Biography by Rosemary Dunn
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Paul Patterson was born in Chesterfield in 1947, but grew up in Exeter. He learnt the trombone at school, and became a member of several local bands and orchestras. At the early age of seventeen, he gained a place at the Royal Academy of Music, having just started to compose his own music: 'I went into the Academy as a trombonist and came out as a composer', he says. Early, and sustained, musical influences on Patterson's work were the refined, neo-classic lines of Stravinsky and Hindemith, enhanced by Bartok's motivic structures. His first two published compositions were prophetic. Humour surfaced first, in his opus 1, a setting of Hilaire Belloc's famous Cautionary Tale, Rebecca, which was written at the Dartington Summer School in 1966, and which can be seen as a 'send-up' of many of the avant garde aleatoric techniques of the day. |
But Rebecca still enjoys a long life as an educational work as, for children, it represents an ideal introduction to those important techniques. Opus 2, a wind quintet written for the Nash Ensemble a year later, shows his formative influences seeding a personal compositional style, in the shape of the dancing vitality of irregular rhythmic patterns, a contemplative slow movement and organic growth within an atonal, contrapuntal texture Humour surfaces many times in later works, such as Comedy for Five Winds, his opus 14 of 1972 for the Vega Wind Quintet, and the more experimental sound-world of Time Piece, opus 16, written in 1973 for the King's Singers. For many, humour is the introduction to Patterson's music but, to appreciate other aspects, it helps to know that he learned to sail in his early teens, and that sea-sailing remains a most important part of his life. Although Patterson's ability to write extended melodic lines is evidenced by the slow central movement of Duologue for oboe and piano, for example, it is not a romantic notion to suggest that his frequent use of multilayered countrapuntal writing reflects the currents, tides, waves, wavelets and iridescent spray of the sea. Indeed, the form and colourful orchestration of White Shadows on the Dark Horizon, written for the Kent County Youth Orchestra in 1989, overtly exploits that relatio |
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Patterson's student days had ended with further study with Richard
Rodney Bennett, and he had remained at the Royal Academy as Manson
Fellow, and teacher of composition. It was then he discovered the
Polish composers Lutoslawski and Penderecki. As he adopted the new
notation symbols he found in their scores, and made the first of many
visits to Poland, an enhanced expressiveness surfaced in his music,
reaching new heights in Voices of Sleep, opus 40, performed at the
Proms in 19~81. Yet musicians found the new notation difficult so,
with great courage, Patterson reverted almost entirely to conventional
notation and began another fruitful compositional stage producing,
over the next twenty years, a continuous succession of varied pieces,
including the major choral works Mass of the
Sea, Stabat Mater, Te
Deum, Magnificat and the
Millennium Mass, also the exquisite a capella
Missa Brevis.
However, Patterson's deep emotional involvement in Poland and its
music could not be denied, and it surfaced in 1984 with renewed intensity
in the conventionally notated Luslawice
Variations, opus 50. The undercurrents
of tension and poignancy in the slow movements of his works remain,
particularly in the Concerto for
Orchestra, written for the CBSO in
1981, and certainly in the poised melodic line of that section of
the Violin Concerto.
Patterson's latest work is Deviations for string octet, premiered
this year. Between this and Rebecca, lie over 80 published compositions,
including the phenomenally successful Little Red Riding Hood of 1992,
and 35 years of devotion to the cause of contemporary music, which
has taken him all over the world, and for which he has received recognition.
In 1987 he received a Medal of Honour from the Polish Ministry of
Culture, in 1996 the Performing Rights Society and the Royal Philharmonic
Society awarded him the Leslie Boosey Award for outstanding services
to contemporary music, and he is now Manson Professor at the Royal
Academy, a position which recognises his long service to his students
and his achievement in establishing the annual Composer Festivals
there.
Patterson is one of the most frequently performed contemporary composers;
his works, performed world-wide, certainly include those in cutting-edge
styles of the avant garde, but his music never alienates - rather,
it draws both audiences and performers in to contemplate, and rejoice
in, the complex spirit of our time.
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