Sir Peter Maxwell Davies | |
|---|---|
 Davies in 2012 | |
| Born | (1934-09-08)8 September 1934 Salford, Lancashire, England |
| Died | 14 March 2016(2016-03-14) (aged 81) Sanday, Orkney, Scotland |
| Occupations |
|
| Works | List of compositions |
| 20th Master of the Queen's Music | |
| In office 2004–2014 | |
| Monarch | Elizabeth II |
| Preceded by | Malcolm Williamson |
| Succeeded by | Judith Weir |
Sir Peter Maxwell DaviesCH CBE (8 September 1934 – 14 March 2016) was an English composer and conductor, who in 2004 was madeMaster of the Queen's Music.[1]
As a student at both theUniversity of Manchester and theRoyal Manchester College of Music, Davies formed a group dedicated to contemporary music called theNew Music Manchester with fellow studentsHarrison Birtwistle,Alexander Goehr,Elgar Howarth andJohn Ogdon. Davies's compositions include eight works for the stage—from themonodramaEight Songs for a Mad King, which shocked the audience in 1969, toKommilitonen!, first performed in 2011—and tensymphonies, written between 1973 and 2013.
As a conductor, Davies was artistic director of theDartington International Summer School from 1979 to 1984 and associate conductor/composer with theRoyal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1992 to 2002, holding the latter position with theBBC Philharmonic Orchestra as well.
Davies was born in Holly Street, Langworthy,Salford, Lancashire, and lived in Trafford Road before moving to Wyville Drive in Swinton. He was the son of Thomas Davies, a manufacturer of optical instruments, and his wife Hilda, an amateur painter.[2][3] At age four, after being taken to a performance ofGilbert and Sullivan'sThe Gondoliers, he told his parents that he was going to be a composer.[4]
He took piano lessons and composed from an early age. As a 14-year-old, he submitted a composition calledBlue Ice to the radio programmeChildren's Hour in Manchester. BBC producerTrevor Hill showed it to resident singer and entertainerViolet Carson, who said, "He's either quite brilliant or mad". ConductorCharles Groves nodded his approval and said, "I'd get him in". Davies's rise to fame began under the careful mentorship of Hill, who made him the programme's resident composer and introduced him to various professional musicians both in the UK and Germany.[5]
After attendingLeigh Boys Grammar School, Davies studied at theUniversity of Manchester and at theRoyal Manchester College of Music (amalgamated into theRoyal Northern College of Music in 1973), where one of his teachers wasHedwig Stein; his fellow students includedHarrison Birtwistle,Alexander Goehr,Elgar Howarth andJohn Ogdon. Together they formedNew Music Manchester, a group committed to contemporary music. After graduating in 1956, he studied on an Italian government scholarship for a year withGoffredo Petrassi in Rome.[6]
In 1959, Davies became Director of Music atCirencester Grammar School.[7] He left in 1962 after securing aHarkness Fellowship atPrinceton University (with the help ofAaron Copland andBenjamin Britten);[8] there he studied withRoger Sessions,Milton Babbitt andEarl Kim. He then moved to Australia, where he was Composer in Residence at theElder Conservatorium of Music,University of Adelaide, 1965–66.[9]
Davies was known as anenfant terrible of the 1960s, whose music frequently shocked audiences and critics. One of his overtly theatrical and shocking pieces wasEight Songs for a Mad King (1969), in which he used "musical parody" by taking a canonical piece of music –Handel'sMessiah – and subverting it to explore the periods of madness ofKing George III.[10]
In 1966 Davies returned to the United Kingdom and moved to theOrkney Islands, initially toHoy in 1971, and later toSanday. Orkney (particularly its capital,Kirkwall) hosts theSt Magnus Festival, an arts festival founded by Davies in 1977. He frequently used the festival to premiere new works (often played by the local school orchestra).[11]
Davies was artistic director of theDartington International Summer School from 1979 to 1984. From 1992 to 2002 he was associate conductor/composer with theRoyal Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he also held with theBBC Philharmonic Orchestra, and he has conducted a number of other prominent orchestras, including thePhilharmonia, theCleveland Orchestra, theBoston Symphony Orchestra and theLeipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 2000 Davies was Artist in Residence at the Barossa Music Festival when he presented some of hismusic theatre works and worked with students from the Barossa Spring Academy. Davies was also Composer Laureate of theScottish Chamber Orchestra, for whom he wrote a series of tenStrathclyde Concertos.[12]
Davies was one of the first classical composers to open amusic download website,MaxOpus (in 1996).
He was awarded a number of honorary doctorates, includingHonoraryDoctor of Music fromOxford University in July 2005. He had been President ofMaking Music (The National Federation of Music Societies) since 1989. Davies was made aCBE in 1981 andknighted in 1987. He was appointedMaster of the Queen's Music in March 2004 but, in a break from the tradition of lifetime tenure, his appointment was limited to ten years. He was made a Freeman of the City of Salford August 2004. On 25 November 2006, he was appointed an Honorary Fellow ofCanterbury Christ Church University at a service inCanterbury Cathedral. He was visiting professor of composition at theRoyal Academy of Music,[13] and in 2009 became anHonoraryFellow ofHomerton College, Cambridge.[14] Davies received an Honorary Doctorate fromHeriot-Watt University in 2002[15]
Davies was known by friends and colleagues as "Max", after his middle name "Maxwell", and was openly homosexual throughout his adult life.
Although he sometimes set sacred texts, Davies was an atheist.[16]
In 2005 his house on Sanday was raided by police, who removed parts of awhooper swan (a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act) which Davies had been planning to eat; he stated he had found the swan electrocuted beneath power lines.[17]
In 2007, a controversy arose regarding an intendedcivil partnership with Davies's partner of five years, builder Colin Parkinson. They were told that the ceremony could not take place on theSanday Light Railway.[18] The couple later abandoned their plans[19] but remained together until a break-up in 2012.[20]
The same year, the composer'sMaxOpus site became temporarily unavailable after the arrest in June 2007 of Michael Arnold (one of MaxOpus's directors) on fraud charges arising from money missing from Davies's business accounts.[21][22] In October 2008 Arnold and his wife Judith (Davies's former agent) were charged with the theft of almost £450,000.[23] In November 2009, Michael Arnold was sentenced to 18 months in jail on a charge of false accounting. Charges of stealing against the couple, to which both had pleaded not guilty, were dropped when the prosecution offered no evidence.[24][25] MaxOpus was relaunched earlier in 2009.
Davies was appointedMember of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the2014 New Year Honours for "services to music".[26][27] He died from leukaemia on 14 March 2016, aged 81, at his home in Orkney.[28]
Davies was a life-long supporter of gay rights and a vice-president of theCampaign for Homosexual Equality.
Davies had a keen interest in environmentalism. He wroteThe Yellow Cake Revue, a collection ofcabaret-style pieces that he performed with actressEleanor Bron, in protest at plans to mineuranium ore in Orkney. It is from this suite of pieces that his famousinstrumentalchanson tristeinterludeFarewell to Stromness is taken. The slow, walking bass line that pervades theFarewell portrays the residents of the town ofStromness having to leave their homes as a result of uranium contamination. TheRevue was first performed at the St Magnus Festival, in Orkney, by Bron, with the composer at the piano, in June 1980. Stromness, the second largest town in Orkney, would have been two miles from the uranium mine's core, and the centre most threatened by pollution, had the proposed development been approved.
In the run-up to theIraq War in 2003 he marched in protest, and he was an outspoken critic of the Labour governments of bothTony Blair andGordon Brown.[29]
Davies's appointment to the post of Master of the Queen's Music was initially controversial, as he had expressedrepublican views. However, he confirmed in 2010 that contact with the Queen had converted him tomonarchism. He toldThe Daily Telegraph, "I have come to realise that there is a lot to be said for the monarchy. It represents continuity, tradition and stability."[29]
He was a member of theBritish Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (BASCA)[30] and theIncorporated Society of Musicians.[31]
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Davies was a prolific composer who wrote in a variety of styles and idioms over his career, often combining disparate styles in one piece. Early works include theTrumpet Sonata (1955), written while he was at college, and his first orchestral work,Prolation (1958), written while under the tutelage of Petrassi. Early works often useserial techniques (for exampleSinfonia for chamber orchestra, 1962), sometimes combined with Mediaeval and Renaissance compositional methods. Fragments ofplainsong are often used as basic source material to be adapted and developed. His "O Magnum Mysterium" (1960)[32] features on several YouTube clips, and was, for some time, his most talked-about work.
Pieces from the late 1960s take up these techniques and tend towards theexperimental and to have a violent character. These includeRevelation and Fall (based on a poem byGeorg Trakl), the music theatre piecesEight Songs for a Mad King andVesalii Icones, and the operaTaverner.Taverner, again, shows an interest in Renaissance music, taking as its subject the composerJohn Taverner, and consisting of parts resembling Renaissance forms. The orchestral pieceSt Thomas Wake (1969) shows this interest and is a particularly obvious example of Davies's polystylism. It combines a suite offoxtrots (played by a twenties-style dance band), apavane byJohn Bull and Davies's "own" music (the work is described by Davies as a "Foxtrot for orchestra on a pavan by John Bull"). Many works from this period were performed by the Pierrot Players, which Davies founded with Harrison Birtwistle in 1967; they were reformed as theFires of London in 1970, then disbanded in 1987.
After his move to Orkney, Davies often drew on Orcadian or more generally Scottish themes in his music, and has sometimes set the words of Orcadian writerGeorge Mackay Brown. He has written a number of other operas, includingThe Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976),The Lighthouse (1980, his most popular opera), andThe Doctor of Myddfai (1996). The ambitious, nihilistic parableResurrection (1987), which includes parts for a rock band, was nearly twenty years in gestation.
Davies was interested in classical forms, completing his firstsymphony in 1976. He wrote ten numbered symphonies – a symphonic cycle of the Symphonies Nos.1–7 (1976–2000), a Symphony No. 8 titled theAntarctic (2000), a Ninth Symphony (premiered on 9 June 2012 by the Royal Liverpool Symphony Orchestra), a Tenth Symphony (see below), a Sinfonia Concertante (1982), as well as the series of tenStrathclyde Concertos for various instruments (pieces born out of his association with theScottish Chamber Orchestra, 1987–1996). In 2002, he began work on a series ofstring quartets for theMaggini String Quartet to record onNaxos Records (theNaxos Quartets). The whole series was completed in 2007, and was viewed by the composer as a "novel in ten chapters".[33]
Davies's lighter orchestral works have includedMavis in Las Vegas (a title inspired by a Las Vegas hotelier's mishearing of "Maxwell Davies" and registering him as "Mavis"[34]) andAn Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise (which features thebagpipes), as well as a number of theatre pieces for children and a good deal of music with educational purposes. Additionally he wrote the scores forKen Russell's filmsThe Devils andThe Boy Friend. His Violin Concerto No. 2 received its UK premiere on 8 September 2009 (the composer's 75th birthday) in theRoyal Albert Hall, London, as part of the 2009 season ofThe Proms.
On 13 October 2009, his string sextetThe Last Island was first performed by theNash Ensemble atWigmore Hall in a 75th birthday concert for the composer. His Symphony No. 10 had its world premiere at theBarbican Hall, London on 2 February 2014.[35]
Throstle's Nest Junction, opus 181 (1996), andA Spell for Green Corn – The MacDonald Dances both had their London premiere at the BBC's Maida Vale studios, broadcast live on Radio 3 with the composer's participation on 19 June 2014, in celebration of his 80th birthday. The music was played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and presented byPetroc Trelawny.[36]
The last months of his life, as he struggled with terminal illness, showed continuing creative power and energy. There was The Hogboon (op. 335, a children's opera), the epiphany carol A Torrent of Gold, and the short choral work The Golden Solstice. He was working on a String Quartet (op.338) at the time of his death; only the first movement was completed.
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