John McCabe

John McCabe (1939- ), British composer and pianist. Born on April 21, 1939, in Liverpool, John McCabe began composition when a boy, turning out a large number of ambitious works even before he reached his teens. His undergraduate studies were undertaken at Manchester University and the Royal Manchester School of Music. In 1964 he went to Munich for postgraduate study at the Hochschule für Musik with Harald Genzmer. On returning to Britain the following year he took a job at Cardiff University as a pianist, before moving to London in 1968.

John McCabe’s compositions showcase his extremely wide range of musical interests. One early recording was a piano recital that mixed Anton Webern, Aaron Copland, and Carl Nielsen with works by Benjamin Britten, Alan Rawsthorne, and himself, while he is equally at home with Joseph Haydn and Franz Schubert. Such breadth almost inevitably informed his composing style, which began by emphasizing serial (twelve-tone) techniques before incorporating a wider range of organizing procedures, making the sound-world of his later music immediately approachable. Among his works are four symphonies (1965, 1971, 1978, 1995), opera and ballet scores (the children’s opera The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, 1968, and the ballet Edward II, 1995, are particularly noteworthy), and orchestral pieces such as the Variations on a Theme of Nicholas Maw for string orchestra (1970) and The Chagall Windows (1974). A major ballet project, a two-part cycle on Arthurian legends, began with Arthur Pendragon, premiered in 2000, and was completed with the premiere in 2001 of Le Mort d'Arthur. John McCabe was made a CBE in 1985.