Gaston Borch

Borch was born in Guînes, Pas de Calais, France. His mother, Emma Hennequin, a pianist and soprano, was a friend and pupil and with whom she is known to have performed. His father, Christopher Wolner Borch, was Norwegian. Borch's sister Frida was also an accomplished pianist. ==Career==

Borch played the cello. He studied for three years with Massenet and also at the Valand School of Fine Arts in Sweden. During the 1890s he spent time variously as conductor of the Christiania Orchestral Society and the Central Theatre in Christiana (now Oslo), and was also a visiting conductor in various European countries. His reported conducting credits include the Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra; Brussels Opera Orchestra; Société Symphonique, Lille; Crystal Palace Orchestra, London; Harmonie Royale, Antwerp; Gewerbehaus Orchestra, Dresden; and the Musikforeningen of Bergen (1898–1899). In 1901 Borch's patent application for a device to amplify the vibrations from a piano indicates he was living at the time in Duluth, Minnesota. He spent some time in Europe in 1906 as conductor of the Lausanne Symphony Orchestra. He conducted the Grieg Jubilee Concerts in New York in 1907. By 1925 he was sufficiently prominent in the field to be described as one of "the three 'B's' of picture music", along with Maurice Baron and Irénée Bergé—"a formidable trio of expert writers". In 1920 Borch was reported as attempting to establish a grand opera company in Boston, Massachusetts. Borch returned to Europe in 1921, settling in Sweden, where he was an arranger and musical contributor to the score of The Saga of Gosta Berling (1924), starring Greta Garbo. On 1 January 1925, the first day of radio broadcasting in Sweden, Borch led the Skandia Cinema Orchestra in Sweden's first broadcast of orchestral music. ==Personal life==

Borch married Rose Alice Gluckauf in July 1900 in St. Paul, Minnesota. His wife was a soprano who had previously taught at the Raff Conservatory in Frankfurt, Germany, and who studied with Julius Stockhausen and Jenny Hahn. She taught music at what is now Millikin University in Decatur, Illinois from 1913 until 1922, when she filed for divorce from her husband on the grounds of desertion and bigamy. Gaston Borch died in Stockholm in 1926. ==Selected works==

Opera • Silvio (1897), a one-act opera premiered on 7 March 1898, with libretto by Borch and O. A. Smith—a sequel to Cavalleria Rusticana • Ostenfor Sol, a "fairy opera" ==Publications==

• Practical Manual of Instrumentation. The Boston Music Company, 1918. ==References==