LECTURE RECITAL NO. 18
RECOLLECTIONS AND INTERLUDES:
PATRIC STANDFORD LOOKS BACK OVER SEVENTY YEARS
An Illustrated Talk by the Composer
On Tuesday 13th October 2009
7.00pm
The lecture will be given in the Jubilee Room,
The New Cavendish Club, 44 Great Cumberland Place, London W1H 7BS (Nearest
tube: Marble Arch)
RECOLLECTIONS AND INTERLUDES:
PATRIC STANDFORD LOOKS BACK OVER SEVENTY YEARS
To mark the seventieth birthday year of Patric Standford, the British Music
Society is honoured that the composer has agreed to give this illustrated
talk on his life and music.
Patric Standford was born in Barnsley, South Yorkshire on 5th February
1939. His musical studies took place at the Guildhall School of Music, which
he entered in 1961 studying composition with both Edmund Rubbra and Raymond
Jones. Later he was to take further compositional studies with Gianfrancesco
Malipiero in Venice and Witold Lutosławski on the proceeds of the Mendelssohn
Scholarship Award.
Amongst his works are five symphonies, with a 6th currently in
the making along with an opera about the 15th century poet Francois
Villon; concertos for cello (1974, rev. 2004) and violin (1975, rev. 2002);
choral music which includes Christus Requiem (1973 and recently revised)
and its sequel Toward Paradise (1982) which was awarded the
City of Geneva's Ernest Ansermet award and first performed by the Suisse
Romande chorus and orchestra. The Prayer of Saint Francis (1997) is
a later 'choral masque' which received the first prize of the 1997
International Composers' Competition in Budapest. His work also includes
a ballet Celestial Fire (1969), symphonic wind music, and much chamber,
instrumental, and vocal music. In addition to this Standford is an active
music journalist, writer, critic occasional lecturer and broadcaster. He has
also devoted much time and care to the production of lighter music, both as
composer, orchestral conductor and arranger. His practical orchestral skills
were largely acquired in commercial arrangements for West End shows and television
during the 1960's and 1970's. He worked for a time with the instrumental
rock group Continuum for whom he wrote an album recorded by RCA in 1972, and
he was even employed as a 'ghost writer' of music for symphonic recordings
and films - one such piece was the Rod McKuen Cello Concerto, written and
recorded in just ten days!
All this, together with a constant curiosity for old music and the musical
folklore of Eastern Europe and Asia, combine to make a unique musical personality
who is able to call upon the widest variety of sources with confident understanding,
and turn them to serve the magical world from which he draws his own fascinating
musical ideas and creations.