Biography

John Arthur Neil Lambert was born at Maidenhead

Maidenhead

Maidenhead is a town and unparished area within the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead, in Berkshire, England. It lies on the River Thames and is situated west of Charing Cross in London.-History:...

. After obtaining a post at the Royal College of Music, he lived at Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

 for the rest of his life, where he shared a house with organist Timothy Bond. He died at Brighton, a victim of liver cancer

Liver cancer

Liver tumors or hepatic tumors are tumors or growths on or in the liver . Several distinct types of tumors can develop in the liver because the liver is made up of various cell types. These growths can be benign or malignant...

.

Music career

Lambert studied at the Royal Academy of Music

Royal Academy of Music

The Royal Academy of Music in London, England, is a conservatoire, Britain's oldest degree-granting music school and a constituent college of the University of London since 1999. The Academy was founded by Lord Burghersh in 1822 with the help and ideas of the French harpist and composer Nicolas...

, and then at the Royal College of Music

Royal College of Music

The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...

. He studied with Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger

Nadia Boulanger was a French composer, conductor and teacher who taught many composers and performers of the 20th century.From a musical family, she achieved early honours as a student at the Paris Conservatoire, but believing that her talent as a composer was inferior to that of her younger...

 privately in Paris; that study ended in 1953.

In 1958 Lambert was named Music Director at the Old Vic

Old Vic

The Old Vic is a theatre located just south-east of Waterloo Station in London on the corner of The Cut and Waterloo Road. Established in 1818 as the Royal Coburg Theatre, it was taken over by Emma Cons in 1880 when it was known formally as the Royal Victoria Hall. In 1898, a niece of Cons, Lilian...

 theatre; he retained that post until 1962, when he accepted a post as Professor of Composition at the Royal College of Music

Royal College of Music

The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...

. At the Royal College he established a dedicated experimental music group.

Lambert taught many students who went on to become noted in their own right, including Oliver Knussen

Oliver Knussen

Oliver Knussen CBE is a British composer and conductor.-Biography:Oliver Knussen was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His father, Stuart Knussen, was principal double bass of the London Symphony Orchestra. Oliver Knussen studied composition with John Lambert, between 1963 and 1969 and also received...

, Mark-Anthony Turnage

Mark-Anthony Turnage

Mark-Anthony Turnage is a prolific English composer of classical music. His initial musical studies were with Oliver Knussen, John Lambert, and later with Gunther Schuller...

, Simon Bainbridge

Simon Bainbridge

Simon Bainbridge is a British composer, and a professor and former head of composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and visiting professor at the University of Louisville, Kentucky in the United States.-Biography:...

 and Julian Anderson

Julian Anderson

Julian Anderson is a British composer and teacher of composition.-Biography:Anderson studied at Westminster School, then with John Lambert at the Royal College of Music, with Alexander Goehr at Cambridge University, privately with Tristan Murail in Paris, and on courses given by Olivier Messiaen,...

. He also taught Javier Álvarez, Gary Carpenter

Gary Carpenter

Gary Carpenter is an animation director, comedy writer and creator of King Nutter - The site which monitors eBay items in the news.His animated series Celebrity High for Channel 4 / E4 / Talkback earned him finalist as Director of Best Comedy Series at the 2002 British Animation Awards.His most...

, David Fanshawe

David Fanshawe

David Arthur Fanshawe was an English composer, ethnomusicologist and self-styled explorer. His work is situated at the crossroads of traditional and modern music. His best-known composition is the 1972 choral work African Sanctus.- Life :Fanshawe was born in Paignton in Devon in 1942...

, Jonathan Lloyd, Carlos Miranda and Barrington Pheloung

Barrington Pheloung

Barrington Somers Pheloung is an Australian composer, now living in England. He is one of the most prolific television and film composers in the UK, known for his wide range of compositional genres....

. The striking thing about this list is the musical diversity which is represented therein. Lambert retired from teaching in 1990.

Teaching style

Lambert was a gifted composer, an effective and influential teacher, and was widely regarded as "self-effacing".

For his entire teaching career, Lambert maintained an intense curiosity and openness to the latest trends in music. He stated that his musical development had been stinted by the lack of musical openness in mid-century England, and he hoped that his students would not suffer a similar deprivation. He exhibited this openness in his own curriculum; he regularly invited noted musical influences.

He encouraged musical students to develop an "analytical ear" - the ability to spot an interesting sound or phrase, then dissect it and sense its potential. He taught this technique in his Experimental Music Group, an improvisation seminar which he assembled each week from 1970 until 1990. This involved students both from the college and elsewhere, combining music with live electronics, theatre, dance, film and animation; a forum in which one could try out the most unexpected, even bizarre things and, if they did not come off, that was as important a discovery as if they did.

Lambert's musical compositions

Lambert was most productive in his later years. He progressed most rapidly after taking the Music Director post at the Old Vic, where he worked with noted musicians of the period, such as Franco Zeffirelli

Franco Zeffirelli

Franco Zeffirelli KBE is an Italian director and producer of films and television. He is also a director and designer of operas and a former senator for the Italian center-right Forza Italia party....

. He composed music for a range of productions, but also commissioned music from other composers such as Thea Musgrave

Thea Musgrave

Thea Musgrave CBE is a Scottish composer of opera and classical music.-Biography:Born in Barnton, Edinburgh, Thea Musgrave studied at the University of Edinburgh and in Paris as a pupil of Nadia Boulanger...

 and Michael Tippett

Michael Tippett

Sir Michael Kemp Tippett OM CH CBE was an English composer.In his long career he produced a large body of work, including five operas, three large-scale choral works, four symphonies, five string quartets, four piano sonatas, concertos and concertante works, song cycles and incidental music...

(whose music for The Tempest, 1962, was one of the most striking products of this era).

Possibly Lambert's most imposing composition during his Old Vic period was his Organ Mass, composed in a five-year stretch (1964-1968). After that he produced happier, more direct music, such as Formations and Transformations (1973), and an opera, Family Affairs, which premiered at the 1988 Brighton Festival.

His later works include a choral work, Scale (1988), and string quartets. His Second String Quartet (1986) revealed a more intimate side.

His most ambitious project was the cycle Sea-Change (1978-94), five contrasting works for ensemble and electronics.