Sir Peter Maxwell Davies returns to Princeton University! Maxwell Davies attended Princeton on a Harkness Fellowship, which he secured with the help of Aaron Copland and Benjamin Britten in 1962. This morning, from deep beneath Bloomberg Hall, we honor the angry young man of Manchester, who went on to become Master of the Queen’s Music, on what would have been his 82nd birthday.
The composer lived in the Orkney Islands, off the northern coast of Scotland, for his last 45 years. We’ll have all music on Scottish themes and of Scottish inspiration, whether that inspiration be the Celtic folk traditions of Maxwell Davies’ adopted land or the austere seascapes churning outside his cottage.
At Princeton, Max studied with Roger Sessions, Milton Babbitt and Earl Kim. His own music could be madcap and iconoclastic, drawing from a dizzying array of sources, ranging from Renaissance polyphony to foxtrots.
No one during those early years, least of all Max, would have expected him to embrace the time-honored form of the symphony. In the event, he wrote ten of them. They are austere affairs that require careful attention, imbued with the composer’s coastal impressions and frequently compared to the great masterworks of Jean Sibelius. Maxwell Davies is regarded as the foremost British symphonist of his generation. Be that as it may, the symphonies are not exactly an easy listen.
We’ll be sampling from Max’s Scottish works, whether they be charming or severe, alongside pieces by others who hailed from Scotland, were of Scottish descent, or just plain loved to visit.
You take the high road and I’ll take the low road, from 6 to 11 EDT, on WPRB 103.3 FM and at wprb.com. Our love for Max is like a red, red rose, on Classic Ross Amico.
