JOHN GARDNER-
HIS LIFE AND MUSIC
John Gardner was born in Manchester in 1917 and
spent his childhood in North Devon, where his family
had practiced medicine for three generations. He
was educated at Wellington College and was from
1935 to 1939 Sir Hubert Parry Organ Scholar at Exeter
College, Oxford.
After a brief spell as Chief Music Master at Repton School, he joined the RAF in 1940, where he served successively as dance-band pianist, bandmaster, and navigator. On demobilization in 1946 he joined the music staff of the Royal Opera House, leaving at the end of 1952 to pursue a free-lance career as composer, teacher, pianist and conductor.
John Gardner has held a number of part-time teaching posts: at the Royal Academy of Music (1956-86), Morley College (1952-76), and St Paul’s Girls’ School (1962-75), and was Director of the Performing Rights Society from 1965 to 1992. He was made a CBE in 1976.
Gardner was a prolific composer (there are some 250 works) writing for many genres, opera, ballet, choral, vocal, orchestral, incidental, film, chamber, and instrumental music. Amongst his works are 5 Operas, 3 Symphonies, Concertos for Flute, Oboe, Bassoon, Trumpet and Piano, many smaller descriptive orchestral pieces, 3 String Quartets, 3 Piano Sonatas, organ music and many other pieces for piano, woodwind and guitar. Amongst the large corpus of choral music mention must be made of the following: Cantiones Sacrae, Herrick Cantata, A Latter Day Athenian Speaks, A Shakespeare Sequence, Cantata For Easter, and A Burns Sequence. He also contributed much music for the Christmas season including the carol composed during the 1960’s Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, which achieved great popularity and continues to be performed regularly to this day.
John Gardner celebrated his 90th birthday on 2nd March 2007 and to make the occasion we are pleased that the composers’ son, Christopher has agreed to give this illustrated talk on his fathers’ life and music.
The beginning of September 2007 sees the release on the Naxos label of the World Premiere Recording of the following orchestral works: Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Piano Concerto No. 1 in Bb, and Overture Midsummer Ale. The performers are the Royal Scottish National Orchestra conducted by David Lloyd Jones with Peter Donohoe the soloist in the Piano Concerto. It is expected that a representative from Naxos will be in attendance to sell copies of the disc during the evening.