Alexander Goehr, Composing a Life

Alexander (Sandy) Goehr is a leading British composer and teacher. Born into a Jewish musical family in Berlin in 1932 (his father a composer and conductor, pupil of Arnold Schoenberg; his mother a trained pianist from the Moscow Conservatory) he arrived in England in 1933. Raised in Lancashire, he attended Richard Halls classes at the Royal College of Music in Manchester. There he formed the Manchester School - a group of young musicians including Peter Maxwell Davies, Harrison Birtwistle and pianist John Ogden, who specialized in the performance of new music. He was introduced to Olivier Messiaens music when his father conducted the first British performance of Turangalila in 1950. Later he studied with Messiaen in Paris, with Boulez, Stockhausen and Xenakis. In the late 1950s and early 1960s he became known in Britain as a radical exponent of serial music. Since then, he has composed nearly one hundred major works, including operas, orchestral and chamber pieces, and music for film, television, dance and theatre. He is one of Europes most important music educators and has written and lectured extensively. His music is performed all over the world. He divides his time between his two homes, in Cambridge and Jerusalem. Jack van Zandt, one of Goehrs grateful pupils, has written this first comprehensive account of the creative formation and life of this great composer and teacher.