Early life Robert Russell Bennett was born in 1894 to a musical family in
Kansas City, Missouri. His father, George Bennett, played
violin in the
Kansas City Symphony and
trumpet at the Grand Opera House, while his mother, May, worked as a
pianist and teacher. She taught Bennett piano, while his father taught him violin and trumpet. The Bennett family moved to a farm in
Freeman, Missouri, when Bennett was four, to speed his recovery from
polio. He graduated as the Valedictorian of Freeman High School. By that time, he had demonstrated his aptitude for music and his remarkable ear by picking out the finale of Beethoven's
"Moonlight" Sonata on the white keys of the piano. By his early adolescence, his father often called upon him to play any given instrument as a utility member or substitute player within Bennett's Band in
Freeman. In his autobiography, Bennett recalled finding a
ragtime tune on the piano at age ten and being informed by his mother that such music was trash—this lesson taught him to be, as he called it, a "life-long musical snob". His mother also taught his academic lessons until he was twelve due to health concerns; his health remained an obstacle when Bennett later decided to join the
Army.
Early career After completing his
secondary education, Bennett moved to Kansas City to be a freelance musician, performing throughout the city as well as with the symphony. He also began his first musical training outside of a home environment with Danish composer-conductor Dr.
Carl Busch. Busch taught him
counterpoint and
harmony until 1916, when Bennett took his savings and moved to
New York City. He eventually found a job as a
copyist with
G. Schirmer while continuing to freelance and to build a network of contacts, particularly with the New York Flute Club. In 1917 he volunteered for the Army. Although he yearned for an active role, his youthful health woes caused the
draft board to mark him for limited service. However, he successfully appealed this classification and became the director of the 70th Infantry Band at
Camp Funston, Kansas. He valiantly attempted to improve the "disgraceful" musical standards of the unit, but found his efforts thwarted when the
Spanish flu swept through the post in 1918. Upon his discharge several months later, he returned to New York. His relationship with
Winifred Edgerton Merrill, a society matron who had been the first woman to receive a doctorate from
Columbia University, led to rewards both financial and emotional—she had been one of his first employers in the city, and she introduced him to her daughter Louise, whom he married on December 26, 1919. Their daughter, Jean, was born a year later. Bennett later studied
composition in Paris with
Nadia Boulanger 1926-1929.
Broadway arranger His career as an arranger began to blossom in 1919 while he was employed by T.B. Harms, a prominent publishing firm for Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. Dependable yet creative within the confines of formulaic arranging, Bennett soon branched out as an orchestrator and arranger for Broadway productions, collaborating particularly with
Jerome Kern. Although Bennett would work with several of the top names on Broadway and in film including
George Gershwin,
Cole Porter, and
Kurt Weill, his collaborations with
Jerome Kern and
Richard Rodgers stand out both for sheer volume and for highlighting different facets of an arranger's relationship with a composer. Bennett described his own philosophy: "The perfect arrangement is one that manages to be most 'becoming' to the melody at all points." ;With Jerome Kern Kern's working relationship with Bennett serves as a clear illustration of this point. For example, when orchestrating
Show Boat, Bennett would work from sketches laid out quite specifically by Kern, which included melodies, rough parts, and harmonies. The original sketches appear remarkably close to Bennett's completed scores; as one scholar puts it, "Bennett didn't have much to make up." ;With Richard Rodgers In contrast, Rodgers allowed Bennett a greater degree of autonomy. The pair had first collaborated in 1927, but the majority of their partnership occurred in the 1940s and 1950s. While scoring
Oklahoma! in 1943, Bennett proved himself invaluable by reworking an elaborate and possibly out-of-place selection into the title song. His most legendary contribution to the partnership, however, occurred during the scoring of the television series
Victory at Sea (1952–53). Richard Rodgers contributed twelve basic themes for the series, with three earmarked for the first episode; Rodgers's
Victory at Sea manuscripts total seventeen pages. The Rodgers themes total about twelve minutes of music, and are employed by Bennett in a bit more than two hours of the series' scoring, which amounts to more than 11-1/2 hours of orchestra music. Rodgers commented on Bennett's
Victory at Sea contributions: "I give him [the credit] without undue modesty, for making my music sound better than it was." ;With George Gershwin With
Gershwin and his Broadway musical scores, Bennett would work from annotated short scores (dual folios for piano with general suggestions for which instruments would play what.) He worked very closely as
Gershwin's assistant during the period in which Gershwin composed his score for the 1937
Fred Astaire-
Ginger Rogers film,
Shall We Dance, often spending late nights with Gershwin rushing to complete orchestrations for deadlines. The next year Gershwin died. Later Bennett would be turned to yet again as a definitive orchestrator of Gershwin's other works, both on
Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture and the orchestral medley, "Gershwin in Hollywood".
Other commissions Sergei Rachmaninoff was engaged in writing a 2-piano reduction of his
Piano Concerto No. 4, containing his final revisions, when death overtook him. Robert Russell Bennett completed the reduction at the request of Rachmaninoff's widow.
Musical profile Schooled by his mother to disdain popular music, Robert Russell Bennett found the dichotomy between his serious compositions and his arranging work to be a lifelong struggle. In spite of his prolific output, which included the opera
Maria Malibran, more than seven symphonies, a large variety of chamber works, and at least five concertos, his reputation today as a classical composer rests primarily on two oft-recorded pieces, the
Suite of Old American Dances and
Symphonic Songs for Band. This may be attributed both to the modesty so characteristic of Bennett and to the
Eastman Wind Ensemble recordings which popularized them. In his composing, Bennett brought to bear his considerable talent for orchestration as well as a gift for conceiving melodies and harmonic structure in his head; longtime Bennett copyist Adele Combattente (of Chappell Music) confirmed his ability to write parts in score order, as opposed to filling in leftover parts and doublings as he completed primary melodic lines. He nearly always scored directly in ink, rather than pencil. Many of Bennett's original works came about through direct commission; the
1939 World's Fair,
CBS radio ("Hollywood" for orchestra), and the
League of Composers ("Mademoiselle" for the
Goldman Band) provide prominent examples. A significant number of commissions were initiated by
Robert Austin Boudreau, a former member of the Goldman Band, and his
American Wind Symphony. The AWS traveled via American rivers and waterways, inspiring several works with nautical themes, including the Ohio River Suite and West Virginia Epic. Boudreau would provide a basic concept to Bennett, who would complete the new work rapidly and who would always attend the premiere. Boudreau recalls, "We never offered him a lot of money for those commissions...He was an elegant person. He was always more interested in music than in dollars." Many works were written for his musical acquaintances, including
Hexapoda and a concerto for violinist Louis Kaufman,
Tema Sporca con Variazoni for duo-pianists Appleton and Field, Suite for Flute and B flat Clarinet for Frances Blaisdell and Alex Williams, and the Rondo Capriccioso for Georges Barrére (Bennett's friendship with flutists William Kincaid and John Wummer prompted other chamber works). In 1960, he conducted the
Naumburg Orchestral Concerts, in the Naumburg Bandshell, Central Park, in the summer series. ==Later years==