Peter Maxwell Davies
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010
BBC
4.4 • 804 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2005
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Peter Maxwell Davies.
He is one of Britain's greatest living composers. His career has seen him go from enfant terrible and champion of new music, writing pieces such as Worldes Blis and Eight Songs for a Mad King, to Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Master of the Queen's Music. Peter Maxwell Davies was born in Salford, near Manchester, in 1934. Whilst studying at Manchester University and the Royal Manchester College of Music he formed the key friendships which were to influence his musical career - with Harrison Birtwhistle, Elgar Howarth, Alexander Goehr and John Ogdon. It was during the 60s that Peter composed some of his most influential works - including often cacophonous, expressionist pieces like Vesalii Icones, St. Thomas Wake and Worldes Blis. Music-theatre pieces like Eight Songs were groundbreaking in their use of drama, as well as music. He is fascinated by the mathematical structures and patterns that exist in nature - and tries to replicate them in his music. For more than 30 years he has lived on and been inspired by the Isles of Orkney where, he says, the sounds that surround him creep into his music almost without him knowing it.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Victimae Paschali Laudes by The Benedictine Monks of Silos Book: Sanskrit dictionary Alternative to Bible: Bhagavad-Gita Luxury: Copper plate engravings of Durer's Passion
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.4 | My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:10.7 | The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that. |
| 0:17.4 | With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to |
| 0:22.4 | helping you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all |
| 0:28.1 | put together by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life, |
| 0:34.9 | check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:42.2 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:45.3 | The program was originally broadcast in 2005, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. |
| 0:50.7 | Music was Sue Lawley. |
| 1:06.6 | My castaway this week is a composer. |
| 1:14.3 | He started his career as a controversial firebrand, but he's ending up as an honoured man of the arts and master of the Queen's music. |
| 1:19.1 | He's wanted to compose since he was four when he was taken to a production of the gondoliers. |
| 1:23.1 | He taught himself music at school, his headmaster thought it was a subject only for girls, |
| 1:26.1 | and learned many of the works of Beethoven by heart. |
| 1:31.6 | At college in Manchester, he teamed up with the other groundbreaking musicians of his generation, |
| 1:34.1 | Harrison Bertwistle and Alexander Goer, among them. |
| 1:38.3 | And by the age of 30, he was launching a stream of new work on the public. |
| 1:43.0 | For the past 30 years or more, he's lived in semi-seclusion on Orkney, |
| 1:46.0 | islands that have inspired some of his most famous pieces, |
| 1:49.3 | an Orkney wedding and farewell to Stromness among them. |
| 1:52.5 | Music has always been an obsession, he says. |
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