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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Alexander Goehr (1932-present)

Composer of the Week: Alexander Goehr (1932-present): Episode 3: Middle Years

Alexander Goehr (1932-present)

Episode 3

Episode 3: Middle Years

Middle Years

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Alexander Goehr (1932-present), Middle Years

Donald Macleod talks to Alexander Goehr about his time at the BBC.

Donald Macleod talks to Alexander Goehr about his time at the BBC and his formation of the Music Theatre Ensemble.

Donald Macleod discusses with Goehr working at the BBC and his formation of the Music Theatre Ensemble

All this week, Donald Macleod is in conversation with Alexander Goehr at the composer's cottage in a village outside Cambridge. Sandy (as he's universally known) was born in Berlin in 1932, the son of the conductor Walter Goehr and pianist and photographer Laelia Goehr. The family moved to England in 1933. In his early twenties, Sandy became a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers. By the early sixties he was considered a leader of the avant-garde in the UK, but he never committed himself to any movement or school in particular and throughout his life, Sandy has continued to look over his shoulder at the past as much as he has sought new musical horizons of his own. In 1975 he was appointed Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, where he remains Emeritus Professor. 

This programme is about the middle years of Sandy's life when he was finding his own unique musical path. He describes the dialogue he had with Pierre Boulez as to whether music at this point in history needed to draw a line under the past and start anew, or should regard itself as part of an ongoing continuum. In the early 1960s he worked for the BBC and then taught at Boston, Yale and Leeds. He formed the Music Theatre Ensemble, the first ensemble devoted to what has become an established musical form. 

Das Gesetz der Quadrille (The Law of the Quadrille) - Songs after Kafka, Op 41 (1979)
Susan Kessler (mezzo-soprano), Roger Vignoles (piano)

Paraphrase on the dramatic madrigal Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda by Monteverdi, Op 28 (1969)
Alan Hacker (clarinet)

Behold the Sun (1985)
London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen (conductor)

... a musical offering (JSB 1985)
London Sinfonietta, Oliver Knussen (conductor)

I Squeezed up the Stair - from 'Sing, Ariel', Op 51 (1990)
Lucy Shelton (soprano), Instrumental Ensemble, Oliver Knussen (conductor).

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Donald Macleod explores the life and music of Alexander Goehr

Donald Macleod in conversation with Alexander Goehr at the composer's cottage near Cambridge

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Episode 3: Middle Years

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