John Nicholas Maw (5 November 1935 – 19 May 2009) was a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
composerA composer is a person who creates music, usually by musical notation, for interpretation and performance. The level of distinction between composers and other musicians varies, which affects issues such as copyright and the deference given to individual interpretations of a particular piece of...
.
Biography
Born in
GranthamGrantham is a market town within the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It stands athwart the East Coast Main Line railway , the historic A1 main north-south road, and the River Witham. Grantham is located approximately south of the city of Lincoln, and approximately east of...
,
LincolnshireLincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Rutland, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, South Yorkshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire. It also borders Northamptonshire for just 19 metres, England's shortest county boundary...
, Maw was the son of Clarence Frederick Maw and Hilda Ellen Chambers. He attended the
Wennington SchoolWennington School, founded by the Quaker educationalist Kenneth C. Barnes, was a co-educational and ultimately progressive boarding school. It was originally founded in 1940 in Lunesdale , Lancashire. Early governors included Alfred Schweitzer and John Macmurray...
, a boarding school, in
WetherbyWetherby is a market town and civil parish within the metropolitan borough of the City of Leeds, in West Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Wharfe, and has been for centuries a crossing place and staging post on the Great North Road, being mid-way between London and Edinburgh...
in the
West Riding of YorkshireThe West Riding of Yorkshire was one of the three historic subdivisions of Yorkshire, England. From 1889 to 1974 the administrative county, County of York, West Riding , was based closely on the historic boundaries...
. His mother died of
tuberculosisTuberculosis is a common and often deadly infectious disease caused by mycobacteria...
when he was 14. He attended the
Royal Academy of MusicThe 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...
on
Marylebone RoadMarylebone Road is an important thoroughfare in central London, within the City of Westminster. It runs east-west from the Euston Road at Regent's Park to the A40 Westway at Paddington...
in London where his teachers were
Paul SteinitzPaul Steinitz OBE was a pioneer in the post-war interpretation of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He founded the London Bach Society and Steinitz Bach Players in order to put his scholarship into practice, performing all Bach’s cantatas in London venues over the space of 25 years.-Career:...
and
Lennox BerkeleySir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley was an English composer.- Biography :He was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School, Gresham's School and Merton College, Oxford...
. He then studied in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
with
Nadia BoulangerNadia Boulanger was an influential French composer, conductor, and music professor. An outstanding music educator at the highest level, she taught many of the most important composers and conductors of the 20th century.-Ancestors:Nadia Boulanger was born to a highly musical family. Her...
and
Max DeutschMax Deutsch was an Austrian-French musical composer, conductor, and teacher.He was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg and founded the theater Der Jüdische Spiegel in Paris. Here, many works of composers like Schoenberg, Anton Webern, or Alban Berg were debuted in France...
.
In 1960, he married Karen Graham. They had a son and daughter. The marriage was dissolved in 1976. For the past 24 years he lived in Washington, DC with his companion Maija Hay, a ceramic artist.
From 1998 until 2008, Maw served on the faculty of the
Peabody InstituteThe Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University is a conservatory and preparatory school located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland at the corner of Charles and Monument Streets at Mount Vernon Place.-History:...
at
Johns Hopkins UniversityThe Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university located in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Johns Hopkins also maintains full-time campuses elsewhere in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Italy, China, and Singapore...
, where he taught music composition. He had previously served on the faculties of
Yale UniversityYale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut, and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States. Yale has produced many notable alumni, including five...
,
Bard CollegeBard College, founded in 1860, is a small four-year liberal arts college located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.-Location:Bard has a 600-acre campus in Annandale-on-Hudson, near the town of Red Hook, overlooking the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, within the Hudson River Historic District,...
,
Boston UniversityBoston University is a private nonsectarian university located in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Although chartered by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1869, Boston University traces its roots to the establishment of the Newbury Biblical Institute in Newbury, Vermont in 1839...
, the Royal Academy of Music, Cambridge University, and Exeter University. He had been a resident of Washington, DC since 1984, and died at his home there on May 19, 2009 at age 73 due to heart failure with complications from diabetes.
Compositions
Maw is best known for the orchestral pieces
Odyssey (1987) and
The World in the Evening (1988), the guitar work
Music of Memory (1989) and a violin concerto (1993) written for
Joshua BellJoshua David Bell is an American Grammy Award-winning violinist.-Childhood:Bell was born in Bloomington, Indiana, United States, the son of a psychologist and a therapist. His mother is Jewish and his father a Christian. Bell's father is the late Alan P...
. His music has been described as
neo-romanticIn North American classical music and European classical music, neoromanticism is a style identified by the extended tonality that flourished during the late Romantic era, as well as a frank expression of emotional sentiment equally evocative of the period...
but also as
modernistModernism in music is characterized by a desire for or belief in progress and science, surrealism, anti-romanticism, political advocacy, general intellectualism, and/or a breaking with the past or common practice — Ezra Pound's modernist slogan, "Make it new," as applied to music...
and
non-tonalAtonal may refer to:*AtonalityAtonal or Atonaltzin may refer to:*Atonal I*Atonal II...
(for instance
Personæ, his ongoing cycle of piano pieces).
In 2002 an opera,
Sophie's Choice (based on
William StyronWilliam Clark Styron, Jr. was an American novelist and essayist who won major literary awards for his work.For much of his career, Styron was best known for his novels, which included...
's
novelSophie's Choice is a novel by William Styron published in 1979. It concerns a young American Southerner, an aspiring writer, who befriends the Jewish Nathan Landau and his beautiful lover Sophie, a Polish survivor of the Nazi concentration camps...
), was
commissionedIn law, a contract is a binding legal agreement that is enforceable in a court of law. That is to say, a contract is an exchange of promises for the breach of which the law will provide a remedy....
by
BBC Radio 3BBC Radio 3 is a national radio station operated by the BBC within the United Kingdom. Its output centres on classical music, but jazz, world music, drama and the arts also feature. The station is the world’s most significant commissioner of new music, and its New Generation Artists scheme...
and the
Royal Opera HouseThe Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in the London district of Covent Garden. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal...
,
Covent GardenCovent Garden is a district in London, England, located in the easternmost parts of the City of Westminster and the southwestern corner of the London Borough of Camden...
. It was premièred at the Royal Opera House under the
directionConducting is the act of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. Orchestras, choirs, concert bands and other musical ensembles often have conductors.-Nomenclature:...
of Sir
Simon RattleSir Simon Denis Rattle, CBE, FRSA, is an English conductor. He rose to international prominence as conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and since 2002 has been principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic ....
, and afterwards received a new production by stage director Markus Bothe at the
Deutsche Oper BerlinThe Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in Berlin, Germany, in what was formerly West Berlin. The resident building, also called Deutsche Oper Berlin, also is home to the Staatsballett Berlin.-History:...
and the Volksoper Wien, which had its
North AmericaNorth America is the northern continent of the Americas, situated in the Earth's northern hemisphere and in the western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west by the North Pacific...
n premiere by the
Washington National OperaThe Washington National Opera is an opera company in Washington, D.C., USA. Formerly the Washington Opera, the company received Congressional designation as the National Opera Company in 2000. Performances are now given in the Opera House of the John F...
in October 2006. Mezzo-soprano
Angelika KirchschlagerAngelika Kirchschlager is an Austrian mezzo-soprano opera and lieder singer.Kirchschlager began her musical training at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, where she studied percussion and piano. In 1984, she went to the Vienna Music Academy, where she studied with Gerhard Kahry and Walter Berry. Her first...
, who sang Sophie in London, reprised the title role at the National Opera, joined by American baritone
Rod GilfryRodney Gilfry is a leading American opera baritone. After launching his career at Frankfurt Opera in 1987, Gilfry quickly established a reputation for stylish singing and acting...
as Nathan Landau, the schizophrenic man who initially rescues Sophie and then persuades her to join him in a
suicide pactA suicide pact describes the suicides of two or more individuals in an agreed-upon plan. The plan may be to die together, or separately and closely timed. Suicide pacts are important concepts in the study of suicide, and have occurred throughout history, as well as in fiction.Suicide pacts are...
. Maw also prepared a concert suite for orchestra based on the music.
A performance of
Odyssey took place in BBC's
Maida Vale StudiosMaida Vale Studios is a complex of seven BBC studios on Delaware Road, Maida Vale.It has been used to record thousands of classical music, popular music and drama sessions for BBC Radio 1, BBC Radio 2, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4 from 1946 to the present.- Early years :The site was built in 1909...
on 9 December 2005, and was broadcast on BBC Radio 3 two days later.
Simon RattleSir Simon Denis Rattle, CBE, FRSA, is an English conductor. He rose to international prominence as conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and since 2002 has been principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic ....
has also conducted a recording of the work by the
City of Birmingham Symphony OrchestraThe City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra is a British orchestra based in Birmingham, England.- History :Founded by Neville Chamberlain, the orchestra first performed as the City of Birmingham Orchestra in September 1920, with Appleby Matthews conducting its first concert...
.
Chronological list of compositions
1956 Eight Chinese Lyrics for mezzo-soprano
1956-7 Requiem for voices & orchestra
1957 Flute Sonatina
1957 Nocturne for mezzo-soprano & chamber orchestra
1959 Six Chinese Songs for contralto & piano
1962 Chamber Music for oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon & piano
1962 rev 1966 Scenes & Arias, for orchestra & three female voices
1964 rev 1966 rev 1970 One Man Show, opera
1965 String Quartet 1
1966 Severn Bridge Variation for a composite work with Malcolm Arnold, Michael Tippett, Alun Hoddinott & Daniel Jones
1966 Sinfonia for chamber orchestra
1966 Six Interiors for tenor & guitar
1966 Sonata for Strings & Two Horns
1966 The Voice of Love, Eight Peter Porter songs for mezzo-soprano & piano
1967 Double Canon for Igor Stravinsky on his 85th Birthday
1967-70 The Rising of the Moon, three act opera
1967-70 arr 1972 Concert Music from The Rising of the Moon for orchestra
1971 Epitaph, Canon in Memory of Igor Stravinsky for flute, clarinet & harp
1972-5 1979 1985-7 Odyssey for orchestra
1973 Personae I, II & III for piano
1973 rev 1977 Serenade for orchestra
1973-6 Eight Life Studies for fifteen strings
1975 Te Deum for voices & orchestra
1979 La Vita Nuova, five songs for soprano & ensemble
1980 The Ruin for solo horn & voices
1981 Flute Quartet
1981 Summer Dances for orchestra
1982 Night Thoughts for solo flute
1982 String Quartet 2
1982 The Old King's Lament for solo double-bass
1982-3 Spring Music for orchestra
1984 Little Suite for solo guitar
1985 Sonata Notturna for cello & strings
1985-6 Personae IV, V & VI for piano
1987 Little Concert for oboe, two horns & strings
1988 Ghost Dances, imaginary ballet for five players
1988 The World in the Evening for orchestra
1989 5 American Folksongs for voice & piano
1989 rev 1991 Roman Canticle for baritone, flute, viola & harp
1989-91 Music of Memory for solo guitar
1990-1 Piano Trio
1991 American Games for wind orchestra
1992 Shahnama for chamber orchestra
1992 The Head of Orpheus for soprano & two clarinets
1993 Violin Concerto
1994 String Quartet 3
1994-5 Dance Scenes for orchestra
1995 Voices of Memory for orchestra
1995-6 Hymnus for voices & orchestra
1996-7 Solo Violin Sonata
1997 Stanza for solo violin
1999-2002 Sophie's Choice, four act opera after William Styron's novel
2001 Intrada for string quartet
External links