Composer: Anthony Gilbert

Read more about Anthony Gilbert

Born in London on 26 July 1934, Anthony Gilbert was a relative latecomer to composition. Not until he was 19 did he start to study part time at Trinity College and not until he was 23, by which time he was working as a translator and interpreter at the London offices of the Société des Fonderies de Pont-à-Mousson of Nancy, did he begin to study composition, as a private pupil and at Morley College, with Anthony Milner, Mátyás Seiber and Alexander Goehr. It is a mark of Gilbert's determination that for the next ten years, while working in a variety of both non-musical (warehouseman and accounts clerk) and musical (freelance copyist, proof-reader and arranger) for Schott's, and full-time Music and Record Library Assistant at the City of Westminster Public Library, he not only devoted his summer holidays to studying at Dartington and Wardour Castle (with, among other teachers, Nono and Berio) but also found time to produce a whole series of works, including an unpublished Elegy for piano, a Duo for violin and viola, the Piano Sonata No.1, Serenade, the Missa Brevis and the Sinfonia. In 1965 he left his job as Library Assistant to take up the position of Music Editor and Head of Production of Contemporary Music at Schott's, a post which he held for five years, during the course of which he also studied at Tanglewood with Carter, Schuller and Sessions, received his first commissions, and composed many of the works - Nine or Ten Osannas (recorded on NMC D014), Brighton Piece, The Incredible Flute Music and Spell Respell - that first brought him to public attention.

In 1970, the year which saw the première of his one-act opera The Scene Machine in Kassel, he became Granada Arts Fellow and Composer in Residence at the University of Lancaster, and, in 1971, Visiting Lecturer at Lancaster, a post that he continued to hold from 1971-73 while working at Morley College and as acting Director of Music at the Department of Adult Studies at Goldsmith's College.  In 1973 he took up a post at the newly-instituted Northern College of Music (made 'Royal' the following year) where he was responsible for setting up the Composition department and where, as Tutor and eventually Head of the School of Composition and Contemporary Music, he stayed until his retirement in 1999.

As the only full-time tutor in composition Gilbert taught some 100 would-be composers in his 28 years at the RNCM and it would not be an exaggeration to say that, during this time, he was single-handedly responsible for what might justly be called a Second Manchester School, amongst whom can be numbered Simon Holt, Martin Butler, Alison Cox, Robin Grant, Kate Romano, Paul Newland, Ian Vine, Cheryl Camm, Anwen Lewis and many others.

Nor has Gilbert's influence as a teacher and moving force been confined to his work in Manchester, for he has spent many periods teaching and composing in his beloved Australia, where both Dream Carousels and Towards Asavari (NMC D068) were written. In addition, with his abiding interest in the work of young composers and his unstinting work on behalf of colleagues (Gilbert was one of the founders of the SPNM Composers' Weekends in 1967, has acted as panel member and adjudicator for numerous national awards and was a long-standing member of the score-reading panel of the SPNM and New Music Panel of the BBC) he has, for over thirty years, been somewhere near the centre of British musical life.

(c) 2005 Douglas Jarman

Anthony Gilbert's website

NMC releases on which this composer appears:

NMC D014 Bill Hopkins & Anthony Gilbert Sensation & other works

NMC D025 Jane Manning, soprano Recital

NMC D068 Anthony Gilbert Dream Carousels

NMC D069 Prime Cuts Sampler

NMC D105 Anthony Gilbert On Beholding a Rainbow

NMC D150 NMC Songbook Songs commissioned for the 20th Anniversary of NMC