel and his World (1984). In 1988 he
was also co-author with David Wyn Jones of Haydn: His Life
and Music. In 1990 he collaborated with his friend the
writer and broadcaster John Julius Norwich in presenting
Maestro, a five-part television series about Venice's rich
musical heritage from Gabrieli to Stravinsky which resulted
in the publication of Five Centuries of Music in Venice
(1991).
Among many honours that came Robbins Landon's way were an
honorary fellowship of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and
honorary doctorates of music from Boston University, the
University of Bristol and Queen's University, Belfast. He
was also awarded the Verdienstkreuz f�r Kunst und
Wissenschaft by the Austrian Government in 1972 and the Gold
Medal of the City of Vienna in 1987. A festschrift for his
70th birthday in 1996 included a bibliography of 516
publications, including 28 books. In 1999 he published Horns
in High C, an autobiography that he aptly described as "a
memoir of musical discoveries and adventures".
Robbins Landon's final, long-term companion was Marie-No�lle
Raynal-Bechetoille.
H. C. Robbins Landon, musicologist and author, was born on
March 6, 1926. He died on November 20, 2009, aged 83