Composers
John McCabe
© Peter Thompson
Born: 1939
John McCabe came early to music. As a child he suffered repeated bouts of ill health and during absences from school took to reading and listening to records. The urge to compose manifested itself quickly, and by 11, he had written thirteen symphonies. Studies at Manchester University and the Royal Manchester College of Music equipped him with the necessary techniques to pursue a double career as pianist and composer. It was as a pianist that he first made his name, especially in unfamiliar repertoire, whether Haydn sonatas, Hindemith, Bax or Rawsthorne (in recital and on disc), lecture recitals featuring Webern's 'Piano Variations', or national premieres of concertos by Delius and Corigliano. The entire planet serves as his stamping ground, and he is a frequent visitor to North America and Australia.
Out-and-out composer-pianists of international standing are few; we think of Bartok and Rachmaninov (subjects of short, penetrating studies by McCabe). As a composer, his breakthrough came with the richly scored orchestral song-cycle 'Notturni ed Alba' (1970), almost a concerto for the soprano soloist. Orchestral music dominates his output, at its heart five symphonies, from the first, 'Elegy' (1965), to the fifth (2000), extracted largely from his award-winning ballet score 'Edward II' (1994-5). In the 1990s, his collaboration with the choreographer David Bintley produced three full-length scores, raising his compositional profile around the world. 'Edward II' was premiered in Germany by the adventurous Stuttgart Ballet and successfully revived and toured in Britain, New York and Hong Kong by the Birmingham Royal Ballet. That same company has produced 'Arthur', a diptych of full-length ballets on the subject of 'The Once and Future King' (1999-2001).
Despite these theatrical successes, it is the concerto as a form, with its inherently dramatic and dynamic juxtapositions of solo and tutti, that has undoubtedly been McCabe's major speciality. Indeed, it is hard to think of a modern composer to rival him in this respect. His twenty-odd concertante works (including four for his own instrument) cover most of the standard orchestral instrumentarium. His best known are those for orchestra, written in 1982 for Sir Georg Solti, and the Flute Concerto (1990), written for James Galway and recorded by Emily Beynon.
Composer Stuart MacRae has commented 'British composers tend to be obsessed with landscape and I'm no exception'. Nor is McCabe, and many of his mature compositions vividly evoke musical landscapes whether or not they derive from actual places - such as the Lake District (String Quartet No.3, 'Cloudcatcher Fells'), 'Tintagel' (Flute Concerto) or the varied vistas of his 'Desert' and 'Rainforest' series. Works such as Piano Concerto No.3 (1976-7), built on a truly Beethovenian scale but in places scored like chamber music, and the nocturne 'The Shadow of Light' (1979) paint landscapes of the mind or psyche quite unlike the music of any other composer. Nowhere is this more compelling than in his fourth symphony 'Of Time and the River' (1993-4), a brilliantly achieved examination on the nature of musical time that traverses all twelve tonal centres in its descent from allegro to lento and back. Yet however technically intricate the internal organisation, the expressive purpose is never obscured, for McCabe is a composer who always speaks to the widest possible audience.
© 2001 Guy Richards
McCabe was appointed C.B.E. in 1983 for his services to British music.
In June 2008, a book on the music of John McCabe was published by Ashgate Publishing Ltd. For more information, click here.
External Websites
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