- Gordon Crosse
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Gordon Crosse (born 1 December 1937) is an English composer.
Biography
Crosse was born in Bury, Lancashire and in 1961 graduated from St Edmund Hall, Oxford with a first class honours degree in Music. He then undertook two years of postgraduate research on early fifteenth-century music before beginning an academic career at the University of Birmingham. Subsequent employment included posts at the Universities of Essex, Cambridge and California. He won the Worshipful Company of Musicians' Cobbett Medal for services to music in 1976. For two years after 1980 he taught part time at the Royal Academy of Music in London but then retired to his Suffolk home to compose full time.
Crosse first came to prominence at the 1964 Aldeburgh Festival with Meet My Folks! (Theme and Relations, op.10), a music theatre work for children and adults based on poems by Ted Hughes. Hughes would also provide the lyrics for five of Crosse's subsequent works: the "cantata" The Demon of Adachigahara (op.21, 1968); The New World for voice and piano (op.25); the opera The Story of Vasco (op.29, 1974); Wintersong for six singers and optional percussion (op.51); and Harvest Songs for two choirs and orchestra (op.56). The Demon of Adachigahara, another music theatre work for children and adults, is a retelling of a traditional Japanese folk-tale akin to a Brothers Grimm story; it warns of the dangers of curiosity. The Story of Vasco, premièred in 1974 by Sadler's Wells Opera at the Coliseum Theatre in London, is a setting of Hughes' translation and adaptation of Georges Schehadé's play Histoire de Vasco.
Crosse's first opera, Purgatory (op.18), is a one-act setting of the play by William Butler Yeats. It was written in 1966 and premièred at the Cheltenham Music Festival later that year. In 1969, Crosse returned to the Aldeburgh Festival to hear the English Opera Group première his second opera The Grace of Todd (op.20) and revive Purgatory. The following year, the piece Some Marches on a Ground [1] for full orchestra elaborated material that would later appear in The Story of Vasco of 1956.
Crosse also composed the music for King Lear, the 1983 television production of Shakespeare's play, in which Laurence Olivier played the title role, and for which the celebrated actor won the last of his five Emmy Awards.[2] The production marked Olivier's last appearance in a Shakespearean role. This is the only television production for which Crosse has composed the music.
Crosse's interest in the relationship between music, literature and drama is evident in his concert as well as his theatrical work. Two examples are Memories of Morning: Night [1] for mezzo-soprano and orchestra, based on Jean Rhys' novel Wide Sargasso Sea; and World Within for actress, soprano and small ensemble, based on a text by Emily Brontë. Crosse also developed an interest in ballet after he adapted his orchestral piece Play Ground (1977) for choreographer Kenneth MacMillan. The ballet version of Play Ground was premièred at the 1979 Edinburgh Festival by the Sadler's Wells Royal Ballet, after which MacMillan then choreographed Crosse's chamber piece Wildboy (clarinet and ensemble, 1978) to produce a ballet for the American Ballet Theatre. In 1984, following a request by choreographer David Bintley, Crosse extended Benjamin Britten's Young Apollo for use as ballet music; the resulting ballet was premièred later that year by The Royal Ballet at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London.
Works for soloist and orchestra form the other major strand in Crosse's composition. These include two violin concertos, a cello concerto[1] (written in 1979 "in memoriam Luigi Dallapiccola", based on a motif from Dallapiccola's piece Piccola Musica Notturna) and three works featuring blown instruments (Ariadne for oboe, Thel for flute and Wildboy for clarinet).
His fiftieth birthday was celebrated in 1987 with featured performances at several festivals, and he was BBC Radio 3 "Composer of the Week" in December.
Following the completion of "Sea Psalms", written for Glasgow forces in its year as European City of Culture, 1990, Crosse shifted his focus to computer programming and music technology, and in the following 17 years, produced little music, except several songs with recorder parts, written for the recorder player John Turner.
With "Dirge from Cymbeline" for baritone and harp, written in 2007 for the NMC Songbook, Crosse is once again active as a composer and has written several larger works, notably a Trio for oboe, violin and cello and a "Fantasia" for flute, harp and strings.
Selected works
Orchestral
1986 Array 30' trumpet and string orchestra 1979 Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra [1] op.44 25' "In Memoriam Luigi Dallapiccola" 1978 Play Ground op.41 27' 1975 Symphony No.2 op.37 24' 1974 Young Apollo 30' Memories of Morning: Night [1] op.30 34' mezzo-soprano and orchestra 1970 Some Marches on a Ground [1] op.28 12' Concerto No.2 for Violin and Orchestra op.26 34' Changes: A Nocturnal Cycle op.17 50' soprano and baritone soloists, chorus, orchestra Chamber
1986 Wintersong op.51 30' six singers, optional percussion 1983 Wavesongs [1] 30' cello and piano 1982 Watermusic [3] 11' recorders (one player) and piano 1980 A Year and a Day [1] op.48a 8' solo clarinet 1979 Verses in Memoriam David Munrow [4] 9' countertenor, recorder, cello and harpsichord 1978 Wildboy op.42 27' clarinet and ensemble Thel op.38 14' flute, two horns and string ensemble 1973 Dreamsongs [5] op.35 14' clarinet, oboe, bassoon, piano 1972 Ariadne op.31 23' oboe and ensemble The New World op.25 20' voice and piano Opera and music theatre
1977 World Within op.40 43' actress, mezzo-soprano, ensemble 1974 The Story of Vasco op.29 135' three-act opera 1968 The Demon of Adachigahara op.21 30' children and adults The Grace of Todd op.20 75' "comedy in three scenes" 1966 Purgatory op.18 40' one-act opera 1964 Meet My Folks! (Theme and Relations) op.10 25' children and adults Recordings
Meet My Folks! op.10 EMI LP CLP-1893 Changes: A Nocturnal Cycle op.17 Argo LP ZRG-656 (LP)
Lyrita SRCD 259 (CD)Vyvyan, Shirley-Quirk, LSO & Chorus cond. del Mar Purgatory op.18 Argo LP ZRG-810 (LP)
Lyrita SRCD 313 (CD)The New World op.25 U-K DKP (CD) 9093 Muriel Dickinson, voice; Peter Dickinson, piano A Year and a Day op.48a Metier MSV CD92013 FP Kate Romano, clarinet; Alan Hicks, piano Ariadne op.31 Argo LP ZRG-842 (LP)
Lyrita SRCD 259 (CD)featuring Sarah Francis, oboe Watermusic Olympia OCD714 John Turner, recorders; Peter Lawson, piano Wavesongs NMC 019 Alexander Baillie, cello; Andrew Ball, piano Memories of Morning: Night
Cello Concerto
Some Marches on a Groundop.30
op.44
op.28NMC D058 Bickley, mezzo-soprano; Baillie, cello;
BBCSO cond. BrabbinsBibliography
- ed. Lewis Foreman, British Music Now: A Guide to the Work of Younger Composers (Paul Elek Ltd.: London, September 1975)
- ed. Walsh, Holden and Kenyon, Viking Opera Guide: Gordon Crosse (Viking: London, 1993; ISBN 0-670-81292-7)
- Crosse has written for and been written about in the journal Tempo.
External links
Footnotes
Categories:- 1937 births
- English composers
- Alumni of St Edmund Hall, Oxford
- Academics of the University of Essex
- People from Bury
- Living people
- Honorary Members of the Royal Academy of Music
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