Peter Maxwell Davies

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Peter Maxwell Davies (2012)

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies CH CBE (born September 8, 1934 in Salford , England - † March 14, 2016 in Sanday , Orkney , Scotland ) was a British composer .

From the 1960s to the mid-1980s Davies was part of the musical avant-garde in Great Britain and became one of the most important composers in his country.

life and career

At an early age he received piano lessons and began to compose. After leaving school at Leigh Grammar School he studied at the Victoria University of Manchester (converted to 1973 and at the Royal Manchester College of Music Royal Northern College of Music ), where his fellow students Harrison Birtwistle , Alexander Goehr , Elgar Howarth and John Ogdon included . Together they formed a group devoted to contemporary music, New Music Manchester. After graduating in 1956, he studied for a short time with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome before he held the post of music director at the Cirencester Grammar School from 1959 to 1962 .

After further studies at Princeton University with Roger Sessions , Milton Babbitt and Earl Kim , Davies moved to Australia, where he resided as composer in residence at the Elder Conservatorium of Music at the University of Adelaide from 1965 to 1966. He then returned to Great Britain and moved to the Orkney Islands, first to Hoy in 1972 and then to Sanday . On the Orkney (especially in the capital Kirkwall ) the St. Magnus Festival has been held since 1977 , a cultural festival that Davies brought to life. World premieres of his new works regularly took place at this festival; often by the local school orchestra.

Davies was the Artistic Director of the Dartington Summer School from 1979 to 1984 . From 1992 to 2002 he was assistant conductor and composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and has conducted numerous other famous orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra , the Cleveland Orchestra , the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra . Davies received the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1981 and was knighted in 1987. From March 2004 he was Master of the Queen's Music of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom for a period of ten years . In New Year 2014 he was awarded the Companion of Honor (CH).

In 2007 the Orkney Islands Council prohibited the local registrar from marrying Davies and his partner Colin Parkinson on his home island of Sanday. A little later it became known that his longtime confidante Michael Arnold, who looked after the composer's financial affairs for more than 25 years, had embezzled a considerable amount of his fortune. In 2012, Parkinson and Davies split; the police had investigated domestic violence.

In 2015 he was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters . In February 2016, Davies received the Royal Philharmonic Society's Gold Medal . Davies died in March 2016 at the age of 81 from complications from leukemia from which he had suffered for several years.

music

Davies was a prolific composer who composed in a variety of styles and genres, often by combining different styles into one work.

His early works include Trumpet Sonata (1955), a work from his student days, and his first orchestral work, Prolation (1958), which he wrote while studying with Petrassi. His early works often use serial techniques (e.g. his Sinfonia for Chamber Orchestra, 1962), sometimes in connection with composition methods of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Excerpts from Gregorian chant themes are often used as a basis and further developed in a wide variety of ways.

Works from the late 1960s take up these techniques and point in the direction of expressionism and experimental music-theater: these include Revelation and Fall , Vesalii Icones , Eight Songs for a Mad King , The Medium , Miss Donnithorne's Maggot , Mr Emmet Takes a Walk , as well as the opera Taverner . Taverner, on the other hand, shows Davies' interest in Renaissance music: the subject of the opera is the life of the English Renaissance composer John Taverner .

The orchestral piece St Thomas Wake (1969) also shows this tendency and is at the same time an eloquent example of Davies' style combinations, in which he combined a foxtrot , a pavane by John Bull and his own themes. Many works from this period were performed by the Pierrot Players , which Davies founded together with Harrison Birtwistle in 1967 (this ensemble was re-formed and world-famous as The Fires of London in 1970. It disbanded in 1987).

Worldes Blis (1969) denotes the move towards a new, more moderate style that also reflects the calm Davies found in his new home on the Orkney Islands.

Since moving to Orkney, Davies has frequently used island themes, or more generally Scottish themes, in his music, including words from the Orkney Islands writer George Mackay Brown . Davies wrote other operas: The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976), The Lighthouse (1980, his most popular opera), Cinderella (1980) then for the Staatstheater Darmstadt Resurrection (1987) and The Doctor of Myddfai (1996). The satire The Yellow Cake Revue , a work that criticizes and condemns uranium mining near Davies' home, the Orkney Islands, also belongs in this context .

Davies also began to occupy himself with classical forms and completed his first symphony in 1976. He then wrote a number of other symphonies: a symphonic cycle Symphonies No. 1 - No. 7 (until 2000), a Symphony No. 8 under the title 'Antarctic' (2000), a Sinfonia Concertante (1982) and a series of ten Strathclyde concertos for various instruments (these pieces arose from his association with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra , 1987-1996). In 2002 he began working on a series of string quartets for the Maggini String Quartet that will be released on the Naxos record label (the so-called Naxos Quartets ). The most recently published is the Quartet No. 10 (premiered October 2007 at Wigmore Hall , London).

Davies has also written a number of lighter orchestral works such as Mavis in Las Vegas and An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise (with bagpipes involved ), as well as some theater music for children and a large number of musical pieces for educational purposes.

Selected compositions

  • First Taverner Fantasia (1962)
  • Second Taverner Fantasia (1964)
  • Revelation and Fall (1966)
  • Worldes Blis (1966-69)
  • St Thomas Wake (1969)
  • Eight Songs for a Mad King (1968; for singer / narrator / actor and chamber ensemble)
  • Missa super l'homme armé (1968, rev. 1971; for male or female speaker or singer and ensemble)
  • Stone Litany (1973)
  • Ave Maris Stella (1975; chamber ensemble)
  • The Door of the Sun for Viola Solo, J.132 (1975)
  • Symphony No. 1 (1973-76; orchestra)
  • The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1977; chamber opera)
  • The Lighthouse (1979; chamber opera)
  • Black Pentecost (1979; for mezzo-soprano, baritone, & orchestra)
  • Cinderella (1980; children's opera)
  • Symphony No. 2 (1980)
  • Image, Reflection, Shadow (1982; ensemble)
  • Symphony No. 3 (1984)
  • An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise (1985; orchestra)
  • Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1985; dedicated to Isaac Stern who gave the first performance on 21 June 1986 at the St. Magnus Festival in the Orkney Islands)
  • Concerto for Trumpet and Orchestra (1988)
  • Symphony No. 4 (1989)
  • Caroline Mathilde (1991; ballet)
  • Strathclyde Concerto No. 3 for Horn, Trumpet and Orchestra (1994) (German premiere: Markus Wittgens, Horn / Otto Sauter, trumpet / Philharmonic State Orchestra Bremen / conductor Peter Maxwell Davies - Bremen)
  • Strathclyde Concerto No. 5 for violin, viola, and string orchestra, J.245 (1991)
  • A Spell for Green Corn: The MacDonald Dances (1993; violin, orchestra)
  • Symphony No. 5 (1994)
  • The Doctor of Myddfai (1996; opera)
  • Symphony No. 6 (1996)
  • Concerto for Piccolo and Orchestra (1996, opus 182)
  • Job (1997; singers, orchestra)
  • Mr Emmet Takes a Walk (2000; chamber opera)
  • Symphony No. 7 (2000)
  • Symphony No. 8 (Antarctic Symphony) (2001)
  • Naxos Quartets (2001-2007; string quartet)
  • Homerton (2010; for the choir of Homerton College, Cambridge)
  • Fellow students! (2011; opera)
  • Symphony No. 9 (2012)
  • Symphony No. 10 (Alla ricerca di Borromini) (2013)

Trivia

  • Davies was known as "Max" among his friends and acquaintances.
  • Maxwell Davies' Farewell to Stromness was inducted into the Classic FM Hall of Fame in 2003 .
  • In September 2007 he was the first British composer to be awarded the Premio del Presidente della Republica Italiana cultural prize in Florence.

Awards

literature

  • Mike Seabrook: Max: The Life and Music of Peter Maxwell Davies . Victor Gollancz, 1995, ISBN 0-575-05672-X .
  • Paul Griffiths: Peter Maxwell Davies, Robson Books, 1982, ISBN 0-86051-138-3 .
  • Renate Jeutner (ed.): Peter Maxwell Davies - A composer portrait . (= Music of the time. Documentations and writings. 3). Boosey & Hawkes, Bonn 1983, ISBN 3-87090-203-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jane Simpson: Queen's composer moves to evict gay lover over 'domestic abuse' and launches court fight over remote Orkney home. In: Mail Online . September 1, 2012, accessed April 2, 2013 .
  2. ↑ Honorary Members: Peter Maxwell Davies. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 16, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Imogen Tilden Composer Peter Maxwell Davies dies aged 81 in: The Guardian , March 14, 2016, accessed March 14, 2016.
  4. ↑ Farewell to Stromness on YouTube
  5. ↑ Honorary Doctorates from the University of Cambridge
  6. ↑ List of people honored with higher awards for New Year 2014 (PDF)
personal data
SURNAME Davies, Peter Maxwell
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British composer
DATE OF BIRTH September 8, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Salford , England, UK
DATE OF DEATH March 14, 2016
Place of death Sanday , Orkney, Scotland, United Kingdom