Nicholas Maw

John Nicholas Maw ( born November 5, 1935 in Grantham, Lincolnshire, † 19 May, 2009 Washington, DC) was a British composer.

Life

Maw's parents were Clarence Frederick Maw and Hilda Ellen Chambers. He attended the Wennington School, a boarding school in Wetherby, West Yorkshire. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 14 years old. In 1960, he married Carol Graham, with whom he had a son and a daughter. The marriage ended in divorce in 1976. His last 24 years of life he was living in Washington DC with his partner, the ceramic artist Maija Hay.

Nicholas Maw studied from 1955 to 1958 with Paul Steinitz and Lennox Berkeley at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and in Paris with Nadia Boulanger and the pupil of Schoenberg Max German.

Stages of his career as a high school teacher were the Trinity College in Cambridge, Exeter University and Yale University. Most recently, he was professor of composition at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. For his chamber music work he was awarded in 1993 with Aaron Jay Kernis the Stoeger Prize.

His opera Sophie 's Choice was listed among other things, at the Royal Opera House (London), at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Volksoper Vienna.

Maw died in May 2009 at the age of 73 years due to heart failure with complications.

Works

Orchestral works

• Odyssey 1987
• The World in the Evening, 1988

Operas

• Sophie 's Choice, 2002