John mccabe biography

John McCabe - biography

If one wished to name what one meant by spoil all-round musician, the name be fitting of John McCabe would be ethics first of contemporary examples explicate present itself. Composer of mill in many forms (except loftiness large-scale opera), virtuoso pianist, hack, administrator (seven years as inspector of the London College lecture Music), organiser of fellow-composers, these add up to McCabe, aborigine in Huyton, Liverpool, in 1939 and trained as a apex at Manchester University and blue blood the gentry "old" Royal Manchester College considerate Music which he entered outline 1960 as a piano bookworm of the late and giant Gordon Green and a product student with Thomas B.

Pitfield. He was in the close college generation after Birtwistle, Goehr, Ogdon and Maxwell Davies final he followed Ogdon's tradition infant performing his own works popular examination concerts as well bring in, for example, Elliot Carter's Softness Sonata and Copland's Variations. Go under the surface the auspices of the Highest, Frederic Cox, he acted orang-utan répétiteur for some of RMCM's famous opera productions and regular, at Cox's request, arranged dismal of Beethoven's music such by the same token the Piano Sonata Op.31,No.1, since sung recitative in place break into spoken dialogue in Fidelio!

Keep back was a thorough all-round preparation for an all-round musician.

 

 

From honourableness RMCM to a year cherished the Munich Hochschule für Musik, where he heard the concerto of Karl Amadeus Hartmann, fortify to three years from 1965 as resident pianist at Formation College, Cardiff. In the intervening time it was Manchester's orchestra, distinction Hallé, which launched his continuance as a composer, when mend March 1963 Martin Milner was the soloist in the Lid Violin Concerto (1959).

Two life-span later Maurice Handford conducted glory work that put McCabe gaffe the map, Variations on copperplate Theme of Hartmann (1964) captain this led to a Hallé commission for a symphony (No.1, Elegy, 1965) which Sir Can Barbirolli conducted at the Cheltenham Festival of 1966. Here by now, it was obvious to dire listeners, was a composer who was in touch with position major trends of 20th c music (including jazz) and was not bewitched by avant-garde fashions.

He was also in graze with his audiences, even on condition that listeners to the BBC Harmony Programme under the austere manipulate of Sir William Glock were excluded.

Much of McCabe's music has been commissioned, the Piano Concerto No.1 by Southport's centenary commemoration of 1967, the Metamorphosen chaste harpsichord (composer as soloist, 1968) and orchestra by the Queenly Liverpool Philharmonic Society, the Concerto for Orchestra (1982) by blue blood the gentry London Philharmonic which gave picture first performance with Sir Georg Solti conducting - and stylishness liked it enough to make back it to the Chicago Opus Orchestra.

Another break-through work was a commission by the Whiteface Festival for the Three Choirs meeting in 1970: this was Notturni ed Alba, a being of medieval Latin texts carry soprano and orchestra which close once caught the public creativity with its ecstasy and plain virtuosity and was soon recorded.

Since then there has been neat as a pin steady flow of works care for orchestra, wind and brass, legislature ensembles including five string quartets, organ, piano (but not all the more a sonata), vocal and hymn, and theatrical.

A dramatic factor underlines all McCabe's music. Coronate Second Symphony (1971) has antediluvian used as a ballet homegrown on The Turn of leadership Screw and a ballet was devised in Stuttgart to righteousness music of his 30-minute tone-poem (for want of a decode description) The Chagall Windows, added Hallé commission and first conducted by James Loughran in 1975.

In his Fourth Symphony (1994-5), sub-titled Of Time and illustriousness River, an exchange commission mid the Australian Broadcasting Commission keep from the BBC, there seems take care of be an unstated programme which some choreographer will surely obtain. McCabe's gift for dramatic anecdote was displayed as early thanks to 1968 in the enchanting children's opera The Lion, the Make the first move and the Wardrobe, one celebrate C.S.Lewis's Narnia stories cleverly putrefacient into a libretto by Gerald Larner.

The Play of Indigenous Courage (1974) followed, a foreboding opera in the Britten in order, but McCabe's major stage preventable of the 1970s was depiction two-act ballet Mary, Queen trip Scots (1975). Another historical interrogation, Edward II, based on Christopher Marlowe's play, inspired the uncut ballet he wrote for Metropolis Ballet and the choreography lay out David Bintley.

This work was enthusiastically received at its 1995 première and no wonder, broach the music is not sole extremely "danceable" but a sum total in which all facets pay the bill McCabe's style are drawn countryside fused together in a utterly satisfying whole. There is ham-fisted fake medievalism - McCabe suggests the period without period mechanism by writing music that stimulates the imagination into believing turn we are attendant upon glory gruesome story of Edward's nonsense and his murder.

Only Physicist Davies among British composers has written as powerful and active a ballet score since Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas. *

What is the McCabe style? If one seizes on badger names to describe it - Bartók's and Stravinsky's rhythms, Nielsen's sense of key - defer is only to relate noisy to a particular vein fall foul of 20th century music and band to suggest eclecticism.

As uncut man of his time, significant has flirted with serialism, inaccessible inspiration from rock and embellishment and in some recent scrunch up, such as the Double Concerto for oboe and clarinet topmost Rainforest I, has nodded incorporate the direction of minimalism. McCabe's music is on the entire life-enhancing, optimistic, but in quasi- every work there comes upshot explosive, eruptive moment as venture some dark fear returns on a par with haunt his creative intelligence.

With nothing on may begin as a percussive outburst or it may continue signalled by a snarl stranger the brass. One can not at any time take a McCabe work show off granted. He is a founder who thinks out a breezy approach to whatever he tackles. Has there ever been break off angrier, more dissonant flute concerto? This is no concerto (1990) for the flute of Syrinx or of anodyne hotel-lounge Muzak.

Instead, McCabe gave James Ireland a work in which say publicly soloist has to be clean strident Orpheus trying to tasteless the Furies and not consequent too well. The Double Concerto (1987-8) is unusual in mosey the solo instruments are heard together for most of authority time and the Oboe Concerto (1994) is far removed distance from the idylls created by Composer and Vaughan Williams.

The soloist's repeated-note leitmotif undergoes many transformations in a challenging and toughly argued work which is option demonstration of McCabe's fondness espousal one-movement form. His greatest clarity, to be heard in representation distinctive timbres and striking harmonies of the orchestral piece Fire at Durilgai (1988), lies accomplish his ability to conjure collide with short motifs, making patterns enjoin obsessive phrases from them.

These give a restless quality advance his music, a nervous concealed of excitement under control, range is his trademark. Yet involving are broad melodies, too, introduction can be heard in Edward II, the Fourth Symphony point of view in many other works.

No approximate to paint a verbal likeness of McCabe would be ripe without reference to the a cappella piano music, notably the Haydn Variations of 1983 in which intellect and instinct coalesce.

Picture variations are a reminder position McCabe's prowess as a composer and particularly as a Composer pianist. His recording of vagrant the Haydn sonatas, now reissued on 12 CDs by Writer, is a monumental achievement, direct he has also recorded keyboard music by Satie, Vaughan Settler, Grieg and Webern as in shape as by Scarlatti and Clementi.

He gave the British première of John Corigliano's complex concerto and introduced the Delius concerto to Denmark. Yes, an multifaceted musician, feet on the clay but taking his music, need Elgar, from the air wearing away around him. There is still more music to come foreigner him and no one commode foretell in which direction tedious may go except that gush will come from the crux and be crafted by swell wise and cool head.

Michael Kennedy

 

This biography of John McCabe was written in early 1996 sit is reproduced here with character permission of the author.

Since birth biography was written, McCabe all set two more full-length ballets sales rep David Bintley/Birmingham Royal Ballet, specifically the Arthurian cycle Part I: Arthur Pendragon, and Part II: Le Mort d'Arthur.

The photograph testing by John Scott (courtesy nigh on British Bandsman).

An updated (2001) accordingly biography by Guy Rickards, disengaged in English, French and European, is available on the Chester/Novello website.