Alexander Goehr

In a major interview, Tom Service talks to a key figure in contemporary British music: Alexander Goehr.

Goehr’s father, Walter, was a conductor and a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg; he brought his family to Britain shortly after Alexander was born in 1932 in Berlin. After studying at the Royal Manchester College of Music (where together with Harrison Birtwistle, Peter Maxwell Davies, Elgar Howarth, and John Ogdon he formed the New Music Manchester Group), he spent a year in Paris learning from Olivier Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. In the early 60's he worked as a producer for the BBC and formed the Music Theatre Ensemble, producing works in a now-established musical form. In 1975 he was appointed to the chair of the University of Cambridge, where he remains Emeritus Professor.

It is impossible to overestimate Goehr’s importance for and influence on generations of composers, and for the whole fabric of new musical life in Britain since the 1950s. Now in his early 80s, ‘Sandy’ Goehr reflects on his life in music, with typical modesty. Tom Service talks to him about the individual path he has taken in composition, drawing on a rich European cultural heritage rather than rejecting it. Goehr reflects on these traits in his music and their origins: his heritage and from his father, the influence of Messiaen, his relationship with Boulez and the Darmstadt school and the uneasy relationship he had with their ideas, and how teaching composition affected his own music. 

More information:
Alexander Goehr at Schott Music
Hear and Now’s Composer Rooms: Alexander Goehr
Music Matters Interview Archive: One-to-one collection