Peter Maxwell Davies
Sir Peter Maxwell Davies CBE CH ( born September 8, 1934 in Salford, England ) is a British composer.
From the 1960s to the mid 1980s, Peter Maxwell Davies was one in the United Kingdom the musical avant-garde. He is now one of the most important composers of his country.
Life and career
Even at an early age he received piano lessons and began to compose. After leaving school at Leigh Grammar School, he studied at the University of Manchester and the Royal Manchester College of Music (1973 converted to the Royal Northern College of Music), where among his fellow students Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth and John Ogdon. Together they formed a group dedicated to contemporary music, the 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. Then he returned to the UK and moved to the Orkney Islands, in 1972, first by Hoy and later to Sanday. On the Orkney ( especially in the capital Kirkwall), the St. Magnus Festival has been held since 1977, a cultural festival called Davies to life. Regularly found on this festival premieres of his new works instead (often by the local school orchestra ).
Davies was 1979-1984 Artistic Director of the Dartington Summer School. From 1992 to 2002 he was assistant conductor and composer of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and has numerous other famous orchestras including the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. Davies 1981 he received the Order of the British Empire ( CBE) and was knighted in 1987. Since March 2004 he has been for a period of ten years, Master of the Queen's Music of the Royal Household of the Sovereign of the United Kingdom. New Year's Day 2014 he received the Order of Companion of Honour (CH)
2007 prohibited the Orkney Islands Council to the local civil registrar, the marriage of Davies with his partner Colin Parkinson on his home island of Sanday make. A little later it was announced that his long-time confidant Michael Arnold, who over 25 years looked after the financial affairs of the composer, had embezzled a substantial sum of his assets. In 2012, Parkinson's and Davies have separated; the police investigation for domestic violence.
The Music
Davies is a prolific composer who has composed in a variety of styles and genres, often by combining different styles in a work.
His early works include the Trumpet Sonata (1955), a work from his student days, and his first orchestral work, Prolation (1958 ), written during his studies at Petrassi. His early works often use serial techniques (eg his Sinfonia for chamber orchestra, 1962), sometimes in conjunction with compositional methods of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Excerpts from issues of Gregorian chant are often used as a basis and developed on verschiedartigste way.
Works of the late 1960s resort to these techniques and point towards expressionism and experimental music - theater: these include Revelation and Fall, the works 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 again shows Davies interested in renaissance music: as a substance of the opera the life of the English Renaissance composer John Taverner is treated.
The orchestral piece St Thomas Wake ( 1969) also shows this tendency, and is also an eloquent example of Davies ' style combinations by combined here Foxtrot, a pavan by John Bull and with their own issues. Many works of this period were performed by the Pierrot Players which Davies 1967 together with Harrison Birtwistle founded ( in 1970, this ensemble was re- formed as The Fires of London and world famous., 1987 it broke up ).
Worldes Blis (1969 ) called the move to a new, more moderate style that reflects the tranquility that Davies has found his new home in the Orkney Islands.
Since his move to Orkney Davies has often used themes of the islands, or more generally Scottish themes in his music, including words of the writer George Mackay Brown, who hails from the Orkney Islands. Davies wrote more operas: The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976 ), The Lighthouse (1980, his most popular opera ), Cinderella (1980 ) and The Doctor of Myddfai (1996). In this context include the satire The Yellow Cake Revue, a work that uranium mining near Davies ' home, Orkney Islands, criticized and condemned.
Davies also began to deal with classical forms, and completed his first symphony in 1976 Since then, he has written a number of 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 came from his association with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, 1987-1996 ). 2002 began work on a series of string quartets for the Maggini String Quartet, appearing on the record label Naxos ( Naxos Quartets called ). The recently published of which is the Quartet No.10 ( premiered in October 2007 at the Wigmore Hall, London).
Davies also has a number of lighter orchestral works written, such as Mavis in Las Vegas and An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise (with the participation of bagpipes ), still some theater music for children and a large number of music for educational purposes.
Trivia
Among his friends and acquaintances Davies is known as "Max".
Maxwell Davies ' Farewell to Stromness came in 2003 in the Classic FM Hall of Fame.
In September 2007 he became the first British composer with the Culture Award Premio del presidente della Republica Italiana in Florence.