Discipline: Music Composition

David Matthews

Discipline: Music Composition
Region: London, UK
MacDowell Fellowships: 1998, 1999
David Matthews is an English composer of mainly orchestral, chamber, vocal, and piano works. David Matthews read the classics at Nottingham University and afterwards, feeling himself still too much self-taught, studied composition with Anthony Milner; he was also much helped by the advice and encouragement of fellow British composer Nicholas Maw. Then, for three years, he was associated with Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival. Not until he was 25 did he produce a work that satisfied him sufficiently to be pronounced his Opus 1. He has largely avoided teaching, but to support his composing career has been employed in much editorial work and orchestration of film music. He has also written occasional articles and reviews for various music journals, the culmination of which activity being his 1980 book about Michael Tippett, a composer he admires enormously. Since the 1990s he has become increasingly interested in the tango as a dance form capable of bearing complex structures, and in some of his symphonies and string quartets a tango takes the place traditionally reserved for the scherzo.

Studios

Van Zorn (formerly Kirby)

David Matthews worked in the Van Zorn (formerly Kirby) studio.

Constructed thanks to a bequest from Sarah L. Kirby, Kirby Studio was the last new building to be erected during Mrs. MacDowell’s leadership (1907-1951). The load-bearing masonry walls were laid by local mason Augustus Beaulieu atop a fieldstone foundation. A 1995 renovation preserved the brick fireplace with wooden mantel and…

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