Ron Tendler studied violin with David Martin and composition with Alan Bush at the Royal Academy of Music. He became a professional violinist on a freelance basis whilst teaching the violin in 1969 and working at composition in his spare time. Since the death of his wife on 2003, he has gradually spent more time composing, whilst stopping playing in orchestras in 2016.
Here are some examples of my work:
Track 1 – In Memoriam – Aubrey Bowman
In Memoriam commemorates Aubrey Bowman, a student of Alan Bush in the 1930s. Aubrey conducted the Festival Ballet, and, later, the ballet in Canada. Following the death of my wife, he acted as a mentor to me in my composition work; that despite his courageous battle with macular degeneration of the eyes. At the age of 91, however, a motorist ran him down and killed him as he crossed the busy main road in Finchley during the Christmas period 2010. The single movement piece, part of which was played at Aubrey’s funeral, expresses my gratitude to him for his friendship and teaching and celebrates his life.
Family Fun Tracks 2 (Allegro Assai) 3 (Andante) and 4 (Moderato)
This was written for my relatives and I to play. My cousin and daughter are flautists whilst my cousin’s son is a double bass player – a unique quartet!
Track 5 – To Charlie
This was written for my grandchild’s baptism in 2007 – for solo violin.
Track 6 – Stafford Revisited – A Promenade
In Stafford Revisited, I reflect on the period I spent living and working in Stafford as a young, peripatetic violin teacher between 1969 and 1972, with a focus on the long walks that punctuated my time there. I wrote the piece for the Stafford Sinfonia, an orchestra comprising two horns, double woodwind and strings and conducted by my colleague from those early days of my career, Mr Darrell Wade. The orchestra performed the work for the first time in Stafford in April 2011 as part of a program entitled ‘The English Composers’. So evocative a piece was it, that a slide-show of vistas from the local area accompanied the performance.
Track 7 – Youth Observed
This piece captures musings on the behaviours and attitudes of students and young people whom I have encountered during my teaching career of over forty years. It culminates in the eventual triumph of maturity over previously expressed inexperience. Some of these same youngsters, along with their peers at the South West Surrey Youth Orchestra, performed the composition in November 2012.
Scales and Things Tracks 8 (Moderato) 9 (Largo) and 10 (Allegro)
Written for a string orchestra, this piece aims to expose young string players to scales and related rhythmic and melodic ideas in order to foster their understanding of these important technical issues. The Surrey Junior String Orchestra, Opus 1, performed the work’s first movement (one of three) at the Farnham Maltings in April 2011 to the critical acclaim of newspaper reviews.
Track 11 – Rhajit’s Svaasa
Rhajit’s Svaasa ( Name of Hotel)
I have just completed a piece for piano following my trip to India.
In India there are little Indian squirrels that make a noise far larger than their size. This contrasts with the hotel, as above, which is very tranquil and restful. This piano piece reflects these two aspects: the noise and the peacefulness.
The words to Tomorrow is the Day
These are the words I wrote describing the pain of a divorcee caused by her ex.:
Tomorrow is the day that I shall find you out
Tomorrow is the day that the truth comes out
For your behaviour is intense
And yet you always have a defence
To treat me as if I have no real sense.
Tomorrow is the day that I shall find you out
Tomorrow is the day that the truth comes out
I shall always remain honest and true
Even though you have reduced me to have no clue
To lose my confidence and feel untrue.
I shall rise up but not be an ogre to you
I shall rise up and be my person to view
I shall be strong and true and unlike you
I shall be happy and at one with me
I shall be myself as yet unknown.
So come on, be more horrible to me
You know you have lost and can never see
You have not destroyed me, you destroyed yourself
You have become your own problem, yes, you to deceive
Not me, but you, you cannot win a battle you cannot perceive.
You lie, you laugh, you cry, you apologise
You have money, you have ambition, but a different guise
For every situation, you weave a different story
Your happiness is defeated by history
A man of moods, a man of torment, a man who is going nowhere.
Tomorrow is the day, tomorrow is the day, tomorrow is the day,
When you will have to pay
You cannot ruin me, you tried to ruin me
All you have done is bring ruin on yourself
Tomorrow is the day.
May 2018
Track 12 – Tomorrow is the Day
The words of: The Factory Girl’s Last Day
‘Twas on a Winter morning
The weather wet and mild
Two hours before the dawning
The father roused his child:
Her daily morsel bringing
The darksome room he paced
And cried: ‘the bell is ringing;
My hapless darling, haste
“Dear father I am so weary;
I scarce can reach the door
And long the way and dreary
O, carry me once more:
Her wasted form seems nothing;
The load is on her heart
He soothes the little sufferer
Till at the mill they part.
The overlooker met her
As to her frame she crept;
And with his thong he beat her
And cursed her when she wept
It seemed, as she grew weaker
The threads the oftener broke
The rapid wheels ran quicker
And heavier fell the stroke.
She thought how her dead mother
Blessed her with latest breath
And of her little brother
Worked down, like her, to death;
Then told a tiny neighbour
A half-penny she’d pay
To take her last hour’s labour
While by her frame she lay.
The sun had long descended
Ere she sought that repose
Her day began and ended
As cruel tyrants chose
Then home! But oft she tarried
She fell and rose no more
By pitying comrades carried
She reached her father’s door.
At night with tortured feeling
He watched his sleepless child
Though close beside her kneeling
She knew him not, nor smiled
Again the factory’s ringing
Her last perceptions tried
Up from her straw bed springing
It’s time! she shrieked and died
That night a chariot passed her
While on the ground she lay
The daughters of her master
An evening visit pay.
Their tender hearts were sighing
As negroes’ wrongs were told
While the white slave was dying
Who gained their father’s gold.
Michael Sadler 1780 – 1835
Track 13 – The Factory Girl’s Last Day
Track 14 – Woking Palace
Track 15 – The Myth of Salzburg
Track 16 – Prelude and Fugue in G Minor
This was written for my colleague and friend Tamaki. She is a fine violinist and member of the Villiers String Quartet, who specialise in playing English music. Tamaki seems to have got involved in deep philosophical ideas! I have responded by answering these ideas through music – quite a challenge, but I hope it makes you think?! I wrote it for the piano, but she is performing it in the tracks 16(a) for violin and cello which I have arranged thus.
Track 16(a) – Prelude and Fugue arranged for Violin and Cello (live concert):
VID_20191101_193109 from Ron on Vimeo.
Track 17 – Just Joking!
This was written when asked for by my cousin, Susie Silverman, who is a flute teacher. She required a flute quartet for the flute ensemble at the Henrietta Barnett Girls Grammar School in London.
The pressure of School life seems to leave little time for rest and relaxation and so I thought I would write a light-hearted piece for their next concert. Hopefully the girls will have much fun sorting this one out:
Track 18 – Reflections
This piano piece was inspired by an encounter with a woman and her only child who is classed as a one-parent family. She was making the most of life whilst enduring much hardship due to lack of money and cramped living conditions…life goes on as she had to accept her separated husband would have nothing to do with his daughter!
Covid Symphony 2020 by Ron Tendler
This work was started at the beginning of Lockdown, March 23rd.
It was completed in September.
In the absence of a live orchestra, the sound is electronically generated.
This Coronavirus event is unique in human history and needs recording in all sorts of media.
As a composer, I feel we are so limited by the way the market wealds its power over everything.
The listener is free to decide how they choose to decipher the music. Thus my descriptions below are brief so as to let the listeners decide for themselves what exactly to make of my creation.
As a relatively free agent, retired and happy, I was able to assess the situation as follows:
Movement 1: this records the fear and apprehension that the virus brought
Movement II: this reflects on the isolation of lockdown
Movement III: I try to make the government sound strong with the opening trumpet idea. The loud interventions are purposefully a reflection of the feelings the establishment arouses in the masses.
Movement IV: reflection are on the feelings based on the idea that life has to go on. I try to end optimistically, but the sound scape is a bit of a mess!