Lorne Betts

Biography

Sample Works

Lorne Betts was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on August 2, 1918 [and died on August 5, 1985 in Hamilton, Ontario]. He studied in Winnipeg with Filmer Hubble (piano and organ), W.H. Anderson (voice), and Hunter Johnston (composition), later studying composition with John Weinzweig (1947-53) in Toronto and in summer courses at the Royal Conservatory of Toronto with Ernst Krenek, Alan Rawsthorne, and Roy Harris (1950-53). He holds the ACCO and LRSM diplomas and was a Fellow of the Royal Hamilton College of Music. From 1952 to 1959 he was principal of the Hamilton Conservatory of Music (later the Royal Hamilton College of Music), and was the director of music at St. Paul's Presbyterian Church and at Melrose United Church in Hamilton. In 1965 he became the music critic for the Hamilton Spectator.

His Music for Orchestra (1963), commissioned by Lee Hepner for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, uses a twelve-tone series, which Betts exploited through rhythmic variation. The structure is not complex; in fact, Betts preferred the clearest statement of the row and its variations. This is not typical of Betts' style, however, which usually combined tonal writing with dissonant interjections for colouristic effect. Three Songs (1948), in which he called on chromatic material, is dark and dramatic; the Five Songs (1950) are polytonal and lighter than the earlier set. The vocal writing in Festival Psalm (1968) is quite traditional and again the material is tonal.

Betts died on August 5, 1985 in Hamilton, Ontario.

Contemporary Canadian Composers; Edited by Keith MacMillan, John Beckwith; Published by Oxford University Press, 1975. p. 27.

CAPAC, Registered Music Teachers Association (Canadian and Ontario division), Canadian Association of Music Festival Adjudicators

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