Sir Peter Maxwell Davies - Davies's music

Composer, born in Manchester, Greater Manchester, NW England, UK. He studied at Manchester, Rome, and Princeton, and was composer-in-residence at the University of Adelaide in 1966. He founded and co-directed the Pierrot Players (1967–70) and was founder/artistic director of The Fires of London (1971–87). A prolific composer, his works include Taverner (1972) and three other operas, Eight Songs for a Mad King (1969), symphonies, concertos, works for individual instruments and instrumental ensembles, songs, and a considerable amount of chamber music (for which he received the Cobbett Medal in 1989). Since 1970 he has worked mainly in Orkney, frequently using Orcadian or Scottish subject matter for music. He became associate composer/conductor with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra in 1985, and was made composer laureate in 1994. He was Composer-Conductor of the Royal Philharmonic and BBC Philharmonic Orchestras for 10 years, and was made Master of the Queen's Musick in 2004. In 2006 he collaborated with poet laureate Andrew Motion in the composition of an anthem, ‘The Golden Rule’, to celebrate the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. He was knighted in 1987.

Davies was born in Salford, England. After education at Leigh Grammar School, he studied at the University of Manchester and at the Royal Manchester College of Music (amalgamated into the Royal Northern College of Music in 1973), where his fellow students included Harrison Birtwistle, Alexander Goehr, Elgar Howarth and John Ogdon. Together they formed New Music Manchester, a group committed to contemporary music.

After a further period of study on a Harkness Fellowship at Princeton University with Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt and Earl Kim, Davies moved to Australia, where he was Composer in Residence at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide from 1965-66.

He then returned to the United Kingdom, and moved to the Orkney Islands, initially to Hoy in 1971 and later to Sanday. Orkney (particularly its capital, Kirkwall) hosts the St Magnus Festival, an arts festival founded by Davies in 1977.

Davies was Artistic Director of the Dartington Summer School from 1979 to 1984 and has held a number of posts. From 1992 to 2002 he was associate conductor/composer with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and he has conducted a number of other prominent orchestras, including the Philharmonia, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra.

He has been awarded a number of honorary doctorates at various institutions. He has been President of Making Music (The National Federation of Music Societies) since 1989.

Davies is gay and has a keen interest in environmentalism.

Davies's music

Davies is a prolific composer who has written music in a variety of styles and idioms over his career, often combining disparate styles in one piece.

Early works include the Trumpet Sonata (1955), written while he was at college, and his first orchestral work, Prolation (1958), written while under the tutelage of Petrassi.

Pieces from the late 1960s take up these techniques and tend towards expressionism and a violent character - these include Revelation and Fall (based on a poem by Georg Trakl), the music theatre pieces Eight Songs for a Mad King and Vesalii Icones, and the opera Taverner. The orchestral piece St Thomas Wake (1969) also shows this interest, and is a particularly obvious example of Davies's polystylism, combining, as it does, a suite of foxtrots (played by a twenties-style dance band), a pavan by John Bull and Davies's "own" music (the work is described by Davies as a "Foxtrot for orchestra on a pavan by John Bull"). Many works from this period were performed by the Pierrot Players which Davies founded with Harrison Birtwistle in 1967 (they were reformed as The Fires of London in 1970, disbanded in 1987).

Davies is known for his use of magic squares as a source of musical materials and as a structural determinant.

Worldes Blis (1969) indicated a move towards a more integrated and somewhat more restrained style, anticipating the calm which Davies would soon find at his new home in Orkney.

Since his move to Orkney, Davies has often drawn on Orcadian or more generally Scottish themes in his music, and has sometimes set the words of Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown. Davies also became interested in classical forms, completing his first symphony in 1976. He has written eight numbered symphonies since - a symphonic cycle of the Symphonies No.1 - No.7 (-2000), a Symphony No.8 titled the 'Antarctic' (2000), a Sinfonia Concertante (1982), as well as the series of ten Strathclyde Concertos for various instruments (pieces born out of his association with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, 1987-1996).

Davies has also written a number of lighter orchestral works such as Mavis in Las Vegas and An Orkney Wedding, with Sunrise (which features the bagpipes), as well as a number of theatre pieces for children and a good deal of music with educational purposes.

Maxwell Davies's short piano piece Farewell to Stromness entered the Classic FM Hall of Fame in 2003, his first ever entry.

He also wrote several children's operas including A Selkie Tale, The Great Bank Robbery and The Spider's Revenge. 1967 - together with Harrison Birtwistle, founded the contemporary music touring ensemble the Pierrot Players (later renamed The Fires of London).