Professor Alexander Goehr

Biography

Alexander Goehr, composer and teacher, studied in Manchester at the Royal Manchester College of Music with Richard Hall—where together with Harrison Birtwhistle, Peter Maxwell Davies and John Ogdon he formed the New Music Manchester Group—and in Paris with Messiaen and Yvonne Loriod. Goehr worked for the BBC in the early ‘60s during which time he formed the Music Theatre Ensemble, the first devoted to what has become an established musical form. He has taught at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Yale University and the University of Leeds, and in 1975 was appointed to the chair of music of the University of Cambridge where he remains Emeritus Professor.

Goehr’s substantial body of works includes five operas and a wealth of orchestral music including concerti for piano, violin, viola and cello for top soloists like Peter Serkin, Jacqueline du Pré and Daniel Barenboim. Through chamber music, Goehr gains an unprecedented rhythmic and harmonic immediacy, while his music remains ever permeable by the music and imagery of other times and places.