The composer and communism
In 1941, Frankel joined the British Communist Party, ever more convinced that this was the political solution to fascism. Fellow members included Alan Bush, Elizabeth Lutyens and Bernard Stevens. During this time, some of Frankel’s works alluded directly to his sympathies: Youth Music for string orchestra (originally entitled Music for Young Comrades), which included a poignant movement headed We remember the Fallen, in an otherwise light-hearted piece; Solemn Speech and Discussion (again for strings), which depicted a trade-union meeting and in which the composer quoted ‘The Internationale’ towards the end and, in 1947, the orchestral prelude May Day, subtitled a panorama. This was Frankel’s first significant orchestral piece, demonstrating his mastery and originality in orchestration, along with his fertile musical invention. Frankel and his first wife were divorced in 1944 and he subsequently married (again ‘outside’ the Jewish faith) a fellow member of the Party.
His career entered a new phase after the cessation of hostilities, as his concert music (mainly chamber works, for quite a while) began to find a public, and the British film industry became increasingly productive. In 1945 he wrote the music for what was to become a classic, The Seventh Veil his most important film score to date. In a recent BFI survey for the British television broadcaster Channel 4, it was revealed that the film was the tenth most successful ever at the UK box office, with sales approaching 17 million. Moreover, his reputation as a teacher of composition took off - Vaughan Williams and Walton were two composers who recommended young composers to study with Frankel - and in 1946, he joined the staff of the Guildhall School of Music, where he had been a student all those years before. It was here that he formed one of his most important friendships, with the violinist and pedagogue Max Rostal who was to remain a lifelong friend of Frankel, and champion of his music. Rostal, not long before his own death, recalled: “Perhaps because of my troubled relationship with my father, I was always closer to women than to men in my personal relationships, so the closeness of my friendship with Ben was unique in my experience.”. Professionally, it was also a very productive friendship, with Frankel composing his violin works with Rostal firmly in mind. Most importantly, Rostal commissioned the composer’s Violin Concerto for the Festival of Britain, in 1951. It turned out not only to be his most significant work up to then, but a very personal comment on the atrocities of the Holocaust, which affected him, both as a humanitarian and a Jew.
1952 was the year in which Frankel resigned - very publicly - from the British Communist Party, in bitter protest and outrage against the show trials and summary executions of alleged spies in Prague. He had already been increasingly at odds with the Party and the same care for human rights which had first led him to join, now led him away. Certain others - as yet undecided - followed his example. An Evening Standard reporter, writing in ‘The Londoner’s Diary’ columns on 12th December 1952, announced:
“Mr Benjamin Frankel, the composer, has quit the Communist Party after 12 years as a member. His feelings have been outraged by the recent Prague trials and the swift executions which followed….Frankel tells me his disagreement with Communist policy began with the party’s increasingly illiberal attitude towards culture, and music in particular. For the past two years, he says, he has been isolated from his fellow members. Last Friday Frankel wrote to the Communist Daily Worker about the Prague trial and saying he was resigning. His letter was not printed.”
What was printed, however, was the composer’s letter to The New Statesman and Nation, printed on Saturday, 13th December, 1952, with which he ended: “I can no longer remain a member of a party which unquestioningly accepts such standards of civil liberty, and for whom the application of the death penalty for ‘political deviations’ represents a triumph.” Frankel’s resignation - and the publicity surrounding it - was not without repercussions during the years that followed. These, however, will have to await a more extended biography, in which the detailed attention they deserve can be given. For now, let it only be said that there was at least one attempt to ruin Frankel during the mid-50s, in which the Communist Party was implicated.
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