Up for auction the "English Composer" Herbert Menges Hand Signed First Day Cover Dated 1964. 

ES-4593E

 Herbert

Menges OBE (27

August 1902 – 20 February 1972) was an English conductor and composer, who

wrote incidental music to

all of Shakespeare's plays. Siegfried

Frederick Herbert Menges was born in Hove on

27 August 1902. His father was German and his mother British. His elder sister was the violinist Isolde Menges. Herbert appeared in public as a violinist at

the age of four. He later abandoned the violin for the piano, and he studied at

the Royal College of Music under Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Other teachers included Mathilde Verne and Arthur De Greef. Menges's

mother Kate founded the Brighton Symphony Players in 1925 and the first concert

was given in the Hove Town Hall on 18 May 1925, conducted by Herbert Menges. After some years the Players evolved into the

Brighton Philharmonic Society, forerunner of the Southern Philharmonic

Orchestra, a professional group based in Brighton from 1945 which also gave

regular concerts in Portsmouth and Hastings. Menges was a powerful advocate of

the regional professional orchestras. He remained the orchestra's musical

director for the remaining 47 years of his life, during which time it became

the Brighton Philharmonic Orchestra in 1958, and conducted the orchestra 326

times.  He conducted the

premieres of a number of works by contemporary English composers. In

1931 he became musical director of the Old Vic Theatre, in which capacity he wrote (or arranged from

composers such as Henry Purcell) incidental music for all the plays of William

Shakespeare, and numerous plays by other writers. Notable among these was his music for a 1949

production of Love's Labour's Lost. He

was associated with the productions of John Gielgud from 1933 onwards. His assistant there for

three years was John Cook. He remained

with the Old Vic until 1950. From 1941 to 1944, alongside Lawrance

Collingwood he conducted performance in London and around Britain for operas

with the Sadler's Wells Theatre Orchestra,

before returning to the Old Vic company when it moved to the New Theatre. He toured with Laurence Olivier and Ralph Richardson to Paris, Germany, the Low countries and

New York, where he also conducted the CBS Symphony Orchestra.

He also became musical director of the Royalty Theatre in London. In 1931 he founded the London Rehearsal Orchestra, whose purpose was to help young

musicians learn difficult pieces. In 1951 he wrote the music for the

Laurence Olivier-Vivien Leigh Broadway

production of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. That same year, Malcolm Arnold dedicated his A Sussex Overture,

Op. 31, to Herbert Menges and the Brighton Philharmonic Society. He

considered that he had a strong affinity with Bach and conducted the Viennese

classics and composers such as Verdi and Tchaikovsky with restraint, while his

Brahms and Dvorak are warmer in his interpretations. His rehearsal and conducting technique were

commended for their economy and he would often forego the baton in more

expressive passages. A later critic, discussing his recordings,

praised the rhythmic acuity, superb internal balance in the orchestra and the

precision of attack he achieved, comparing his approach with Paray and Monteux. He had conducting engagements with

the Royal Philharmonic

Orchestra, the Liverpool Philharmonic

Orchestra, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. He

became Director of Music at the Chichester Festival

Theatre from 1962. Herbert Menges was appointed an

Officer of the Order of the British

Empire in 1963. He died on 20 February 1972, in London, aged 69. His name now appears as tribute on some

Brighton and Hove buses. Many of his letters and scores are held

at McMaster University Library, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

He was married in 1935 to Evelyn Stiebel and had three children,

Nicholas, Christopher (an Academy

Award-winning cinematographer) and Susannah.