Peter (Racine) Fricker

Composer, born in London, UK. He studied at the Royal College of Music, and became musical director of Morley College, London (1952–64), professor of music at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1964–5), then resident composer there. Influenced by Bartók and Schoenberg, he wrote several symphonies, the oratorio The Vision of Judgement (1957–8), and other chamber, choral, and keyboard works.

Peter Racine Fricker (September 5, 1920 - February 1, 1990) was an English composer who lived in the United States for the last thirty years of his life. He held a post as professor of composition at the Royal College of Music in London, and in 1952 he became director of music at Morley College, succeeding Michael Tippett. Other works include Paseo for guitar (1969), Sinfonia in Memoriam Benjamin Britten (1977), two violin concertos (1950, 1954), choral and chamber works, and works for piano and organ.

Stylistically his music was significantly different from the mainstream English school of the middle 20th century; instead of following in the lyrical, folk-song influenced tradition of Holst, Vaughan Williams and others, he wrote music which was chromatic, contrapuntal, and acerbic—more akin to Schoenberg and Bartók than to his English contemporaries. Unlike Schoenberg, however, he never abandoned tonality altogether, preferring to work in a dissonant idiom which retained a tonal basis—a position considered to be conservative in the musical milieu of the 1950s and 1960s.

Fricker became visiting professor of music at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1964. he became chairman of the Music Department in 1970, and was appointed "faculty research lecturer" in 1979, the highest academic honor which the university bestows on its faculty. From 1984 to 1986 he was president of the Cheltenham International Festival of Music and Literature in England.