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Alexander Goehr
Peter Alexander Goehr (German: ['ɡøːɐ̯]; 10 August 1932 – 26 August 2024) was a German-born English composer of contemporary classical music and academic teacher. A long-time professor of music at the University of Cambridge, Goehr influenced many notable contemporary composers, including Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, George Benjamin and Robin Holloway.
Born in Berlin, Goehr grew up in London surrounded by musicians, including his father, the conductor Walter Goehr. Goehr emerged as a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers, including Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle, in his early twenties. He joined Olivier Messiaen's masterclass in Paris in 1955. Back in England and working for the BBC, he experienced an international breakthrough in 1957 with his cantata The Deluge in 1957, conducted by his father Walter Goehr. He composed Little Symphony in 1963 as a memorial to his father, arriving at a serialism that allowed expressive freedom. He combined avant-garde techniques with elements from music history in works of many genres including the Piano Trio (1966), his first opera, Arden Must Die (1966), the music-theatre piece Triptych (1968–1970), the orchestral Metamorphosis/Dance (1974), and the String Quartet No. 3 (1975). He founded the Music Theatre Ensemble in 1967.
Goehr first lectured in the United States, at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston from 1968 and at Yale University, then at the Southampton University from 1970. He was professor of music at the University of Leeds from 1971 and at Cambridge University from 1976 to 1999. Goehr returned to a more traditional way of composing with Psalm IV in 1976. He wrote the opera Arianna in 1995, setting the libretto of Monteverdi's lost opera. He focused on chamber music in later years.
Peter Alexander Goehr was born in Berlin, on 10 August 1932. He came from a musical Jewish family; his mother Laelia (née Rivlin), from Kyiv, was a pianist who had appeared with Vladimir Horowitz at age 12, and his father Walter Goehr was a Schoenberg pupil and pioneering conductor of Schoenberg, Messiaen and Monteverdi. The family moved to Britain a few months after the boy was born. His father became an influential conductor in London, leading the world premiere of Tippett's A Child of Our Time. The boy attended Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, where he was known as "an anti-establishment political activist, flirting with the Communist Party". He received lessons from a composer colleague of his father, Allan Gray. Although these premises pointed to Goehr's future in music, his efforts as a composer were not encouraged by his father.
Goehr worked for the music publisher Schott after leaving school. A girl he met on the train to work recruited him for a left-wing Zionist party, and he spent two years in a training kibbutz in Essex. He was then sent to Manchester for political work, where he wrote his first piece, described as "a sort of Zionist pageant with songs".
Goehr studied composition at the Royal Manchester College of Music from 1952 to 1955, with Richard Hall. He became friends there with Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, trumpeter Elgar Howarth and pianist John Ogdon. He influenced Davies, a clarinetist, and Birtwhistle who studied to teach, to focus on composition. As students, the five founded the New Music Manchester Group, which performed works by its members and also introduced compositions of the European avant-garde. In 2024, Andrew Davies described the group as a "distinctive, progressive force in what was the generally parochial and conservative world of British music in the early 1950s".
A seminal event in Goehr's development was hearing the UK premiere of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony in 1953, conducted by his father. The interest in non-Western music (for instance Indian raga) sparked by the meeting with Messiaen's music combined with the interest in medieval modes shared with Davies and Birtwistle largely influenced Goehr's first musical imaginings. His first acknowledged compositions date from these years: Songs for Babel (1951) and the Piano Sonata, Op. 2, which was dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev. The piano sonata in one movement was played at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1954 by Hedi Stock-Hug.
In 1955, Goehr left Manchester to go to Paris and study with Messiaen at the Conservatoire de Paris, and he studied counterpoint privately with Yvonne Loriod. He remained in Paris until October 1956, becoming friends with Pierre Boulez and involved in the serialist avant-garde movement of those years. Goehr experimented with Boulez's technique of bloc sonore. Eventually Goehr left pure serialism, which he came to consider a cult modelled after twelve-tone works by Anton Webern, forbidding references to any other music:
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Alexander Goehr
Peter Alexander Goehr (German: ['ɡøːɐ̯]; 10 August 1932 – 26 August 2024) was a German-born English composer of contemporary classical music and academic teacher. A long-time professor of music at the University of Cambridge, Goehr influenced many notable contemporary composers, including Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, George Benjamin and Robin Holloway.
Born in Berlin, Goehr grew up in London surrounded by musicians, including his father, the conductor Walter Goehr. Goehr emerged as a central figure in the Manchester School of post-war British composers, including Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle, in his early twenties. He joined Olivier Messiaen's masterclass in Paris in 1955. Back in England and working for the BBC, he experienced an international breakthrough in 1957 with his cantata The Deluge in 1957, conducted by his father Walter Goehr. He composed Little Symphony in 1963 as a memorial to his father, arriving at a serialism that allowed expressive freedom. He combined avant-garde techniques with elements from music history in works of many genres including the Piano Trio (1966), his first opera, Arden Must Die (1966), the music-theatre piece Triptych (1968–1970), the orchestral Metamorphosis/Dance (1974), and the String Quartet No. 3 (1975). He founded the Music Theatre Ensemble in 1967.
Goehr first lectured in the United States, at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston from 1968 and at Yale University, then at the Southampton University from 1970. He was professor of music at the University of Leeds from 1971 and at Cambridge University from 1976 to 1999. Goehr returned to a more traditional way of composing with Psalm IV in 1976. He wrote the opera Arianna in 1995, setting the libretto of Monteverdi's lost opera. He focused on chamber music in later years.
Peter Alexander Goehr was born in Berlin, on 10 August 1932. He came from a musical Jewish family; his mother Laelia (née Rivlin), from Kyiv, was a pianist who had appeared with Vladimir Horowitz at age 12, and his father Walter Goehr was a Schoenberg pupil and pioneering conductor of Schoenberg, Messiaen and Monteverdi. The family moved to Britain a few months after the boy was born. His father became an influential conductor in London, leading the world premiere of Tippett's A Child of Our Time. The boy attended Berkhamsted School in Hertfordshire, where he was known as "an anti-establishment political activist, flirting with the Communist Party". He received lessons from a composer colleague of his father, Allan Gray. Although these premises pointed to Goehr's future in music, his efforts as a composer were not encouraged by his father.
Goehr worked for the music publisher Schott after leaving school. A girl he met on the train to work recruited him for a left-wing Zionist party, and he spent two years in a training kibbutz in Essex. He was then sent to Manchester for political work, where he wrote his first piece, described as "a sort of Zionist pageant with songs".
Goehr studied composition at the Royal Manchester College of Music from 1952 to 1955, with Richard Hall. He became friends there with Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle, trumpeter Elgar Howarth and pianist John Ogdon. He influenced Davies, a clarinetist, and Birtwhistle who studied to teach, to focus on composition. As students, the five founded the New Music Manchester Group, which performed works by its members and also introduced compositions of the European avant-garde. In 2024, Andrew Davies described the group as a "distinctive, progressive force in what was the generally parochial and conservative world of British music in the early 1950s".
A seminal event in Goehr's development was hearing the UK premiere of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony in 1953, conducted by his father. The interest in non-Western music (for instance Indian raga) sparked by the meeting with Messiaen's music combined with the interest in medieval modes shared with Davies and Birtwistle largely influenced Goehr's first musical imaginings. His first acknowledged compositions date from these years: Songs for Babel (1951) and the Piano Sonata, Op. 2, which was dedicated to the memory of Prokofiev. The piano sonata in one movement was played at the Darmstädter Ferienkurse in 1954 by Hedi Stock-Hug.
In 1955, Goehr left Manchester to go to Paris and study with Messiaen at the Conservatoire de Paris, and he studied counterpoint privately with Yvonne Loriod. He remained in Paris until October 1956, becoming friends with Pierre Boulez and involved in the serialist avant-garde movement of those years. Goehr experimented with Boulez's technique of bloc sonore. Eventually Goehr left pure serialism, which he came to consider a cult modelled after twelve-tone works by Anton Webern, forbidding references to any other music:
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