Peter Maxwell Davies

Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 8 September 1934, Salford, England) is a British composer.

Davies' 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.

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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. Early works often use serial techniques (e.g. Sinfonia for chamber orchestra, 1962), sometimes combined with Mediaeval and Renaissance compositional methods. Fragments of plainsong are often used as basic source material to be adapted and developed in various ways.

Related Topics:
Serial - Plainsong

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Pieces from the late 1960s take up these techniques and tend towards expressionism and a violent character - these include Revelation and Fall, the music theatre pieces Eight Songs for a Mad King and Vesalii Icones, and the opera Taverner. Taverner again shows an interest in Renaissance music, taking as its subject the composer John Taverner, and consisting of parts resembling Renaissance forms. The orchestral piece St Thomas Wake (1969) also shows this interest, and is a particularly obvious example of Davies' polystylism, combining, as it does, foxtrots, a pavan by John Bull and Davies' 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).

Related Topics:
Expressionism - Opera - Taverner - John Taverner - Foxtrot - Pavan - John Bull - Harrison Birtwistle

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Davies is known for the use of Magic squares as to devise composition rules. In his work Ave Maris Stella (1975) he used a 9x9 square numerologically associated with the moon, reduced modulo 9 to produce a Latin square, to permute the tones of a plainsong with the same name as the piece and to govern the durations of the notes.

Related Topics:
Magic square - Ave Maris Stella - Numerologically - Modulo - Latin square

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Worldes Blis (1969) indicated a move towards a more integrated and somewhat calmer style, reflecting the calm which Davies found at his new home, Orkney. Some have drawn a comparison between this later style and the music of Jean Sibelius.

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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. He has written a number of other operas, The Martyrdom of St Magnus (1976), The Lighthouse (1980, his most popular opera) and The Doctor of Myddfai (1996). 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). In 2002, he has begun work on a series of string quartets for the Maggini String Quartet to record on the Naxos record label (the so-called Naxos Quartets). His most recent one is No.7 (2005).

Related Topics:
George Mackay Brown - The Martyrdom of St Magnus - The Lighthouse - The Doctor of Myddfai - Symphony - Strathclyde - Scottish Chamber Orchestra - String quartet - Maggini String Quartet

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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.

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

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