Derek Bourgeois

Last updated

Derek Bourgeois
Born
Derek David Bourgeois

(1941-10-16)16 October 1941
Kingston upon Thames, England
Died6 September 2017(2017-09-06) (aged 75) [1]
Poole, Dorset, England
NationalityBritish
Alma mater Cambridge University, Royal College of Music
OccupationMusic composer
Spouses
Jean Bourgeois
​
​
(m. 1965;died 2006)​
Norma Bourgeois
​
(m. 2008)​
Website www.derekbourgeois.com

Derek David Bourgeois (16 October 1941 – 6 September 2017) was an English composer.

Contents

Career

Derek Bourgeois was born in Kingston upon Thames in 1941. After receiving his university education at Magdalene College, Cambridge [2] (honours degree and doctorate), Bourgeois spent two years at the Royal College of Music, studying composition with Herbert Howells and conducting [3] with Sir Adrian Boult. [4]

From 1971 to 1984, Bourgeois was a lecturer in music at Bristol University, and director of the National Youth Orchestra [3] from 1984 to 1993. [5] In 1980 he began conducting the Sun Life Band [6] (now the Stanshawe Band of Bristol), which was his introduction to brass bands. [7] In 1994 Bourgeois was appointed director of music at St Paul's Girls School, London, a position previously held by a number of noted composers, including Gustav Holst and Herbert Howells.

After retiring from this post in 2002 he and his wife settled in Mallorca. Following her death in 2006, he remarried in 2008 and moved to New York City, but returned to the United Kingdom in 2009. [4] He also conducted for various orchestras. His symphonies included Jabberwocky-Extravaganza (1963) and the symphonic fantasy The Astronauts (1969). [8] For his Symphony of Winds, the First International Conference for Conductors, Publishers and Composers awarded him with their main commission in 1981. [9] He also chaired Composer's Guild of Great Britain and served as the artistic director of Bristol Philharmonic Orchestra. He founded the National Youth Chamber Orchestra of Great Britain in 1988. He was also a member of the Music Advisory Panel of the Arts Council. [6]

Bourgeois was a prolific composer for brass and wind bands. [10] His works in that area included two concerti for brass band, the concerto grosso, Blitz, Diversions, Serenade, The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, and Apocalypse. Reviewing Bourgeois's Sonata for Trombone, David Vinning of trombone.org wrote: "Bourgeois is a skilled composer who knows how to write for the trombone and this piece is a major new work sure to become popular." [11] Bourgeois's first band work was a concerto, adapted from a flute concerto. [12] He has also played the tuba.

Bourgeois's first symphony, which he composed at the age of 18, was positively reviewed in the Guardian by Stanley Sadie, the future editor of Grove's Dictionary . By 2009, Bourgeois had written 44 symphonies, well beyond the number composed by Havergal Brian, and a larger number than were produced by most 19th and 20th century composers. [4] In an interview with Alan Rusbridger of the Guardian, he said that the symphonies came "tumbling out." [4] By the time of his death in 2017, he had 116 symphonies to his name. [13]

Bourgeois also composed music for the television movie The Crucible (1981), the short documentaries Thirty Million Letters (1963) and The Driving Force (1966), the TV series The Barchester Chronicles (1982), Mansfield Park (1983), and the "Buddyboy" episode of the TV series Beasts (1976). [14]

Personal life

His first wife, the violinist Jean Bourgeois, died of motor neurone disease on 27 November 2006. She had played in the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and was also a piano teacher. [15] After returning to the UK from the USA in 2009, Bourgeois lived in Wool, Dorset, with his second wife, Norma Bourgeois. [13] He died on 6 September 2017 in Poole, Dorset, and is survived by his wife Norma. [1]

Works

Orchestral and Choral Music

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark-Anthony Turnage</span> English composer (born 1960)

Mark-Anthony Turnage is an English composer of contemporary classical music.

Paul Creston was an Italian American composer of classical music.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alun Hoddinott</span> Welsh composer

Alun Hoddinott CBE was a Welsh composer of classical music, one of the first to receive international recognition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexander Tcherepnin</span> American composer (1899–1977)

Alexander Nikolayevich Tcherepnin was a Russian-born composer and pianist.

William James Mathias CBE was a Welsh composer noted for choral works.

Robert Muczynski was a Polish-American composer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ian Bousfield</span> English trombonist (born 1964)

Ian Bousfield is an English musician who has held positions as Principal Trombone with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra and the Hallé Orchestra. Also a pedagogue, Bousfield is an instructor in the music division at the Hochschule der Künste in Bern, Switzerland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frank Ticheli</span> American composer (born 1958)

Frank Ticheli is an American composer of orchestral, choral, chamber, and concert band works. He lives in Los Angeles, California, where he is a Professor Emeritus of Composition at the University of Southern California. He was the Pacific Symphony's composer-in-residence from 1991 to 1998, composing numerous works for that orchestra. A number of his works have become standards in concert band repertoire.

Ragnar Søderlind is a Norwegian composer. He has written ballets and operas, and for the concert hall, programmatic works based on poems.

David C. Sampson is an American contemporary classical composer.

Iain Ellis Hamilton was a Scottish composer.

David Frederick Stock was an American composer and conductor.

Victor Legley was a Belgian violist and composer of classical music, of French birth. He first studied in Ypres with Lionel Blomme (1897–1984). In 1935 he matriculated at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels, and there won awards in the study of viola, fugue, counterpoint and chamber music.

Martin S. Mailman was an American composer noted for his music for orchestra, chorus, multimedia, and winds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Trumpet repertoire</span> Set of available musical works for trumpet

The trumpet repertoire consists of solo literature and orchestral or, more commonly, band parts written for the trumpet. Tracings its origins to 1500 BC, the trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family.

Arthur Eckersley Butterworth, was an English composer, conductor, trumpeter and teacher.

Matthew Taylor is an English composer and conductor.

Bernard Clements Barrell was an English musician, music educator and composer.

References

  1. 1 2 Derek Bourgeois (16 October 1941 – 6 September 2017)
  2. ↑ John Xiros Cooper (2000). T.S. Eliot's Orchestra: Critical Essays on Poetry and Music. Psychology Press. p. 240. ISBN   978-0-8153-2577-2.
  3. 1 2 Christopher Seaman (2013). Inside Conducting. University Rochester Press. pp. 23, 158. ISBN   978-1-58046-411-6.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Rusbridger, Alan (9 February 2009). "Alan Rusbridger talks to Derek Bourgeois, one of Britain's most prolific composers". The Guardian . Archived from the original on 19 July 2014. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
  5. ↑ Michael Kennedy; Joyce Kennedy (2012). The Oxford Dictionary of Music. Oxford University Press. p. 107. ISBN   978-0-19-957854-2.
  6. 1 2 "Derek Bourgeois". Hafabramusic. Archived from the original on 28 October 2015. Retrieved 28 October 2015.
  7. ↑ Reynish, Tim (2006). "Derek Bourgeois – An Assessment of his music in Two Parts". Timreynish.com. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  8. ↑ Barrie Jones (2014). The Hutchinson Concise Dictionary of Music. Routledge. p. 84. ISBN   978-1-135-95018-7.
  9. ↑ Cipolla, Frank J. (1997). The Wind Ensemble and Its Repertoire: Essays on the Fortieth Anniversary of the Eastman Wind Ensemble. Alfred Music Publishing. p. 188. ISBN   978-1-4574-4994-9.
  10. ↑ Newton, Rotney (26 April 2003). "Bourgeois in Brass Yorkshire Building Society Band". World of Brass. Archived from the original on 8 August 2014. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  11. ↑ Vinning, David. "Sonata for Trombone by Derek Bourgeois: A Review". Trombone.org. Retrieved 29 July 2014.
  12. ↑ Roy Newsome (2006). The Modern Brass Band: From the 1930s to the New Millennium. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 123. ISBN   978-0-7546-0717-5.
  13. 1 2 Rickards, Guy (25 September 2017). "Derek Bourgeois obituary". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 10 October 2019.
  14. ↑ "Derek Bourgeois". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 8 August 2014. Retrieved 19 July 2014.
  15. ↑ Alan Rusbridger (2013). Play It Again: An Amateur Against The Impossible. Random House. p. 132. ISBN   978-1-4481-3869-2.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.