Frankel’s formative years
Benjamin Frankel’s parents, although they had met and married in England, were both immigrants. His father, Charles Frankel, had come from Warsaw, after completing military service in the Czarist army; his mother, Golda Adler, from Tarnopol - a Polish town in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When Benjamin Frankel was born, at home in London’s Fulham Road, Charles was a tobacconist but later abandoned business to take up a humble position in the local synagogue, as a beadle. Golda helped to supplement the family’s income by making kosher meals for the Jewish boys at St. Paul’s Public School. Like his elder brother, Isaac, and younger sister, Minna, Benjamin proved to be a highly gifted musical child but, while both parents were proud of the fact and encouraged them for recreational purposes, the idea of any of them taking up the ‘uncertain’ profession of music was out of the question. Isaac, however, after doing well at school opted for the career of dentist, while Minna became a very efficient secretary.
Benjamin Frankel as a boy (seated right)
with sister Minna and brother Isaac, their
parents Charles and Golda (centre and left),
and Golda’s sister, Leah Weintraub.
c. 1914
Benjamin, on the other hand, had set his sights on a musical career quite early on. He and his brother had, as children, played through all available piano-duet arrangements of the orchestral repertoire - something he regarded to have been a vital, if informal, part of his musical education. He would also visit the Hammersmith Public Library (the “Carnegie Library”!), almost on a daily basis, always borrowing the maximum number of music volumes allowed (four), reading through them all and returning for a fresh collection the next day. In this way, he not only became familiar with a great deal of music but also developed into a remarkable sight reader (he also acquired his mother’s voracious appetite for reading books). Before he left school at fourteen after, he later recalled, an undistinguished career there - he began to study the violin and became quite excited about it, though he never got down to much serious practise. He could often be seen during lunch-breaks, playing the fiddle in the school yard and, much to the annoyance of one teacher, experimenting with vibrato technique quite audibly. Frankel recalled his childhood with mixed feelings but nevertheless delighted in recounting vignettes which had stuck in his memory. A particular favourite concerned the local delicatessen who used only one knife with which to cut everything; “Benjela,” his mother would say, “here’s some money - go to the deli for a pound of cheese,…” adding the admonition,” and tell him it shouldn’t smell from herring
Charles and Golda Frankel (standing)
Isaac, Minna and Benjamin (left to right)
c.1930
After leaving school, Frankel landed his first job as a shop-boy working as a fruiterer in Spitalfield’s market. This was a position that Max Adler, his mother’s cousin, had helped to secure. He held one other such job, before being apprenticed to a watchmaker, who happened to be the choirmaster of the local synagogue. In a frank and illuminating discussion with the musicologist Robert Layton - recorded for the BBC’s then Third Programme, shortly before Frankel’s death - he remembered that he was paid ten shillings a week while he learned to clean watches, then: “…after about one year, at which time my salary would have risen to a pound a week, I was given the sack and very properly so!”. It was at about this time that one of his piano teachers persuaded her son, the American virtuoso Victor Benham, to take an interest in the young Frankel’s budding musical talent. Evidently, he was much impressed, taking on his new pupil for a two-year period, free of charge. Benham had succeeded in overcoming the parental opposition which had threatened Frankel’s aspirations.
The last six months of this crucial period of study, took place in Germany (Cologne), where Benham had moved to take advantage of the high inflation which enabled foreigners to live there phenomenally cheaply. Indeed, Frankel’s father sent Benham just one pound a month, on which he was able to maintain his pupil quite handsomely. In the wake of the inflationary problems of the German currency and inevitable unemployment throughout the country, civil chaos ensued, so Frankel returned to England, at seventeen, to confront his own need for work. It was now that his natural talent for the violin came into its own: he began playing in jazz bands at various night-clubs, also on trans-Atlantic ocean liners (as a pianist, this time), and began what was to become a long and distinguished period as an arranger for many bandleaders. To ensure that his daytime studies at the Guildhall School of Music were not endangered, he worked mainly late at night, often finishing at about four in the morning and leaving only a little time for sleep before returning to his classes in the morning. Frankel always felt his identification with his Jewish roots to be absolute:” I consider myself to be either an English Jew or a Jewish Englishman,” he told Robert Layton, during the earlier- mentioned talk. For a time, this also spilled over into his compositions - influenced by the idea, though not the music of, Bloch - and for a while, he attempted to develop a “Jewish musical language” in consequence. Before too long, however, he set aside such a notion, realising that it could only limit his expressive range.