Richard D.C. Noble  (1930 - 2008)
Champion of British music

It was never my good fortune to have met Richard Noble, who died on 19th June, aged 78. He lived in Godalming, while I have for the past forty or more years, lived in the Yorkshire Dales; so our paths never met.  However, this did not preclude a long and satisfying correspondence with him. 

I don‘t know how it first came about, but as far as I remember he first wrote to me after a radio performance of the First Symphony of mine which I had conducted with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He was very enthusiastic about this and wrote a most glowing appreciation, which livened the spirit and was the kind of encouragement  which does much for a composer‘s sense of fulfilment  when faced with the indifference of a large part of the fashionable  and sophisticated musical world as a whole.  

His letters were long and invigorating and touched upon all manner of topics concerning the way the essential quality of British music has evolved in the last fifty years or so when a growing interest in avant garde tended to challenge the long-held traditions of British musical language.  He not only wrote to me - and indeed to others - encouraging exhortations not to give up the  pursuit of our natural English musical language which we had grown up with and which the large, ’silent’ majority of listeners could understand and respond to. 

While it is my personal regret that we never met in person, I would like to put on record my tribute to this musical English gentleman for all his encouragement and support.
 
Arthur Butterworth,   June 2008