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David Matthews (born 9 March 1943) is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works.
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David Matthews (born 9 March 1943) is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal and piano works.
Matthews was born in London into a family that was musical, though not formally trained; the desire to compose did not manifest itself until he was sixteen, and for a time he and his younger brother Colin Matthews, also a composer, were each other's only teachers. The start of the 'Mahler boom' in the early 1960s, when the works of Gustav Mahler began to enter the regular British repertoire for the first time, provided a tremendous creative impetus for both of them; but although they have sometimes since collaborated as arrangers (in orchestrating seven early Mahler songs, for instance) and as editors (in the published version of Deryck Cooke's 'performing version' of the draft of Mahler's Tenth Symphony), as composers they have very much gone their separate ways.
David Matthews read Classics at Nottingham University and afterwards, feeling himself still too much self-taught, studied composition with Anthony Milner; he was also much helped by the advice and encouragement of fellow British composer Nicholas Maw. [1] Then, for three years, he was associated with Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival. Not until he was 25 did he produce a work that satisfied him sufficiently to be pronounced his 'Opus 1'. He has largely avoided teaching, but to support his composing career has been employed in much editorial work and orchestration of film music. He has also written occasional articles and reviews for various music journals - the culmination of which activity being his 1980 book about Sir Michael Tippett, a composer he admires enormously.
Tippett is indeed one of the strongest palpable influences on Matthews's own music, which could be characterised as a potent distillation and development of certain qualities that distinguish the Tippett, Britten and Maw generations of English composers - notably their ecstatic melodic writing and vibrantly expanded tonal harmony. But underlying this deceptively 'English' surface, and coming increasingly to the fore in recent works, is a concern for large-scale structure that connects rather to the central European tradition, back through Mahler and ultimately to Beethoven. Since the 1990s he has become increasingly interested in the tango as a dance-form capable of bearing complex structures, and in some of his symphonies and string quartets a tango takes the place traditionally reserved for the scherzo.
Although he has written a fair amount of vocal music, notably a song-cycle, The Golden Kingdom, on poems of Kathleen Raine and Cantiga, a dramatic cantata on the tragic story of Inez de Castro, to a text by the novelist Maggie Hemingway (who was Matthews's partner for the last ten years of her life), Matthews's output as a whole is centred on the classical instrumental and orchestral forms. His series of (to date) fifteen string quartets is one of the most distinguished that any composer has essayed in recent years. [2] To date he has written ten symphonies - nine of which have been commercially recorded. They, and an accompanying cluster of works such as September Music, the Serenade, two violin concertos, concertos for cello, for piano, and for oboe, the symphonic poems In the Dark Time, The Music of Dawn, A Vision and a Journey and the monumental orchestral Chaconne (inspired by a poem of Geoffrey Hill), show that he can handle large and small orchestras with skill.
Matthews celebrated his 70th birthday in 2013. The occasion was marked by: a Nash Ensemble portrait concert at the Wigmore Hall – which included the premiere of A Blackbird Sang, a quartet for flute and strings; a major new symphonic poem, A Vision of the Sea, premiered at the Proms by the BBC Philharmonic; a new concerto for violin, viola and strings co-commissioned by the Presteigne and Cheltenham Festivals; two piano pieces for William Howard performed at the Spitalfields Festival; and the release of two recordings – a disc of piano music for Toccata Classics featuring pianist Laura Mikkola, and a Dutton disc of Matthews’ Symphony No. 7 (Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/John Carewe) and Vespers for Choir and Orchestra (BSO/The Bach Choir/David Hill) [3]
With Roger Scruton, he wrote a two-act opera Anna, which premiered on 14 July 2023 at The Grange Festival.
Hendrik Pienaar Hofmeyr is a South African composer. Born in Cape Town, he furthered his studies in Italy during 10 years of self-imposed exile as a conscientious objector. While there, he won the South African Opera Competition with The Fall of the House of Usher. He also received the annual Nederburg Prize for Opera for this work subsequent to its performance at the State Theatre in Pretoria in 1988. In the same year, he obtained first prize in an international competition in Italy with music for a short film by Wim Wenders. He returned to South Africa in 1992, and in 1997 won two major international composition competitions, the Queen Elisabeth Music Competition of Belgium and the first edition of the Dimitris Mitropoulos Competition in Athens. His 'Incantesimo' for solo flute was selected to represent South Africa at the ISCM World Music Days in Croatia in 2005. In 2008 he was honoured with a Kanna award by the Kleinkaroo National Arts Festival. He is currently Professor and Head of Composition and Theory at the South African College of Music at the University of Cape Town, where he obtained a DMus in 1999.
Tristan Keuris was a Dutch composer.
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Lior Navok is an Israeli classical composer, conductor and pianist. He was born in Tel Aviv. His music has been performed internationally by orchestras and ensembles including the Oper Frankfurt, Nuernberg Opera, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, and the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. Amongst the awards he has received are those from the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. He has also received awards from the Fromm Music Foundation, Lili Boulanger Memorial Fund Award, and Israel Prime Minister Award. In 2004, he was one of seven composers awarded commissions for new musical works by the Serge Koussevitzky Foundation in the Library of Congress and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation.
Zdeněk Lukáš was a prolific Czech composer who authored over 330 works. He graduated from a teachers' college and worked as a teacher from 1953 to 1963. He was a musical editor and program director at the National Broadcasting Company in Pilsen and conducted the Česká píseň, a choir in Pilsen.
Jan Zdeněk Bartoš was a Czech composer.
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Gary Kulesha is a Canadian composer, pianist, conductor, and educator. Since 1995, he has been Composer Advisor to the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He has been Composer-in-Residence with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony (1988–1992) and the Canadian Opera Company (1993–1995). He was awarded the National Arts Centre Orchestra Composer Award in 2002. He currently teaches on the music faculty at the University of Toronto.
Matthew Taylor is an English composer and conductor.
Jiří Teml is a Czech composer and radio producer.
Witold Friemann was a Polish composer, pianist, conductor and pedagogue. He was very prolific and composed more than 350 Opuses, most of which remain inedited.
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