A Bot’s Bad Berkeley Bio

Berkeley’s Trio Op. 44 is a core piece in the repertoire of the French chamber music ensemble Trio Clavicor (Francis Lefebvre, horn; Philippe Quesnel, violin; and Jean-Louis Tant, piano). The group played the work at a recent concert in Dieppe, and the Society’s Membership Secretary Kathleen Walker, stumbling on an online report - while surfing the net for Berkeley news - was struck by the colourful inventiveness of the Google translation of the Berkeley biography in the concert programme:

Lennox Berkeley, born in 1903, is an English composer, contemporary with Britten. As a student for Nadia Boulanger and after having received advises from both Ravel and Stravinsky, Berkeley has French blood in his veins and his aspirations, as a composer, never overflow the frame of music. His style is sometimes europhoric and desequilibrated which has led many people to think that his talent is easy and somewhat superficial. Nevertheless, his art has never ceased to affirm itself as the art of a musician that possesses the true power to ensure its brightness and to impose it. He has composed one symphony, one serenade for orchestra, one concert for two pianos, ballets and works for chamber music.