Saw him give an interview last year and he sounded really nice and not a crank with a chip on his shoulder type. However, he also wrote this article. 'ILM' (the mythical ILM) wdn't be into it but he fights for music in schools so good for him.
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Thursday, 9 March 2006 22:28 (eighteen years ago) link
― Soukesian, Thursday, 9 March 2006 23:22 (eighteen years ago) link
― NoTimeBeforeTime (Barry Bruner), Thursday, 9 March 2006 23:31 (eighteen years ago) link
― Tim Rutherford-Johnson (Rambler), Friday, 10 March 2006 10:15 (eighteen years ago) link
― stew!, Friday, 10 March 2006 11:59 (eighteen years ago) link
― xyzzzz__ (jdesouza), Friday, 23 June 2006 07:58 (seventeen years ago) link
RIP: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-35802564
― François Pitchforkian (NickB), Monday, 14 March 2016 12:42 (eight years ago) link
a fuller obit here: http://intermusica.co.uk/news/1613
― François Pitchforkian (NickB), Monday, 14 March 2016 12:43 (eight years ago) link
Saw a performance of the fifth symphony a couple of years ago and it's astonishing, always meant to dig deeper with this guy and maybe this week I will. RIP.
― Matt DC, Monday, 14 March 2016 13:00 (eight years ago) link
Oh no :-(
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 14 March 2016 13:05 (eight years ago) link
RIP. Excellent score for The Devils, wish he'd written more film music.
― Chicamaw (Ward Fowler), Monday, 14 March 2016 13:05 (eight years ago) link
Gotta hear that, and watch The Devils too.
I was trying to select a piece of his for the classical poll and Vesalii Icones is so good.
― xyzzzz__, Monday, 14 March 2016 13:11 (eight years ago) link
^that was the first piece by him i picked up... have only gotten into his stuff over the last year and a bit, & mostly just the sixties-early seventies work so far
some excellent footage included in the bfi devils dvd of the score being recorded too
― no lime tangier, Monday, 14 March 2016 22:56 (eight years ago) link
Iffy obit:
http://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/14/sir-peter-maxwell-davies-obituary
This amazing productivity is actually an obstacle to the survival of his music. It is hard to know where to start, and plunging in at random may lead to one of the many grey patches in his music, particularly in the later works such as the Strathclyde concertos. But the expressionist works of the 60s seem more and more to be genuine masterpieces. Unlike the other shocking things of that era such as Ken Russell’s 1971 film The Devils (for which Maxwell Davies wrote the music), they have not dated.
One of the things you should do to 'survive' is to compose just enough but not too much.
I reckon The Devils is also 'expressionist' sounding, like there is this weird decade cut-off. I'm not sure why interest in it couldn't be revived at some later point.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 March 2016 12:05 (eight years ago) link
Yeah I don't really get that, there are plenty of composers with fallow periods. If anything is likely to be an impediment to survival its a lack of consensus over what the masterpieces might be, but even then that can make exploration of a body of work more exciting.
― Matt DC, Tuesday, 15 March 2016 12:10 (eight years ago) link
holy crap, RIP. I literally only discovered him last night while trawling for rural horror oddities and today I see this thread.
― draxx them sklounst (dog latin), Tuesday, 15 March 2016 12:14 (eight years ago) link
Also Eight Songs.. is the clear starting point for PMD.
― xyzzzz__, Tuesday, 15 March 2016 12:44 (eight years ago) link
Maxwell Davies's personal website has reverted to a sample project in Beaver Builder, under the pensive rubric "Music is nice."
― alimosina, Tuesday, 11 June 2019 17:29 (four years ago) link